Today's Topics:
Re: Four Zoas: Luvah, Los & Orc/Luvah's serpent
Augustine on sex change
Re: Raine?
The Ralph's Regress
Re: Blake's Early Popularization, Boston, & Emerson
Re: Dolly / Blake citings
Blake sighting (with some rue)
Re: Blake's Early Popularization, Boston, & Emerson
Luvah, Los and Orc
Re: Los & Orc
Blake sighted again--prior case
Re: Raine?
Re: Augustine on sex change
Four Zoas: Luvah & Insecto-Theology
Re: Blake's Early Popularization, Boston, & Emerson
Lowly to Sublime
eternal urizen
Approve/forgive
Writing for posterity: Cities Not Yet Embodied (ans to Jen's post on WB & RWE)
Re: Writing for posterity: Cities Not Yet Embodied (ans to Jen's post on WB & RWE)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 08:35:34 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Four Zoas: Luvah, Los & Orc/Luvah's serpent
Message-Id: <199702271435.IAA05721@dfw-ix8.ix.netcom.com>
Hi Phil,
While there are almost assuredly sexual overtones to the passages you
cite (but who can say for certain?) I think there might be a couple of
things that undermine your reading (?)---which is nonetheless a very
thoughtful one (subtext: I'm not trying to have at you: I claim no
expertise and only a passing knowledge of 4 Zoas. Let's DO, please,
have no more rancor on this list!)
First, the gender of the worm, serpent and dragon is feminine
(interesting in itself--are we back to angrogeny?). And if Luvah is
nurturing her with his "rains and dews," then can she be the phallus?
I.e.: if the rains and dews are what you suggest they are, then this
poses a problem: from what organ do the rains & dews emanate? I guess
it depends on how you read the action that's going on here. Have you
looked at Erdman's concordance on this passage? (I have not, but it
might be a very good place to start unraveling your Gordian knot).
The same kind of paradox can be seen at the end: "I open'd all the
floodgates of the heavens to quench her thirst." Again, the action
seems to serve, not to relieve, but to quench, as if the serpent is
the female who gets "quenched."
There may be some connection here to the change in man's sexuality
which took place (according to St. Augustine) when man committed
original sin. The prelapsarian erection was thought to be completely
contolled by man's own will, but for his disobedience man was punished
by losing control over his genitals [see W. Rudat, "Back to the Thicket
Slunk" American Notes & Queries 22:7-9) on Milton's serpent]. Could it
be that Blake is undermining the baggage of this reactionary kind of
exegesis? Think about: the role of the female here (as opposed to the
treatment by early exegetes of women and serpents!)and the issues of
sexual power & fulfillment through, and not in spite of, sexual
experience.
S.R.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 17:20:26 +100
From: "VLADIMIR GEORGIEU"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Augustine on sex change
Message-Id: <322F6F4A1C@picasso.ceu.hu>
Dear Susan,
>There may be some connection here to the change in man's sexuality
>which took place (according to St. Augustine) when man committed
>original sin. The prelapsarian erection was thought to be completely
>controlled by man's own will, but for his disobedience man was punished
>by losing control over his genitals [see W. Rudat, "Back to the Thicket
>Slunk" American Notes & Queries 22:7-9) on Milton's serpent].
Augustine has never been fashionable in the Eastern church, so small
wonder that I never heard of such a doctrine. Does it have something
to do with residual influences of Manicheism in his thought (Gnostic
ideas of androgyny etc.)? Can you quote any particular study on the
problem? Thanx in advance.
Yours,
Vlado.
vladimir Georgiev
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:36:58 -0500 (EST)
From: bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Raine?
Message-Id: <199702271636.LAA18337@host.ott.igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Raine points out (Vol 11, p.12) that "The epithet
"Gnostic" was first applied to Blake by Crabb Robinson.
... No Gnostic texts had been published [in English]
during Blake's lifetime... so that whatever Blake
may have known of Gnostic thought came to him at third
hand, from the writings of ecclesiastical historians
drawing solely upon the fragments of Gnostic thought
preserved, ar attributed, by their enemies the Church
Fathers. Sources available to Blake were Mosheim's
_Ecclesiastical History_, Lardner, and Priestley's
_Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ_. From these
... Blake must have been aware that the Gnostic systems
all held that the creator of the temporal world was not
the supreme God ..."
