Ecritures hétérogènes et vision une dans l’œuvre poétique de William Blake

• Main Author: Patrick Menneteau
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université du Sud Toulon-Var 1999-07-01
• Series: Babel : Littératures Plurielles
• Subjects: Bible; spirituality; mysticism
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/babel/2401

William Blake’s poetical writing is heterogeneous firstly in the sense of varied and multiple: pastorals, demonstrative arguments, children’s poems, didactic pieces, lyrical epics, exhortations are as many different modes of writing which the poet uses in an apparently disorderly fashion. Nevertheless, the biblical and Swedenborgian parodies, the imitations of well-established genres and the use of the parable should not conceal the fact that under the diversity lie a number of set themes and an objective which ensure the unit y of the works. Indeed, the central stake of these poems is to be found in a transformative function, which implies the denial of our habits of thinking and writing. Heterogeneous is then the mode of writing which, being determined by a practice of reading related to the spiritual states identified by the poet, begets the other the « self » as opposed to the« I », then the Other Himself. As it cannot grasp this subject, critical writing itself ultimately becomes heterogeneous.