William Blake’s Black Bible as a Spectacle of Doom: A Recent Note to Blakean Reception in Romania

Abstract

I intend in this paper to focus on a lesser-known, yet highly significant, aspect of Blake’s aesthetic reception in southeast Europe. The radio play William Blake’s Black Bible (Biblia neagră a lui William Blake) represents—​as one learns at the end—​a tribute to the victims of the Colectiv Club fire, which occurred in Bucharest on 30 October 2015. The site itself was a blast from the past: established as a private venture by a prominent bourgeois family, Prodanof, between the two world wars, it became a successful footwear factory during the communist era and was left derelict after the demise of the Ceaușescu regime in late 1989. It was subsequently rented by private businessmen and turned into a fashionable events club after 1990.