She continues to discuss the concept of the "Demiurge"
or "Workman," as distinct from the unknowable Supreme
Deity, giving reference to the cabalistic Tree of God
(Vol 11, pp200-01). She mentions the possibility of
Blake having learned "the tradition of cabalism" from
conversations with "some rabbi."
I'm personally a (not too blind) fan of Raine's.
Her books were my introduction to Blake, and I studied
them thoroughly, for seven years, from cover to cover.
In 1974, when Gloudina and I paid her a visit, she
expressed interest in Hindu thought, and if I remember
correctly, was planning to visit India.
Izak Bouwer
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 12:00:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Benson Smith
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: The Ralph's Regress
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Then old Nobodumain aloft
Farted & belched & coughed
And said "I love bombast & boasts & scatology
And never will offer a civil apology
Damn van Schaik and Albright
Who insult my insight
With interpretations that can't be at all right."
Benson
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:09:57 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake's Early Popularization, Boston, & Emerson
Message-Id: <97022711095759@wc.stephens.edu>
?????"a 100 or so copies at a time"????? Is that a supportable claim?
Just curious. Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 97 11:09 CST
From: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu
To: blake@albion.com, Richard Johnson
Subject: Re: Dolly / Blake citings
Message-Id: <199702271728.LAA21851@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
Too late, Dick Johnson! I just saw in today's NYT that William
Safire's column (p. A15) begins as follows:
Two centuries ago, when William Blake posed the question "Little lamb,
who made thee?" the answer the mystic poet gave seemed obvious: the
same gentle God who fathered Jesus made, and blessed, the lamb.
But in counterpoint to his "Songs of Innocence," Blake, in his "Songs
of Experience," followed up that question -- with a more troubling one
about a terrifying creature: "Tyger, tyger, burning bright / In the
forests of the night / . . . Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
Some of us who study the Old Testament Book of Job, as Blake did,
think the poet was dealing with the duality of the God of mercy and
the God of wrath -- searching for answers to why a just God permitted
evil to afflict innocent people.
I ran this thought past Harold Bloom, a classmate 50 years ago at the
Bronx High School of Science; he's now the great professor of
humanities at Yale. (Neither of us made it in science.) He sees the
Lamb and Tyger as satiric images of each other, and that Blake's Man
makes both Tyger and Lamb: In "the forests of the night," or mental
darkness, we mortals create our fearsome Tyger, but in the open vision
of day we make our gentle Lamb.
These head-breaking thoughts about good and evil, God and humanity,
are stimulated, of course, by the creation of Dolly, the lamb formed
by cellular biologists in Scotland and fused into life by electric
shock, as was the Monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein."
(followed by reflections on Jay Leno's response "Can clones make
campaign donations without violating election laws?" and deep thoughts
on James Watson, DNA, etc; with Safire's column concluding as
follows:)
Little clone, who will make thee? The same mysterious amalgam of
beauty and terror that made the Lamb and the Tyger.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:30:56 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake sighting (with some rue)
Message-Id: <97022711305672@wc.stephens.edu>
Probably many of you have already seen William Safire's column in
this morning's New York Times. It begins:
"Two centuries ago, when William Blake posed the question "Little lam,
who made thee?," the answer the mystic poet gave seemed obvious: the
same gentle God who fathered Jesus made, and blessed the lamb.
But in counterpoint to his "Songs of Innocence," Blake, in his
"Songs of Experience" followed up that question -- with a more
troubling one about a terrifying creature: "Tyger, tyger,
burning bright/In the forests of the Night/...Did he who made the
Lamb make thee?"
Som of us who study the Old Testament Book of Job, as Blake did,
think the poet was dealing with the duality of the God of mercy and
the God of wrath --searching for answers to why a just God permitted
evil to afflict innocent people." And so on.
For reasons of time and copyright, I must let you find the rest for
yourselves. It's about cloning, of course, ending: "Little clone, who
will make thee? The same mysterious amalgam of beauty and terror that
made the Lamb and the Tyger."
Please not that mentioning, even quoting, Safire constitutes no kind of
endorsement of him or his often dishonorable works.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 12:11:55 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake's Early Popularization, Boston, & Emerson
Message-Id: <199702271811.MAA19956@dfw-ix13.ix.netcom.com>
Yes, it is. The bibliographic description in OCLC lists the
information. I'll get the exact citation when I have a few more
minutes to spare! I guess I should post it privately...
Cheers,
S.R.
You wrote:
>
>?????"a 100 or so copies at a time"????? Is that a supportable claim?
