Today's Topics:
Re: No Natural Religion
Quote
OBSCURE BLAKE SIGHTINGS: WILLIAM GORMAN
Re: Blake Online
how do i get off
Re: Quote
Re: No Natural Religion
Blake citing -ReplyMewling mystics
Re: No Natural Religion -Reply
Re: Blake citing
Jefferson, Blake, and "America"
Blake as Mystic
Blake and C.L.James Sighting
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:27:42 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: No Natural Religion
Message-Id: <199705291824.LAA14939@gost1.indirect.com>
> >"There is No Natural Religion" by William Blake (c. 1795)
> >I - Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception, he
> >perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover
Human Imagination.
> >II - Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not the
> >same that it shall be when we know more
Progress. Reason is susceptible to change, the divine truth of
eternity as revealed through vision is not.
> >IV - The bounded is loathed by its possessor, The same dull round
> >even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels.
It takes cooperation to stop the turning, to end time. Time is
getting us into further complication.
> >V - If the many become the same as the few, when possess'd, More!
> >More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy
> >Man
You have every thing you really want and need already.
> >VI - If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing. despair
> >must be his eternal lot
What you desire you can have, but must work for & believe in.
> >VII - The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite &
> >himself Infinite
Raise thy perception up to the infinite. Then you will no longer
desire more! more! Desire the infinite and you can have it. Not
many desire such a thing these days. It has to do with perception
and consciousness and understanding, spiritual not material.
> >Conclusion - If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character,
> >the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all
> >things. & stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull
> >round over again
Rational science & deism keeping things bound down in this
time-centered existence. Experimentation becomes circular like the
time it was performed in. Imagination brings representations from
eternity, out of time, and helps to build it up. The imaginative
work of the poet or prophet keeps balance with the rational Human
activities going on.
> >Application - He who sees the infinite in all things, sees God. He
> >who sees the Ratio only sees himself only
Once you see in infinite perception, with imagination and reduced
rationality, you will understand. You will get past you own ego or
selfhood to see that all men are one man, all things appearing
separate are really connected & working together and actually make up
a single whole. This single whole Blake terms "God." Working under
the notion that everything is separate from ourselves, as our organs
of perception might "naturally" have us believe, leaves us seeing
ourselves as separate selves, working independently and among all the
other separate selves walking, flying, swimming, leaping, and
floating around.
> >Therefore - God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is
God is as much a reflection of us as we choose to be, as we are of
Him.
So there Randall, that's how I'd "deconstruct" this one. Anybody
else want to give it a go?
Charlie
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:31:51 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199705291828.LAA15231@gost1.indirect.com>
"for tho on Earth things seem Permanent they are less
permanent than a Shadow as we all know too well"
- from 'A Vision of The Last Judgment'
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:04:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: jimmurray@igc.org
Subject: OBSCURE BLAKE SIGHTINGS: WILLIAM GORMAN
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970529125941.357f2274@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I'm sure William Gorman will forever be lost to American intellectual
history unless I have something to say about it. Gorman (ne Goelman) was
one of those obscure Detroit radicals in the circle of C.L.R. James known as
the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the 1940s. Gorman contributed articles on
many topics, most notably black history, to the American Trotskyist press,
and was quite militant, along with other Johnsonites, in promoting the
then-startling idea that the socialist movement should support autonomous
black militant political organizations. Gorman also was James's main
correspondent, along with Grace Lee (Boggs) in the early 1950s when James
was conducting research and working out his own ideas on literary criticism
and Herman Melville. Late in life James recalled Gorman as one of the most
brilliant men he had ever known. One of my sources who knew Gorman told me
that he was recognized by people around him as a brilliant man, but so
marginal he could not and would not function in mainstream society, and was
relegated to a skid row existence. Gorman is still alive as far as I know,
but his whereabouts are not precisely known.
I just happened upon an article by Gorman in a somewhat obscure but
historically significant radical cultural periodical from the 1970s,
CULTURAL CORRESPONDENCE, which was edited by Paul Buhle, who later became
known as an historian of American radicalism as well as a James
proselytizer. CC was taken over briefly in the 1980s by Jim Murray. The
periodical died out, but the institution lives on.
Gorman's "On: Humor and Horror in the U.S." takes the form of a long letter
(most likely to Buhle) with numbered/lettered paragraphs, dated 11/22/75.
It appears in CULTURAL CORRESPONDENCE, no. 2, August 1976, pp. 13-14, 35-37.
