Tom Hodgkinson on why William Blake is as relevant today as ever
Is man a machine or a spiritual animal? A mere collection of atoms or a godlike creature endowed with a non-material imagination and a soul? A complicated computer or a holy ghost dwelling in a physical body?
If you’re William Blake, the answer is clearly the latter. If you’re some nutty avaricious Silicon Valley hyper-capitalist ad salesman-turned-prophet-of-the-future, then you probably believe the former.
Since day one the Idler has been infused with a Blakeian sensibility. The late great Gavin Hills used to quote the bard in his pieces for the magazine and today our resident philosopher Mark Vernon keeps the Blakeian flame burning.
As freedom-seekers, we hope to throw off the “mind-forg’d manacles” Blake talks about in his 1794 poem “London”:
I wander thro’ each charter’d street
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man
In every Infants cry of fear
In every voice; in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
Of course this was at a time when Britain was starting to congratulate itself on building what it called its “empire” by essentially raiding other countries of their wealth via the East India Company (you can hear William Dalyrmple talking on this at the Idler Festival).
The Industrial Revolution was sending some children to “dark satanic mills” and others up chimneys. Greed and military might worked together to create profits and big houses for the few, all built on the tears and deaths of children:
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
We’d have to wait over 50 years before the arrival of the Factories Act of 1847, nicknamed The Ten Hours Act, which stipulated a maximum 58-hour working week for children. The mind boggles really; how many hours were the children working in mills before the act came in?
The act was pushed forward by Lord Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury (whose ancestor the third Earl of Shaftesbury was the famous philosopher) and by John Fielden, a cotton mill owner who said most mill workers died young:
I well remember being set to work in my father’s mill when I was a little more than ten years old; my associates, too, in the labour and in recreation are fresh in my memory. Only a few of them are now alive; some dying very young, others living to become men and women; but many of those who live have died off before they attained the age of 50 years, having the appearance of being much older, a premature appearance of age which I verily believe was caused by the nature of the employment in which they had been brought up.
Blake combined prophetic works with a sort of “antiwork” attack on the greed-infused utilitarian approach to the world, which not only produced unbelievable misery, but which also denied the life of the spirit. The Silicon Valley ad salesmen, money movers and data controllers – the Peter Thiels of this world – are the direct descendants of the textile factory owners of the 19th century. (To see an example of the utilitarian mindset in action, search “Willam Blake” on your computer. The first result reads: “Low prices on blake william blake – Amazon.co.uk Official Site”.)
Thank God, in fact, for Victorian philanthropists, and for the likes of Marx and Engels and William Morris for shining a light on the appalling subjugation of our own people – as well as people overseas. And let’s not get smug when it comes to our own age: the International Labour Organisation says that long working hours kills 750,000 people each year.
We’ve just recorded a lovely illustrated online course on how Blake can help us to live well with Mark Vernon. That will be released the Wednesday following the Idler Festival in Hampstead. Mark will also be leading a William Blake walk at the festival.
PS: Festival tickets are now nearly sold out. Day tickets for Saturday are all gone. We have a few weekend tickets left, plus a handful of day tickets for Friday and Sunday.
Also the July/August edition of the Idler has been mailed out. It’s also available in shops next week. Don’t forget, you can now buy the Idler in your local bookshop. A good excuse to visit and spend some idle time pondering the shelves. We’re also available in larger branches of WHSmiths, Waitrose and Booths.
Below is a sneak preview of the cover: We interviewed Jarvis Cocker on the art of creativity and mucking about.
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