At his Barcelona presentation, Philip Hoare makes the case that sea creatures belong at the centre of William Blake’s imaginative world. The British writer builds his argument through art and literature, with personal memory adding another current rather than a straight biographical line.
Hoare’s route to the whale runs partly through Herman Melville and the image of the Leviathan. In Hoare’s reading, Blake’s “terrible symmetry” links tiger and cetacean: “A tiger like a whale like a poet.” The comparison reflects the method of a 520-page book, gathering figures and stories like objects left behind by the tide. El País identifies William Blake y los monstruos marinos del amor as a 2026 title from the Spanish publisher Ático de los Libros.
The method gives the book its pull. It can also leave readers searching for the thread.
Hoare describes the book as a literary gathering. Derek Jarman appears alongside Paul Nash. Oscar Wilde shares space with John Singer Sargent. Ruskin meets Joyce, while Yeats sits beside Francis Bacon. Iris Murdoch joins Peter Beard, with Nancy Cunard rounding out the gathering. Hoare calls himself a fan, sometimes shy in the presence of artists he admires. The associations wind so far that readers may lose their way; he asks them to trust the current.
Blake is no decorative name in this procession. Hoare rejects the lingering habit of dismissing the poet and artist as a madman. He reads Blake as a serious modern creator. The work remains elusive and intense, and Hoare sees it as ahead of its time. Its afterlife runs through William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. David Bowie offers another point of reference.
For Hoare, the argument is physical, too. He recalls trembling before El fantasma de una pulga at the Tate. Its painted figure seemed to him like a gargoyle or a visitor from hell. His encounter with Newton left a lasting impression. So did Nabucodonosor; Piedad stayed with him as well. Hoare says Blake helped him heal while he was ill. He approaches the artist’s images and words as experiences that can be felt without explanation.
The book’s other compelling presence is T. E. Lawrence. Hoare visits Lawrence’s cottage at Clouds Hill and follows his connection to water. Lawrence swam and exposed himself to cold water. He also designed fast boats for the Navy, then tested them. Lawrence said Los siete pilares de la sabiduría emulated Moby Dick. He regarded himself as Blake’s disciple and admired the phrase “everything that is, is sacred.” Hoare calls him the book’s most interesting figure and describes a deeply troubled man.
Hoare’s lifelong habit of swimming wherever he travels helps explain the sea’s place in the book. He wrote about whales in Leviatán o la ballena. Alberto y la ballena also takes whales as its subject, while El mar interior turns to the sea. As Hoare reads it, Blake’s world holds fallen angels alongside satanic figures. Strange marine forms appear, along with predatory fish and deep-sea dragons. Hoare sets Blake beside Milton: El paraíso perdido is extraordinary, he says. Blake is rougher and more difficult. Hoare also finds him modern and queer. The tiger poem remains his point of return when he is disturbed and when he visits the poet’s grave.
A Cape Cod lobster fisherman was caught in a humpback whale’s mouth and suffered broken legs, but the whale did not swallow him. Hoare jokes that he would like to end up inside a whale like Jonah. He acknowledges the experience would be unpleasant for the animal. Apparently, swallowing a person is scientifically impossible.
