Today's Topics:
Re: Testimony 2
Africa
Re: Blake sighting
Quote
Re: good and evil
life mask
Go, Lovely Rose
Re: life mask
Complete Works Index
Quote
Quote
Quote (with commentary)
Re: Quote (with commentary)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 01:41:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Josh J. Hansen"
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Testimony 2
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Bravo Tom Dill for your eloquent "testimony" on the wide range of
Ginsberg's appeal. I just so happened to catch one of his performances at
the University of Washington a few years ago and the audience was not your
typical recycled coffee house idoloters that have also been spotted at
Grateful Dead shows. There were doctors lawyers (and possibly a few indian
chiefs) present. I do have one question however, in these days of the
nostalgic capitalist commodification of art and culture (see Village People's
YMCA in Burger King ads) how did Ginsberg escape the onslaught? Was he
really that special? Or could it be that marketing executives found little
in his work that might reach the 18 to 35 target group? Or, like Whitman and
Blake, his work might be a bit too unsettling and subversive for most of the
chip-chomping channel surfing American public. As far as his wide range
of influence I think I might have answered my own question... he clearly
was like Whitman said about himself in Leaves of Grass, "I am large I
contain multitudes".
Josh J. Hansen
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 09:14:40 +0100
From: timli@controls.eurotherm.co.uk (Tim Linnell)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Africa
Message-Id: <10570.199704100715@merlot.controls.eurotherm.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> I can however not resist this sideswipe at Saul Bellow,
>if he indeed said "How many Zulus have written novels like
>Tolstoy?" Does he, in the first place, know anything about
>Zulu literature? Does he know B.W. Vilakazi?
I think this is missing the point a little. Although the global culture
has meant that forms of expression such as the novel have been
universally adopted (and I'm certainly prepared to believe that Vilakazi's
novels are excellent examples of the form), I would hazard a guess that they
are not the format in which Zulu lingustically based culture had been
transmitted prior to
the colonisation of the African continent. Africa is a big place and glib
generalisations are dangerous, but I imagine that such transfer was
primarily verbal, and passed on by (high status) storytellers in the way it
was in the regions of Africa colonised by the French (of which I know a
reasonable amount - it is quite brillant). Bellow's question is therefore
just as dumb as asking where the poly-rhythmic structures in Western
European music are: it ignores the wholly different cultural context.
>Does he know
>that a few decades ago all domestic work came to a stand-
>still in the Zulu-speaking parts of South Africa when the
>South African Broadcasting Corporation serialized half hour
>segments of Zulu translations of Shakespeare plays and
>all domestic workers strangely found their ways to rooms
>with radios and proceeded to polish those floors with great
>gusto whenever anyone approached.
I'm that Shakespeare's themes are indeed universal, but I fear that the
events you describe were more to do with the a feeling that the state media
were at last acknowledging the existence of the Zulu people after years of
colonial arrogance. It may well, therefore, have been an effect of the
psychology of empire, and note that at the end of the play, the workers were
still polishing floors. But lets hope that when Zulu stories are translated
into Afrikaans and English, the white South Africans are now starting to
feel sufficiently African to down tools and computer terminals to listen to
what is now their culture.
Tim Linnell
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 08:08:33 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake sighting
Message-Id: <97041008083351@wc.stephens.edu>
Right, Tom. I had not looked at the Lavater materials for some time, but
certainly should have remembered that. Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 06:50:57 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704101347.GAA23879@gost1.indirect.com>
[from Milton, plate 3(a)]
Every Mans Wisdom is peculiar to his own Individiality
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:16:14 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: good and evil
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Mark:
I liked your post on "Good and Evil" very much, and was thinking about it
as I continued to ponder "The Sick Rose" visually and verbally. Verbally,
it sounds like we are to pity the rose and its destruction, while visually
it seems to me that the worm is a person who uses that rose like food to
transform herself from sick to "free at last". Certainly, the paradox in my
reading/viewing ties in with your assertion that there is a certain amount
of perspectivism with those concepts.
