Books
William Blake

FOR THE SEXES: THE GATES OF PARADISE

The Gates of Paradise, were first published in a limited run in 1793, Blake later changed the title to For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise, and added several more drawings as well as a preface and concluding verse, publishing this version in 1818. The seventeen emblematic drawings and their commentaries depict the life of man from birth to death: passage through the four elements (water, earth, wind and fire), hatching as a child from the “mundane shell,” encountering women, reaching for the moon of love («I want, I want”), falling into Time's Ocean. After several other episodes he finally arrives at the death's door with Job's words: “I have said to the Worm: Thou art my mother and my sister.” There a female figure is “Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife, And Weeping over the Web of Life.”
William Blake (1757 — 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.
30 printed pages
Copyright owner
Bookwire
Original publication
2017
Publication year
2017
Have you already read it? How did you like it?
👍👎
fb2epub
Drag & drop your files (not more than 5 at once)