>Just curious. Tom Dillingham
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 14:46:52 -0500 (EST)
From: bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Luvah, Los and Orc
Message-Id: <199702271946.OAA07827@host.ott.igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Philip Benz, thank the Lord you are still around. I
nearly unsubscribed myself (- was already flicking
away half the stuff unread) when I noticed to my horror
the sickening sight of the ham himself dallying with
bright al , and others emersoning like lemmings...
Now about FZ Night the Second. (Do you know that
Blake wrote that first, and only later added Night
One?) I cannot see that one could object to your train
of thought in (1) of your post, as long as one keeps in
mind that one is talking about the zoa of the affective
energy and takes note of the fact that Luvah himself
says "IF I INDEED am Vala's King & ye O sons of Men the
workmanship of Luvahs hands," as if he is filled with
wonder and doubt at being so closely associated with
the creation of the phenomenon of "Nature."
I would also hope that your Earh-worm/serpent train
of thought would not be cast in stone, so that your
attempt to interpret subsequent events in FZ would
be restricted by this point of view.(To do that, would
be to make the same mistake as Urizen, after he fell.)
In (2) of your post you ask "Could Orc be a son
begot on...Enitharmon by Luvah?" A careful reading of
Night One makes me feel that you may be right to express
the above suspicion. There is sure a lot of looking with
desire at other zoa's emanations going on in Night One
(which Blake wrote after Night Two, as if to explain
relations between the Zoas.)
About (3) in your post, I will only ask you this
question: Why is it "a wry paradox...that through the
early parts of FZ the word 'sublime' is consistently
used in reference to the depths and heights of Urizen."
Are the creations of the unfallen cognitive energy not
as sublime as that of the creations of the other Zoas?
Gloudina Bouwer
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 15:55:21 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Los & Orc
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Philip Benz:
I don't see how Orc could be a bastard child, because there was no one
around in Urizen's world until his emanation broke off, Los, and his
emanation broke off, Enitharmon, at least within "The (First) Book of
Urizen". So as far as the seemingly irrational jealousy that he feels to
his son, within "Urizen" itself, I could chalk it up to a very common
father/son jealousy that can occur, documented by psychology. Often
marriages can break up or at least be put under great strain when Dad is no
longer the focus of attention. I note too that Los grows a beard after the
birth of his son (plate 21), an can imagine himself feeling like his own
youth is a fading star against "the future" as represented in Orc: another
sign for jealousy.
"The Four Zoas", never plated, does have beautiful drawings which seem
intended for it, which add another dimension to me for why Los was jealous.
Again, it's the classic Freudian Oedipal thing: his mother, Enitharmon, is
pictured seducing him while Los, "kneeling with a cord round his bosom and
looking over his shoulder at Orc", merely looks on.
-figure 26, _Drawings of William Blake_, Selection, Introduction by
Sir Geoffrey Keynes
Gloudina Bouwer, by the way: I would have been shocked if you had
unsubscribed, having called for an analysis of Urizen to be led by Mr.
Dillingham... or... whomever....... because I still think that a proper
analysis begins with the text/illustrations which together create the
illuminated "(First [Bible from Hell]) Book of Urizen", and that since my
interpretation from last Spring was deemed blasphemous by both you and Tom
Dillingham, I would love to hear what someone believes is a less heretical
view on at least a few of those plates! Gorgeous book. Urizen is Satan? My
my. And people are trying to defend Blake as a friend of science?
-Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 15:15:25 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake sighted again--prior case
Message-Id: <97022715152576@wc.stephens.edu>
Whoops--Daniel Kevles, science writer, seems to have beat all of us
to it, including Safire. In Wednesday's Times op ed section, Kevles
begins his article on cloning "In 'Songs of Innocence,' William Blake
asked, 'Little Lamb, who made thee?' The answer for Dolly the sheep
is Dr. Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute in
Edinburgh." No slouches, those scientists. Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 15:49:21 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Raine?
Message-Id: <199702272149.PAA26596@dfw-ix14.ix.netcom.com>
Dear Izak and Gloudina,
I met Kathleen Raine in Grasmere 3 yers ago. ( I wasn't going to pipe
in till the subject came up). At that time, after she gave her talk at
the Prince of Wales, her focus of conversation in small groups shifted
to the personal price she had paid for her dedication to scholarship.
She is a lovely woman.
