I first came across this Blake illustration in Alexander Roob’s fine compendium Alchemy and Mysticism (2006). I’m not sure why I had the notion to render it in simplified form using tracing paper, but it took shape very easily and the initial sketch is very close to the final design.
The chosen accompanying text does not, synchronicity not always being perfect, come from the same page but from slightly later in the Book of Urizen. The sentiments expressed seem to embody Blakes’s own creative struggle, and I think the words have a universal resonance for anyone attempting to realise difficult ideas or aspirations.
The crouching skeletal figure is a potent image, and seems poised between recoil from, and re entry into, the world. In Roob’s book it is fittingly found in the section titled “resurrection.”
The chosen accompanying text does not, synchronicity not always being perfect, come from the same page but from slightly later in the Book of Urizen. The sentiments expressed seem to embody Blakes’s own creative struggle, and I think the words have a universal resonance for anyone attempting to realise difficult ideas or aspirations.
The crouching skeletal figure is a potent image, and seems poised between recoil from, and re entry into, the world. In Roob’s book it is fittingly found in the section titled “resurrection.”
