Milton, A Poem (The Illuminated Books of William Blake, Volume 5)
The core of William Blake's vision, his greatness as one of the British Romantics, is most fully expressed in his Illuminated Books, masterworks of art and text intertwined and mutually enriching. Made possible by recent advances in printing and reproduction technology, the publication of new editions of Jerusalem and Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1991 was a major publishing event. Now these two volumes are followed by The Early Illuminated Books and Milton, A Poem. The books in both volumes are reproduced from the best available copies of Blake's originals and in faithfulness and accuracy match the acclaimed standards set by Jerusalem and Songs. These two volumes are uniform in format and binding with the first two volumes.
The Early Illuminated Books comprises All Religions Are One and There Is No Natural Religion; Thel; Marriage of Heaven and Hell; and Visions of the Daughters of Albion. Milton, A Poem, second only to Jerusalem in extent and ambition, is accompanied by Laocon, The Ghost of Abel, and On Homer's Poetry.
The editors of this great work recognize its difficulties and that it is usually only the domain of specialists. They have filled to volume it commentary, notes, and helps to try and help the general reader to penetrate aspects of this extended poem / lyric / myth. The style is so personal to Blake and so unlike any other writer's style that it is hard for most of us to make sense of what each character means in any instance. A further difficulty is that there really isn't a narrative path or plot or much to help the reader move from one moment to the next. Blake had a view of reality has so multi-layered with each being having simultaneous multiple identities and manifestations that our normal way of viewing reality is quite useless.
The plates are beautifully reproduced with wonderful coloring and great images. It is a poem you can tackle as you wish, but plan on spending a lot of time thinking about it before it yields much to you.
For those readers who love Blake this is a great volume to add to your collection. --Reviewer: Craig Matteson from Ann Arbor, MI
