William Blake and the age of revolution

by Jacob Bronowski

Bronowski was fascinated by William Blake for much of his life. His first book about him, "A Man Without a Mask", was published in 1944. In 1958 his famous Penguin selection of Blake's poems and letters was published. As further testimony to Bronowski's enthusiasm it should be noted that the final plate in the book of his great TV series "The Ascent of Man" is Blake's frontispiece to Songs of Experience. "William Blake and the Age of Revolution", first published in 1965, is, in some ways, a revised edition of "A Man Without a Mask", in others, a new book. In it Bronowski gives a stimulating interpretation of Blake's art and poetry in the context of the revolutionary period in which he was working. Like all of Bronowski's writings it dazzles with wide-ranging erudition, making this work far removed from conventional literary criticism.

Genres: History, Art, Biography, Poetry

216 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 1972

About the author

Jacob Bronowski was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.

In 1950, Bronowski was given the Taung child's fossilized skull and asked to try, using his statistical skills, to combine a measure of the size of the skull's teeth with their shape in order to discriminate them from the teeth of apes. Work on this turned his interests towards the human biology of humanity's intellectual products.

In 1967 Bronowski delivered the six Silliman Memorial Lectures at Yale University and chose as his subject the role of imagination and symbolic language in the progress of scientific knowledge. Transcripts of the lectures were published posthumously in 1978 as The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination and remain in print.

He first became familiar to the British public through appearances on the BBC television version of The Brains Trust in the late 1950s. His ability to answer questions on many varied subjects led to an offhand reference in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus where one character states that "He knows everything." However Bronowski is best remembered for his thirteen part series The Ascent of Man (1973), a documentary about the history of human beings through scientific endeavour. This project was intended to parallel art historian Kenneth Clark's earlier "personal view" series Civilisation (1969) which had covered cultural history.

During the making of The Ascent of Man, Bronowski was interviewed by the popular British chat show host Michael Parkinson. Parkinson later recounted that Bronowski's description of a visit to Auschwitz—Bronowski had lost many family members during the Nazi era—was one of Parkinson's most memorable interviews.

Jacob Bronowski married Rita Coblentz in 1941. The couple had four children, all daughters, the eldest being the British academic Lisa Jardine and another being the filmmaker Judith Bronowski. He died in 1974 of a heart attack in East Hampton, New York a year after The Ascent of Man was completed, and was buried in the western side of London's Highgate Cemetery, near the entrance.

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though he is best known as a philosopher and science historian, Jacob Bronowski was also a William Blake enthusiast who used the poet/visionary/artist as either the subject or a key figure in several of his books. This study puts Blake squarely in the context of his times, and offers many insights into the roots of the often puzzling images that crop up in Blake's poems and illustrations. Bronowski's erudition is as formidable as his prose style is direct and accessible. I'm not sure a Blake novice would get much from this book, but someone already familiar with the man's eccentric and impressive body of work will find much to ponder.

[Hugh A. Buchanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always had great difficulty reading William Blake. His poetry is very difficult to comprehend on any level, I think, at least for me. I was intrigued when I saw this book available to me on a "Free" table of books, I took the opportunity to pick it up. Thomas Merton, a favorite spiritual writer for me, was cited in two biographies I read that Blake was his "favorite poet." That is say a lot for Merton, himself a poet, also drew upon many of like kind in his life in his scholarship, teaching and reflection. Still, for some time, this book sat in my library unopened.

In October, 2020, I finally picked up the volume. Written by Jacob Bronowski, more known to me through his scientific leaning efforts (Assent of Man, Science and Human Values, etc) was a philosopher in his own right and a cultural commentator well acquainted with classical literature. He began by linking the profound effects of the turbulent age Blake endured (to use a word that seems to fit) that marked the end of cottage industry in England, to be replaced by the brutal spawning of the Industrial Revolution. A list of the chapter titles will convey the how Bronowski portrays this sensitive author in the ravages he experienced, suffered during his lifetime:
-the Prophetic Mask
-The Seditious Writings
-The Satanic Wheels
-Innocence and Experience
-The Man Without a Mask
The seismic societal changes Blake lived through brought immense impact upon his understanding of God, his own immortal soul and the visions he would capture in his engravings and his writings. I must confess, Bronowski speaks intimately about Blake in almost loving terms, threading us through the periods of Blake's life and building of tapestry of incredible pain, the prophetic vision and mystic writing we need to capture somehow in our imagination; alas, to my poor ability, I could only grasp some of the depth and it will demand another slow reading through not only Bronowski's words, but through Blake's also.

Reading this brought a realization to me that we are now entering a similar seismic change in our world with the technological advancement, shifts in global power and influence, and the subtle siren calls to adopt a secular culture. They were all elements in Blake's day. They are with us today; that alone is enough to read this work. I find I am immensely grateful to the person who dropped this volume on the "Free" table for me to find.

[Emma Papworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blake was regarded as an untaught remote mystic whose poems lay quite outside his times and our tradition. Blake loved the adventure of learning; to him, Christ was the wonder child, the rebellious child and the symbol of knowledge, innocence at one with experience.

William Blake is the poet whose work and whose life express most sensitively the moving changes of that age. He more than any other, had the ambitions of simple men, spoke out of their difficult dilemmas, and suffered their neglect. His poetry and his designs belong to the romantic revival, and his life and his friends (as well as men he hated) belonged to the Industrial Revolution. He was a man of the new stamp, self taught, lonely, awkward.

[Nasser]

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