Book review: My Business Is To Create, by Eric G. Wilson
The subtitle unfortunately implies that William Blake wrote far too much, but that's not Wilson's point. Nor, despite the author's scholarly credentials, is this an academic work. It's more an extended meditation on Blake's life and works.
Wilson is obviously a Blake enthusiast, and like many Blake enthusiasts he is inclined to claim too much for his hero. For instance, at one point he says that Blake "is probably the first poet in English to see form not as prior to content but as an extension of content." Does Wilson seriously believe that Shakespeare and Milton were ignorant of this obvious (to any practicing poet) truth? Even Blake's poetic bugbear, Alexander Pope, was well aware of form "as an extension of content" -- see his Essay on Criticism.
Fortunately, most of the book is much more insightful than this. Wilson has much to offer on Blake's dialectic, his transcendence of categories, and the central place of imagination in his thought and life. Any artist or writer will draw inspiration from this book. I found it hard to complete, because I kept wanting to stop reading and start writing. That's a good thing.
