Today's Topics:
Re: Yale Blake exhibit
vision and blake
Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply
Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply
Quote
Quote
Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply
Re: vision and blake
Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply -Reply
BLAKE & GINSBERG REVISITED
Nietzche and Blake
DEAD MAN Again...
Bop Kaballa
Quote
the Spectre named Urthona
Los Versus Urizen, William James Style
Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply
Intro
Re: BLAKE & GINSBERG REVISITED
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 13:15:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Joseph Viscomi
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: NASSR List
Subject: Re: Yale Blake exhibit
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
In the Blake Archive you can
find a description of Yale's Blake exhibition, a list of the works
exhibited, and a selection of illuminated plates from Jerusalem copy E and
Songs copies F and L, three illuminated books that will in the Archive
in their entirety by the end of the year.
Joe Viscomi
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 21:58:31 -0400
From: "Elisa E. Beshero"
To: dtambor@mindspring.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: vision and blake
Message-Id: <199704160248.WAA56324@r02n05.cac.psu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Matthew, --Have you looked at Morton Paley's _Energy and the Imagination:
the Development of Blake's Thought_? Paley writes a great deal on Blake's
eidetic idea of visionary art-- that an artist can literally, vividly, see
things in his head-- rather than simply working from nature. . . Doesn't
Frye, too, touch on this? --Elisa
>Resent-Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 09:28:40 -0400
>Old-Return-Path:
>Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 09:28:40 -0400
>X-PH: V4.1@r02n07
>From: Matthew Bodie
>Reply-To: dtambor@mindspring.com
>Organization: Max Communications, Inc
>To: blake@albion.com
>Subject: vision and blake
>Resent-Message-Id: <"m1uzg3.0.jY.qruKp"@los>
>Resent-From: blake@albion.com
>X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/4561
>X-Loop: blake@albion.com
>Resent-Sender: blake-request@albion.com
>
>Dear Powers That Be:
>
>I'm composing a paper on Blake and his use of vision within the works of
>'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience'. I'm in search of some
>research with regards to this topic. Key things that I'm looking for
>are his vivid visual descriptions; his analogies and allusions to sight;
>the omniscient point of view of the narrators; his strong use of the
>imagination, and his niche for envisioning or prophesying.
>
>I've found information on vision in his other works, but not in his
>Songs; however, it seems as these works would be a good subject for
>discussion of vision, as well. If you can be of any help, please let me
>know by e-mailing me here.
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>
>Matthew Bodie
>
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 09:00:56 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply
Message-Id:
Tom, You present a real problem and I would resolve it by seeing Los as
Urthona's Spectre, since it is true that his indefatigable labours at his
Furnaces are aimed at, and succeed in, preserving the Divine Vision of
love in which Jerusalem is the Emanation of all. Being fallen from unity
with the other Zoas of Albion, Los is a Spectral form of what Urthona
once was in Eden, and,by analogy, the Spectre of Los is an even more
contracted form, and so even more subject to the delusions brought on
by Urizen's fallen visions of love. Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 10:35:55 -0700
From: Steve Perry
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply
Message-Id: <33550DFB.723C17BB@surf.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Pam, all,
I am wondering here what actually differentiates an emamanation from a
spectre? Are all emanations female, and if so is there a theme of
victimization in among emanations?
I get the sense that in the case of Jerusalem, Urizen has hidden her
away, and she is in someway a helpless victim, though Enitharman seems
more proactive, but more in the sense that she is an assistant to Los,
without the agency that Los has.
I appreciate your idea of the ascendency of spectres, i.e. the further
down the chain from the Zoas, the more insidious or distant from the
divine vision. We don't seem to have emanations from emanations, or are
these children of Generation?
