Today's Topics:
Re: Quote
The Romaunt of the Rose
Quote
Re: The Romaunt of the Rose
Surrealist
RE: Surrealist
RE: A.N. Other
Re: Quote
Re: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc
Quote
Question
Re: Surrealist
Re: Surrealist
Re: The Romaunt of the Rose
Dictionary
Re: Dictionary
Re: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc
Thank you Ralph
a source for an image in Night Thoughts
Re: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc
Re: Quote
Re: Surrealist
Allen Ginsberg
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 00:50:04 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote
Message-Id: <199704030747.AAA21351@gost1.indirect.com>
Ralph Dumain wrote:
> Why not attach some commentary to all your bare quotes as a
> starting point for discussion? What do you think the following
> lines mean? I find them an intriguing in light of all of the
> complaints of Blake's alleged sexism. What experiences led Blake to
> believe that he who respects woman shall be despised by woman?
It was due to him being the sort of person he was. It has to do
with the Artist maintaining his Divine Vision. I'm sure the way his
eye fell upon a woman was not like that of most.
The Quotes look good naked, don't you think?
(I've never been a very good dresser.)
>The Man who respects Woman shall be despised by Woman
>And deadly cunning & mean abjectness only, shall enjoy them
An Eye of Innocence is more apt to bring out the maternal instinct
than the sexual.
Charlie
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 07:54:30 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: The Romaunt of the Rose
Message-Id: <199704031354.HAA23903@dfw-ix6.ix.netcom.com>
Dear Steve,
Chaucer's Middle English translation of Le Roman de la Rose was printed
in London as early as 1602; this is all the information I can offer
at present.
Does anyone have Erdman Raine, Damon, etc. handy?
Susan
You wrote:
>
>Interesting Pam - would Blake have read "The Romance of the Rose"?
Does
>anyone have any concrete information about Blake's exposure to that
work?
>
>Steve
>
>
>**********************************************************************
>>I find it hard to equate the Rose with Satan, as suggested in your
last
>>posting. This is because I believe there is consistency in Blake's
vision
>>of the Garden of Love in Eternity which contained the healthy Rose.
In
>>health, univaded by the Devourer, the prolific Rose would have had a
>>divinely human form (as can be seen in the illustration to the Sick
Rose)
>>and like the Lily of the Valley (in The Book of Thel) she would have
shed
>>her fragrance selflessly on others. She would also have opened her
>>beauty unashamedly and have had no need of thorns to protect her,
>>since in Eternity, all mingle incessantly in love in fiery ardour in
odrer to
>>lose their sense of isolated self and participate in God's unity.
The Sick
>>Rose falls ill because love in the fallen world is selfish and
devouring ...
>>the lover desiring mainly to satisfy self. The contraries for me
are
>>therefore Rose (good) and Worm (bad) and are not reversible. Pam van
>>Schaik
>>
>>
>>
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 08:09:57 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704031506.IAA23579@gost1.indirect.com>
[from Jerusalem, plate 68]
Why trembles the Warriors limbs when he beholds thy beauty
Spotted with Victims blood: by the fires of thy secret tabernacle
And thy ark & holy place: at thy frowns: at thy dire revenge
Smitten as Uzzah of old: his armour is softend; his spear
And sword faint in his hand, from Albion across Great Tartary
O beautiful Daughter of Albion: cruelty is thy delight
O Virgin of terrible eyes, who dwellest by Valleys of springs
Beneath the Mountains of Lebanon, in the City of Rehob in Hamath
Taught to touch the harp: to dance in the Circle of Warriors
Before the Kings of Canaan: to cut the flesh from the Victim
To roast the flesh in fire: to examine the Infants limbs
In cruelties of holiness: to refuse the joys of love: to bring
The Spies from Egypt, to raise jealousy in the bosoms of the Twelve
Kings of Canaan: then to let the Spies depart to Meribah Kadesh
To the place of the Amalekite; I am drunk with unsatiated love
I must rush again to War: for the Virgin has frownd & refusd
Sometimes I curse & sometimes bless thy fascinating beauty
Once Man was occupied in intellectual pleasures & energies
But now I hate & now I love & Intellect is no more:
There is no time for any thing but the torments of love & desire
The Feminine & Masculine Shadows soft, mild & ever varying
In beauty: are Shadows now no more, but Rocks in Horeb
[plate 69]
Hence the Infernal Veil grows in the disobedient Female:
Which Jesus rends & the whole Druid Law removes away
>From the Inner Sanctuary: a False Holiness hid within the Center,
For the Sanctuary of Eden. is in the Camp: in the Outline,
In the Circumference: & every Minute Particular is Holy:
Embraces are Cominglings: from the Head even to the Feet;
And not a pompous High Priest entering by a Secret Place.
