How did an ancient poet and painter who died in obscurity come to obsess everyone from Oscar Wilde to David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Derek Jarman and David Bowie? The writer of a new book explains his glorious allure
William Blake may be known for seeing angels up in trees, for writing the alternative national anthem Jerusalem, and for his emblematic poem The Tyger. But his story is far more subversive and far queerer than cosy fables allow.
It’s why Oscar Wilde hung a Blake nude on his college room wall. It’s why Blake became a lyric in a Pet Shop Boys song. And it’s why David Hockney is showing a Blake-inspired painting at his current exhibition in Paris.
When I lived in the East End of London, I’d walk over Blake’s grave in Bunhill Fields every day. It felt sort of disrespectful. Perhaps that’s why he has haunted me ever since. Years later, while trying to write a book about another artist, I got ill and very low.
Suddenly, echoing one of his own visions, Blake came to me and said: “Well, how about it?” I felt I had to make amends for treading on his dreams. I’ve met many artists – Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud, Derek Jarman – but it is Blake whose hand I would love to have held and whose magical spirit I summon up in my new book. He even gave me my title: William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love. (A friend has since pointed out that the title sounds suspiciously like a 1970s album by a certain starman from Mars).
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