Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake Paperback – April 1, 1969

It burst open William Blake's works for me like a key to Narnia. I read it to pieces. Superb analysis, presenting all the complexities of Blake's thought which the modern world definitely could benefit from, if they would only listen. It also contains a profound critique of popular understandings of religion, ethics, and morality, which have cleared up a lot of fogginess for me personally as a religious/spiritual seeking individual.

I have a much clearer sense of Blake's writings now that I've read this book. I took a long time in finishing it, reading some major poems by W.B. at the same time. This is really an exciting book; it brings to life a whole universe - that lived in the poet's imagination. Blake is alive today (in the spirit of his artistic creations) I am convinced. William Blake had a great gift for describing aspects of real life in a way that was inspired by the Bible, and some other imaginative or visionary artists and poets; he was also highly opinionated. It's impressive how well Frye understood Blake's gift, and his personal life, which also makes a strand of this effort, which is a literary effort in it's own right. Anyone with an interest in Blake ought to read this book. It's a tool that allows one to approach Blake's creations of writing and visual artistry with an active (as well as open) mind.

Frye’s very substantial study of Blake is an wonderful guide to the poet’s symbolism and to his significance as a mystical artist. Indeed the relationship between mysticism and art forms a substantial theme in the book. The central myth of Blake’s prophecies, Albion‘s fall and redemption through the creative imagination (symbolized by Jesus), is treated extensively, unifying the accounts from Jerusalem, the unfinished Four Zoas, Daughters of Albion, Milton, as well as the engravings for these and other works. “Read William Blake or go to hell - that’s my message for the modern world!” Frye once remarked.

Some time ago I reread Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry before having another read through of the poems of William Blake including the longer poems The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. Despite my appreciation of Frye's book I was struck by the disconnect between many of Frye's well-expressed and coherent ideas and the poems themselves. I noticed also that Frye barely quoted from any of the poems or analyzed any passage specifically. At that point I started to look around for other texts which offered a different viewpoint from Frye to see if my dissatisfaction was justified or not. The more I read the alternative views the more convinced I became that Frye's account was seriously deficient. I do not think he is entirely wrong or that there is nothing of value in his book. However, I strongly recommend that readers interested in Blake's poetry read alternative views. The ones I have found most useful and interesting include the following: The Four Zoas (Photographic Facsimile (Magno & Erdman), Narrative Unbound (Donald Ault), The Dialectic of Vision (Fred Dortort), Dark Figures in the Desired Country (Gerda Norvig), The Traveler in the Evening (Morton Paley), Rethinking Blake's Textuality (Molly Rothenberg),Blake's Critique of Transcendence (Peter Otto) and some of the articles in Blake's Sublime Allegory (Curran & Wittreich Eds.) I might note that after doing all this reading of the poems and about Blake I am convinced that the unpublished The Four Zoas is the central and most significant poem Blake wrote and that both Milton and Jerusalem suffer in comparison with it. The problem that Blake may have realized with the Four Zoas was that it could never be published in its authentic form due to the graphic (for the time) psychosexual content of the illustrations (the subtitle of the poem is The Torments of Love and Jealousy).

Blake is a conundrum, but well worth studying with an open mind and a sense of wonder. This book supports one's journey and prompts one to read Blake's texts with a growing awareness of their value to us, enmeshed as we are in the machine era that he abhorred.

A great book to last for a lifetime into eternity. Northrop Frye's perceptions are subtle and open the works of Blake and others in a way that is simply astonishing and like no other book I have ever read. A masterpiece about a genius.

as a critic, northrop frye is the complete critic...his blending of all of literature helps to lead in other directions...before you know it, you're off on another subject...as in this case, english social history become a source of blake's search...bye

If you give yourself fully to an imaginative reading of this book, and then of Blake's Collected Poems,the doors of your perception will be opened. Not always an easy task, but certainly worth the effort.