I also think of Whitman, who warns frequently that steps he takes may be
"good" in some ways but "bad" in others, such as...
"What blurt is this about virtue and vice?
Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,
My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait,
I moisten the roots of all that has grown."
---lines 464 through 467, "Song of Myself", Penguin Complete Poems
edition
And I also think of Stephen Sondheim's musical, _Into The Woods_, Act Two,
where we realize that Jack (from Jack in the Beanstalk) isn't all "good",
either. He killed the Giant wife's husband, and she's angry!
Most of all, I like your appeal to not try to annihilate one another's
opinions in this group as much as listen to the contrasts and contraries of
each other as our own "system" builds.
Thank you.
-Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 97 09:17 CST
From: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: life mask
Message-Id: <199704101419.JAA13190@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
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From: MLGrant at president-po
Date: 4/10/97 9:13AM
To: TomD3456@aol.com at internet
Subject: life mask
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Blake seems to have been much more interested in Physiognomy than
in Phrenology, but at age 65 he did agree to have his life mask taken
by the phrenologist James Deville as an example of "the imaginative
faculty." Here's George Richmond's account (from Bentley's Blake
Records, p. 278):
"This is not like dear Blake's mouth, such a look of severity was
foreign to him - an expression of sweetness and sensibility being
habitual: but Blake experienced a good deal of pain when the cast was
taken, as the plaster pulled out a quantity of his hair. Mrs. Blake
did not like the mask, perhaps the reason being that she was familiar
with varying expressions of her husband's fine face, from daily
observation: indeed it was difficult to please her with any portrait -
she never liked Phillips's portrait; but Blake's friends liked the
mask."
I recall reading, perhaps in Erdman, that the hair-pulling couldn't
have caused the expression because the plaster would have been set by
the time it was pulled off. But it must have been uncomfortable to
hold still, breathing through straws in each nostril, while the
plaster set.
As for Phrenology, a 19th-century pseudoscientific offshoot of
Physiognomy,it was pioneered by Gall and Spurzheim and has to do with
associating personality traits with knots and knobs in mapped-out
locations on the skull. Physiognomy (as the clergyman Lavater presents
it) has to do with the search for God's image in the human face and
form. Lavater attempts to read character in the "solid parts" of the
face and body, not only the bony structure but also the more highly
developed facial muscles. According to Lavater, one's habitual mental
state, over time, can actually alter one's physiognomy. (And,
creepily, he thinks people whose animated faces conceal these deeper
structures may not fully reveal their physiognomies until several
hours after death; that's why he had portraits made of his own dead
father and two of his five dead babies.)
Physiognomy is not to be confused with Pathognomy, which is the
reading of fleeting facial expressions that don't permanently alter
one's appearance; pathognomy is properly studied by actors, while both
physiognomy and pathognomy should be studied by artists. Still another
field is Craniology, associated with early 18th-century Dutch
naturalist Camper, who was interested in analyzing and ranking various
skull types in a (usually racist) search for gradations from beast to
man. Lavater uses some diagrams (not necessarily agreeing with them)
from Camper.
Enough already! -- Mary Lynn Johnson
---boundary:=545131144-21763=:boundary--
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:58:20 -0500 (CDT)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Go, Lovely Rose
Message-Id: <199704101558.KAA07161@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com>
Since the subject of "The Sick Rose" has come up again, I now offer the
rough equivalent of a post I tried to send last week, (?) when the
subject was alive, but which (again--how many times now!) floated off
to another dimension for alien eyes in some future age to view.
In my former post, I was struck by the possible influence (which may
have been written on somewhere--I'm a slug myself and haven't checked)
of a poem by Edmund Waller (1606-1687) in the carpe diem mode, "Song"
(see below).
But as I was studying the engraving ( "The Sick Rose", from _Songs_
1794, copy Z, 1826)---[let's be clear, earthlings, just in case there
is a copy which varies substantially from this and was last seen in a
dirty garret in Cheapside but is now in a time capsule trailing the
comet Hale-Bopp] it struck me that the worm is depicted as advancing
(let us not say attacking) toward the thorn, the bud, the leaf, and the
blossom--in short-- within all phases of the rose's existence/life
cycle. This complicates, no doubt, the carpe diem theme; but the
comparison might be of interest on this Thursday morning from Nowhere.