Gorman traces the history of the horror genre to its Puritan, Anglo-Saxon
roots. The rest of the article is speculative. Gorman links horror
literature to anxieties about individualism, community, the frontier
(nature), Hegel's PHENOMENOLOGY, and Melville and Poe as turning points in
the development of world literature. Gorman also links the question of form
to the troubled establishment of certain nation-states as opposed to others.
Finally there is the pivotal question of the current counter-culture and its
role in the "mass revolt of the everyday" against murderous institutions.
Criticizing the addressee (Buhle?), Gorman turns again to a historical
perspective, proceeding from the Renaissance up to the Romantic movement.
Here is where Blake appears:
"The combining of the romantic and the apocalyptic as found in William Blake
is missing from your opus. Also Shelly failed in his "Prometheus Unbound";
May [sic] Shelley goes on to the public success of 'Frankenstein.' Thus
even Bacon's empiricism makes plenty of room for poesy and history, as
against the epistemological reductionism of a John Locke. Shakespeare,
Bacon's compatriot, moves from the tension of his tragedies to the sonnets
and comedies. Indeed, the underside of his period is in the gory works of
Webster, Jonson and Fletcher where the gore is interminable. Is that the
side of Anglo-Saxon continuity that _had_ to flourish once the Lockean would
be given _cosmic_ supportiveness by the Newtonian physics?" (pp. 35-36)
I can't make heads or tails out of this, but if anyone can, please explain
it to me.
There follows further speculation on the horrific as a reaction against
Newton and Locke and in relation to the question of the American frontier
and the development of the nation-state. Gorman ends up citing Abe Lincoln
as a key historical figure (as did James), linking Lincoln's humor to the
tradition of the horrific.
I don't know precisely what to make of all this, so I'll just limit myself
to doing my historian's duty.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 15:05:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Josher9999@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake Online
Message-Id: <970529150459_1459284684@emout02.mail.aol.com>
To everyone that reads this,
I am currently working on a research project that deals with comparison
between Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. I'd really appreciate it
if anyone would like to contribute to my research. Again, thanks for any
help.
Sincerely,
Josh Brady
josher9999@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 18:37:05 -0500 (CDT)
From: lawesl@neosoft.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: how do i get off
Message-Id: <199705292337.SAA09299@praline.no.neosoft.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
how do i get sign off blake? what is the email adress and the command?
thanks
Lawrence Lawes
Board Certified Social Worker
Critical Incident Responder
MAJOR, USAFR, BSC
912 East Lexington Avenue
Terrytown, LA 70056-4543
(504) 392-4046
DSN 678-3680
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 22:33:32 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> "for tho on Earth things seem Permanent they are less
> permanent than a Shadow as we all know too well"
>
> - from 'A Vision of The Last Judgment'
Why Mr. Blake! You mean, my corporeal death? I thought you were the one
that was just going to be moving to a room next door!
-Randall Albright
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 21:19:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: chaz@take3soft.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: No Natural Religion
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970529231459.38071074@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Charlie K doesn't believe eternity is in love with the productions of time.
Hence a static and dogmatic approach, devoid of explanation or process,
remaining content with pure abstract doctrine and lazy nice-nice
spiritualist piffle. Stale stale stale. Yet what about Blake's
step-by-step logical reasoning that assaults the limitations of empiricism
and mechanical materialism? What about the temporality of Blake's
assertions here? Blake criticizes empiricism not for being temporal, but
for being static, for not being able to explain qualitative change and
development. Blake's argument is also about the progress of knowledge and
accuses empiricism of not being able to explain this. As usual, Blake
conflates empiricism with fallen perception of the fallen world. Blake
stresses the dynamic and expanding over the static and tautological.
Eternity without time would be as tedious and sterile as a Sunday morning
Bible class.
At 11:27 AM 5/29/97 -0700, Charlie K. wrote:
>> >"There is No Natural Religion" by William Blake (c. 1795)
>
>Progress. Reason is susceptible to change, the divine truth of
>eternity as revealed through vision is not.
>
>Rational science & deism keeping things bound down in this
>time-centered existence.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 11:09:48 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake citing -ReplyMewling mystics
Message-Id:
Ha! Are all references to Blake as a mystic to be sponged away because
you automatically associate the word `mystic' with `mewling'? Surely
your response is Pavlovian -- a residue of a schoolboy-type fear of
being associated with what appears to be weak? Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 11:39:40 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, chaz@take3soft.com
Subject: Re: No Natural Religion -Reply
Message-Id:
Tom Dillingham,
Do the quoatations given by Charles represent `mewling mysticism'?
