How The Complete Poems drew on Isaiah
A documented line of influence: William Blake demonstrably engaged Isaiah’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 theory of the poet-as-prophet is voiced, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, by Isaiah himself — a literal guest at his table
- Read Isaiah first and you hear the visionary register Blake is channeling: the prophet who speaks for God becomes Blake's model for what a poet is
- The seer's authority Blake claims for himself is borrowed straight from the book of Isaiah
On Isaiah’s page
- Blake didn't just admire Isaiah — he sat him down to dinner
- In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, "The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me," and Isaiah speaks Blake's own creed: the poetic imagination is the voice of God
- Isaiah's visionary mode is the explicit template for Blake's prophetic poetry — the prophet as poet, the poet as prophet