A Lemming
You wrote:
>
>Raine points out (Vol 11, p.12) that "The epithet
>"Gnostic" was first applied to Blake by Crabb Robinson.
>... No Gnostic texts had been published [in English]
>during Blake's lifetime... so that whatever Blake
>may have known of Gnostic thought came to him at third
>hand, from the writings of ecclesiastical historians
>drawing solely upon the fragments of Gnostic thought
>preserved, ar attributed, by their enemies the Church
>Fathers. Sources available to Blake were Mosheim's
>_Ecclesiastical History_, Lardner, and Priestley's
>_Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ_. From these
>... Blake must have been aware that the Gnostic systems
>all held that the creator of the temporal world was not
>the supreme God ..."
> She continues to discuss the concept of the "Demiurge"
>or "Workman," as distinct from the unknowable Supreme
>Deity, giving reference to the cabalistic Tree of God
>(Vol 11, pp200-01). She mentions the possibility of
>Blake having learned "the tradition of cabalism" from
>conversations with "some rabbi."
>
> I'm personally a (not too blind) fan of Raine's.
>Her books were my introduction to Blake, and I studied
>them thoroughly, for seven years, from cover to cover.
>In 1974, when Gloudina and I paid her a visit, she
>expressed interest in Hindu thought, and if I remember
>correctly, was planning to visit India.
>
> Izak Bouwer
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 16:30:41 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Augustine on sex change
Message-Id: <199702272230.QAA10091@dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com>
You are a joy.
At the moment, the only citation I can offer is the one below (Rudat).
I will do a cursory search when time permits (I love these posts, for I
always learn something in answering.
I happen to be delivering a paper on Milton's use of Beast Fable in [Bk
IX of] *Paradise Lost* in April. The essay deals in part with Milton's
various & volatile melange of sources for his fawning flatterer of a
serpent-in-the-garden, but the Augustine issue was only tangential to
my argument: that Milton overlaid characterisitcs of the flattering fox
of beast fable over accounts of the Fall with which he was already
familiar in Genesis, exegesis, mystery play, emblem book, and homiletic
material. (Eve, I argue, is the eblematic figure of Luxuria and
Satan-as-serpent is a Chauntecleer of sorts---this due to the
preoccupation and fixation at the time with the dangers of Pride).
I'll keep this post short, but if you're interested to see some of the
ways Chrisitan exegetes took Scripture (Septaguint & Vulgate), the
Physiologus, and other ancient Hellenic, Asiatic & Egyptian sources wch
had come down thru Aristotle and others, Christianized them, and then
kept them in circulation through homily, emblem book, catechisitic lit,
mystery play, we can talk off-list.
All Best,
Susan
You wrote:
>
>Dear Susan,
>
>>There may be some connection here to the change in man's sexuality
>>which took place (according to St. Augustine) when man committed
>>original sin. The prelapsarian erection was thought to be completely
>>controlled by man's own will, but for his disobedience man was
punished
>>by losing control over his genitals [see W. Rudat, "Back to the
Thicket
>>Slunk" American Notes & Queries 22:7-9) on Milton's serpent].
>
>
>Augustine has never been fashionable in the Eastern church, so small
>wonder that I never heard of such a doctrine. Does it have something
>to do with residual influences of Manicheism in his thought (Gnostic
>ideas of androgyny etc.)? Can you quote any particular study on the
>problem? Thanx in advance.
>
>Yours,
>
>Vlado.
>vladimir Georgiev
>
>
------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 97 17:57:37 EST
From: Philip Benz <100575.2061@CompuServe.COM>
To: "internet:blake@albion.com"
Subject: Four Zoas: Luvah & Insecto-Theology
Message-Id: <970227225736_100575.2061_GHW36-1@CompuServe.COM>
Susan said: << I think there might be a couple of things that undermine
your reading >>
That's very diplomatic of you Susan. Proof that we needn't be nearly
so... agonistic on the list. After all, it's only literature.
This said, you needn't worry about offending me.
RE Luvah's Lament in _FZ_(N2):
The gender problem does run counter to reading the worm as Luvah's
phallus, though at that stage of Eternity, the zoas were presumably all
hermaphroditic (or undifferentiated, if that means something different).
OTOH, one could read the humidity (rains, dews, floodgates) as refering
to emissions, Luvah's "nurturing" as onanistic energy and the growth as
phallic growth. But why "she" and "her" for the phallus? a quandry.