>From the Norton Anthology, Vol II, 5th edn:
Song (1645)
Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer her to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
[spelling probably modernized--looks it--haven't checked]
Yes, yes--so beautiful and sentimental, in fact, that it's been
famously set to music.
Yours in the name of the Rose,
Susan
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 12:04:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu, tomdill@wc.stephens.edu
Subject: Re: life mask
Message-Id: <970410115708_-1502792456@emout16.mail.aol.com>
Mary Lynn-
Thanks for copying me on your wonderful posting. I was ignorant of the
distinctions you point out between Phrenology and Physiognomy, and was
therefore surprised at Tom Dillingham's question. I should have known that
something more was behind it. (Sometimes I wish to lead others when I should
be led.)
In any case, thanks for clarifying and illuminating the issue, as usual.
--Tom Devine
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:11:23 -0500 (CDT)
From: The Voice of the Devil
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Complete Works Index
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
To go along with the fabulous work that Dr. Hilton has done compiling the
eE text and concordance, You can now view a completely indexed version of
it at the site I am constructing.
http://www.unomaha.edu/~wwwengl/blakeweb/
The full table of contents is indexed and targeted to each individual
title that was specified by Erdman or Blake himself.
So if you want to read just Jerusalem you can go straight to the whole
text and save it on a disk. Etc. Etc.
I am diligently and daily scanning plates and enhancing their color
through Photoshop so check back to the sight and watch my progress.
The concordance is also mirrored at my site.
I appreciate all criticism and corrections. Complements are nice too.
David Downie
PS This is a frames presentation so you need to use a graphical browser.
If you are using Lynx, try http://www.unomaha.edu/~wwwengl/works.html to
escape the frames. All you get is the complete works...for now.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 10:17:14 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704111714.KAA27927@gost1.indirect.com>
Each man is in
his Spectre's power
Untill the arrival
of that hour,
When his Humanity
awake
And cast his Spectre
into the Lake
[from Jerusalem, plate 41(37)]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 21:34:42 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704120432.VAA06180@gost1.indirect.com>
[from Jerusalem, plate 30(44)]
And the Two that escaped; were the Emanation of Los & his
Spectre: for whereever the Emanation goes, the Spectre
Attends her as her Guard, & Los's Emanation is named
Enitharmon. & his Spectre is named Urthona: they knew
Not where to flee: they had been on a visit to Albions Children
And they strove to weave a Shadow of the Emanation
To hide themselves: weeping & lamenting for the Vegetation
Of Albions Children. fleeing thro Albions vales in streams of gore
Being not irritated by insult bearing insulting benevolences
They percieved that corporeal friends are spiritual enemies
They saw the Sexual Religion in its embryon Uncircumcision
And the Divine hand was upon them bearing them thro darkness
Back safe to their Humanity as doves to their windows:
Therefore the Sons of Eden praise Urthonas Spectre in Songs
Because he kept the Divine Vision in time of trouble.
They wept & trembled: & Los put forth his hand & took them in.
Into his Bosom: from which Albion shrunk in dismal pain;
Rending the fibres of Brotherhood & in Feminine Allegories
Inclosing Los: but the Divine Vision appeard with Los
Following Albion into his Central Void among his Oaks.
And Los prayed and said. O Divine Saviour arise
Upon the Mountains of Albion as in ancient time. Behold!
The Cities of Albion seek thy face, London groans in pain
>From Hill to Hill & the Thames laments along the Valleys
The little Villages of Middlesex & Surrey hunger & thirst
The Twenty-eight Cities of Albion stretch their hands to thee:
Because of the Opressors of Albion in every City & Village:
They mock at the Labourers limbs! they mock at his starvd Children.
They buy his Daughters that they may have power to sell his Sons:
They compell the Poor to live upon a crust of bread by soft mild arts:
They reduce the Man to want: then give with pomp & ceremony.
The praise of Jehovah is chaunted from lips of hunger & thirst!
Humanity knows not of Sex: wherefore are Sexes in Beulah?
In Beulah the Female lets down her beautiful Tabernacle;
Which the Male enters magnificent between her Cherubim:
And becomes One with her mingling condensing in Self-love
The Rocky Law of Condemnation & double Generation, & Death.
Albion hath enterd the Loins the place of the Last Judgment;
And Luvah hath drawn the Curtains around Albion in Vala's bosom
The Dead awake to Generation! Arise O Lord, & rend the Veil!
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 23:44:58 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote (with commentary)
Message-Id: <199704120642.XAA10985@gost1.indirect.com>
[from Jerusalem, plate 30(44)]
And the Two that escaped; were the Emanation of Los & his
Spectre: for whereever the Emanation goes, the Spectre
Attends her as her Guard, & Los's Emanation is named
Enitharmon. & his Spectre is named Urthona: they knew
[Negative Reasoning Power protecting the Imagined Ideal Female
of The Eternal Prophet... as they flee.]
Not where to flee: they had been on a visit to Albions Children
And they strove to weave a Shadow of the Emanation
To hide themselves: weeping & lamenting for the Vegetation
Of Albions Children. fleeing thro Albions vales in streams of gore
[Obviously things aren't good wherever they went before Los,
the keeper of the Divine Vision, saw them and gathered them back
up... them being pure, a part of Los]
Being not irritated by insult bearing insulting benevolences
They percieved that corporeal friends are spiritual enemies
[That first line is a tough one... something about the use of
insult giving rise to an insulting form of 'doing good' or
do-gooders; but Enitharmon & Urthona were not bothered when they
saw this; they held Blake's truth that normal friends in the
flesh here on Earth tend not to be strong spiritual influences in
one's life; opposites attract (& create a balance).]
They saw the Sexual Religion in its embryon Uncircumcision
[They perceived Regeneration as it happens in This World, don't
know about that 'Uncircumcision' part.]
And the Divine hand was upon them bearing them thro darkness
Back safe to their Humanity as doves to their windows:
[Withstanding all this, they were viewed and guided by the
"Divine hand" which brought them back to their Innocent pure
state, Humanity.]
Therefore the Sons of Eden praise Urthonas Spectre in Songs
Because he kept the Divine Vision in time of trouble.
[Could "Urthonas Spectre" be Los? Whatever the case, Blake's
task (as he perceived it) was to keep the Divine Vision in time
of trouble... a noble enough job, and so it gets recognized by
the "Sons of Eden," even if such work is ignored or even mocked
here in This World. The fact that Blake gave it all he had and
got little in return during his lifetime, though probably
necessary for things to have happened as they did, was a sore
point he could not escape. It is a shame that the Artist must
endure this. But I believe that had he become 'famous' in any
sort of big way while he was still living, his poetry wouldn't
have been as it is. It would have suffered.]
They wept & trembled: & Los put forth his hand & took them in.
Into his Bosom: from which Albion shrunk in dismal pain;
[Los makes Enitharmon & Urthona a part of himself once again; he
saves them in a sense; doing so lessened Albion, another
inhabitant of Los's Bosom.]
Rending the fibres of Brotherhood & in Feminine Allegories
Inclosing Los: but the Divine Vision appeard with Los
Following Albion into his Central Void among his Oaks.
[Albion is a bit jealous by the newcomers Enitharmon & Urthona,
and so Albion produces femininity which he hopes will act to
close off our actual Brotherhood & trap Los in his own natural
desires. Lucky for Los, he keeps with him the Divine Vision,
what he works to continually purify & maintain, allowing him to
resist being Inclosd. Los takes with him the Divine Vision and
follows the jealous Albion.]
And Los prayed and said. O Divine Saviour arise
Upon the Mountains of Albion as in ancient time. Behold!
