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‘The Sciences of Life’: Living Form in William Blake and Aldous Huxley

‘The Sciences of Life’: Living Form in William Blake and Aldous Huxley Nicholas M. Williams Of all the genealogies of Romantic phrases or ideas, perhaps none interests today’s students more than the line of descent by which a gnomic statement from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite’)1 becomes the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1954 exploration of psychedelic drug use, The Doors of Perception, and, in a subsequent transformation, the name of Jim Morrison’s band The Doors, founded in 1965. (For the chain of transmission to be complete, one should also include the vital link of Timothy Leary, who had read Huxley’s book and met with him at Harvard, and who served as a conduit for his ideas to the California counter-culture of the 1960s). For the teacher of British Romanticism seeking to inspire in undergraduates an enthusiasm for the topic that can be turned to serious study, the aura of cool surrounding this textual series is invaluable. But the precise nature of the relation between Blake and Huxley has for the most part been ignored or, when considered, largely trivialised. Shirley Dent and Jason Whittaker, for instance, in their wide-ranging survey http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Romanticism Edinburgh University Press

‘The Sciences of Life’: Living Form in William Blake and Aldous Huxley

M. Williams, Nicholas
Romanticism , Volume 15 (1): 41 – Apr 1, 2009
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References (2)

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2009
Subject
Post-Romantic Identities: A Critical Forum; Literary Studies
ISSN
1354-991X
eISSN
1750-0192
DOI
10.3366/E1354991X09000506
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Nicholas M. Williams Of all the genealogies of Romantic phrases or ideas, perhaps none interests today’s students more than the line of descent by which a gnomic statement from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite’)1 becomes the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1954 exploration of psychedelic drug use, The Doors of Perception, and, in a subsequent transformation, the name of Jim Morrison’s band The Doors, founded in 1965. (For the chain of transmission to be complete, one should also include the vital link of Timothy Leary, who had read Huxley’s book and met with him at Harvard, and who served as a conduit for his ideas to the California counter-culture of the 1960s). For the teacher of British Romanticism seeking to inspire in undergraduates an enthusiasm for the topic that can be turned to serious study, the aura of cool surrounding this textual series is invaluable. But the precise nature of the relation between Blake and Huxley has for the most part been ignored or, when considered, largely trivialised. Shirley Dent and Jason Whittaker, for instance, in their wide-ranging survey

Journal

Romanticism – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2009

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