Today's Topics:
BLAKE IN THE CANON-- BRITISH SCHOOLS & TRINIDAD?
The Tyger -Reply
Ecstasy to Eternity?
Searching for the Sublime
Re: The Tyger
Re: Searching for the Sublime
Re: Sasha Stone's take on Dead Man and William Blake (fwd)
Blake/Sublimity
Off list
Personal introduction
Re: Personal introduction
Ecstasy to Eternity? -Reply
Searching for the Sublime -Reply
Re: The Tyger -Reply
Re: The Tyger -Reply
Personal introduction -Reply
Re: Altizer introduction
Re: The Tyger -Reply
Re: Personal introduction
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 20:32:49 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: BLAKE IN THE CANON-- BRITISH SCHOOLS & TRINIDAD?
Message-Id: <199702070432.UAA16629@igc4.igc.org>
Regarding recent discussion on Blake and the canon, I do not do
Blake scholarship for a living, but I do have an historical
question which is of great practical importance to my own
research. I need to know something about the history of Blake's
introduction into the British educational system, particularly in
the public schools and colleges and their counterparts in the
British colonies. My own area of research is the Trinidadian
writer C.L.R. James (1901-1989). James was a student at Queen's
Royal College in Trinidad. In the documentary record James makes
numerous references to Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, and
occasionally Byron, but not a word about Blake. James was
strongly affected by Greek tragedy and English literature, and in
poetry specifically by these Romantic poets. After moving to
England in 1932, James turned against Wordsworth but became more
attached to Keats and Shelley. Still no word about Blake. I must
assume Blake was not part of the canon between before 1925, or
James would have had some exposure in school and hence some
commentary in Trinidad. I am also not well versed in the literary
scene in the West Indies in the 1920s and 1930s, so I don't know
if Caribbean literary people were reading Blake. But if somebody
knows about these matters and could inform me, this would be of
great help in my own work.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 1997 08:50:51 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, bd@stac.ac.uk
Subject: The Tyger -Reply
Message-Id:
~Twinkle, twinkle. little star ...' in posing a question re the nature of the
star is somewhat like Blake's `Tyger' poem in that both point to the
nature of the creator behind what one sees. I think it is an
oversimplification to relate the Tyger simply to Satan or reduce the
cosmic scope of the poem to the industrial revolution. I think Blake saw
clearly the predatory nature of the world in which the tiger devours the
lamb and the worm the rose and raises the question, as a child might
well do, but obviously with deep wisdom and concern too, of how a
good God could create a world in which the Prolific is always devoured.
He provides the answer to his own question in his longer poems in
which Los is seen as the blacksmith re-creator of Urizen's flawed
creations in the abyss - in which horrendous travesties of the divine
human form, sufficiently ugly to appall even their own creator, were
spawned. Los, swinging his hammer of mercy breaks down the world
created by Urizen's mistaken visions of moral judgement and rigour
(untempered by mercy) and attempts to re-create the lovely forms he
once beheld in Eternity , but given the contracted , darkened nature of
matter, can only restore a partial semblance of the beautiful symmetries
of eternal life. I don't think this kind of explanation has been given of the
poem by others, but this is the one that emerges from the research I
have done and mainly from primary response to Blake's texts
themselves. Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 03:50:37 -0500 (EST)
From: PJermolow@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Ecstasy to Eternity?
Message-Id: <970206222937_-1643367949@emout03.mail.aol.com>
To all who care to help,
This is a poem that I unconciously wrote, while in a state of ecstasy,
and before I had ever started reading Blake. After this moment in my life I
was completely different from who and what I was before. I have, since then,
read most of Blake's books and have analysed the personal meaning of this
poem. I would, however, be extremely grateful for any fresh perspectives
from those of you whose knowledge and understanding I truely admire.
Be Laugh Ache Kry Eternity
The piper was prancing and dancing with glee,
carrying a baton, that he passed it to me.
A lonely child on side of the road,
strengthening his shoulders to carry the load,
Of the piper, the wolves, the dark of the night,
This child was chosen, the shepard was right.
