Dante e l'Arte (Oct 2020)
Prophetic Gestures: How Blake drew his Virgil
Abstract
This article concentrates on one specific figure in Blake´s visual adaptation of the Commedia: Virgil, whom Dante invoked both as a poetic predecessor and as an ethical model. The gestures and physical attitudes of the character in Blake´s plates suggest an insertion of this version of Virgil within the tradition of sacred writing that the author considered as prophetic. As we shall see, this involved a conscious decision on the part of Blake to abandon the core values and the larger significance of Virgil in the original Commedia. The article attempts to offer a reading of Blake´s version of the Mantuan poet based on the notions of prophecy that he had developed between 1804 and 1820, in his illustrations for the works of John Milton and in the illuminated poem Jerusalem, which must be considered his final and most decisive statement on the subject. What will emerge will be not a definitive perspective on the Blakean Virgil (no readings can be considered “definitive” in what concerns Blake), but one in which the prophetic gestures of the figure will appear in all their potentiality of meaning.
Keywords