[plate 70]
Imputing Sin & Righteousness to Individuals; Rahab
Sat deep within him hid: his Feminine Power unreveal'd
Brooding Abstract Philosophy. to destroy Imagnation, the Divine-
-Humanity A Three-fold Wonder: feminine: most beautiful: Three-
fold
Each within other. On her white marble & even Neck, her Heart
Inorb'd and bonified: with locks of shadowing modesty, shining
Over her beautiful Female features, soft flourishing in beauty
Beams mild, all love and all perfection, that when the lips
Recieve a kiss from Gods or Men, a threefold kiss returns
>From the pressd loveliness: so her whole immortal form three-fold
Three-fold embrace returns: consuming lives of Gods & Men
In fires of beauty melting them as gold & silver in the furnace
Her Brain enlabyrinths the whole heaven of her bosom & loins
To put in act what her Heart wills; O who can withstand her power
Her name is Vala in Eternity: in Time her name is Rahab
The Starry Heavens all were fled from the mighty limbs of Albion
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 10:45:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Alexander Gourlay
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: The Romaunt of the Rose
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> >
> >Interesting Pam - would Blake have read "The Romance of the Rose"?
> Does
> >anyone have any concrete information about Blake's exposure to that
> work?
> >
> >Steve
I have argued (Studies in Bibliography 42) that Blake owned a copy of the
1687 edition of Speght's Chaucer, which includes the "The Romaunt of the
Rose" on page 199. I don't know when or even if he read it, though -- my
evidence is that he owned it in 1809. He clearly read the Canterbury
Tales carefully, and it seems more than likely that he read the whole
book with great care.
Sandy Gourlay
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 11:27:02 -0500 (EST)
From: bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Surrealist
Message-Id: <199704031627.LAA03084@host.ott.igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
The Blake list - how surreal these days.
-- Charlie K's posts drifting by. I like them. You
do not need to attach comments,Charlie, as far as I am
concerned. Just don't cheat. That "Man who respects
Woman shall be despised by Woman" surely should have
been quoted in quotes, since it is said by the Spectre.
Which is another ball game altogether, isn't it, Charlie?
-- Ralph Dumain saying that Blake is not a white man,
and I agreeing with him. Coming from Africa, I know what
he means. Being told that thing here in North America by
a Maliseet - how one carries it as a badge of honour!
Lazily I wonder also: with that name, is Ralph from the
Carribean? Or were his forebears kicked out of Acadia
by those bloody English, and they just never bothered to
return? In that case, Canada's loss.
-- Tom Dillingham answering a thread started by Albright.
(If the Blake List were a novel, there is some real character
development here.) And I genuinely like the grace with which
he imparts information, the liquid control he has of the
English language. I sometimes wonder if he is not really an
Englishman.
-- amazed by the talk of how Blake was not really taught
in some American colleges until the sixties. Surely it would
have been completely different in the Carribean, and all over
the rest of the English speaking world. Even in South Africa,
in a totally Afrikaans-medium university, I was introduced to
him in a first year English class, long ago.
-- trying, as always, to follow in Dumain's footsteps. (One
day I hope to be able to say "Mr. Livingstone, I presume.")
Resolving to start reading C.L.R. James and E.P. Thompson,
and discovering Thompson's SYKAOS PAPERS. While 39 people
there in California depart for somewhere else in the wake of
the comet, I land on earth and discover birds for the first
time.
