------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 104 Today's Topics: Leaving the Blake list (was: Re: unsubscribe) Re: holding C.A.S. Re: Seeing many Blakes RE: Seeing many Blakes Re: Seeing many Blakes -Reply Re: Seeing many Blakes -Reply RE: Seeing many Blakes -Reply Re: Thel and Arcadia -Reply -Reply Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Re: belated repsonses Re: Seeing many Blakes -Reply AZANIA in ARCADIA Re: AZANIA in ARCADIA Re: Seeing many Blakes; seeing more and multifaceted Blakes in three dimensions and living colour ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Aug 96 13:55:23 -0700 From: Seth T. Ross To: blake@albion.com Subject: Leaving the Blake list (was: Re: unsubscribe) Message-Id: <9608222055.AA07966@albion.com> Content-Type: text/plain =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- BLAKE ONLINE ADMINISTRIVIA To leave Blake Online, send an email message to blake-request@albion.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the SUBJECT field (putting it in the body of the message may or may not work), like so: TO: blake-request@albion.com SUBJECT: unsubscribe Your address will be automatically unsubscribed. Occasionally, the automatic unsubscription mechanism fails. In that case, please DON'T send the request to the entire list distribution at the address blake@albion.com. Please use the address blake-request@albion.com for all administrative queries. Virtually yours, Seth Ross Albion sysadmin -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 19:06:27 MET From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. Message-Id: <39B5221483A@netwareserver.uni-trier.de> August 22nd, 1996 Dear Pamela: C'mon! Your latest message on "Seeing many Blakes" makes me wonder (and in awe) whether you don't -- at least occasionally -- find *yourself* > `[holding] contradictory attitudes simultaneously, not simply > sequentially.'?? I certainly do so, most of the time, and I think this an entirely appropriate response to the very real complexities of This World (and, most likely I should think) to those of all the Other Worlds you love to roam in. [For example, I'm thinking -- simultaneously -- (1) that I should send the present note to electronic interspace, *not* to the list, because I may risk to hurt your feelings which I don't intend to do; and (2) that I just *have to* mail that same note because I consider it an act of intellectual hygiene to state that I can find nothing wrong with Alicia Ostriker's and Jeanne Moskal's observation.] Well, I'm not Blake, and I'm sure glad that this is so. Maybe your idea that such holding of C.A.S. is a sign of mental suffering, and that in this sense it indicates the loss of control over the self, is an idea relevant only for the interpretation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry and art. Still, I cannot believe you want us to think of Blake as someone addicted to "single vision and Newton's sleep". Beginning with two-fold vision, the mind enfolds multiple and sometimes "contradictory attitudes simultaneously", wouldn't you agree? So why the fuzz about Ostriker and Moskal? Four-fold vision the *non plus ultra* of schizophrenia? Hey, that's an *original* idea! Yet absolutely "abhorrent" to me. However, I doubt that an intellectual openmindedness, which allows for the co-existence of contraries, provides a useful definition of schizophrenia. As an academic teacher acting in This World, your primary aim certainly is to "foster" the critical potential of your students, not to "foster [...] respect" and a belief in whatever authority. My Blake tells me that this is right, but your Blake ("the Bible that you read ..."--*MHH*) may tell you that most of all he wants to be *respected* by his readers and *critics*, and that furthermore he is very happy indeed with his "Church of William Blake" on the banks of the Ohio. (By-the-by, have you heard that someone only recently founded The Church of Kurt Coban? Such "churching" seems as appropriate for the suicidal singer of a band called Nirvana, as it is for Billy Blake, astute critic of all institutionalized religion.) I hope these very simple thoughts have been stated clearly enough -- no harm's intended -- and I don't see any need why Pamela van Schaik's brief query concerning the usefulness or abhorrence of C.A.S. should prompt an endless discussion of our personal Blakean religions and heresies, Elderidge's CoWB, the most recent psychoanalytic research in schizophrenia, Kurt, or good old Newton (loved and feared by Blake). Hope that'll do. -- DW Doerrbecker ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Aug 96 14:45:17 CDT From: Mark Trevor Smith To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Seeing many Blakes Message-Id: <9608221952.AA18457@uu6.psi.com> Is