Page 66 - Studio International - November 1971

Irene Taylor. 169 pp, with 116 monochrome and gave up none of the visual sensuousness of Articles of faith
one colour illustration. Princeton University colour. Being a master of both poetry and The Genius of the Future: Studies in French
Press (London: Oxford University Press). painting, one feels, Blake had no need to employ
£12.00. one to duplicate the functions of the other, but Art Criticism, by Anita Brookner. 208 pp with
3o illustrations. Phaidon Press, £3.50.
William Blake: the Artist (A Pictureback) by could profit from the full use of the inherent
Ruthven Todd. 160 pp, with ii6 monochrome qualities of both to augment the dimensions of Zola: Mon Salon— Manet— Ecrits sur l'Art,
introduced by Antoinette Ehrard. 240 pp.
illustrations. Studio Vista. £1.80 (hardback), his vision. Gamier Flammarion, fop.
Bop (paperback). As is well known from his famous pictorial
commentaries on Dante and the Book of Job, D'abord le genre me plait. Anita Brookner's
While many artists have expressed themselves Blake's illustrative method was no less original The Genius of the Future is a book of essays on
in both pictures and words, there can be few who when applied to writings other than his own. In seven of the greatest French writers on art:
have shown their genius so equally in both as `Blake's Illustrations to the Poems of Gray' Mrs Diderot, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Zola, the
William Blake. Indeed such quality of expression Irene Taylor provides an authoritative account Goncourts and Huysmans. It is a study of art
is almost uniquely central to Blake's life, for of one of Blake's lesser known series, a work that criticism in its golden age, before it developed
from the time of his apprenticeship to the has particular historical interest for having into 'the rigid toadying exercise that it has
engraver James Basire he was intimately apparently been commissioned by Flaxman. become today'. And it suggests—by implication
concerned with the processes of combining The reproduction of this group of 116 at least—that art criticism was viable for these
illustration and text in both his hackwork and watercolours in their entirety forms a valuable men only as an adjunct to more general
his own creative productions. addition to the volumes containing complete concerns, to a more comprehensive effort, moral,
In view of this it is strange to find that sequences of Blake illustrations that have been stylistic, political, philosophical. Dr Brookner
comparatively little attention has been paid in appearing with increasing frequency in recent quotes a contemporary professional critic only
the past to a consideration of the significance of years; although it is a sad reflection of current once, in her introduction, and that to illustrate
Blake's simultaneous use of the 'sister arts' of trends that, in a book so highly priced, only one the typical tone her critics avoided : impotent,
painting and poetry to convey his visionary plate should be in colour. Although fascinating self-conscious, angry at nothing. She goes on to
ideas. The need for such a study has certainly for showing Blake's critique of what he comment : 'It is precisely the absence of this
been felt for a long time, and as early as 1906 the considered to be Gray's increasing misuse of his bitterness and rancour that has impressed me in
pioneer Blake scholar W. Graham Robertson poetic imagination, it is unlikely that these the six characters chosen for this study. Out of
was writing that Blake's 'two chosen forms of illustrations will ever be counted among his most the welter of their duties, usually lonely ones,
• expression must be studied side by side; ... popular series. For despite a number of superb these writers performed their journalistic task
until we begin to know the third Blake, Blake designs, and such individual delights as the with an innocence, that is to say, a genuine lack
the seer, the philosopher, and the teacher.' anthropoid goldfish in the 'Ode on the Death of of worldliness or compromise, which compels
However, there has until recently been little a Favourite Cat', the watercolours as a whole not only our admiration but our very deepest
pooling of resources between literary and visual have a slightly dull feel about them, something respect. For them criticism was an article of
historians to attempt to discover the 'third that Mrs Taylor herself sees as a deliberate faith, and for us, the readers, their criticism now
Blake'. response to certain sentiments expressed by appears in some curious way to be about the
In Blake's Visionary Forms Dramatic, the the author of 'Elegy Written in a Country very nature of faith itself'.
literary camp has made the first move towards a Churchyard'. There will, however, be a chance That is a typical passage, I think, and it
rapprochement. In a collection of twenty essays, for the public to become more acquainted with suggests at once that part of what is remarkable
edited by the noted Blake scholars David the undoubted merits of the originals both when about this book is its style. Dr Brookner points
Erdman and John Grant, systematic analyses of they go on exhibition at the Tate in December, time and again, always accurately, to the way her
the interrelation of text and design have been and when the Blake Trust facsimile edition is critics write—the length of a sentence, the
provided on many of his most important published. rhythm of a paragraph, the particular character
illustrated books, including the 'Songs of Ruthven Todd's William Blake: The Artist, of Diderot's insolence or Stendhal's ellipses.
Innocence and Experience' and the prophetic which deals exclusively with Blake's pictorial Nor is the concern for style an academic affair.
poems 'America' and 'Jerusalem'. While the production, represents a quite different aspect of This is a book which uses aphorism and joke as a
scholarship in these essays is evidently of a very Blake studies. The author himself does not claim means to avoid the inappropriate response, the
high standard, one cannot help wondering it to be more than a brief survey. It is however description that travesties the style it refers to,
whether further light might have been cast on full of detailed information concerning the the pedantic response to something which is the
the central theme of the book through the means whereby Blake scraped together a living, opposite of pedantry. To my mind, Dr
participation of some more informed specialists much of it the result of original research by a Brookner most often succeeds. Take, for
on Blake the artist, for almost all the contributors scholar long known for his investigations into example, these sentences from her opening
are clearly more at home with literary than English romanticism. This information has been paragraph on Baudelaire:
pictorial analysis. It is, as W. J. T. Mitchell supplemented by a series of carefully chosen `With Baudelaire's life we seem to be reading a
points out in `Blake's Composite Art', essential plates which provide, albeit in rather indifferent chapter in some kind of martyrology, a
to realize that while Blake's visual imagination monochrome reproductions, many interesting martyrology that relates not the operatic
can be sensed in his poetry and his power of examples of his lesser known works. The sufferings of the distressed poet common to the
narrative is apparent in his pictures, he did not narrative, unusually cast in the form of a Romantic age, but the withdrawal symptoms of
attempt a merging of the characteristics of chronological inventory of Blake's activities as a a man of faith who made the choice, perhaps the
visual and verbal expression. There are no commercial engraver and as a creative artist is wrong choice, of operating in the sphere of the
Apollinairian shaped poems in his oeuvre, for enlivened both by the author's references to his beautiful rather than that of the good. This man,
example, and no pictogrammic use of imagery own personal experiments with Blake's printing instead of occupying himself with the
of the kind that can be found in the Tageszeiten techniques, and by his humane approach to his chronicle of a spiritual journey which he was
of his German contemporary Philipp Otto subject. In this sense at least one feels that of the supremely equipped to make, became a poet and
Runge. In an age when a visual analogy three books reviewed here this modest volume earned his living as a critic.'
to poetic method was being explored in the comes closest to conveying a sense of Blake's This seems to me superb writing. It is
synoptic form of pure outline engraving, Blake, world. q pitched at the right, the only level for its subject.
despite his adulation of Neoclassical contour, WILLIAM VAUGHAN It sets itself a high standard—one of elegance,

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