One might perhaps more convincingly portray this passage as the
individuation, through generative transmogriphication, of the female
aspect of Luvah. Birth often takes the form of a growing worm, though
that doesn't necessarily divorce the notion from phallic symbolism.
When I read the corresponding passage on Orc's birth from _The Book
of Urizen_, the phallic symbolism is less evident, and the move from
worm to serpent, fish, bird, beast and finally to "Infant form" seems
more like an elaborate embryology. Only in Luvah's lament does the
phallus leap off the page.
No, I haven't read Erdman's concordances on this passage (or MLJ's,
or anyone elses) as I don't have access to a library. But I don't
necessarily see this as a drawback. Blake wanted his readers to have to
work at understanding his poetry, and I must say I can feel the sweat
beading on my brow from time to time.
RE the sons of Men, of Urizen, of Luvah, of Los...
So often I see nameless sons parading across the stage of _FZ_, but
only Los seems to have named sons. Who are they? The human inhabitants
of the fallen world? Are some the sons of Urizen, others the sons of
Luvah (etc) or is it more a case of each of the zoas claiming humanity
as his own sons, just as each claims godship for himself at some point?
Specifically, when in Luvah's Lament (FZ, p26) we read "If I indeed am
Valas King & ye O sons of Men / the workmanship of Luvah's hands[...]",
who is Luvah refering to?
More later, --- Phil
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 19:10:02 -0500 (EST)
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake's Early Popularization, Boston, & Emerson
Message-Id: <970227190956_307222124@emout01.mail.aol.com>
Susan-
Please DON'T post that privately -- that's the kind of information I
would love to see on the list (and I suspect I'm not alone).
I haven't said much lately because I've been rather busy and not
particularly involved in the subjects under discussion, but I'm still
enjoying the substantive posts (and some of the others). And I want to
say that, despite my own objections to his rhetoric, I would hate to lose
Ralph Dumain's company on this list. I look forward to his occasional
brilliant posts on real issues.
For the rest: "Forgive what you do not approve...".
--Tom Devine
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 18:23:20 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Lowly to Sublime
Message-Id: <199702280023.SAA16292@dfw-ix12.ix.netcom.com>
Dear Phil,
Bravo!
An ingenious reading. I guess I'm the lazy type who when confronted
with such a puzzle, often heads to see what others have to say on the
subject (which often leads me to some kind of resolution, or at least a
handle on the possibilities, or even, to new insights of my own.
I enjoyed your reading very much.
I think there is something in the lowly-to-lofty theme that is central
to this passage---it almost inverts Satan's progressive degeneration in
*Paradise Lost* from Promethean Lucifer to serpentine Satan (and he
undergoes transitional degenerations:wolf, lion, tiger, cormorant,
toad), who as a "worm" is one of the lowliest forms of animal life.
Regards,
Susan
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 18:17:56 -0600
From: "Jeffrey Skoblow"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: eternal urizen
Message-Id: <9702280354.AA11488@daisy.ac.siue.edu>
can somebody help me with eternity? i'm thinking of randall's
comment that "there was no one around in urizen's world until his
emanation broke off, los"-- which gets me to the question that i've
been trying to formulate since gloudina suggested a closer more
systematic look at urizen... let me try it this way:
eternity, as i understand the term, is unbound by time-- i.e. it is
not simply a very very very long time, but rather no-time at all.
all of our language and understanding and so on is hopelessly framed
by temporality-- it's part of the vegetable ratio-- so we really are
at a loss when it comes to discussing eternal matters. but there it
is-- eternity is always. it's not, as in some versions of dogmatic
christianity, the time that we get to after earthly time-- it's not a
subset of time, but the other way around. or to put it another way:
what happens in eternity has always been happening, is always
happening, will always be happening-- in no sequence, but all always
eternally forever. now this makes for a problem-- blake's books are
temporal artifacts (among other things), words follow other words,
plates follow plates, events follow events: so enitharmon emanating
from los seems to come after los emerging to shackle urizen which
seems to happen after urizen separates himself from the other
eternals, etc.-- but this, i'm thinking, is just an illusion of our
temporal mode. in (eternal) fact, all these things happen at the
same time, at all times, are always happening all together: it's just
that we can't talk about them except as if in a sequence.
one of the things this means to me is that it's a real problem to
demonize urizen-- it seems a kind of holdover from conventional
christianity, a version of the fall, a vision of the thing that
happened that we'd like to wish to unhappen, to get back to the other
side of its happening, to return to the point before it happened:
urizen is bad, so let's eradicate him... something like that. but
there's no eradication in eternity. there's no getting back before.