-- So, Ralph Dumain, if you have spent time in "provincial
Buffalo" you must have crossed the bridge and looked at America
from the other side. What do you think, whose falls are the
greatest?
Gloudina Bouwer
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 15:18:19 -0500 (EST)
From: WATT
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Surrealist
Message-Id: <4519181503041997/A76934/RUTH/11B41BD20700*@MHS>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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Gloudina: loved your LUVAH responding to the Blake List. It is fun to me,
also, that this masterpiece of URIZENIC work is being so naturallly
employed by the other Zoas. I hear ORC's voice in your postings as well
and, being an AmORCian, I smile in my soul. As to Blake's being taught or
not taught in America: I should hope that Blake is not being TAUGHT
anywhere! I offer a course in Blake from time to time, but I know better
than to say I am TEACHING him. How anyone could read _Milton_ 38
[43]: 29-36 and claim to be doing so is beyond me! As to the poor ones in
California, we should rather pray for them than mock them --as it is so
clear that they failed to note that Milton's self-annihilation comes AFTER his
natural death, not in its place! But then such are the kinds of errors Urizen
seems always doomed to make --and later lament. Thanks, again, for
your cheerful voice --I only wish I could REALLY hear it. When ever I sit in
front of this machine and try to write anything REAL, my THARMAS knifes
me just to the left of my upper torso, between my neck and my heart!
Jim Watt (in INDIANA at the moment &, from time to time in BEULAH)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 15:29:06 -0500 (EST)
From: WATT
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: A.N. Other
Message-Id: <9306291503041997/A77184/RUTH/11B41BDC3B00*@MHS>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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The best re-creation of William Blake since William Blake is still Joyce
Cary's _The Horse's Mouth_. Jim Watt
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 17:24:57 -0600 (CST)
From: Darlene Sybert
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Wed, 2 Apr 1997, Ralph Dumain wrote:
> What experiences led Blake to believe that he who respects woman shall be
> despised by woman?
>
> At 04:41 PM 4/2/97 -0700, Charlie K. wrote:
> >The Man who respects Woman shall be despised by Woman
> >...................
> >[from Jerusalem, plate 88]
I don't know what specific experiences might have led Blake
to this conclusion. I do know that I get this same response
at least once a semester in each class of freshmen I teach
when the conversation turns to how men treat women in
mid-Missouri. Usually it turns out to be the opinion of the
majority of the men in the room or so they claim. And most of
the women deny that it's true. I've always suspected the whole
conversation was some sort of mid-Western ice-breaker since class
participation improves dramatically from that moment...
Of course, after the first few classes, I learned to initiate
this topic of conversation early in the semester.
Darlene Sybert vsa
http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
....The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive the flesh.
Wordsworth, "The Dream"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 16:08:04 PST
From: "Jenny H."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc
Message-Id: <199704040008.QAA20348@f21.hotmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
An important thing to remember in "The Sick Rose" is that the worm is invisible,
which symbolizes something that is repressed. In a sense, the rose destroys
itself by repressing the dark aspect (night, storm, and worm symbolize the
unconscious, which is usually symbolized by darkness). Sickness occurs,
psychologically, when some aspect that has gone unnoticed demands attention, to
the extent that it acts negatively on the ego so that it cannot be ignored.
Sickness thus acts as a purifying process.
John- could you comment further on the Rose=complexity of perception?
---------------------------------------------------------
Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 17:26:20 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704040023.RAA15607@gost1.indirect.com>
. . . . the whole creation will
be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy
whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of
sensual enjoyment.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 17:27:20 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Question
Message-Id: <199704040024.RAA15736@gost1.indirect.com>
So just why didn't they want Blake to engrave his own designs for
Blair's 'Grave'?
Charlie
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 17:37:08 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Surrealist
Message-Id: <199704040034.RAA16816@gost1.indirect.com>
Gloudina Bouwer wrote:
> Just don't cheat. That "Man who respects Woman shall be despised by
> Woman" surely should have been quoted in quotes, since it is said
> by the Spectre. Which is another ball game altogether, isn't it,
> Charlie?
