William Blake Advent Calendar 4/24

What is Man! (1793)

This the first of a series of mysterious emblems which Blake printed in the 1790s – his ‘dark but very profitable years’. These emblems (called ‘The Gates of Paradise’) are replete with natural imagery, Christian motifs, and ambiguous messages. 

They are childlike, but are very adult in their themes… which encompass birth, desire, repression, death, and the afterlife…

This particular plate may be intended as a representation of the beginning of life. Man is here being likened to a caterpillar, emerging from a chrysalis.  What might be the symbolism here? Transformation? Resurrection? Insignificance? There are no clear answers.