The musical journey in Literature always in combination with Metal music continues with our third article.
Music and literature are works of art that touch our imagination and emotions and this is their biggest connection.
As, after, we mentioned in our previous articles, Metal has an inseparable relationship with Literature and we see it through its songs.
Cathedral – A Funeral Request (Ethereal Architect) (1991)
David Park Barnitz was an American poet known for his collection The Book of Jade, published in 1901.
In this collection, there is also the poem “Requiem / Sombre Sonnet”, which inspired Cathedral for the song.
The poem, as well as the entire collection, is included in the “Decadent” poetry.
The “Decadent” movement was an artistic and literary movement in the late 19th century, centered on Western Europe, which followed an aesthetic ideology of exaggeration and artificiality.
Barnitz adopted the “declining style” preferred by Gothic and macabre poets such as Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Count Stenbock, James Thomson (B.V.), H. P. Lovecraft, and Bonaventura.
Corrosion of Conformity – Wiseblood (1996)
“Wise Blood” is the first novel by American author Flannery O’Connor, published in 1952.
An inspirational novel for Corrosion of Conformity.
The plot of the novel focuses on a surviving soldier of World War II.
Hazel Motes, the grandson of a wandering priest, Motes, grows up struggling with doubts about religion.
After his experience in the war, he became an atheist and began to spread a “gospel” against religion.
The book, in essence, deals with freedom, free will, life and death, and the inevitability of faith.
There are many references to redemption, racism, sexism, and isolation in the novel.
Ulver – Voices Of The Devil (1999)
Ulver’s “Voices Of The Devil” is inspired by William Blake’s book, The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell, published in 1793.
It is a series of poems that refer to biblical prophecy, but strongly express the personal, romantic, and revolutionary beliefs of the poet.
William Blake was once ridiculed as insane and today is regarded as a genius, as he is one of the most important poets of world literature.
He treated the sanctuaries, religion, ethics, art, and politics with an exceptional unconventional look. He is recognized as the most authentic of the romantic poets and as the most irreconcilable.
His view was that the autonomous publication of books could free the artist from the tyranny of censorship by the church and the state.
“The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell” deals with the philosophy of the contradictory nature of man.
Describes the poet’s visit to Hell, a version he adapted from Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost”.
Blake’s conception of Hell is that it is a source of unrestrained and somewhat Dionysian energy.
Something that is in stark contrast to the authoritarian conception of what Paradise and Hell are.
Blake’s aim is to create what he called an “unforgettable fantasy” in order to reveal the repressive nature of conventional ethics and institutional religion.
Blake’s theory is a belief that every individual reflects the opposite nature of God and that progress in life is impossible without the opposite.