How can you elevate only the historical and give attention to
only-what-you-like in Blake and ignore the full resonance of his work and
be taken as a fully-fledged Blakean? Surely to do so is to use Blake
merely as a stage for airing your own world-views?
Look again at what is implied in Blake's own words below:
> >I - Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception, he
> >perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover
This implies more than simply `Human Imagination' in my opinion. It allows
for the `prophetic soul' ( as in Blake and Hamlet) and for the quantum
leap in human thought and in interaction with divine providence. It
impinges on synchronisms, coincidences, miracle - in a universe in
which we are not existentially isolated and alone - not `lost', but `found',
because there is a merciful and benign divinity ( as depicted in "The Little
Black Boy") in opposition to the Nobodaddy (who instils doubt in the true
divine vision of love).
> >II - Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not the
> >same that it shall be when we know more
Progress. Reason is susceptible to change, the divine truth of
eternity as revealed through vision is not.
*Yes, and more: is this not akin to saying, as in the Bible, that on this
earth we see , as in a dark glass, imperfectly? When freed from
contracted fleshly senses, and restored to Eternity ultimately, then the
faculty of Reason within us will be freed from all the mental chains
which made it look cramped and deformed in the world.
> >IV - The bounded is loathed by its possessor, The same dull round
> >even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated
wheels.
I would gloss these lines as being so rich that one can apply them to
most of our human problems. They probe human misery with the surest
of touches since most of us have known how even what we most love
can become burdensome when there is insufficient scope for the
imagination to play and grow within routine circumstances. So, love of
spouse, children, family, literature, even the act of creativity can all
become tedious . But as all things on earth are `bounded' and `finite' , all
things are subject, not just to death (Shakespeare's theme in the
sonnets) but to being too limited to satisfy the infinite cravings of our
souls for complete fulfilment. We get tired not only of the 'other' but of
our limited selves and our limited place and significance in history.
> >V - If the many become the same as the few, when possess'd, More!
> >More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy
> >Man
I don't think that this simply means `You have every thing you really want
and need already'. On the contrary, I think the words suggest that
because our souls are infinite, our cravings for fulfilment on earth can't
be satisfied and that Blake approves of the soul's not being fettered and
its always desiring completeness.
Mewlingly yours, Pam
> >VI - If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing. despair
> >must be his eternal lot
What you desire you can have, but must work for & believe in.
> >VII - The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite &
> >himself Infinite
Raise thy perception up to the infinite. Then you will no longer
desire more! more! Desire the infinite and you can have it. Not
many desire such a thing these days. It has to do with perception
and consciousness and understanding, spiritual not material.
> >Conclusion - If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character,
> >the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all
> >things. & stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull
> >round over again
Rational science & deism keeping things bound down in this
time-centered existence. Experimentation becomes circular like the
time it was performed in. Imagination brings representations from
eternity, out of time, and helps to build it up. The imaginative
work of the poet or prophet keeps balance with the rational Human
activities going on.
> >Application - He who sees the infinite in all things, sees God. He
> >who sees the Ratio only sees himself only
Once you see in infinite perception, with imagination and reduced
rationality, you will understand. You will get past you own ego or
selfhood to see that all men are one man, all things appearing
separate are really connected & working together and actually make up
a single whole. This single whole Blake terms "God." Working under
the notion that everything is separate from ourselves, as our organs
of perception might "naturally" have us believe, leaves us seeing
ourselves as separate selves, working independently and among all the
other separate selves walking, flying, swimming, leaping, and
floating around.
> >Therefore - God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is
God is as much a reflection of us as we choose to be, as we are of
Him.
So there Randall, that's how I'd "deconstruct" this one. Anybody
else want to give it a go?
Charlie
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 08:02:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake citing
Message-Id: <199705301302.IAA15010@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com>
Tom Dillingham wrote:
>
>Not a seeing, but a hearing in this case. In the opening segment of
>the PBS series, _American Visions_,
I happened to catch the end of this program and marvelled at the acumen
and insight of the narrative. Mercifully free of patriotic rhetoric and
brilliantly presented---I was moved to submit my kudos to the website,
a thing I've never done.
Robert Hughes features the genius
>of Thomas Jefferson as architect and "the first do-it-yourselfer,"
>emphasizing his habit of endlessly tinkering and re-designing.
>(Terrible irony here in the aftermath of the sad event at the UVa
>commencement.)
