‘Walking among the fires of hell’. William Blake, Los and Christ

The analysis of Blake’s aesthetic, symbolic and epistemological system sheds light on the archetypal figure of Los, a fictional character interpretable as the au- thor’s alter ego. Los, a blacksmith busy at his furnace, and his consort Enitharmon, a weaver engaged in her looms, represent the power of creation and stand for the male and female principles, time and space, line and colour, word and image: according to the emblematic tradition, they also stand for body and soul and personify the indi- visible aspects of Blake’s composite art and of his philosophy. These pages will try to demonstrate that Los the blacksmith and Blake the engraver are a unique persona iden- tifiable with the figure of the alchemist, with the sun and with Christ.