urizen is forever, as is los, as is all. the struggles of these
figures are not struggles to resolve but struggles to honor (for lack
of a better word).
well, there's one pass at the problem, anyway. maybe youall could
help me formulate this more clearly.
how can we talk about eternity?
if we live in eternity, as blake claims to (and i believe him!), then
isn't all sequence an illusion, a bar to eternal vision?
if urizen always is, always was, always will be-- and if urizen's
separation from the eternals (at the start of the book of urizen)
always is was and will be, as well as the moment "before" his
separation, as well as all the moments after-- all these "moments"
not really moments but eternal occurrences-- then can urizen's
petrific horrific law business be said to be of a different status,
or a different value, from any other eternal event?
i'll stop, temporally speaking, now.
jeffrey skoblow
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 08:18:31 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Approve/forgive
Message-Id: <97022808183165@wc.stephens.edu>
I would endorse both of Tom Devine's suggestions (post that information,
keep Ralph on the list), but would question why it is that the
messenger must be "forgiven" but the initial offender is absolved.
It all reminds me of the confrontation in plates 6-9 of _Milton_
("Satan: with incomparable mildness
His primitive tyrannical attempts on Los: with most endearing love
He soft entreated Los to give him Palamabron's station)
Here Satan has much in common with Master Blifil and Joseph Surface--
and whom we know.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 08:56:40 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Writing for posterity: Cities Not Yet Embodied (ans to Jen's post on WB & RWE)
Message-Id: <199702281456.IAA12222@dfw-ix15.ix.netcom.com>
Jen,
I don't know how fully aware Blake was of writing for posterity,
(does he say anything in the Notebook, letters?) but I know Keats was
extremely aware that for various reasons, his audience and his fame
would have to be deferred to a time after his death. When I worked on
the *SEL* survey of "Recent Studies in 19th Century one of the books I
read was Andrew Bennett's *Keats, Narrative, & Audience: The
Posthumous Life of Writing,* which dealt with exactly this issue. I
like your reading of Songs of Innocence: it gets me thinking about a
lot of things...
Does your "Cities Not Yet Embodied" touch on this at all?
S.R.
You wrote:
>
>>Blake as you know privately published editions of his work 100 or so
>>copies at a time for private circulation (a practice wch dates back
at
>>least to 15th or 16th century Eng Lit) but it's not till much later,
>>with the rise of a reading (i.e. literate) public and innovations in
>>printing like the steam and stereotype press that you get really
wide,
>>large, and international circulations.
>>Amen.
>
>Good point, Susan. That's why I resist the common reading of the
>Introduction to _Songs of Innocence_ as a "fall" from pure music to
verbal
>song to the written word.
>
>Piper sit thee down and write
>In a book that all may read
>
>Until the work is published and "disseminated," it remains a private
>performance between piper and child: lovely, but not very accessible
or
>democratic. So in spite of all that staining the water, I see the
last
>line as a triumph: "Every child may joy to hear": not just the child
on a
>cloud.
>
>Of course, the limited circulation of Blake's work at the time makes
that
>argument extremely ironic: it's only *now* that every child (with at
least
>a dollar to spend on a Dover paperback) can "hear" the songs.
>
>Jennifer Michael
>
>
>
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 11:13:10 -0600
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Writing for posterity: Cities Not Yet Embodied (ans to Jen's post on WB & RWE)
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Does your "Cities Not Yet Embodied" touch on this at all?
Susan,
My dissertation does include a version of my argument on the Intro to Songs
of Innocence, but doesn't take up the issue of posterity as such. I've
mainly thought of "cities not yet embodied" as works in progress, but I'm
glad you pointed out this possible connection. Maybe I'll take that up as
I try to revise it for publication.
Off the top of my head, I think Blake is aware at times of writing for
posterity, as in "A Little Girl Lost," when he addresses "Children of a
future Age, / Reading this indignant page." Certainly his addresses to the
reader become more explicit and insistent as his career goes on, as in the
first page of _Jerusalem_, where he seems to have gouged out the words such
as "lover" that imply a bond with the reader. But I think in that instance
he was acting out of his general disgust with contemporary audiences, as
evidenced by the failure of his public exhibitions.
Thanks for your comments.
Jennifer Michael
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #26
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