For he maintains the blue-prints of humanity,
The child caught a glimpse to explain their insanity,
The child will age, but will not grow old,
'Cause he has the secrets of life to be told.
Pete J
------------------------------
Date: 07 Feb 97 04:04:17 EST
From: Philip Benz <100575.2061@CompuServe.COM>
To: "internet:blake@albion.com"
Subject: Searching for the Sublime
Message-Id: <970207090416_100575.2061_GHW126-1@CompuServe.COM>
Many thanks to those who have posted bibliographic references on
this subject; still I think it's time we got past such general
considerations and began weighing the individual details.
Stop me if I've got this all wrong, ye who have seen the Poet's
heart, pulsing and coruscating in the heat of Los' eternal furnace.
***** Blakean sublime vs Gothic sublime *****
I'm beginning to get the idea that the way Blake uses the word
"sublime" is diametrically opposed to the way Gothics like Radcliffe use
it. In Radcliffe's _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ the word "sublime" tends
to be linked either to dramatic views of nature (mountains) or else to
dark, shadowy images laced with fear and the threat of death, or worse
.
In Blake, however, the sublime seems principally dependant on the
active work of the poet in making essential truths manifest in
particular forms. Far from being linked to darkness and the unseen,
Blake's sublime seems predicated on exacting detail -- the "minute
particulars".
"Where man is not nature is barren." -- Would Blake see the Sublime
in an Alpine mountin gorge? One might argue that it is the observer's
eye which endows scenes of natural grandeur with the sublime, by
associating them with fear of death (cf Burke), but it seems Blake would
sooner grant the sublime character of a Gothic castle than that of a
mountainside.
OTOH, Blake does use the word "sublime" on a number of occasions in
its mundane sense -- meaning a high place.
"Minute Discrimination is Not Accidental All Sublimity is founded on
Minute Discrimination" -- the sublimity of Gothic terror, resulting from
that which the human eye *cannot* see or the mind know, is antithetical
to Blake's notion of the sublime, impossible "Without Minute Neatness of
Execution."
Which brings me back to my earlier (unanswered) question -- is
Blake's sublime the same as the "Sublime of the Bible" that he mentions
in the preface to "Milton"? I suspect not, but that depends a lot on his
reading of the bible. Is the sublime in the human "minute
particulars", or in the titanic forces that represent their essential
natures?
Then there's that other agonizingly unanswered question -- surely it
is Los and not Orc who can be identified as Blake's "Sublime Energizer".
Sorry to be such a nudge. Sure, I could look up the answers myself
in the reams of criticism lining the shelves of places like the fourth
and fifth floors of the University of Iowa's main library. But you never
really miss something till it's gone and I wonder if I'll ever see those
dear shelves again. So please help turn this monologue into a
conversation.
Cheers, --- Phil
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:48:40 -0000
From: Owen Eden
To: "'Blake, William'"
Subject: Re: The Tyger
Message-Id: <01BC14E4.920918E0@pool15.netcom.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Am I wrong in believing that Blake's engraving of a tiger on p.42 of
Songs of Experience is calculated to bring a smile to the face of
anyone who has ever seen the real beast?
One wants to go up to his animal, check its name tag, and call the
RSPCA.
Owen
ode@netcom.co.uk
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 21:02:55 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Searching for the Sublime
Message-Id: <97020721025556@wc.stephens.edu>
Phil--You seem to have it right, but not to want to accept it--indeed,
Blake's version of "sublime" is radically different from the Radcliffean
"mystery" sublime--the sublime of the Gothic (as in the tradition of
gothic fiction or drama) is not entirely unrelated to the sublime of
the Bible, but they are distinguishable and Blake would have been
unlikely to have been charmed by an association with Anne Radcliffe,
Monk Lewis, or Charles Maturin, not to mention Horace Walpole or
William Beckford.