The Cities of Albion seek thy face, London groans in pain
>From Hill to Hill & the Thames laments along the Valleys
The little Villages of Middlesex & Surrey hunger & thirst
The Twenty-eight Cities of Albion stretch their hands to thee:
[The Cities, which were always personified by Blake, as many
things were, are sick. The Cities (i.e., all the things,
especially the People, composing the City into a living organism
unique to itself) have lost the Divine Vision, & become sick due
to its absence, and need to be healed. Here Los is actually
praying to the Saviour to return... things are definitely not
good...]
Because of the Opressors of Albion in every City & Village:
They mock at the Labourers limbs! they mock at his starvd Children.
[The rich man vs. the working man. Unequal distribution of
resources and wealth due to the corruption. Corruption happens
when Albion is Opressed.]
They buy his Daughters that they may have power to sell his Sons:
They compell the Poor to live upon a crust of bread by soft mild arts:
[Interesting lines... could "soft mild arts" be what society is
fed as "art," which is not really true art at all, but really a
support for the Establishment and a means to keep the
non-thinking public happy for a time, lest they awaken (Albion)
to realize the whole wrongness of the situation? Real Art
promotes individualistic thinking and fosters independence from
the system. Today Television is our best example of "soft mild
arts," and only if you can justify using the word 'art' to
describe it at all. The "buy" & "sell" in the first line are
important, Money being a big part of the corruption.]
They reduce the Man to want: then give with pomp & ceremony.
[Makes them seem like Saints when they are really cruel selfish
beings.]
The praise of Jehovah is chaunted from lips of hunger & thirst!
[This is all too true. The poorest people are the most
religious, at least from what I have seen... and that's truly
religious. Some of the poorest neighborhoods around here are
also the very ones with the most religious icons openly visible.
Those folks truly believe, I guess because they don't got much
else. This is not right.]
Humanity knows not of Sex: wherefore are Sexes in Beulah?
[Once again "Humanity" as a pure Innocent state of undivided,
unseparated, nonselfish Humanness.]
In Beulah the Female lets down her beautiful Tabernacle;
Which the Male enters magnificent between her Cherubim:
And becomes One with her mingling condensing in Self-love
[Blake's Ideal of Sex; not competitive, just beautiful & pure.]
The Rocky Law of Condemnation & double Generation, & Death.
[In my mind "Rocky Law" always refers to the Ten Commandments,
the beginning of law-making; so could he here be linking the
creation of set, fixed Laws with the fall into Generation?]
Albion hath enterd the Loins the place of the Last Judgment;
And Luvah hath drawn the Curtains around Albion in Vala's bosom
The Dead awake to Generation! Arise O Lord, & rend the Veil!
[Albion, the Father of Man, tries this Sexual Act... resulting
in the creation of Vala... the beautiful woman who has Albion
shut off by curtains within her. These curtains are the veil of
Vala, what makes her Sexually attractive at the cost of her True
Self being hidden away. This causes the Dead to awake into the
fallen state of Generation, where Humans must be Born and then
eventually Die, in a crude form of spiritual and soul recycling,
creating Time & Space and all that. The Dead think Vala looks
pretty damn good, good enough to wake them up into this
Generating competitive pursuit. Los, seeing all this, and how it
pales in comparison to how things could be (or how they once
were), prays to the Lord to lift Vala's veil, so that her True
Soul may be revealed... as Albion awakes... and the Cities may be
healed... and we can all return to our Humanity. -ck]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 14:23:22 -0500 (CDT)
From: Darlene Sybert
To: "Charlie K."
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote (with commentary)
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, Charlie K. wrote:
> [from Jerusalem, plate 30(44)]
> And the Two that escaped; were the Emanation of Los & his
> Spectre: for whereever the Emanation goes, the Spectre
> Attends her as her Guard, & Los's Emanation is named
> Enitharmon. & his Spectre is named Urthona: they knew
> [Negative Reasoning Power protecting the Imagined Ideal Female
> of The Eternal Prophet... as they flee.]
