Uzbekistan state university of world languages english philology faculty

1.3 Blake's legacy in Modern literature
Now, two hundred years later, it is clear that William Blake's works were not intended for his contemporaries. All his life, he worked to appeal to his descendants, and apparently he was aware of this. To see the complete indifference of his contemporaries brought him considerable despair, "My works are more famous in heaven than on earth" - so he said, and continued to create, hoping for the proper respect and attention of his descendants.
Today, we can understand how far he has outstripped his generation, perhaps by a century, and perhaps even more. Today, Blake's books are published in huge circulations in many countries, including Russia, and they do not lie on the shelves. The number of transfers is growing.
Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats was the first to publish the complete works of Blake, recognizing in him a kindred spirit who met his then revolutionary aspirations and aspirations. For W. Yeats, Blake is primarily the heir to esoteric traditions (alchemy, Celtic mythology), who struggles with a narrowly nationalistic understanding of the world. Yates was supposedly wishful thinking about his Irish ancestry. In general, Blake risked being a harbinger of the Irish revolution, but in the same 1916, he found himself on the other side of the front, unwittingly becoming a singer of English nationalism. Poet laureate Robert Bridges included a poetic introduction to the poem "Milton" in an anthology of patriotic poetry, which was intended to raise the morale of British soldiers. Bridges came up with the idea of putting these words to music, which he turned to composer Hubert Perry - the resulting "Jerusalem" is now revered as the unofficial anthem of Great Britain. And while the Irish and English were engaged in dividing Blake's inheritance, the image of the bard-revolutionary was finally formed, as indirectly confirmed by the Gadfly's farewell note in the immortal novel by Ethel Lillian Voynich - with a quote from Moth ("Songs of Experience") instead of the signature. But perhaps Blake himself, who lectured parliament, cheered the French Revolution, and cursed the slaveholders of the Old and New Worlds, would not have objected to the political treatment of his art.
T. S. Eliot was one of the first critics of Blake to fully appreciate the artistic merits of his poems. T. S. Eliot is attentive to the imagery rooted in the biblical tradition; and his poems with a pronounced prophetic pathos can be considered as a direct continuation of Blake's genre search.
References to Blake fill the pages of academic collections and paintings in major museums around the world, and explicit quotes from Blake are constantly flashing in the names of platinum albums, Oscar-winning films and on the covers of bestsellers. Blake was even hailed in Britain as the founder of the comic book genre, and the first English ballet was composed based on his "Book of Job".
But Blake dissolves into the fantasy genre, since Tolkien calls it the forerunner of all his Hobbit myths and transfers the heroes of Albion, Urisen, and Los to his mythology.
Interestingly, Blake is also quoted by the anti-radical Islamist Indian poet Salman Rushdie in his "Satanic Verses"⁶.
In the 20th century, Blake became the object of attention of writers, musicians, and cinematographers, in whose works his work received various interpretations. ЭсхатологизмBlake's eschatologism and historical pessimism are not the only factors of mass appeal to the poet's legacy in the twentieth century; Blake's mythology, revolutionary ideas, and psychological insights are just a small list of aspects of his work that are affected by modern culture.
The use of Blake's imagery within the psychedelic culture of the 60s of the XX century is also accompanied by a clear rethinking of the author's idea. Huxley and Ginsberg, who viewed Blake's work from different angles and reflected it differently in their own works, created different images of the poet. Huxley sees Blake primarily as a visionary, and Blake's ideas in Huxley's "Doors of Perception" only support the bold but unscientific hypothesis that many of the "visions" of various authors are nothing more than a consequence наркосодержащихof drug use.
Ginsberg took Blake as a kind of precursor and used his complex syntax, periods, long verse, and the position of a visionary narrator to describe his vision of the modern world and man. The images of Blake in Ginsberg's work receive a controversial but creative interpretation, which confirms the relevance of the romantic's ideas and poetics.
Ideologue and leader of the legendary rock band of the 60s"The Doors", a fan of Blake, Morrison actualized the problems that worried the romantic: the confrontation between man and nature, the mysterious nature of man, doubt about the possibilities of positive cognition, the essence of predestination, faith in the power of imagination. The name of Blake as a cultural sign, repeatedly present in the texts of the most famous band, has acquired a new sound. However, to a certain extent, the work of the romantic lost the meanings that were important for him. Blake, in Morrison's mind, was no longer a Christian or a follower of certain lines in art; he became a figure in the mythology of the ' 60s-a singer of free love, revolution, emotional liberation, and inner liberation. Blending into Morrison's lyrics - " psychedelic spells "that from time to time acquire" the status of High Poetry, a breakthrough into Eternity " - Blake's poems are modernized, but saturated with content that is alien to his poetry⁷.
Most interesting to us is another example of understanding the image of Blake in the culture of the XX century - the film by J. R. R. Tolkien. Jarmusch's The Dead Man (2001). In the movie "Dead Man", the main character is named William Blake, he falls in love with a fallen woman named Thel. However, "William Blake," an accountant in Cleveland, doesn't know "his own poetry": one of the first Romantics to stand at the foundation of the new European civilization is forgotten; culture crosses itself out by appealing to the values of the consumer society. And only an Indian, a savage, who happened to read Blake in a randomly visited England, can remind the poet of his true nature. Many cultural areas intersect with Blake's work in the film: this is the ideology of positivism (the last name is Tal - Russell), and Christian superstitions (goat skulls on the city wall), and the ideology of colonization-the capture of peoples (Indians) and nature (extermination of bison). The rigid aesthetics of the film, the inclusion of a layer of Native American culture in the myth of Blake, create an allegorical picture of modern culture, partly imitating Blake's allegory. Quite far from the aesthetics and worldview of the "historical" Blake, Jarmusch's painting is nevertheless an important fact of understanding Blake's place in the culture of the XX century.
Comparative characteristics of Blake's poetry and poetry of English Romanticism and analysis of examples of creative perception of the poet's legacy in the XX century, makes it possible to draw conclusions about the factors of successful reading of his complex texts, the reasons for misunderstanding Blake in the era of Romanticism, as well as ways to further transform and develop the author's myth in culture, an English poet.