Yeah, but whatever the ball game, they were all taking place on the
field of Blake himself. I believe that no matter which character is
"speaking," it is really Blake himself, or rather an aspect of Blake
himself, which really represents an aspect of Humanness. The
Contraries were Understood by him and existed in him, Spectres and
all. To look out at the World and see all the various aspects (or
"states" as he called them) being played out, and to realize that
they *all* exist within each Individual, and then to actually
"explore" them... makes for a complex Being, which is exactly what
the man was. He Knew. He was a Wise Man.
Charlie
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 20:02:07 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Surrealist
Message-Id: <97040320020746@wc.stephens.edu>
Aw shucks, Miz Gloudina,
I'm jist a plain simpleminded
Missourah boy, born and bred here
and drug up by the hand
of my sainted Irish granny
(really she was as mean as
a scorpion trapped in a jar,
but like all dear departed
Irish grannies, now a saint)
and though corrupted a bit
by a few years in the East
still just a downhome type
but lordy (bashfully digging the toe of m'boot
in the dust) both "liquid control"
(which sounds, how shall I put it,
just the least little bit lubricious?)
and a contribution to a surreal moment
on the list--all in the same day?
I think I had better retire to
the closet where I keep my Anglo-drag
and don my tweeds and smoke my pipe
(English profs essential props)
all the time reminding myself
"Ceci n'est pas un pipe."
And thanks. Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 20:15:20 -0700 (MST)
From: fawman@compusmart.ab.ca (Steven Mandziuk)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: The Romaunt of the Rose
Message-Id: <199704040315.UAA26340@bernie.compusmart.ab.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>> >
>> >Interesting Pam - would Blake have read "The Romance of the Rose"?
>> Does
>> >anyone have any concrete information about Blake's exposure to that
>> work?
>> >
>> >Steve
>
>I have argued (Studies in Bibliography 42) that Blake owned a copy of the
>1687 edition of Speght's Chaucer, which includes the "The Romaunt of the
>Rose" on page 199. I don't know when or even if he read it, though -- my
>evidence is that he owned it in 1809. He clearly read the Canterbury
>Tales carefully, and it seems more than likely that he read the whole
>book with great care.
>
>Sandy Gourlay
>
Thanks Sandy - I'll check out your article. I'll also give some
thought to the 1809 date.
Much obliged,
Steve>
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 23:58:38 -0800
From: Hugh Walthall
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Dictionary
Message-Id: <3344B4AE.61FD@erols.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Blake is literally the last great poet not to suffer under the
debilitating restraints of that evil contrivance "The Dictionary". The
phrase Blake Dictionary to me has always been a wonderful oxymoron like
military intelligence.
I feel certain if we could show Shakespeare the OED he'd say something
like, it's cute, they sure stole a lot of shit from me. What's it for?
Blake is profoundly generous to Chaucer and Shakespeare because now and
again he had written as well as they.
To this day, a MINIMUM REQUIREMENT for being a great poet is to possess
the technical lyric ability of a Cole Porter, or Irving Berlin, or Percy
Mayfield, or Noel Coward. Just to name song writers who wrote both
words and music. (If you don't know Percy Mayfield, shame on you.)
All fine poets of whatever ideological stripe are great song writers.
Among contemporaries and the recent dead: Walcott, Hollander, Jimbo
Merrill, even Archie Ammons. (There is a wonderful faux doggerel poem
by Ashbery which may be sung to the tune of "Reunited and it feels so
good", just as most of Emily D. works with Yellow Rose of Texas or
Hernando's Hideaway.)
My personal choices for the best (because lists are fun) are
Shakespeare, Tennyson (stupid as a bag of rice, but boy can he
sing--How Stupid is he, Johnny? As stupid as the other poets on this
list are sly and intelligent.), Chaucer, Emily D., and Blake.
