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Religion & MysticismThe Marriage of Heaven and HellWilliam BlakeThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

William Blake

Religion & MysticismEnglish
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In this strange, brilliant little book of prose and verse, William Blake turns conventional morality upside down. Heaven, he says, is passive reason and…

Catalogue details

Author
William Blake
Category
Religion & Mysticism
Language
English
Source
Project Gutenberg

About this book

In this strange, brilliant little book of prose and verse, William Blake turns conventional morality upside down. Heaven, he says, is passive reason and obedience, Hell is active energy and desire, and both are needed: 'Without Contraries is no progression.' It contains the 'Proverbs of Hell', such as 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom', visions of a printing house in Hell, and the famous claim that Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it'.

Context and significance

Blake engraved and coloured the book himself around 1790 to 1793, partly as a reply to the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Its line 'If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite' gave Aldous Huxley the title of his book The Doors of Perception, and the rock band The Doors their name. Read Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

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