When Blake invokes the "sublime of the Bible," he is taking a stand in
an argument much older than anything associated with the specialized
sublime of the mid-18th century gothic tradition or even its cousins,
the sublime of Wordsworth's Snowdon, Byron's Chillon (or the mountain
of Manfred), or Shelley's Mont Blanc. (I know you don't want
bibliography, but Marjorie Nicholson's _Mountain Gloom and MOuntain
Glory_ traces the development of the perception of grand landscapes
as evocative of the
"sublime" response, and Anne Williams's _Art of Darkness: A Poetics of
Gothic_ is the best recent study of the aesthetics and psychology of
the gothic mode, including its aesthetics of extremity, of nightmare
states and the presence of "Evil").
Note that Blake's reference to the "sublime of the Bible" is offered in
explicit contrast to the "stolen and perverted" writings of Homer and
Ovid; Blake positions himself on the side of the Bible in the ancient
controversy between the Hellenic or classical tradition that dominated
education and aesthetics for centuries and, on the other hand, the
assertion from many that the Bible (it's heroes, its narrative forms,
its poetry, especially) has as great or greater value as ancestor to
and formulator of culture. (This is not the same as Arnold's hellenic
and hebraic contrast, but not entirely divorced from it either.)
If you consider the text of Blake's "Vision of the Last Judgment"
in conjunction with the preface to Milton, you will see the links
between Blake's concept of vision and the sublime of the Bible--
neither of them in any sense dependent on responses to mountains,
great storms at sea, lofty icebergs or crossing the Simplon Pass.
Blake is quite explicit (in more places than these) about what he
finds sublime and it is decidedly not the natural world in any of
its forms.
Back to the "stolen and perverted" vs. "sublime of the Bible"--
granted, Blake found gothic *architecture* (the real stuff, not
the faked up follies of 18th century aristocrats showing how much
money they could sink into creating stylish ruins) sublime and he
linked it with vision and the Bible; analogously, he set it off
against the squared off, symmetrical, geometric architecture of the
classical (palladian) traditions he associated with the Greeks (and
ironically, with the Druids and their trilithons). These notions
are scattered in his prose statements about art.
So it is not easy to offer a brief history of Blake's sublime, in part
because there is a tradition behind it (even on the level of controversies
over whether the Psalms should be translated in to regular stanzas or
blank verse or couplets, all based on analogies that could not work but
that assumed consistencies between English prosody and Hebrew prosody)
and it occurs during a period of complex syncretic efforts on the part
of many scholars trying to "prove" the equivalency, even the temporal
identiy, of various widely separated (by time and space) cultural and
mythological phenomena (some of this nicely developed in Frank Manuel's
_The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods_, and elsewhere), and becasue
Blake's possible connections with various antinomian groups (see E.P.
Thompson and Jon Mee, among others) extend further the range of
issues that really precede the possibility of his awareness of the
popular gothic tradition in fiction and drama of his time.
(It has been said before in this thread that DeLuca's book is the
best help on this subject--I am embarrassed by the feebleness of
these remarks in relation to it, even though DeLuca does not
address every detail I am mentioning.)
Let me, however, quote a passage from Anne Williams's study of
Gothic that does bring Blake in range; she is discussing the growing
"Romantic mythology of the self" in connection with Mary Shelley's
_Frankenstein_ and she suggests "if we reread _The Book of Urizen_ and
_Prometheus Unbound_ and _Manfred_ and all the rest with _Frankenstein_
in mind, they appear rather different. . . . to focus on just one
aspect of that difference: the high Romantic fascination with
creativity, which in the context of _Frankenstein_ now appears as the
last-ditch stand of patriarchy's repression of the material and the
maternal" (177-178). [The notion of _Frankenstein_ as a drama of
male usurpation of the maternal is a fairly old idea now, tracin g
back at least to Ellen Moers, but noticeable in earlier critiques
as well.] I have a quarrel with the linkage of Blake into this
company, but no room or time to develop it here.
But my answer to one of Phil's questions is that even though we can
find some useful grounds of comparison between Blake and the gothic,
we need to be careful not to allow superficial resemblances (verbal
or even imagistic) to prompt claims of similarity or commonality not
grounded in more substantial evidence.
