From: Kenneth C. Kaleta, David Lynch, Twayne Publishers: New York (1993), page ix-x:
Bridging the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, William Blake created a mythic world of Innocence and Experience in his poetry and copper-plate illustrations. His was a world of spiritualism, dreams and nightmares, inhabited by angels and devils. His literary and visual creation of a dual world may be a forerunner of David Lynch's evolving cinematic world.From: "Gnosticism" article on Wikipedia website (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism#Gnosticism_in_modern_times; viewed 21 October 2005):
William Blake, the nineteenth century Romantic poet and artist, was according to some sources well-versed in the doctrines of the Gnostics, and his own personal mythology contains many points of cohesion with several Gnostic myths (for example, the Blakean figure of Urizen bears many resemblances to the Gnostic Demiurge). However, efforts to dub Blake a "Gnostic" have been complicated by the complex nature and extent of Blake's own mythology, and the variety of myths and themes that may be referred to as "Gnostic"; thus, the exact relationship between Blake and the Gnostics remains a point of scholarly contention, though a comparison of the two often reveals intriguing points of cohesion.