How The Complete Poems drew on Ezekiel
A documented line of influence: William Blake demonstrably engaged Ezekiel’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
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On The Complete Poems’s page
- One of Blake's chosen prophets — Ezekiel turns up as a dinner guest in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
- Ezekiel's four living creatures and burning wheels are the raw material Blake reforges into his Four Zoas and the cherubim of Jerusalem
- Read the vision first and Blake's strangest images stop being random — you're watching him remake an ancient one
On Ezekiel’s page
- Blake liked Ezekiel enough to invite him to dinner — literally, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, where the prophet sits down at his table
- Ezekiel's vision of the four living creatures and the eyed wheels became the engine of Blake's later prophecies, reworked all through Jerusalem
- He even painted it — Ezekiel's Vision of the Cherubim and Eyed Wheels — before rebuilding it into his own mythology