Foreword from the performance programme of William Blake’s Divine Humanity
New Players Theatre, London
20.November – 2.December.2007
William Blake is the great liberator of the imagination. His writing has unrelenting cerebral firepower; kinetic energy captured in words, eighteenth century rock’n’roll and then some. Academics labour hard to unlock his secrets, each falling into the very trap that Blake has set for them, their souls remaining unnourished, and their mind’s eye missing the point of the mission; it is not we who unlock Blake, but Blake who unlocks us. Whatever inspires you, be it true love (“Can that be love, that drinks another as a sponge drinks water?”), or the punk ethic (“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s”), all that truly motivates human life is there, articulated, in the words and images of William Blake, a messiah for those of us who have no natural religion. As an artist, I choose to walk in his steps and take up his gauntlet, because it’s the greatest cause I have ever known; through my relationship with the work of William Blake, the sun shines and my task is clear. I must never cease from Mental Fight, not ever. And therein is the realisation that so touched me when I discovered his work. Freedom, exercised with compassion and flair, the heart and the head in harmony, the road to Damascus, the proverbial sunrise of the soul, the new dawn that never fades. His gift to me, and to us all, for all time.
Jude Rawlins
Comment from Philip Pullman, President of the Blake Society
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William Blake’s Divine Humanity – a dramatisation of the life and work of William Blake – has also been staged in the following cities:
Helsinki
Rome
Milan
Perugia
Geneva
Basle
