“The leviathan is both positive and negative,” says Philip Hoare on this week’s episode of The World in Time. “The image is almost yin and yang: there is the behemoth, kind of a hippopotamus-elephant-rhinoceros, and the leviathan, which is a sea serpent, but has elements of a sperm whale skeleton that Blake had actually seen. So there is this struggle for good and evil. He acknowledged that you have to have heaven to balance hell and vice versa. But it seems the balance has been interrupted by the sea and he is too close to the power of the ocean.”

 

In this week’s two-part episode, Donovan Hohn speaks with Philip Hoare, author, most recently, of William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love. Their conversation, like the book, is a séance that channels many ghosts—the ghosts of writers such as John Milton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Joyce, and Oscar Wilde; the ghosts of artists such as Katsushika Hokusai, Derek Jarman, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Andy Warhol, and Paul Nash; the ghosts of a great many historical and cultural figures. David Bowie and John Waters both make memorable appearances. But the conversation’s presiding spirit is artist, printmaker, poet, and proto-punk prophet of freedom William Blake. Part two of the episode resumes our intermittent and ongoing series on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the history of the sea. While considering Blake’s influence on Melville, Hohn and Hoare linger over chapter 55, “Monstrous Pictures of Whales.”

 

Earlier conversations in our series about Moby Dick: Lewis Lapham’s Sea Stories, Wyatt Mason on “Extracts,” Francine Prose on “Loomings,” James Marcus on “The Mast-Head,” Charles Baxter on “The Sermon,” Elizabeth Kolbert on the History of Cetology, Alexander Chee on “The Counterpane,” Aaron Sachs on “The Monkey-Rope,” Caleb Crain on “Queequeg in his Coffin.”

 

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WORKS CITED

(In order of mention.)

 

Philip Hoare. William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love. New York: Pegasus Books, 2025.

 

Philip Hoare. Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World. New York: Pegasus Books, 2022.

 

Philip Hoare. The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea. New York: Ecco, 2011.

 

Herman Melville. Moby-Dick: A Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Hershel Parker. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.

 

Roman Polanski, director. Pirates. Carthago Films S.a.r.l., 1986.

 

Herman Melville. Journals. Edited by Harrison Hayford and introduced by Hershel Parker. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1989.

 

Mary Shelley. Frankenstein: Or The Modern Prometheus, The 1818 Text. Introduced by Jeanette Winterson. New York: Vintage Books, 2025.

 

James Joyce. Ulysses. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

 

James Joyce. Finnegans Wake. New York: Penguin Classics, 1999.

 

Hester Travers Smith. Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde. London: T. Werner Laurie Ltd., 1924.

 

Herman Melville. Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories. Introduced by Peter M. Coviello. New York: Penguin Classics, 2016.

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Blithedale Romance. Introduced by Annette Kolodny. New York: Penguin Classics, 1983.

 

Pat de Groot. Sea Smoke. ca. 1994. Oil on board. New York Studio School. Artsy.

 

David Bowie. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (2012 Remaster). London: Parlophone Records, 2012.

 

David Bowie. Heathen. London: Parlophone Records, 2002.
 

David Bowie. “The Jean Genie.” On Aladdin Sane (2013 Remaster). London: Parlophone Records, 2015. 

 

Gerald Manley Hopkins. “The Windhover.” In The Major Works: including all the poems and selected prose. Edited by Catherine Phillips. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

 

William Blake. “The Tyger.” In Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, 1789-1794. Introduced by Geoffrey Keynes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

 

John Milton. Paradise Lost. Edited and introduced by John Leonard. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.

 

William Blake. “Auguries of Innocence,” Poetry Foundation.

 

Edwin John Ellis and William Butler Yeats. The Works of William Blake: Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical, Edited with Lithographs of the Illustrated “Prophetic Books,” and a Memoir and Interpretation. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1893.

 

Albrecht Dürer. Melancholia I. ca. 1514. Engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

Catherine Blake. Agnes. ca. 1800. Tempera on canvas. The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. Art UK.

 

William Blake. America a Prophecy. Copy N. Printed ca. 1829 by Catherine Blake. Auckland Public Library, Auckland, New Zealand. Blakearchive.org.

 

Ishirō Honda, director. Godzilla. Toho Co. Ltd., 1954.

 

Ridley Scott, director. Blade Runner. Warner Bros., 1982.

 

William Blake. Newton. ca. 1804-05. Monotype print. Tate Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

 

William Blake. The Complete Illuminated Books. Introduced by David Bindman. London & New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001.

 

William Blake. Behemoth and Leviathan. ca. 1825-26. Engraving. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

 

William Blake. Illustrations of the Book of Job. ca. 1825. Engraving on paper. The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.

 

Albrecht Dürer. Erasmus of Rotterdam. ca. 1526. Engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

Katsushika Hokusai. Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei). ca. 1830-32. Woodblock print; ink and color on paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

Albrecht Dürer. The Rhinoceros. ca. 1515. Woodcut. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

Alexander Gilchrist. The Life of William Blake. Edited and introduced by W. Graham Robertson. London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1907.

 

John Singer Sargent. W. Graham Robertson. ca. 1894. Oil paint on canvas. Tate Gallery, London.

 

William Blake. The Ghost of a Flea. ca. 1819-20. Tempera and gold on mahogany. Tate Gallery, London.

 

William Blake. Nebuchadnezzar. ca. 1795-1805. Color print, ink and watercolor on paper. Tate Gallery, London.

 

William Blake. Pity. ca. 1795. Relief etching, printed in color and finished with pen and ink and watercolor. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

 

William Blake. Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion. Copy A. ca. 1820. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London. Blakearchive.org

 

Paul Nash. We Are Making a New World. ca. 1918. Oil on canvas. Imperial War Museum, London.

 

Antony Penrose. Lee Miller: Photographs. Foreword by Kate Winslet. London & New York: Thames & Hudson, 2023.

 

“Ithell Colquhoun: 1906-1988,” Tate Gallery, London.

 

Derek Jarman, director. Studio Bankside (Short 1971).

 

Catherine Blake. William Blake as a Young Man. ca. 1828. Schaffer Library, Union College.

 

Iris Murdoch. The Sea, The Sea. Introduced by Mary Kinzie. New York: Penguin Classics, 2001.

 

Herman Melville. Moby-Dick. Illustrated by Rockwell Kent. Chicago: Top Five Books, 2026.

 

Oliver Goldsmith. A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, with an Introductory View of the Animal Kingdom by Baron Cuvier; Copious Notes of Discoveries in Natural History; and a Life of the Author by Washington Irving. Edinburgh: A. Fullarton and Co., 1855. 

 

Herman Melville. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Introduced by John Bryant. New York: Penguin Classics, 1996.

 

Andrew Delbanco. Melville: His World and Work. New York: Vintage, 2006.

 

Herman Melville. Pierre; or, The Ambiguities. Introduced by William Spengemann. New York: Penguin Classics, 1996.

 

Herman Melville. White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War. Edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970.

 

Herman Melville. Redburn. Introduced by Elizabeth Hardwick. New York: Modern Library, 2002.

 

Daniel Mason. North Woods. New York: Random House, 2024.