Total (partial) Eclipse of the Art(ist)

On this day 199 years ago William Blake breathed his last, aged 69, in a shabby room in Fountain Court, this room in fact.

Fountain Court was just off the Strand, and is now a dingy alley round the back of the Savoy Hotel.

Image courtesy of my friend (and brilliant teacher and novelist) Amy Weldon. As befits the eternal maverick Blake, there is no official plaque, but this brilliant DIY contribution, fashioned out of a foil cake stand, by the William Blake Congregation.

According to Blake’s young admirer, George Richmond, Blake died at 6 o’clock, and as it happens from about 6 onwards (less than an hour from now as I write) we are expecting a partial eclipse. Pity it couldn’t line up with the big 200 next year! but I’ll take what I can get.

I can only find a couple of direct references to an eclipse in Blake’s poetry, one from Milton: ‘Then Palamabron reddening like the Moon in an eclipse…’, and the other from his early dramatic verse fragment, King Edward the Third: ‘Rolling dark clouds o’er France, muffling the sun / In sickly darkness like a dim eclipse’. But there’s plenty about suns and moons in Blake, and more generally t there’s something about the apocalyptic vibe of a solar eclipse that feels pretty Blakean - portentous signs in the heavens, etc. It also makes me think of the weird, cosmic, globes of angry red blood that Blake frequently invokes. This, for example, is from The Book of Urizen:

‘Down sunk with fright a red
Round globe hot burning deep
Deep down into the Abyss:’

and here’s my approximation of this recurring image in the early pages of LOS, my graphic novel about Blake.

And maybe the most famous Blake image shows an eclipse? Or is Urizen (in old Testament God Nobodaddy form) himself attempting to eclipse the sun?

Blake told Henry Crabb Robinson that he had conversed with ‘the Spiritual Sun’ (on Primrose Hill no less) and his great prophetic character, Los, is partially named after the sun - sol backwards.

If you are going to gaze upon the sun, spiritual or otherwise this evening, please look after your eyes, which may not be as well equipped as Mr Blake’s to absorb fiery, visionary emanations. My friends have managed to secure the last few pairs of eclipse glassed in South London, so I’m off to have a look on Peckham Rye.

If you’re free this Saturday 15th August, the Blake Society and friends will be meeting at Blake’s grave in Bunhill Fields at noon to celebrate his life and work. All are welcome. More details here