sexual division, with its consequent sexual behaviors, a horrible disaster resulting from the fall? Yes. Is sexual division a means of working to accomplish reunion and Vision? Yes. I have no problem holding these two apparently mutually exclusive points together simultaneously. But many Blake readers do. Leo Damrosch, one of the most brilliant interpreters of Blake, stumbles on that paradox, as do many others. Is this physical world a falling away from Albionic unity? Yes. Is this physical world a marvelous construction of Visionistic beauty? Yes. Is Urizen a mistaken tyrant? Yes. Does Urizen often build beautiful and useful temples? Yes. On Thu, 22 Aug 1996 12:46:00 +0200 P Van Schaik said: >An example of the type of criticism which necessitates seeing many >Blakes is referred to by Jeanne Moskal in "Blake, Ethics and >Forgiveness" , p. 17: > > ....Ostriker's Blake Number One ... believes sexuality should be >unfettered. ...Ostriker's Blake Number Four ... contends that the proper >study of woman is the happiness of her man.... > >I'd like to hear from others what they make of such distinctions. I >personally find them abhorrent, but Jeanne Moskal would appear to >find them `useful' . She says: `Ostriker presents four sets of Blakean >attitudes toward women and sexuality, and usefully expalins that Blake >sometimes held contradictory attitudes simultaneously, not simply >sequentially.' >(p. 17) >How does so schizoid a Blake foster any respect among all those >students studying his poetry, I wonder? >Pam van Schaik > ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 15:23:04 -0500 (CDT) From: RPYODER@ualr.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: RE: Seeing many Blakes Message-Id: <960822152304.2023ff18@ualr.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Pam, I rather like Ostriker's essay, and I don't find her Blake "schizoid" at all. Frankly I think it is "abhorrent" to think that Blake thought the same thing throughout all his life. In my view, Blake's ideas grow, develop, mutate as he gets older, as he understands more about his own earlier works, as he gets more and more disillusioned with English taste and politics. I do not think that there is any "false dichotomy" (as I think you put it once) in recognizing that Blake's ideas change during his lifetime. Instead, I see it as the rather normal development of a single person's mind. God forbid that I or anyone should have the same opinions now at 41 that I did at 20. Paul Yoder ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 08:55:33 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu Subject: Re: Seeing many Blakes -Reply Message-Id: I associate `fourfold' with all that Blake represents as too manifold in its variety in Innocence for his `gross tongue' to describe, and so would not trade this word for what critics who see several Blakes refer to as Blake One, Two, Three, Four etc. Jennifer, you bring up a point that has always puzzled me: when other critics create their monolithic Blakes in print (insisting on overly narrow and contradictory interpretations) they are praised and their work , because of the educational system, is processed down to students as if it were biblical exegesis. When I challenge these and attempt to indicate the possiblility of a model in which Innocence is fully brought into the picture, the better to understand the spiritual depth of Blake, then the reaction is `please spare us this monolithic, closed, consistent view' .... yet, to ignore the full implications of Innocence is to close the mind to half of what BLake evokes and implies. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:12:20 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, MTS231F@vma.smsu.edu Subject: Re: Seeing many Blakes -Reply Message-Id: Dear Mark, I happen to agree with all your statments - except the last concerning Urizen's building beautiful temples. Here, I would argue that it is Los, working in his Furnaces (as in `Tyger' and the Prophetic poems) who creates warmth and beauty in the cold, wintry world initially created by Urizen, then swamped by the waters of Tharmas. As Urizen contracts, many imperfect worlds are created and destroyed (as in Kabbalah). Since the divine expansive centre is opened in all dark matter by Los, everything that lives is `holy' even in the fallen world and everything that lives can help to recover and regather the scattered divine sparks and uplift fallen humanity to what it once was - infinitely beautiful and humane. So, like you, I say Yes to both sides of the equation, but do not see this as saying yes, for example, to selfish lusts and selfish gratifications which `hinder' the energies of others. To avoid hindering others does, in my opinion, constitute a greater challenge spiritually to all of us mortals than any other dictum I have ever encountered. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:29:20 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, RPYODER@ualr.edu Subject: RE: Seeing many Blakes -Reply Message-Id: I'm not against change which is , surely, organic and natural to the psyche. As Blake says, The Cistern contains; the Fountain overflows. We interpret the nature of the change differently, however. I see Blake's works as proceeding from a series of meditative sessions in which he allowed inspiration to pour in visually and poetically through his subconscious mind, without too rigorous censorship from his conscious mind. So, there are certainly variations in his accounts of the Fall - but mostly, these form, or can be accommodated within, a coherent narrative - provided that Eternity is first understood in all its fullness as representing the Contrary of all the images evocative of Experience. (I find The Mental Traveller, Tiriel, Island in the Moon among the least accessible, for example, because the images evoked are lest consistent with others.) However, I am very ucomfortable with a Blake who holds contradictory views `simultaneously' and `sequentially'. This reminds me of the seven-headed Beast which the Whore of Babylon rides - all of the heads contending fiercely with one another. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 10:32:54 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Thel and Arcadia -Reply -Reply Message-Id: >>> Alexander Gourlay 22/August/1996 03:39pm >>> The situation in the poem is like that of the Heliades, in which there are "sunny flocks" parallel to the Apollonian herds tended by the Heliades. *** This could well be , but doesn't exclude the place being also like Beulah as we have no way of knowing at which point this became a consistent metaphor for Blake. If he had visualised eternal worlds at all, even without a name yet being attached, he may have seen them as evoked in The Book of Thel, ( and I simply find no inconsistency between his later Beulah and the vision of divinely inspired denizens in The Book of Thel - sorry can't get rid of underline). " Luvah is a conflation of Pan (the rapist god of the Arcadians), Christ, and Apollo/Helios/Sun, and I call him the universal lover because most of the females report a relationship with him. * ********** I fully agree that Luvah (provided that he has not yet begun to contract into the Selfhood) may be a conflation of Christ because in the realms where Thel wanders all beings still aspire to unity with Christ and Jerusalem through selfless giving to others (of their fragrance, nurturing care , etc) . But, when Luvah is expanded into the light of divine love, how can he simultaneously be One with rapist Pan?*********** ******* I realise that Helen Bruder not you - makes the distinctions which I query, but I thought I was taking blinkers off by querying the critical positions of others - not putting them on. It is here that we don't agree and I'm not sure how to address this breach. Why should I think of gender where it seems to me to be inapplicable to a particular text? And , of course, I see Blake's designs as integral to his poetic texts - which is why I made a videotape of his vision of the Fall of Man for our students. But, these pictures, like his words, have often been used to inflect his meaning as the reader chooses. All readers of course do have the right to `soar with their own wings'. I merely question whether their flight reflects my own reading of Blake - and does justice to what appears to me to be Blake's own vision. Pam I do, however, like the interdisciplinary approach > of adducing Poussin and Arcadia as having a tangential bearing if one is > looking at the historical background to the possible genesis of Blake's > poem. This, however, should not, surely, influence a literary reading of > it? Pam van Schaik > I guess I don't believe that a strictly literary reading of an illustrated book is even a good idea. Blake was a visual artist and a poet who worked in terms of the whole context of visual and verbal art. Indeed, a critical feature of the book is that the answers to questions posed in words are provided in pictures. By the way, Arcadia and Arcadianism are actually poetic conventions that had been transplanted to pictures, and there is a long rich tradition of movement back and forth. See Milton's "On the Morning off Christ's Nativity" for a densely allusive example of Christianized Arcadianism. Sandy Gourlay ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:48:21 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, DOERRBEC@uni-trier.de Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Message-Id: Thanks Detlef, for your sincere reply. I was aware of throwing a `cat among