I hope I'm not the only one who doesn't understand the reference. What
happened at UVa?
>During Hughes's praise of Jefferson the maker, he asserts that the
>man's character, constantly striving and improving, would probably
>appeal to "the English poet, William Blake" and then he quotes the
>words "Energy is Eternal Delight."
>Now this is a fascinating connection. As many of you no doubt know,
>Jefferson's name is conspicuously absent from Blake's writings, most
>noticeably from _America A Prophecy_, which includes, however, the
>names of a number of other American worthies and prominences. There
is
>one reference that may be interpreted as referring to Jefferson:
>
> "The builder of Virginia throws his hammer down in fear"
>
> (_America_ 14.16)
>
>The hammer would certainly associate this "builder" with Los, as well
>as would referring to him as a builder; in context, it is not clear to
>me whether the reference to fear would be condemnatory or just
descriptive.
>
>But the questions abound. Why would Blake have refrained from naming
>Jefferson
(I have certainly not done a systematic
>search, but my quick impression is that Jefferson is hardly mentioned
in
>Blake criticism,
I think you're right. At least, I can't find anything, either. But
I've only done the most cursory of surveys...
_History & Myth: Essays in English Romantic Literature_ (Wayne State
U Press, 1990), ed. Behrendt, looks promising, though, with selections
on Blake, one of which is "Blake's America and the Birth of the
Revolution."
But I may well just not
>have the relevant study at my immediate disposal.)
I haven't even checked the critical editions of _America_, but if I
see anything, I'll shout.
>
>On a different note (and I apologize if this has already been
mentioned
>on the list) it is not surprising that Harold Bloom's _Omens of
>Millennium_ is decorated with a reproduction of the frontispiece of
>Blake's illustrations to _The Grave_ (a design that also appears in
>his illustrations to _Night Thoughts_--title page of Night the
Second),
>called "The Skeleton Reanimated."
Gillray's "Presages of the Millenium" and Mortimer's "Death on a Pale
Horse" are powerful millenial images, both featuring skeltons mounted
on horseback riding through scenes of carnage, war, etc., and loaded
with historical referents.
By the way, Bindman's _William Blake: His Art & Times_ (New Haven &
Ontario, 1982) is a superb catalogue of the art of Blake and his
contemporaries, and a bargain at $12.95. It was on sale at YBCA, and
I've found it more informative and representative of the Blake
exhibition as a whole than the Noonan catalog (sorry). It can be
ordered from the website.
Susan Reily
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 11:04:44 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Jefferson, Blake, and "America"
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Tom Dillingham:
This is mere speculation, of course, but I believe Blake avoided outright
commentary on Jefferson for a number of reasons. One is that he was very
European-oriented. His friendship with Paine would not have happened if
Paine hadn't come back to England, and then to France, would it? Also,
Paine came from a less "aristocratic" upbringing than Jefferson. Another is
that Jefferson perhaps didn't "fit" into his theories too well. A Deist,
yet a devoutly religious man with his own chopped up version of the Bible
that he kept around, not unlike... Blake? An architect, who appreciated the
glory of those dreaded Greco-Roman achievements, mimicking and improving on
them, particularly that stud Hadrian's Pantheon. An inventor-- is it true
he did the Venetian blinds, or... just modified an existing design? His
gardening theories didn't always work out, and then of course there was
(for his time) the broadest case *designed and actually implemented in the
real world* a public education system in Virginia, plus the Constitution he
wrote for that Commonwealth... but hey:
"To teach Doubt & Experiment
Certainly was not what Christ meant."
--(d) 49-50, "From the Everlasting Gospel"
Maybe Blake had heard of Jefferson's amazing clock at Monticello, and
couldn't be bothered by someone who had such a mundane vision of time.
Jefferson was too much a pragmatist, Blake too much a prophet.
But then, to give the Romanticist poets their due, I don't see many
accolades from Emerson, either, even in my own country. Rousseau,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shakespeare... these are some of the names that keep
repeating in the early classic essays from THAT prophet's era.
==========
> "The builder of Virginia throws his hammer down in fear"
>
> (_America_ 14.16)
Jefferson definitely needed Orc to the rescue, didn't he?
==========
But really, Tom. I thought the discussion on the Frontispiece of "Europe"
was rather informative, not chaotic! Of course, it kind of dissipated when
I tried to show some of my own speculative views on how the contrary
plates, and eventually the language, intertwine, because no one seemed
interested in offering their own views on what the plates meant *for them*!
