[The Mirrorball Man]

There are quite a lot of similarities between Tolkien and Blake. Both have produced a very singular body of work, very different from what was popular in their own time. Both have tried to build a completely new mythology from scratch. Both were world-builders, authors, poets and illustrators.

Tolkien, as an English scholar, probably knew about Blake and we can't completely exclude that he was influenced by his poems, although that influence, if it existed, was probably extremely limited.

Tolkien and Blake were very different men. Tolkien loved the beauties of nature and was deeply irritated by industrial progress. He was a philologist and was fascinated with the past, with the history of mankind and the evolution of language and society. He built his imaginary world on these concepts and methods. He was also a Monarchist and a Catholic.

He wrote timeless classics, loved by millions of readers, and was already very popular in his lifetime. Although his world is an extremely impressive creation in its own right, one might argue that it doesn't have enough symbolic depth to be a successful mythology, the probable consequence of Tolkien's hatred of analogies and traditionalist outlook on life.

Blake was a non-comformist, a visionary in every possible meaning of the word. He believed in free love and supported the revolutions in America and France. He wanted to create his own mythology because he rejected every traditional forms of religion in favour of an alternative spirituality which delved into Eastern and ancient beliefs, although it heavily borrowed from Christian imagery.

Blake wrote very complex, mad, unreadable poems that do not appeal to a large audience. He received very little recognition in his lifetime. The world of the Four Zoas is less coherent and convincing than Tolkien's Middle-Earth, but it's an undeniably powerful mythological creation, full of vivid imagery and successfully capturing the soul of his era.