Commoditizing Blake

Our elusive fellow micro.blog-ger Ayjay has a new essay up at Harpers (Everything is Illuminated) and a complementary blog:

Politically radical? Check. Pacifist? Check. Feminist? Check. Pop culture maven? Check. In short, Blake was basically a Guardian reader. And that’s the kind of “Rebel, Radical, Revolutionary” that the corporate world is happy to support. Meanwhile, the visionary imagination that drove Blake’s entire career, which he believed to be pursuing in response to a Divine command — all that is to be passed over in discreet and embarrassed silence. Rebels, radicals, and revolutionaries can be commoditized and can therefore be “for all”; but ecstatic visionaries? The less said the better. T. S. Eliot found Blake “terrifying,” for reasons which the Tate exhibition tried to obscure. Fortunately, the attempt was not wholly successful.

Why Blake is terrifying

My main blog is the Tipsy Teetotaler, http://intellectualoid.com.