Hugh Walthall hugwal@erols.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 22:51:13 -0800
From: Steve Perry
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Dictionary
Message-Id: <3344A4E1.1C52@surf.com>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Hugh Walthall wrote:
Blake is literally the last great poet not to suffer
under the
debilitating restraints of that evil contrivance "The Dictionary".
Actually, maybe Joyce, who requires a multi-lingual/dimensional/temporal
crossword dictionary to get passed the first page, then unless you are
analy impaired you give it up and sing it in whatever the language is....
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 09:04:38 -0500
From: John Hecklinger
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc
Message-Id: <33450A76.1C17@earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Jenny H. wrote:
>
> An important thing to remember in "The Sick Rose" is that the worm is invisible,
> which symbolizes something that is repressed. In a sense, the rose destroys
> itself by repressing the dark aspect (night, storm, and worm symbolize the
> unconscious, which is usually symbolized by darkness). Sickness occurs,
> psychologically, when some aspect that has gone unnoticed demands attention, to
> the extent that it acts negatively on the ego so that it cannot be ignored.
> Sickness thus acts as a purifying process.
> John- could you comment further on the Rose=complexity of perception?
>
The rose's complex, convoluted, undulating, yet supremely harmonious
physical structure embodies the beauty of maintaining multi-faceted
perception in the face of debilitating single vision. The rose,
becoming what it is beholding, assumes a fleeting moment of perfect form
before it withers. The worm's solid, unvaried, simple structure
destroys the rose's moment of beautiful exuberance. After all, worms
are agents of decay, vectors of rot. Of course this decay and rot is
absolutely necessary to create the generative soil on which more roses
will feed and achieve further moments of harmonious order. Roses
represent a synthesis of singular elements into a temporary whole, just
like everything else that exists, including worms. "The Sick Rose"
brings order and chaos together into such reversible proximity that it
is impossible to really and definitively separate them.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is that the rose and the worm could
represent the contunual and necessary artistic, political, religious,
social, cultural, and/or psychological struggle between reason and
energy, good and evil, single vision and perceptual complexity.
Sickness continually rears it debilitating head, but through this decay
a new beautiful health emerges, and the struggle continues.
Of course this post is only one fleeting moment of formulation. I
expect and hope that it will be blown apart.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 09:53:20 -0500 (EST)
From: WATT
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Thank you Ralph
Message-Id: <9120530904041997/A86700/RUTH/11B422750E00*@MHS>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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For the quotation fromWalcott's tribute to James --many thanks, Ralph! I
am sure that many of us will be using this and I, for one, will make the
correct attribution. Jim Watt
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 01:29:50 +0930
From: jmillett
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: a source for an image in Night Thoughts
Message-Id: <33452576.2264@kormilda.nt.edu.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Greetings to all Blakeans out there from a Mental Traveller enslaved in
the dark Satanic Mills of Secondary education! I've just surfed from
the Blake homepage for the first time [an insane thing to do when I
should be applying the Urizenic pen to clip the wings of "angels" -
awfully mixed metaphor for writing school reports] !!!!
Sooooo... I once came across an engraving of a Deluge painting by J.P.
DeLoutherbourg (?) - Swiss/French(?) character who did avalanches and
other Sublime manifestations of Apocalypse in Nature. It contained a
foreground "family" scene of Father lying exhausted on the last piece of
exposed rock, Mother clasping young child as it almost falls from her,
and a snake, also (temporarily) escaped from the Flood. You know, the
sort of thing that became compulsory in Deluge subjects after
Michaelangelo set the standard on the Sistine ceiling. The point is,
and I'll get there eventually, that Blake has an uncannily similar (yes
I know, it comes with the 'visionary artist' territory) image in his
illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts: a man swooning on a rock below
a poised snake while a mother/woman restrains a child beside him as it
lunges after a bird. Far fetched? But consider the post-lapsarian
family unit re-enacting the aftermath of Eden on De Loutherbourg's rock
as being surrounded by a Blakean Sea of Materiality. Unfortunately I
don't have my Oxford complete edition of the Night Thoughts
illustrations with me to check the textual relationship but regardless
of who was best to steal from, I find the associations of
serpent-family-flood fascinating and feel there is a key there to some
strands of Blake's Night Thoughts. Anyway (again), I've never been able
to find that De Loutherbourg picture since. Does anyone Know what I'm
talking about? Do I know what I'm talking about?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 11:32:00 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Jenny: An interesting interpretation.
