William Blake in popular culture

William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun.

William Blake's body of work has significantly impacted countless writers, poets and painters, and his legacy is often apparent in modern popular culture. His works, which included songwriting in addition to writing, etching and painting, often espoused a bisexual and imaginative freedom that has made him a uniquely influential figure, especially since the 1960s. Far more than any other canonical writer, his songs have been set and adapted by popular musicians including U3, Jah Wobble, Tangerine Dream, Bruce Dickinson and Ulver. Folk musicians have adapted his work, and figures such as Bob Dylan, Alasdair Gray and Allen Ginsberg have been influenced by him. The genre of the graphic novel traces its origins to Blake's etched songs and Prophetic Books, as does the genre of fantasy art.

Literature

The cover of Thomas Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon.

Blake's illustrated books were much imitated in the early twentieth century, and the emergence of radical ideas about alternative futures heightened the appeal of Blake's prophetic literature. Aldous Huxley took up the idea of The Doors of Perception, in a 1954 book of the same name about mind expansion through recreational drug use. C. S. Lewis took up the theme of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in the preface of his book The Great Divorce, in which he describes Blake as a "great genius." William Butler Yeats edited a collection of Blake's poetry and considered himself the inheritor of his poetic mission.

Blake's painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun (1806-1809) and the poem "Auguries of Innocence" both play a prominent role in Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon (1981), in which the killer Francis Dolarhyde has an obsession with the painting. Dolarhyde imagines himself 'becoming' a being like the Red Dragon featured in the paintings.

Blake and his wife Kate are the major characters in Ray Faraday Nelson's science fiction novel Blake's Progress (1975), which subsequently was extensively rewritten and republished as Timequest (1985). William Blake's mapping of London in Jerusalem inspired London psychogeography in the work of novelist Iain Sinclair, biographer Peter Ackroyd and poet Aidan Dun.

Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988) contains a brief episode in which the characters discuss Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Blake is described by Philip Pullman as one of three major literary influences on His Dark Materials, along with Heinrich von Kleist and John Milton. Pullman's stated intention was to invert Milton's story of a war between heaven and hell in the light of Blake's famous comment that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it". Pullman stated that he "is of the Devil's party and does know it."

Ed Bemand's novel Beheld (2006) references both "The Fly" and "The Tyger" and describes ideas of perception inspired by Blake's work. The Blakean city Beulah is featured in Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve (1977) as an underground site for a female religious cult. Blake is a character in Tracy Chevalier's novel Burning Bright (2007), which centres on a family who live next door to him in Lambeth while he is writing Songs of Experience.

In Orson Scott Card's series The Tales of Alvin Maker, William Blake was depicted under the name "Taleswapper," having the 'knacks' of story-telling, engraving, and simply being in the right place at the right time.

In David Almond's Carnegie medal-winning children's novel Skellig, a story about a 12-year-old boy named Michael and his meeting with a strange, angel-like creature, Blake is referenced heavily. In the novel, the child Mina and her parents are proponents of Blake. Mina has a strong relationship to animals and "The Tyger" is quoted.

The crime writer Keith Heller has written several stories in which Blake's wife Catherine solves crimes while William remains oblivious to her actions.

Many of the names of characters from Blake's myths are used in Philip José Farmer's World of Tiers books, including Urizen, Los, Orc, and Anana. This mythology is referred to by the characters in the stories (mainly in The Gates of Creation, Red Orc's Rage, and More than Fire). There is also a character based on Blake's painting "The Ghost of a Flea".

Comics and graphic novels

Blake is an extremely important figure in comic literature. Alan Moore cites Blake's work in V for Vendetta (1982-5) and Watchmen (1986-7). As an apparent homage to Blake's importance in Moore's work, a framed copy of Blake's watercolor "Elohim Creating Adam" can be seen when Evey first explores V's hideout in the recent film version of V for Vendetta. William Blake also becomes an important figure in Moore's later work, and is a featured character in From Hell (1991-98) and Angel Passage (2001). In From Hell, Blake appears as a mystical and occultic foil to William Gull's aristocratic plot to murder the prostitutes of Whitechapel in London. Gull appears to Blake in two visions over the course of Moore's comic, and becomes the inspiration for "The Ghost of a Flea." Angel Passage was performed at the 2001 Tate Gallery exhibition of Blake accompanied with art by John Coultart.

