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Poet: William Blake
Poem: To Nobodaddy
Comment 4 of 4, added on June 8th, 2009 at 2:58 PM.
Nobodaddy is Nobody-Daddy - nobody/father - in other words, a patriarchal god who is a nobody because he never shows himself to those he supposedly created. Blake has no time for a ghost of a god - he wants a living, breathing, guiding god - one who interacts with humans and doesn't remain invisible to them; he also wants one who does not lay down stupidly dark and obscure laws, especially those that prohibit the gaining knowledge. Blake finds this insulting. It's a great poem.
R J Dent from United States
Comment 3 of 4, added on May 11th, 2009 at 4:50 PM.
Dear Lauren,
Invoking Freud sadly does not make you appear smarter in this instance, since William Blake died almost half a century before Freud was even born. Thus the title of the poem cannot be a reference to Freud in any way, unless you truly believe in Blake's prophetic genious. sic
Gregor from Slovenia
Comment 2 of 4, added on March 25th, 2009 at 10:37 AM.
Nobodaddy is a reference to Freud, who believed that religion was born out of an infantile desire to always be under the care and discipline of one's father. Into adulthood, this desire results in the psyche creating a projection of a god. Blake picked up on this and wrote poems to mock the Judeo-Christian god, who he thought to be patriarchal and indeed a tyrannical father figure. Of course, we can assume that Blake would disagree with Freud's suggestion that *all* religion stems from an infantile father-hunger, as Blake himself was a mystic; however, he must have thought Freud's idea pertinent to Christianity with its preoccupation with the idea of God the Father.
Lauren Chomyn from Canada
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Nobodaddy is Nobody-Daddy - nobody/father - in other words, a patriarchal god who is a nobody because he never shows himself to those he supposedly created. Blake has no time for a ghost of a god - he wants a living, breathing, guiding god - one who interacts with humans and doesn't remain invisible to them; he also wants one who does not lay down stupidly dark and obscure laws, especially those that prohibit the gaining knowledge. Blake finds this insulting. It's a great poem.
R J Dent from United States