P Van Schaik wrote:
>
> Tom, You present a real problem and I would resolve it by seeing Los as
> Urthona's Spectre, since it is true that his indefatigable labours at his
> Furnaces are aimed at, and succeed in, preserving the Divine Vision of
> love in which Jerusalem is the Emanation of all. Being fallen from unity
> with the other Zoas of Albion, Los is a Spectral form of what Urthona
> once was in Eden, and,by analogy, the Spectre of Los is an even more
> contracted form, and so even more subject to the delusions brought on
> by Urizen's fallen visions of love. Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:29:13 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704161826.LAA07549@gost1.indirect.com>
[America, plate 7]
Albions Angel stood beside the Stone
of night, and saw
The terror like a comet, or more like the
planet red
That once inclos'd the terrible wandering comets in its sphere.
Then Mars thou wast our center, & the planets three flew round
Thy crimson disk; so e'er the Sun was rent from thy red sphere;
The Spectre glowd his horrid length staining the temple long
With beams of blood; & thus a voice came forth. and shook the
(temple
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:49:49 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704161846.LAA10406@gost1.indirect.com>
[from "Gwin, King of Norway"]
The King is seen raging afar;
With all his men of might;
Like blazing comets, scattering death
Thro' the red fev'rous night.
Like blazing comets in the sky,
That shake the stars of light,
Which drop like fruit unto the earth,
Thro' the fierce burning night;
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 23:47:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply
Message-Id: <970416234708_-468690298@emout10.mail.aol.com>
Thanks for your reply, Pam. Forgive me, all, for continuing to belabor this
issue, but it really bothers me. I agree with you that Los must be
"Urthona's Spectre," and I like your use of "Spectral form" for a contraction
from an original form, as one might say "I'm only a ghost of my former self."
So that leaves only one further puzzle: why LOS's Spectre is named "Urthona."
And that has led me to open my book again and to look at the context of
Charlie's quote.
Plate 43 [29], which precedes the passage in question, starts with the Divine
Vision appearing "like a silent Sun... above/ Albions dark rocks" and the
Divine Voice speaking of Albion's hidden Reactor, who has compelled Albion to
become a punisher, and who "must have a Place prepard" before Albion can rise
again. After the Divine Vision, like a sun, "incloses" the Human Family, the
"two Immortal forms" appear, who are later identified as Los's Spectre and
Emanation. They speak for the rest of the plate, and their speech ("We alone
are escaped...," which echoes the messengers who tell Job of the destruction
of his goods and children) is not what we would expect from the Spectre we
saw on plates 5 and 6, the Holy Reasoning Power. Rather, their speech is a
description (lifted from Night 3 of _The Four Zoas_) of Albion's fall -- pure
myth. The Spectre here is obeying Los's will, guarding the Emanation; not
ravening to devour Los's humanity, but obeying and serving it: "And the
Divine hand was upon them bearing them thro darkness/ Back safe to their
Humanity as doves to their windows:/... They wept & trembled: & Los put forth
his hand & took them in/ Into his Bosom...".
So perhaps the Spectre in this instance has _earned_ the name of the unfallen
power it comes from. Perhaps my puzzlement comes from my assumption that
"Spectre" is always a pejorative term. Here it is not. Blake always trips
me up that way: I'm always dividing the world into black and white, good and
bad, but Blake seems always to undermine that sort of binary thinking -- yet
I forget that, time and again. The doctrine of contraries, embodied in the
Songs of Innocence & Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, etc., is an
engine for burning up hardened categories, for converting them into energy
and vision. And I believe that much of what seems paradoxical to me in
passages like this comes from my own failure to follow Blake's lead in
jettisoning such hardened categories, which come from "eating of the Tree of
Knowledge [of Good and Evil]."
Perhaps Los is here recognizing and embracing the Spectre as (as it were) his
"Selfhood, Satan, arm'd in gold": so that, just as Los is named Urthona in
Eden, so is the Spectre named Urthona when Los sees him in this light.
Does this make any sense? (And I promise I'll stop posting about this now.)
-Tom Devine
PS- Thank you Richard Johnson for a stimulating dinner and ride through New
Orleans. Thanks to you, I need to reread Wordsworth and Coleridge -- and
look at more photorealist paintings. (You can meet the most interesting
people through this list.)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 23:48:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: vision and blake
Message-Id: <970416234711_1684360053@emout14.mail.aol.com>
Though not a power that is, I feel moved to reply to your question, Matthew,
but indirectly.
I would ask you to look at the faces of the people in the illustrations to
the Songs, and see what you can find to say about vision from them. Look
especially at the frontispiece to Songs of Experience, the shepherd and
cherub.
--Tom Devine
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 13:29:30 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply -Reply
Message-Id:
Dear Steve,
Mostly, the emanations are female -- I think there is one exception to this
case in the naming of France as one, but then in Innocnece, all beings
seem androgynous, and if Blake had Kabbalah in mind, then there is
continual interchange of masculinity and femininity in the radiances of the
Tree.
The Emanations do constantly lament (as in VDA and in Enion and
Ahania's laments in the longer poems) as they never forget what love
was like before Urizen disrupted the unity of the worlds and cast
Jerusalem out of Albion's bosom as a `harlot'. His perception of the
loves of Innocence as `unnatural consanguinities' (whereas, in fact, the
continual mingling of essences of all sustained all in unity with God)
disrupts the entire fabric of Innocence in the worlds of the four zoas,
causing the female emanations to fear imitating Jerusalem, and to reject
their would-be lovers. As they flee into the contracted and darkened
realms below Beulah, the emanations become eventually the Children of
gneration, born into mortal birth.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 09:17:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: BLAKE & GINSBERG REVISITED
Message-Id: <199704171617.JAA26117@igc2.igc.apc.org>
Following up on the already-forgotten discussion on Allen Ginsberg
compared to Blake, I first of all cite an essay germane to the
issues I raised:
Remak, Henry H.H. "European Romanticism and Contemporary American
Counterculture", in: ROMANTICISM AND CULTURE: A TRIBUTE TO MORSE
PECKHAM AND A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HIS WORK, edited by H.W. Matalene
(Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1984), pp. 71-95.
Remak catalogs the similarities and differences he finds between
these two social phenomena. I shall stick to the comments that
concern us here. Remak finds the intellectual and the aesthetic
contributions resulting from the American counterculture
(including Allen Ginsberg's poetry) decidedly inferior to those of
European Romanticism. Remak does concede, however, that concerns
over high culture might be beside the point when one considers the
impact, which he considers permanent and ineradicable, of the
counterculture on the lifestyles and outlook of the culture as a
whole (p. 83). He also begins this essay with the premise that
"European romanticism found its main expression in literature and
the arts, whereas the counterculture was geared more toward
general lifestyle" (p. 72).
I would never make the assertion that one can have either an
advanced high culture or a liberated lifestyle but not both. But
clearly, the motivations behind creating high culture have much to
do with what is going on in the social environment, and the
creation of cultural artifacts has always been stimulated by
social frustration in other areas, though Blake says enjoyment and
not abstinence is what makes art flourish. I would add to the
general stew the peculiarly American cult of immediacy.
Nobody followed up on Joz's comments of 9 April:
>1. Blake saw visions of another truer reality (lets ride
>with that a moment).
>2. These visions were explicated not in a direct way but
>through a medium of art and poetry.
>3. The necessity of the medium makes Blake a poet. Not his
>intent. The role of poet is a Urizenic (does he ever use that
>word himself?) construct. Taken at his word, this is his
>relation to poetry.
>Ginsberg is a poet whose writing is engaged directly with the
>world in a palpable living way that blake would have nothing to
>do with. Blake, if he is anything, is a prophet of sorts, where
>as Ginsberg is far closer to Whitman, a human resonator, an
>amplifier of language in the context of experience.
I can't say I understand much of this, but it seems to me the
essential difference lies in the question of immediacy. I don't
know why Blake would have nothing to do with the world directly
and palpably. However, Blake does not merely engage in reportage
of his reactions to what is going on around him, though he does in
indeed react. Rather, Blake filters his experience through a
symbolic system that mediates his experiences and makes them
comprehensible on a deeper level. Ginsberg is much more direct
and less symbolic and philosophical.