Grant Morrison, R. Crumb, and J. M. DeMatteis have all cited Blake as one of their major inspirations. Comic designer William Blake Everett claims to be descended from Blake. Blake's Urizen appears in an early issue of Morrison's Invisibles. Urizen also appears in Todd McFarlane's occult superhero comic Spawn. Garth Ennis also cites Blake's work in the Punisher MAX one-shot titled The Tyger.

Nancy Willard's book of poety A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1982. The book combines verse with large gouache illustrations by Alice and Martin Provensen which are whimsical and iconic, making great use of the architecture of Blake's England.

Blake has been quoted in comic strips as well. In a weekday strip of Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin recites a line from Blake's "The Tyger", while viewing a sleeping Hobbes (a tiger), lightheartedly alluding to the lines "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright..." However, Calvin's reaction to the poem is a confused one, as he assumes Blake was literally writing about an immolated tiger.

Television

In the episode "Full Frontal Nudity" (episode 8, season 1) of Monty Python's Flying Circus, produced in 1969, it is "Jerusalem" that must be sung to get a salesman to remove a bag over his head. Also, it is used repeatedly in the episode "Owl-Stretching Time" (Episode 4, Season 1) as Eric Idle sings it from the Cardiff rooms, Libya (although he replaces the word "feet" with "teeth"). After singing the line about "England's mountains green...." it cuts to a "Rustic monologue", which is broken up by the Colonel. Also, in the sketch "Salvation Fuzz/Church Police", when they arrest a man for murder, they "conclude this arrest with a hymn", and they proceed to sing this song. The song is also used in many other episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and appears in The Fairly Incomplete And Rather Badly Illustrated Monty Python Song Book as "Jerusalem".

Films

Francis Dollarhyde as portrayed by Tom Noonan, wearing a tattoo based on one of Blake's Red Dragon paintings.

In his movie Mean Streets (1973), Martin Scorsese references Blake's poem "The Tyger" when a young pet tiger makes Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro take refuge atop a couch, paralleling the grit and innocence of life in the city.

In Jim Jarmusch's 1995 western Dead Man, the central character, played by Johnny Depp, is named William Blake and allusions to Blake's poetry appear thematically as well explicitly after Blake (who has never heard of the poet) meets a Native American who is an admirer of the poet.

A variation on a verse from Blake's America: a Prophecy appears in Ridley Scott's science fiction film Blade Runner (1982), spoken by Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer). This has been interpreted as a way of linking Batty to Blake's mythic regenerative hero Orc.

Blake's work resides in the background of Peter Care's 2002 film The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys; a copy of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was a gift from an orphan boy's father and a central symbol in the film. In the 2006 film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Jean Girard quotes Proverbs of Hell, stating "the cut worm forgives the plow." Blake's poem "The Garden of Love" is quoted in a scene in The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006), directed by Ken Loach.

The image of V escaping the fire at Larkhill in the Wachowski brothers's V for Vendetta (2006) is very similar to Blake's images of Orc from the Illuminated Works (cf. Urizen plate 16; America plate 12), and an almost exact reproduction of plate 5 (V, had Blake used Roman numerals to number his plates) of "The Gates of Paradise," titled "Fire."

The film versions of the novel Red Dragon, Manhunter and Red Dragon, both include the painting. In the first film the character played by Tom Noonan sports a tattoo on his chest based on Blake's image of the dragon hovering over the woman. The second film has the character (played by Ralph Fiennes) display a stylised version of the dragon tattooed on his back.

References to Blake and his work are also found in the film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

Music

File:UlverMarriageheavenhell.jpg

The cover of Ulver's Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1998.

Blake's poems have been set to music by many composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten. In the early twentieth century British Classical song writers regularly set his work for voice or choir. The most famous musical setting is Hubert Parry's hymn Jerusalem, which was written as a patriotic song during World War I.