AS for Orc, it seems that Phil's source may have conflated materials
improperly--it is true that Orc is powerful, energetic, rebellious,
red and fiery, phallic (rampant phallic) (and the genitals are beauty,
not sublimity), potentially destructive--in fact, he might be
"sublime" in the gothic sense (like Melmoth?) but does not have
the visionary power of imagination (the phallus has not only no
conscience, but no consciousness) to achieve sublimity in Blake's
terms. But that does not mean (as some would have it) that Blake
would denigrate or condemn Orc (at least I don't think so), and that
would bring us to Blake's notions of sexuality, except that we don't
have any confidence that those notions have any consistency from one
period of his career (as recorded) to another.
All of the preceding is presumptuous on my part and dangerously
fragmentary (I actually do have transitions in mind and connecting
thoughts, but not time to try the patience of the list with them),
so I suspect there will be dreadful consequences when I hit the
send command. In this case, really not enough, but definitely too
much.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 20:04:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Sasha Stone
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Sasha Stone's take on Dead Man and William Blake (fwd)
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Er, hi guys! Sasha Stone here just to make it clear it once and for all:
No, Robert McNamara is not my stalker.
No, I never saw Dead Man (damn it)
No, I am not trying to insult Blake or Jarmusch.
For twenty points and person validation, recite from memory something by
William Blake in its entirety.
Ah, let's see - my favorite thing by Blake:
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
(You gotta love this guy).
The other one I love:
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
Please don't worry about my smearing the name of The Great One all over
the internet. Gotta see that Dead Man one of these times.
Cheers, friends.
Sasha Stone
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 1997 00:44:42 -0800
From: Hugh Walthall
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake/Sublimity
Message-Id: <32FC3CFA.4FE5@erols.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Blake would like you to believe that something Happy and Hopeful and Heroic is the
"Sublime Energizer". A pink bunny beating a drum. But energy comes from chopping down
trees, or mining coal, or running a gasoline engine, or a plutonium swizzle stick.
Energy doesn't come from someplace "nice". Is sleep a nice place? Sleep is a sublime
place. Energy is eternal whatchamacallit.
Of course believing a thing is so makes it so (One of Blakes most interesting and
dangerous constructs: All of conventional Christianity is contained in it/ I believe I
will live after I die, so it is so. I believe black people are worthless and stupid, so
it is so.)
Only believe and try. Blake tries to believe his sublime energizer is Los or something
like Los. Dirty Little Secret: His sublime energizer is something more like the
Spectre of Urthona. It's round him night and day. Los only comes by at Easter and
Christmas. A boring relative who lives in Tahiti.
Which, oddly enough, means, yes, Radcliffe or the gigantically manic Beckford or Monk
Lewis do possess a sliver of the true sublime. One cheer for things lurid and nasty!
Hugh Walthall hugwal@erols.com (The Artist formerly known as wahu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 17:47:06 +1000
From: mariea@ozemail.com.au (Marie Anderson)
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Off list
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
please take me off the Blake list!!!! Thanks mariea
Marie
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 01:05:06 +0000 (GMT)
From: Anders H Klitgaard
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Personal introduction
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Dear Blakeans
Thank you for letting me join the list!
I have applied to the list in the hope that it might be helpful to my
interest in the relationship between literature and the occult. I
am currently in the process of writing a synopsis for an M.Litt. (MA)
dissertation in English literature. I intend to read Marlowe, Shakespeare,
Milton, and Blake, with a view to Harold Bloom's theory (*Anxiety* and
*Map*). Although I'm deeply impressed by the fact that Bloom has
established an occult theory of literature that does NOT lose its grip on
poetry (so as to make it mean something else, cf psychoanalysis, feminism,
&c, &c), I hope to establish an occult theory of literature that is even
closer to the text.(Cf influence as something that takes place in the 'real
world'.) Here, I'm interested in Blake's semantics: are the illuminations
thought to express 'the same' as his poetry (as in alchemy)? Are there any
studies on this particular?