I myself believe Blake's approach is superior, but since we are
not living in the 18th or 19th century, and are thank goodness far
removed from the stench of Europe and its dead culture, how do we
re-create the same sophistication for our time, given the breaking
through of all the taboos that keep us from naming our most
intimate experiences, in a culture in which immediacy reigns, and
which has developed a preference and capability for naturalistic
language over symbolic language? In Ginsberg's time, breaking
through the fog of cover-ups, lies, and taboos at least was still
a project, hence involved some thought not totally absorbed in
immediacy, hence the partially prophetic role of Ginsberg's
poetry. Now we are living in a cynical age in which all the
subversive countercultural energies have been absorbed and
commodified by corporate America, and hence the creative tension
between actuality and potentiality has been suppressed. Hence no
vision and inspiration, but one-dimensional reporting about what's
going on in the 'hood.
I once heard Wynton Marsalis say, contrasting "the contemporary
black persona of ignorance and vulgarity" with the music of Duke
Ellington: "Who cares about what's happening in the 'hood? How
does that relate to the rest of the world? Ellington wrote more
compositions about more places in the world than any composer in
history." The point being: dare to broaden your mind and give
yourself some standards to strive toward. Too bad Marsalis
himself only represents the past and spends too much time shilling
for the capitalist American dream. But then, shame on the left
for wallowing in shit, leaving the right to uphold cultural
standards. Of course, the issue is ultimately not "culture", but
the quality of life all around, which is why art matters.
Hence I would urge all concerned with the broader issues behind
comparisons of Blake and Ginsberg to go beyond ranking various
stars in the pantheon to considering the conditions that make
greatness possible. In my view, nothing whatever can come out of
aristocratic values, which is why Nietzsche must be flushed, and
culture can only be created by a resurgence of real democracy and
a mass movement that has something to strive for and not merely
bitch about.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 17:02:27 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Nietzche and Blake
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>In my view, nothing whatever can come out of
>aristocratic values, which is why Nietzsche must be flushed, and
>culture can only be created by a resurgence of real democracy and
>a mass movement that has something to strive for and not merely
>bitch about.
Another assault at poor, misunderstood Fred. Whereas all you have to do is
go to Mister Blake himself to see he too was a striving, snob, "Superman"
kind of a guy himself.
"Was Jesus Humble? or did he
Give any Proofs of Humility?"
-beginning of (d), "The Everlasting Gospel"
And "The Good and Evil Angels" painting isn't the work of someone aiming
for archetypes higher than a mere democratic herd of mediocrity could
understand?
"What is grand is necessarily obscure."
Today Mr. Dumain claims Blake is "superior" to Ginsberg, dislikes Winton
Marsalis, puts Ellington on a pedestal. Sounds like just another pantheon
and anti-pantheon to me of your own "Supermen" and "Super Bad Men".
"Do you call yourself free? I want to hear your ruling idea, and
not that you have escaped from a yoke."
---Nietzsche, _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, I, "Of the Way of the Creator",
p. 89, 1961 translation, printed by Penguin
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 18:22:15 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: DEAD MAN Again...
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
You know, I noticed a lot of allusions to "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
and the chimney sweepers from "Songs", but...
tell me...
Was I missing some key "Milton" or "Jerusalem" references?
I mean, just because *I* think "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is the
greatest poem of all time, that may have some bearing on my perspective of
the film.
But I'd be curious to know what I overlooked.
-Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/blake.html
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 16:00:05 -0500 (CDT)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Bop Kaballa
Message-Id: <199704172100.QAA07358@dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com>
Ralph:
"The stench of Europe and its dead culture"? This sentiment begs so
many questions that I am lost in the levels of its irony. Given the
tragedy of Native American and Afro-American genocide in this country
(the U.S) and the all-but-obliterated traces of those cultures, what
would we have in the U.S. today besides a capitalist-commercial culture
(which you rightly deplore) were it not for the European legacy we
enjoy (part of which is the Romanticism you claim to love). It's
really imperialism, then (albeit subsidized by the monarchy, but in
which, by the way, the U.S. freely engages) and European colonization
that you are objecting to.
Ginsberg has "gone to join his masters Blake and Smart..." (this week's
New Yorker)---he and others brought us BACK to the priviledging of
Nature, the peeminence of the individual as opposed to the social
machine, and other counter-culture sentiments rooted in the Romantic
movement.
