Publisher's Synopsis
William Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" is here presented, for the first time, as its own, "pocket-sized," stand-alone work.
Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" first appeared in England in 1794, a key piece in Blake's larger The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Since its publication, Blake's "Proverbs" has attained a life of its own, simultaneously fascinating, unsettling, and intriguing scholars, writers, occultists, theologians, and philosophers alike. Blake claimed that the Satanic insights contained in his "Proverbs of Hell" were taken from his meetings with demons "while walking among the fires of Hell."
Ikonograph Press is proud to present here, for the first time, William Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" as its own individual work. Blake's infernal wisdom formed a key part of the Dark Romanticist and Gothic literary movements of the 1800s; and The Proverbs of Hell also served to inspire later figures such as Aleister Crowley, Aldous Huxley, and Allen Ginsberg (and other Beat Poets). More recently, Blake's Proverbs have inspired figures in pop culture, from The Doors, to Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs novels and movies, to Marilyn Manson.
In the appendices to this edition, editor Oliver Sheppard (Thirteen Nocturnes) has also assembled selections from Emanuel Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell, Johann Lavater's Aphorisms of Man-both key influences on Blake-and proverbs from Blake's later works that serve to place The Proverbs of Hell in its proper literary context.
"Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion." - from William Blake's Proverbs of Hell
"There was no doubt that William Blake was mad. But there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott." - William Wordsworth
