This reading forms part of the Blake Voice Project that aims to make all of Blake's works available for free. This and many more Blake recordings can be downloaded for free at [ Ссылка ].

Performing Blake is a powerful experience and below are some thoughts about what the reader has experienced in making this recording.

On reading Milton out loud:

Both Milton and Jerusalem have been close to me for many years, and fundamental in my trying to understand Blake's vision of what human experience is, what part imagination and creative power play in that experience; of human pain, the redemption of that pain and our states of error (if at all possible) and divinity amidst, and around, all this drama. I read these poems over and over again while writing my Blakean novel Ciudad doliente de Dios (still unpublished) and Milton became more and more relevant to it, but I read this complex poetry in silence, led by the kind of trance the sheer thread of words induce along with the infinite thread of ideas and visions.
Until I read Milton out loud for the Voice Project did I enter its narrative truly, and I only wish I had done it earlier. The parts of it I thought would remain locked for me, forever unintelligible, seemed at last to merge into the overall meaning --though much in Blake's work will always contain a great deal of mystery in it--, and it was a delightful experience to find, through my own voice, all the nuances of emotion and passion that the poem contains.
The recording was quite an ordeal on the technological side, and my dwellings inappropriate regarding the quiet necessary for such a project (there will still be heard some indelible traces of that, I'm afraid). Being such a long poem, at moments it was daunting to continue in the face of all these practical issues. I am very grateful to Nick Duncan, first for the idea itself of doing these recordings of Blake's poetry, then for his encouragement while I went through the technical challenge and helping me get the best results. In fact the difficulties ended up making me more determined to record it all and, in the process, experience the poem through entirely unexpected new depths. I hope the pleasure will be shared with listeners somehow.

Adriana Díaz-Enciso

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