The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

by William Blake

Unabridged, 34 minutes

English language

Published Dec. 13, 1793 by Librivox.

(9 reviews)

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

The Marriage of Heaven & Hell is William Blake’s masterpiece – a piously blasphemous reimagining of the duality of good and evil as an eternal dance of equally essential polarities.

Good, in Blake’s complex cosmology, is defined by a blind deference to the external, rational order embodied by the tyrant and the priest. Evil is the chaotic and revolutionary impulse that defies all reason and authority.

While Blake’s sympathies are clearly with the Romantic revolutionary, he argues for the necessity of both sides, which create balance through their eternal opposition.

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32 editions

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Review of 'The marriage of Heaven and Hell' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

"The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the Genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects. Thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast."