>Europe Supported by Africa and America is an engraving by Blake held in the collection of the University of Arizona Museum of Art. The engraving was for a book written by Blake's friend John Gabriel Stedman called The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796).[49] It depicts three women embracing one another. Black Africa and White Europe hold hands in a gesture of equality, as the barren earth blooms beneath their feet. Europe wears a string of pearls, while her sisters Africa and America are depicted wearing slave bracelets.[50] Some scholars have speculated that the bracelets represent the "historical fact" of slavery in Africa and the Americas while the handclasp refer to Stedman's "ardent wish": "we only differ in color, but are certainly all created by the same Hand."[50]
>>24966580
>>24966580As with most pre-modern Europeans glazing cultures they didn't understand, it's more masturbation to their projected image than a genuine belief. It is in a very similar vein to the bon sauvage, more a construction of rational enquiry without connection to reality than true understanding. Although I am aware most modern "woke" people's views can be thought of in the same way, so yes. William Blake was "woke" in "some way."But if you were to plop Blake in the middle of a modern pride parade surrounded by Africa and America, you would suddenly find that this means very little.
>>24966580No. He wasn't anti-white or pro-gay or an advocate for political activeness. He simply made a statement against abuse of people based on race or nationality in the spirit of universal brotherhood. He also thought that the desire for worldly power was unbecoming of a true spiritual being, and held that we are all manifestations of a common creator. So it is true that he had some superficial similarities with wokesters, but the essence and meaning was very different.
