“Man has no Body distinct from his Soul,” declared William Blake. “Nature is imagination itself!” The human face is the “countenance divine”.

Inspiring, yes. But what can we make of his sayings?

Mark Vernon sat down with poet Malcolm Guite to discuss how Blake’s ideas about the imagination challenge modern ways of perceiving the world. 

They stress that dismissing Blake’s converse with angels dismisses the radicality of what he has to offer. They explore how the division between the subjective and objective, which Guite calls “epistemological apartheid”, is false and has terrible consequences for human beings, personally and politically. They argue that theology needs a revival of the imagination as the way we apprehend truths that put the fire into rational comprehension.

For more on Mark’s book, “Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination” see www.markvernon.com

For more on Malcolm Guite see https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com

0:00 Ways of knowing
01:46 Don't medicalise Blake!
3:30 The senses are inlets of soul
5:25 A fundamental, false division
12:07 Imagination makes real not makes up
16:35 Demystifying the imagination
20:48 Eternity in the present and particular
26:58 Reason the bound of energy: Geoffrey Hill on Blake
32:09 Blake's aphoristic philosophy
33:20 The renewal of Christianity
42:56 The generative teaching of Jesus 
44:46 Energy and the Holy Spirit: Barfield on Blake
48:17 Albion crucifies the imagination
54:21 Contraries that create not conflict
58:29 Selfless perception