Sincerely,
Anders H Klitgaard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home address: Hepburn Hall, room 1
Hepburn Gardens
St Andrews
FIFE KY16 9LW
SCOTLAND
Phone: 01334 465093
E-mail: ahk1@st-andrews.ac.uk
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 11:22:46 -0500 (EST)
From: Amberapple@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Personal introduction
Message-Id: <970209112245_1995725447@emout04.mail.aol.com>
your interest in the occult and literature is one of my own! I tend to focus
more on contemporary fiction, but have done some coursework on Gothic lit
too. Also design an independent study on Witchcraft in Literature which
included The Witch of Edmonton and some earlier plays...
Which school are you at? If you are near Hull, I suggest looking up David
Fairer; I worked with him during some summer sessions at Oxford, and he is
really into this subject matter...Taught "The Sublime and the Gothic" and
looked at Blake's poetry and artwork as very formative to this area...
all the best
Peg
aka Albion
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 08:51:56 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, PJermolow@aol.com
Subject: Ecstasy to Eternity? -Reply
Message-Id:
Your poem seems to me to reflect the opening of your psyche to your
whole self - particularly to the child within who seems to have had to
stand alone in clear-eyed perception of the lack of integrity of others
around. Having nurtured the honest and true in yourself , you have
individuated (in the Jungian sense), receiving the help of your
sub-conscious mind which is , it would seem, offering to co-operate
with your conscious mind, and bringing you all the gifts of apparent
communion with a divine helper within. Perhaps this is what it signifies
to carry the `baton' of the Piper and go forth renewed, but also with a
`load' to bear - of transmitting the new insights derived from your
psychic transformation, as well as release from the too narrow
constraints of the ego. Hope this rings true. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:05:16 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, 100575.2061@CompuServe.COM
Subject: Searching for the Sublime -Reply
Message-Id:
Phil, I think the distinctions you draw between Gothic and Blakean
Sublime are very valid. To try to answer re mountains and the sublime ...
in Blake , all things that exist were once endowed with divine humanity in
Eternity. THus, even Mountains, rivers (as well as Clouds, Lilies of the
Valley, and Worms and Clay, as in `Thel'), could speak with the divine
voice and with eloquent wisdom. In FZ or Jerusalem, the Mountains are
dramatised as speaking to one another, as does the CLod of Clay to the
Pebble in the "Song" since, even in the fallen world, they have not
completely lost their original abilty to vocalise. The question you ask takes
us really into the depths of Blake's vision of the sublime since, when all
things are fully one with God they participate in their expansive states
fully in his divine humanity.This, then, leads on to answering your next
question re `minute particlars' since , for Blake, the sublime inheres in the
`minute particulars' of each individual's divine humanity. That is, each
particle of existence is `holy' - even in the fallen world since the light of
the divine is never extinguished at the centre of the dark, enclosing husk
of matter. To believe in this light is already to become liberated from the
mental prison created by reasoning that the body of five senses is the
true individual. The human imagination alone can aspire back towards
that which it can no longer apprhend via the senses, and thus, Los is,
indeed, the energiser ... working unceasingly to fire the furnaces of the
imagination, he reinstils warmth into the cold, death-like body of Albion
who represents the sleeping divine humanity of all of us. Pam van
Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:11:19 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, ode@netcom.co.uk
Subject: Re: The Tyger -Reply
Message-Id:
No, you're not wrong to see the illustration of the tiger as rather
appealing. Much has been written by critics on this, but many seem to
miss the point of Blake's illustration. ... which, to me, is that all that the
tiger represents, though real and very dangerous to all of those in the
world of nature where the Devourer always feeds off the Prolific, is
ultimately overcome by the mercy of a good and benevolent divinity. The
tiger is as much an illusion as Satan in the end... there where time
ceases . Its power is only for a limited time though that time seems
forever to those enduring it. Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 00:37:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: The Tyger -Reply
Message-Id: <199702100837.AAA07544@igc6.igc.org>
Where is this good and benevolent deity in Blake? What have I missed?
The creator of the world is cruel and malevolent. Jesue of Humanity is
the only positive God for Blake that I recall, and BLake doesnt say taht
the cosmic order is a good one, does he? I don;t believe in your
intperpretation of the tyger at all. It seems to m that the tyger represnets
one of the terrible portions of eternity in abstracto, a necessary part of
existnece but a two-edged pheonomeon in the fallen world. The negative
side -- a symbol of depredation. The positive side -- a symbol of
revolution.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 11:32:23 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Personal introduction -Reply
Message-Id:
I think that often Blake's designs express the same vision as he evinces
in his poetry - and this is often not in keeping with the matter he is
illustrating, for example in the case of illustrating Young's pious poetry.
