SOURCE: "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," in William Blake, Hutchinson University Library, 1975, pp. 70-84.

In the following excerpt Nurmi focuses on The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as a philosophical manifesto that goes considerably beyond mere satire.

During the time Blake was producing Songs of Experience, he was also writing and etching a work of a very different kind, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, begun, as indicated in a chronological reference in the text, in 1790 but not completed until 1792 or 1793. It is a strange work, a kind of philosophical manifesto, partly in satiric form, affirming the polar nature of being and the need for a change in man's perception so that this polar nature can be recognized. The immediate object of the work, arising from its satiric theme, was to expose and reject the normative moral categories of Good and Evil of orthodox religion by showing...