the pigeons' with that question, but having to believe what the Feminists say about Blake does present a very real problem for me as I think that of all poets, Blake is least prone to disrespect for females. But this statement is likely to be the equivalent of `putting my head in a hornet's nest'. As explained in another posting, I can't equate `fourfold' with a contradictory Blake, nor see that using this word is an adequate defence of those who have to segment Blake. I earnestly champion open-mindedness - which includes challenging the moulds into which Blake has been compressed by critics. Unavoidably, I do have to offer a new mould which to those accustomed to many conflicting Blakes may well seem monolithic. I like this forum, but foresee that I shall have to publish my own views if they are to be rightly understood as the snippets of interchange we have only touch the tips of `the iceberg'. Any suggestions for a publisher open to a new Blake? Pam ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 12:09:15 -0500 From: "G.L. Brackett" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: belated repsonses Message-Id: <321DE5BB.1F7@tribeca.ios.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Ms Neill-- I just realized I have responded to a month-old message. I would still like the copy if possible; if not, please just send the subscription information and I'll order one for the library at Pace. Sorry for the mixup--I've been rearranging my e-mail in preparation for the coming semester, etc. persisting in my folly, G.L. Brackett ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:35:01 -0800 From: David Rollison To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Seeing many Blakes -Reply Message-Id: <321DEBC4.32CA@marin.cc.ca.us> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Pam: I wonder if De Klerk would sanction the principles you express in your last sentences here. P Van Schaik wrote: > > Dear Mark, I happen to agree with all your statments - except the last > concerning Urizen's building beautiful temples. Here, I would argue that it > is Los, working in his Furnaces (as in `Tyger' and the Prophetic poems) > who creates warmth and beauty in the cold, wintry world initially > created by Urizen, then swamped by the waters of Tharmas. As Urizen > contracts, many imperfect worlds are created and destroyed (as in > Kabbalah). Since the divine expansive centre is opened in all dark matter > by Los, everything that lives is `holy' even in the fallen world and > everything that lives can help to recover and regather the scattered > divine sparks and uplift fallen humanity to what it once was - infinitely > beautiful and humane. So, like you, I say Yes to both sides of the > equation, but do not see this as saying yes, for example, to selfish lusts > and selfish gratifications which `hinder' the energies of others. To avoid > hindering others does, in my opinion, constitute a greater challenge > spiritually to all of us mortals than any other dictum I have ever > encountered. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 00:01:13 -0400 (EDT) From: Izak/Gloudina Bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: AZANIA in ARCADIA Message-Id: <199608240401.AAA27404@host.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pam van Schaik ended a posting of hers with this very moving sentence: "To avoid hindering others, does, in my opinion, constitute a greater challenge spiritually to all of us mortals than any other dictum I have ever encountered." To which David Rollison remarked: " I wonder if De Klerk would sanction the principles you express in your last sentence here." This kind of remark demeans this newsgroup and insults the intelligence of its participants. Recently, on two successive days De Klerk, on behalf of the previous government, and a spokesman on behalf of the A.N.C. apologised to each other for things that were not done in good faith in the past. I put it to you that things are being done in South Africa at the moment that the world would do well to copy. The world is still waiting for the white people from Europe who invaded the North American continent to apologise for the enslavement of black people imported from Africa. The world is still waiting for England and its colonies (Australia, New Zealand, Canada) to apologise to the Afrikaners for invading their independent republics and for the first concentration camps of this century on South African soil. It was initially believed that when the A.N.C. came to power, they would rename South Africa with the name AZANIA. It is very interesting to me to find the following bit of information in JACOB BRYANT : A New System, or an Analysis of Ancient Mythology (first published 1774) "as there was a region named Azania in Arcadia, the reader may judge of my interpretation by the account given of the excellence of its waters.." Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 17:27:14 -0800 From: David Rollison To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: AZANIA in ARCADIA Message-Id: <321FABF1.2187@marin.cc.ca.us> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I apologise if I offended anyone with my question--and it was a question and not a statement. Since I know Pam is in Pretoria, I was very interested in her view. Izak/Gloudina Bouwer wrote: > > Pam van Schaik ended a posting of hers with this very > moving sentence: "To avoid hindering others, does, in > my opinion, constitute a greater challenge spiritually > to all of us mortals than any other dictum I have ever > encountered." > > To which David Rollison remarked: " I wonder if De Klerk > would sanction the principles you express in your last > sentence here." > > This kind of remark demeans this newsgroup and insults the > intelligence of its participants. > > > Recently, on two successive days De Klerk, on behalf of the > previous government, and a spokesman on behalf of the A.N.C. > apologised to each other for things that were not done in > good faith in the past. I put it to you that things are > being done in South Africa at the moment that the world would > do well to copy. The world is still waiting for the white > people from Europe who invaded the North American continent > to apologise for the enslavement of black people imported > from Africa. The world is still waiting for England and its > colonies (Australia, New Zealand, Canada) to apologise to > the Afrikaners for invading their independent republics and > for the first concentration camps of this century on South > African soil. > > It was initially believed that when the A.N.C. came to power, > they would rename South Africa with the name AZANIA. It is very > interesting to me to find the following bit of information in > JACOB BRYANT : A New System, or an Analysis of Ancient > Mythology (first published 1774) > "as there was a region named Azania in Arcadia, the > reader may judge of my interpretation by the account > given of the excellence of its waters.." > > Gloudina Bouwer > > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 10:33:00 EDT From: joelmw@juno.com (Joel M Wasinger) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Seeing many Blakes; seeing more and multifaceted Blakes in three dimensions and living colour Message-Id: <19960827.082952.1943.0.joelmw@juno.com> Pam has a valid point here and it seems that folks are either deliberately missing it or willing to go to great lengths to justify the unartful expressions of other critics. At the risk of my own assuming leap, it seems that the issue is not the fact that Blake contradicts himself manifoldly or matures and changes but that the marvelous intricacies of the imagination would be so crassly compartmentalized. I'm certainly no psychologist, but my image of schizoid is as divorce. The schizoid is just an exxagerated example of the condition from which we all suffer -- a division in self and soul and community. The problem is not that we have all of those contradictions swimming together in the foul ragout, stone soup of the heart but that we insist on picking out the garlic or the onions or the carrots 'cause we don't like the way they taste and when we're done, lose the sum in the parts. Certainly, our fallen condition is one of division. But (and here I go back to my soapbox; pardon, please) this is one of the problems with the obsession over the system; we end up focusing on the divorce and may miss what Mark has stated so well: the beauty of this physical world and (here I must disagree with Pam, alas) the occassionally well-crafted Urizenic temple. Indeed, I sometimes find Blake's (as others have called them) sometimes cartoonish chartacters distasteful but even they carry a great deal more emotional range than Blake Number One, Blake Number Two, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Isn't it marriage we're looking, longing, waiting, working for? And while we work, I'd just as soon not take paring knives to the wedding party. Maybe, it's okay to dissect but let's not settle for a cheap, slaughter-house hacking and leave the body in pieces when we're done. Let's learn from Blake and do better, not fall of from Blake into Newton and Locke. It seems to me that it's okay when there are voices arguing in our hearts and heads, but when we start to pull them apart and put them in corners than we's got troubles. Moreover, if the characters doing the dance in our imagination don't at least have some dimension, what's the point? joel -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #104 **************************************