(You may want to see my article on this in a journal of Unisa of
September 1985 called de arte, entitled "The `Divine Image' and ` Human
Abstract' in A SElection of William Blake's illustrations to Edward Young's
`Night Thoughts'.) I'm sure others on the list will know of other sources .
Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 10:30:57 -0500
From: jkjames@mail.med.upenn.edu (James Kozloski)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Altizer introduction
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Blake Group,
>
>My name is Thomas Altizer, a retired professor from SUNY Stony Brook (and an
>old friend of David Erdman), and I am a radical theologian, one deeply
>inspired by William Blake, as witness my 1967 Book on Blake, The New
>Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (Michigan State
>University Press), as well as my subsequent theological work, particuarly
>History as Apocalypse (Suny Press, 1985), and the just published, The
>Contemporary Jesus (Suny Press). However, I must confess that I have had
>little effect at this point upon my fellow theologians, few of whom are open
>to radical vision and thinking, and I also have had little effect in
>attempting to integrate Blake and Hegel, although it is surely undeniable that
>Blake and Nietzsche and Joyce share a common vision, and the uncovering of
>this common ground has also been a major project of mine. Let me note at this
>point that my most poular book, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Westminster,
>1966) was inspired by Blake, Hegel, and Nietzsche. That book has long since
>been out of print but I have many extra copies if anyone is interested.
I am interested in the book which you mentioned. How could I get a copy?
James Kozloski
Institute of Neurological Sciences
University of Pennsylvania
Address: Department of Psychology
3815 Walnut Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Office: Psychology Lab Bldg., Room E-17
215-898-3460
Fax: 215-898-7301
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 11:23:46 -0600
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: The Tyger -Reply
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
There's so much to say about this poem (and I thank Nelson Hilton for
pointing out the exhaustive bibliography on it). I just want to address
two points:
1. the "pussycat" in the illustration: To me, the apparent incongruity
between the tyger's visual and verbal representations underscores the
difficulty of "framing" the tyger's energy adequately. It also emphasizes
the role perception plays in creation: "the eye altering, alters all" (I
can't remember the source of that line). So the speaker's terror is a
reaction not necessarily to the tyger's essence, but to his own perception
of it.
2. the prevalence of Satan in some readings of the poem, especially the
ones my students seem to bring with them from high school! One version of
this is that just as the Lamb is Jesus, the Tyger is Satan. I argue
against that theory by saying that the identity of creature and creator set
forth in "The Lamb" carries over to "The Tyger," so that the tyger must
represent some aspect of God. This leads to the other version of the
Satan-theory, which is that God made the lamb but Satan made the tyger.
Apart from having no scriptural basis, this strikes me as far too easy an
explanation, demonizing any part of creation we don't like or can't
comprehend. "Everything that lives is holy."
Jennifer Michael
P.S. There's a Blake citing in the New York Times Magazine for 2/9, the
unlikely context being an article about Sara(h) Ferguson as the new
spokesperson for Weight Watchers. The line: "Where there is any view of
money Art cannot be carried on."
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 11:32:18 -0600
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Personal introduction
Message-Id:
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>world'.) Here, I'm interested in Blake's semantics: are the illuminations
>thought to express 'the same' as his poetry (as in alchemy)? Are there any
>studies on this particular?
Welcome to the list, Anders. I don't know about alchemy, but two of the
most influential sources on the relation between Blake's poetry and designs
are Jean Hagstrum's _William Blake: Poet and Painter_ and W. J. T.
Mitchell's _Blake's Composite Art_. They take different views, so I urge
you to read both and then tell us what you think! I often wish we had more
discussion of the designs here: it's probably a combination of the limits
of this verbal medium and a preponderance of text-bound literary types like
me.
Jennifer Michael
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #14
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