Charlie, thanks for choosing this passage to quote and for your
commentary. I hope you or someone will clarify a couple things for
me. Please don't take this as criticism: I'm asking a couple
questions just because I need to understand this passage for
my own research purposes.
First, I understand that the Spectre is the negation , but if
Los (more or less) represents imagination,, why is his Spectre
"negative reasoning power" as opposed to just reason, objectivity
or dullness. Or perhaps, a better question would be, what IS
"negative" reasoning? Is that "poor" reasoning or "faulty?" Or
am I trying to "push" Blake's mythology too far?
>
> Not where to flee: they had been on a visit to Albions Children
> And they strove to weave a Shadow of the Emanation
> To hide themselves: weeping & lamenting for the Vegetation
> Of Albions Children. fleeing thro Albions vales in streams of gore
> Being not irritated by insult bearing insulting benevolences
> They percieved that corporeal friends are spiritual enemies
> They saw the Sexual Religion in its embryon Uncircumcision
>
> [They perceived Regeneration as it happens in This World, don't
> know about that 'Uncircumcision' part.]
Circumcision is the ritual acceptance of the Abrahamic covenant
with God (the Divine of next line) to worship and serve Him only
in return for His protection and guidance--not just individually,
but as a nation. The Sexual Religion is uncircumcised in its
embryonic state as, of course, the embryo Hebrew would be (in
the original meaning of this religious ritual.) So is the Sexual
Religion here being represented as "embryonic," that is, unborn
(and, therefore, not indicating whether it will be part of the
"covenant," i.e., submissive to the Divine [imagination]
...with the insinuation of probably not, perhaps?)
> And the Divine hand was upon them bearing them thro darkness
> Back safe to their Humanity as doves to their windows:
> Therefore the Sons of Eden praise Urthonas Spectre in Songs
> Because he kept the Divine Vision in time of trouble.
> They wept & trembled: & Los put forth his hand & took them in.
> Into his Bosom: from which Albion shrunk in dismal pain;
> Rending the fibres of Brotherhood & in Feminine Allegories
> Inclosing Los: but the Divine Vision appeard with Los
> Following Albion into his Central Void among his Oaks.
> And Los prayed and said. O Divine Saviour arise
> Upon the Mountains of Albion as in ancient time. Behold!
> The Cities of Albion seek thy face, London groans in pain
> >From Hill to Hill & the Thames laments along the Valleys
> The little Villages of Middlesex & Surrey hunger & thirst
> The Twenty-eight Cities of Albion stretch their hands to thee:
> Because of the Opressors of Albion in every City & Village:
> They mock at the Labourers limbs! they mock at his starvd Children.
> They buy his Daughters that they may have power to sell his Sons:
> They compell the Poor to live upon a crust of bread by soft mild arts:
> They reduce the Man to want: then give with pomp & ceremony.
> The praise of Jehovah is chaunted from lips of hunger & thirst!
>
> [This is all too true. The poorest people are the most
> religious, at least from what I have seen... and that's truly
> religious. Some of the poorest neighborhoods around here are
> also the very ones with the most religious icons openly visible.
> Those folks truly believe, I guess because they don't got much
> else. This is not right.]
Just an interrogative comment, not a real question:
But this does remind me of your comment about the effect it would have
had on Blake's poetry if his genius had been recognized in his lifetime.
What "poetry" do the poor make that they would not make if their worth
were recognized, and they were treated accordingly?
Or as Tevye asks, what eternal purpose would it disrupt "if I were
a wealthy man?"
>
> Humanity knows not of Sex: wherefore are Sexes in Beulah?
> In Beulah the Female lets down her beautiful Tabernacle;
> Which the Male enters magnificent between her Cherubim:
> And becomes One with her mingling condensing in Self-love
> The Rocky Law of Condemnation & double Generation, & Death.
> Albion hath enterd the Loins the place of the Last Judgment;
> And Luvah hath drawn the Curtains around Albion in Vala's bosom
> The Dead awake to Generation! Arise O Lord, & rend the Veil!
Darlene Sybert vsa
http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html
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Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #45
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