28 November

Born in 1757 – William Blake, English poet and painter.

Above: Beatrice Speaking with Dante, c. 1825

Also, born in 1908, Belgian-French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.

The work of the painter, the poet or the musician, like the myths and symbols of the savage, ought to be seen by us, if not as a superior form of knowledge, at least as the most fundamental and the only one really common to us all; scientific thought is merely the sharp point more penetrating because it has been whetted on the stone of fact, but at the cost of some loss of substance and its effectiveness is to be explained by its power to pierce sufficiently deeply for the main body of the tool to follow the head.

Previously on November 28, Blake & Alexander Blok.