How The Complete Poems drew on Genesis
A documented line of influence: William Blake demonstrably engaged Moses’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
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On The Complete Poems’s page
- Blake's whole mythology is a reworking of Genesis — the Fall reimagined as the very act of material creation
- "The Book of Urizen" apes Scripture's chapter-and-verse layout to turn the Creation myth inside out; he also illustrated Genesis entire and painted "Elohim Creating Adam"
- Read Genesis first and Blake's inversions land — you can see exactly which myth he's rewriting
On Genesis’s page
- Blake spent a lifetime wrestling Genesis — he illustrated an entire manuscript of it (c. 1826–27) and painted "Elohim Creating Adam"
- His prophetic books rewrite the Creation and the Fall as his own myth, with "The Book of Urizen" mimicking Genesis's chapter-and-verse form to invert it
- The Bible's opening becomes, in Blake's hands, a nightmare of creation rather than a blessing