"Nothing whatever came out of aristocratic values"? How about trying
for a moment to realize that (despite the personal suffering and
oppression it, like all "systems"--including our own--engendred) much
of the art, music and literature of the Medieval to the Renaissance
period and beyond (no I'm not claiming it was the only factor) was
underwritten by aristocratic wealth. Without this heritage, art as we
know it and as you claim to love it (however "flawed" for you) could
not exist.
What the hell are you talking about with respect to Nietzsche? He was a
proto-Marxist who called into question the very subjectivity of
morality and moral-cultural judgments that were based upon the
investment by the nobles in keeping the class structure in place.
P.S. A "Marxist" by definition should not engage in discussions of
"high" and "low" literature, inferiority and superiority, etc. There's
not a name for what you are in the critical vocabulary, but it
decidedly isn't a "Marxist."
Susan Reilly
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 16:34:19 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704172331.QAA15798@gost1.indirect.com>
[this one's from "The Birth of Tragedy" (1872) by Nietzsche]
For better or worse, one thing should be quite obvious to all of us:
the entire comedy of art is not played for our own sakes - for our
betterment or education, say - nor can we consider ourselves the true
originators of that art realm; while on the other hand we have every
right to view ourselves as esthetic projections of the veritable
creator and derive such dignity as we possess from our status as art
works. Only as an esthetic product can the world be justified to all
eternity -
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 19:43:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: the Spectre named Urthona
Message-Id: <199704172343.TAA26775@host.ott.igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I looked up explanations for the specific lines in which
"The Spectre named Urthona" appears. I found these two:
(1) Morton Paley in the Princeton edition says: "The
Spectre 'named Urthona' is unusual, Urthona being
the name of Los before he was divided. The Spectre
_of_ Urthona is more characteristic."
(2) Sloss and Wallis:
"The 'Spectre named Urthona,' Urthona's Spectre and
the Spectre of Los are here synonymous symbols not
distinguishable, except dramatically, from the normal
signification of Los; elsewhere Blake apparently intends
that they should be distinguished."
I find neither explanation of much help.
In plate 10 Los addresses the Spectre as "Spectre of
Urthona."
There are of course also other Spectres: In plate 7 there
is "the triple-form of Albion's Spectre." And "the Spectre
of Man" seems to be the "Holy Reasoning Power." But Los
tells his Spectre: "Thou art my Pride and Self-righteousness.."
As I went further and further back in the text, it struck
me how the relationship between Los (the imaging energy) and
his Spectre really forms the core of the initial action in
Jerusalem. I used to think that the Spectre was roughly the
same as the Shadow in psychological parlance. But I think I
may be wrong. Things are much more complicated. And are the
Selfhood and the Spectre one and the same thing?
So please, Tom Devine, do not stop asking questions about
the Spectre of Los in particular, and Spectres in general.
I would also like to think about how his Spectre helps Los
in the building of Golgonooza.
Gloudina Bouwer
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 22:20:38 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Los Versus Urizen, William James Style
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
William James sets up a dialectic in _Psychology_, Chapter XX, Perception,
between "Old Fogyism and Genius" that sounds to me suspiciously like the
tug of war between Urizen and Los:
"...the difference between our psychological conceptions and what
are called concepts in logic. In logic a concept is unalterable; but what
are popularly called our 'conception of things' alter by being used. The
aim of 'Science' is to attain conceptions so adequate and exact that we
shall never need to change them. There is an everlasting struggle in every
mind between the tendency to keep unchanged, and the tendency to renovate,
its ideas. Our education is a ceaseless compromise between the conservative
and the progressive factors.... Most of us grow more and more enslaved to
the stock conceptions with which we have once become familiar, and less and
less capable of assimilating impressions in any but the old ways. Old
fogyism, in short is the inevitable terminus to which life sweeps us on.