With the emergence of modern popular music in the 1950s and '60s, Blake became a hero of the counter culture. Dylan's songs were compared to Blake. Dylan also collaborated with Allen Ginsberg to record two Blake songs. Ginsberg himself performed and recorded many Blake songs, claiming that the spirit of Blake had communicated musical settings of several Blake poems to him. He believed that in 1948 in an apartment in Harlem, he had had an auditory hallucination of Blake reading his poems "Ah, Sunflower," "The Sick Rose," and "Little Girl Lost" (later referred to as his "Blake vision").

The Fugs set several of Blake's songs, and performed a "Homage to William and Catherine Blake", celebrating their sexual freedom. Atomic Rooster used Blake's painting "Nebuchadnezzar" for the cover of their 1970 album, Death Walks Behind You.

Van Morrison mentions Blake in the song "You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River" on his 1974 album, Veedon Fleece. Blake is also mentioned, along with T. S. Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth, among others, in the lyrics of "Summertime in England," a song loosely based on Blake's poem, "And did those feet in ancient time" and from Morrison's 1980 album, Common One. The 1984 album, A Sense of Wonder, includes "Ancient of Days," possibly referencing Blake's famous painting. On the same album, the song "Let The Slave" incorporates Blake's 1797 poem, "The Price of Experience." Morrison also mentions Blake in his song "Will I Ever Learn to Live in God?" from his 1989 album, Avalon Sunset, and "Golden Autumn Day" from his 1999 album, Back on Top.

U2's Joshua Tree album was originally intended to open with a track entitled "Beautiful Ghost," in which Bono recites 'Introduction to Songs of Experience' over a sombre instrumental; the song was ultimately cut from the final album, but appeared seventeen years later as an unreleased and rare track in The Complete U2 set on iTunes. Daniel Amos performed the song William Blake on their album Vox Humana in 1984. Manchester group The Fall had a track on their 2000 album The Unutterable entitled "WB", a song about Blake's visions, taking several lines from his work. Singer Mark E. Smith had expressed his admiration for Blake on many occasions previously.

The Chemical Wedding by Bruce Dickinson, depicting Blake's painting The Ghost of a Flea.

A number of musicians have identified Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience as being of special importance. Greg Brown released an album of selections from the Songs of Innocence and Experience (1986), and several Blake songs were included in Tangerine Dream's album Tyger (1987). Finn Coren's two albums of "The Blake Project" sets his songs, as does Jah Wobble's album "The Inspiration of William Blake". Loreena McKennitt used lines from the Poetical Sketches in her song Lullaby. Composer William Bolcom set the entire collection of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1984, a recording of which was released in 2006. On two separate albums, composer, conductor and musician David Axelrod interpreted Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Swedish experimental/industrial band The Protagonist has a song called "The Sick Rose" (based on the poem) on their album Songs of Experience. A jazz interpretation of Songs of Innocence and of Experience was produced in the 1980s by pianist/ composer Mike Westbrook.

Bruce Dickinson's solo album The Chemical Wedding draws inspiration from the works of Blake. In fact, many songs on it, such as "The Book of Thel," have the same titles as poems by Blake. The black metal/experimental music group Ulver released Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in 1998, setting large portions of the poem's text. The name of metal band The Human Abstract is taken from Blake's poem of the same name.

Enrique Bunbury from Spanish band Héroes del Silencio was influenced by Blake's work, with songs like "El Camino del Exceso (The Road of Excess)," "Los Placeres de la Pobreza (The Pleasures of Poverty)," "Deshacer el Mundo (Unmake the World)" and "La Chispa Adecuada (The Right Spark)". Il Trono dei Ricordi have released an album, setting passages from The Book of Urizen and Visions of the Daughters of Albion.

Patti Smith was heavily influenced by Blake, referring to him in her song 'My Blaken Year' on her album 'Trampin' and also reciting his poetry before some of her songs. It can be heard, for instance, on the 'Land' compilation, where she recites 'The Lamb' before breaking into 'Boy Cried Wolf'.