In William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s, Saree Makdisi explores the enigmatic character of William Blake, as he fits into the history of his age. Blake is seen as "improbable and impossible," but that off-kilter madness is part of what makes Blake's work so spectacular. "For Blake's work," as Makdisi writes, "invokes a world of spirits and of imaginative power, a sense of time as fractured and unevenly heterogeneous, as sense of sharing and being in common..."
The Language of Blake
Drawing from much older radicalism, Blake creates an enthusiastic exploration of the imagination, which is powerful and limitless. He was an outsider. As a misunderstood, poor artist, he contested much of what his culture had to offer. While he stood apart, Blake was by no means a radical, or at least not a radical along the lines of Thomas Paine.Instead of arguing for the "rights of man," Makdisi says, "Blake elaborated a very different conception of being--and hence a very different conception of politics, as well as of aesthetics." Blake creates his own language, and his own philosophy; but his "tinkering" had more far-reaching ramifications.
While Blake's aesthetics were in many ways controversial, he was careful with how he expressed his dissension. Drawing from the critical studies of other prominent Blake scholars, Makdisi suggests that they haven't gone far enough to show how "Blake attacked the ruling state religion," and that gap is something that he intends to fill with this study.
Beyond Stability
Blake used his works to critique the culture of his time, but a true understanding of Blake can only be derived when we delve deeper into his "impossible history." If we are to pursue this "impossible history," Makdisi says that we must leave "stable representational ground."If Blake does not make sense in the history of his time, then perhaps there really does need to be a revision of the commonly held assumptions of the age. We dig deeper into the meaning and reason of the age. Makdisi claims: "What we need is to consider the way in which aesthetics and politics, economics and philosophy, religion and psychology work together." But, of course, that's easier said than done.
"For Blake," as Makdisi explains, "our being is defined by our desire," which involves a dynamic network of sharing. By connecting with other human beings, we are freed "to live life as continuous striving." Thus, meaning can only be determined as elements relate to one another in a network.
"Indeed," as Makdisi says, "the sense of heterogeneous, uneven, and fractured time, always folding and refolding on itself, that we have explored in Blake's work, is here shown to be both a time of change and a time of unity, both of the moment and of all eternity, both particular and infinite..."