Objects which violate our established habits of 'apperception' are simply
not taken account of at all; or, if on some occasion we are forced by dint
of argument to admit their existence, twenty-four hours later the admission
is as if it were not, and every trace of the unassimilable truth has
vanished from our thought. Genius, in truth, means little more than the
faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
"On the other hand, nothing is more congenial, from babyhood to the
end of life, than to be able to assimilate the new to the old, to meet each
threatening violator or burster of our well-known series of concepts, as it
comes in, see through its unwontedness, and ticket it off as an old friend
in disguise. This victorious assimilation of the new is in fact the type of
all intellectual pleasure. The lust for it is scientific curiosity. The
relation of the new to the old, before the assimilation is performed, is
wonder. We feel neither curiosity nor wonder concerning things so far
beyond us that we have no concepts to refer them to or standards by which
to measure them...."
Or how about this one, from XIX, Imagination:
"A person whose visual imagination is strong finds it hard to
understand how those who are without the faculty can think at all."
"The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of
the crow."
---William Blake, Plate 8, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
-Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/blake.html
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 13:46:06 +0000
From: hbri1@student.monash.edu.au
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: TomD3456@aol.com
Subject: Re: Quote (with commentary) -Reply -Reply
Message-Id: <1DEF3B475E@mfs06.cc.monash.edu.au>
To Tom D.,
Don't apologize, Tom, for continuing your discussion about
'spectres', for it's been of great interest, because the
interrelationships of Blake's 'parts' are really confusing, and I
like sitting in as other poor souls try to sort it out for me!!
Hassanah Briedis.
=========================================================
HBRI1@MFS06.cc.monash.edu.au
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 21:52:36 -0800 (PST)
From: "Rainville, Pierre"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Intro
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Hello--this is just a short note of introduction. I began reading Blake
three weeks ago, and have fallen into a dreadful fascination with his
words. His audacity stuns me: his twists on the Good Book (sarcastic?
pious?) keep me reeling. I have dedicated many happy hours to the
"Portable Blake" I found in my local library, consciously avoiding
scholarly interpretations so far for fear that they will lead to
disenchantment. Nevertheless, I did poke around on the internet and found
this conversation, which I will be very glad to listen in on for the time
being.
--Pierre
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 22:10:23 -0700
From: Kevin Shrieve
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: BLAKE & GINSBERG REVISITED
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Ralph Dumain wrote:
>culture can only be created by a resurgence of real democracy and
>a mass movement that has something to strive for and not merely
>bitch about.
Don't you think it more likely to come from talented individuals striving
for something that many (consciously or not) have a genuine need for? I
wouldn't look to the masses for the vision that frees us.
>Blake filters his experience through a
>symbolic system that mediates his experiences and makes them
>comprehensible on a deeper level.
>...
>how do we
>re-create the same sophistication for our time...
>in a culture in which immediacy reigns, and
>which has developed a preference and capability for naturalistic
>language over symbolic language?
As I look around, I see a hunger for story, myth, fantasy, and some large
orienting symbolic context to counter "Newton's single vision". Isn't the
task of would-be culture builders to master the craft of "speaking"
(songwriting, designing, storytelling) symbolically, metaphorically,
allegorically? The means for disseminating such creations are becoming
more widely available every day.
Do you see any myths currently flowing through the culture which you think
have real healing or transformative power, and that you would vote (with
your creative energy) to support?
>Now we are living in a cynical age in which all the
>subversive countercultural energies have been absorbed and
>commodified by corporate America, and hence the creative tension
>between actuality and potentiality has been suppressed. Hence no
>vision and inspiration, but one-dimensional reporting about what's
>going on in the 'hood.
Aw, come on, isn't it just the ancient tale of the confusion of an artistic
vision by the encounter with the exhilarating diversions of the society?
One-dimensional reporting is quicker and easier than seducing the
collective unconscious to dance to your themes, so there's bound to be more
of it around. It's up to the individual artist to choose to attempt a
genuine transformation (of self and society) instead of getting lost in the
marketplace. It's not easy, so it's rare.
If you were coaching a brilliant artist, what theme would you encourage her
to inject into this particular culture at this particular time?
Looking forward to your thoughts,
Kevin Shrieve
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #47
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