Visually, I notice that the top red figure looks like a worm/person with a
dangling arm and mermaid like-feet. Could this be giving in to "illness"?
The next one down looks like a cow or some other animal. Or is a human
crawling inside? Any other views on that?
The rose bush/tree is full of thorns that could itself be poisonous.
And out of the fallen rose, a person emerges, smiling, looking like "free
at last!"
So is the worm like a caterpillar, and the end a butterfly?
-Randall Albright
>An important thing to remember in "The Sick Rose" is that the worm is
>invisible,
>which symbolizes something that is repressed. In a sense, the rose destroys
>itself by repressing the dark aspect (night, storm, and worm symbolize the
>unconscious, which is usually symbolized by darkness). Sickness occurs,
>psychologically, when some aspect that has gone unnoticed demands
>attention, to
>the extent that it acts negatively on the ego so that it cannot be ignored.
>Sickness thus acts as a purifying process.
> John- could you comment further on the Rose=complexity of perception?
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------
>Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>---------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 13:31:18 -0600 (CST)
From: Jack W Jacobs
To: "Charlie K."
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Hey Charlie,
I wanted to run something by you. I haven't worked thisout formally yet,
but what do you think (or anyone else who cares to comment)?
I'm trying to develop this idea that sense expansion takes place as an
apocalypse and that this apocalypse, on perhaps an individual level, takes
place when one perceptually "self-annihilates" their "selfhood," meaning
not only that one ceases to act selfishly (at least temporarily) but in a
more literal sense one sets aside the idea of his/her own identity as it
is presented to him/her by his/her closed senses, the standard five senses
that take in phenomenal "reality." By setting aside this false (fallen?)
concept of identity, one opens to otherness. One comes to perceive in
terms of what in \All Religions Are One\ is Universal Poetic Genius.
Does that agree with your reading of "sensual" expansion?
Jack
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 13:36:02 -0600 (CST)
From: Jack W Jacobs
To: "Charlie K."
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Surrealist
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Charlie K. wrote:
> Gloudina Bouwer wrote:
>
> > Just don't cheat. That "Man who respects Woman shall be despised by
> > Woman" surely should have been quoted in quotes, since it is said
> > by the Spectre. Which is another ball game altogether, isn't it,
> > Charlie?
>
> Yeah, but whatever the ball game, they were all taking place on the
> field of Blake himself. I believe that no matter which character is
> "speaking," it is really Blake himself, or rather an aspect of Blake
> himself, which really represents an aspect of Humanness. The
> Contraries were Understood by him and existed in him, Spectres and
> all. To look out at the World and see all the various aspects (or
> "states" as he called them) being played out, and to realize that
> they *all* exist within each Individual, and then to actually
> "explore" them... makes for a complex Being, which is exactly what
> the man was. He Knew. He was a Wise Man.
>
> Charlie
>
>
Charlie,
I think I'm leaning more toward Gloudina's point. While the elaboration
of any character may indicate the incredible depth of the elaboator,
neverteless, I think it would be misleading to ignore the role of spectres
in the prophetic works.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 16:37:30 -0600
From: "Kay P. Easson"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Allen Ginsberg
Message-Id: <1.5.4.16.19970404223730.19ff6c7a@cc.memphis.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Dear Blakean Friends--
I have just learned something that greatly saddens me. Allen Ginsberg has
"untreatable liver cancer" and his doctor, David Clain of Beth Israel
Medical Center says that he has "four to 12" months to live. Allen is a
wonderful man. I will always remember how he gathered his choir of angels in
*Normal* Illinois to sing Blake songs. Let's send him all our energy and love.
Kay
Kay P. Easson
Department of English
The University of Memphis
Memphis, TN 38152
Reply to: kpeasson@cc.memphis.edu
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #39
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