I mean, they just make... uncommon sense!
Let's talk about "America", which is indeed in print by Dover along with
"Europe", but is, for some odd reason, not carried by any major bookstore
I've visited in New York, Boston, San Francisco, or LA! In my case, I had
to get a cut-out from Shakespeare & Company before they closed shop because
of the Super Barnes and Noble next door on the Upper West Side, NYC (they
also had a copy Keynes's collection of drawings back there). Meanwhile, for
some odd reason, you can readily buy the _Songs_ and "Marriage" Dover
repros in places like Borders (isn't late capitalism great! They're owned
by K-Mart, I hear, and that's how they've been able to expand like an
octopus, pushing adorable little independents like "Earthlings" in Santa
Barbara to the point of bankruptcy!). Everyone: go to your local bookstore
and DEMAND that these "America/Europe" Dover repros be put back on the
shelves on a regular basis, along with Damon's _Blake Dictionary_, which
I've only seen *once* recently at that dreaded Barnes and Noble Superstore
on the Upper West Side, NYC. (Or maybe buy via "www.amazon.com" on the
Web!) On the other hand, Borders in SF was carrying _Dangerous Enthusiasm_
by Mee (sorry, I just BROWSED it!) about Blake in the 1790s (he dares not
enter _Vala_), and the new SUNY-published _Four Zoas_ companion guide last
week........
But I digress!
The frontispiece to "America". Orc's a super-giant, in chains. He's just
too big to be restrained anymore, don't you think? Brooding, dark... his
face, though... looks like a Dr. Moreau-like monster! There's light in
those dark clouds above, though... and why are the woman and child looking
sad? For him? They're not looking AT him, you know! She's not Urthona's
daughter, is she? Looks like a piece of a cannon in the lower left... or
maybe just a large baseball bat for a 14 year old to wield, once free? God,
my vision is tainted by preconceptions I have of what is to come...
although I must admit that the preconceptions are limited to that poem,
only!
And then the comparative lightness of the clouds (all is Dover edition) on
the title page is a nice "contrary", isn't it? A woman either seducing or
bringing a Sleeping-Beauty-like kiss to a man at the bottom. Notice how her
one hand merges into that gold-colored moss-rock, which casts a shadow as
if it has roots? Up above, some are dancing, naked, free... the old man
seems troubled though. The clothed woman seems beautiful and enlightenned,
entertaining the kids.
But then there's that "Preludium" plate! And of course there's no
description of who that couple might be who are standing, appalled, at what
has happened to Orc. The text merely talks about *one* shadowy woman before
him, with food in iron baskets that Blake cares not to visualize.
======
"At the end of _America_, for instance, the fires of Orc, the force
behind the revolutionaries in America and France, consume not just old
political, social and moral systems, but 'the five gates' of our mortal
senses. We are to be released from the restrictions of the senses as we now
experience them into new ways of seeing."
---from P.H. Butter's Introduction to Everyman's _Selected Poems_, 1982
That last Butter quote reminds me of one by John Muir:
"If the Creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us, or
slightly remodel the present ones leaving all the rest of nature unchanged,
we should never doubt we were in another world, and so in strict reality we
should be, just as if all the world besides our senses were changed."
---At Smoky Jack's Sheep Camp (you may begin to know
by now how much Muir *loved* sheep), January 6, 1869, _John of the
Mountains_, 12
But Muir isn't imaginative enough to get BEYOND the restrictions of the senses!
======
I love the remarkable way in which Blake just kind of "drops us" into these
prophecies with little or no context (like, maybe that's Los and Enitharmon
looking at Orc, even though they're not mentioned in the text? like, maybe
this is a dream?)-- the abrupt, odd, jump-shifts, metaphors not quite
making the leap frog without forcing reader/viewer to speculate about
filling in the connection blanks... it's really all for the best, isn't it!
It gives US so much to speculate about! Wouldn't Freud have had a good time
with "America", my friends?
========
One last concurrence with Butter: he and I believe that even a Blake poem
should be able to stand alone, albeit *perhaps* "enhanced" (or distorted)
as the oeuvre grows:
"We should see what we are shown and apprehend the states of being
suggested without too hastily imposing our own, or Blake's later,
judgments." Butter also warns against imposing "a judgment from outside the
poem"... and later says, in talking about Blake's repeating themes through
endlessly different ways, that this "limitation can be exaggerated if one
jumbles all his works together and abstracts from them a single system of
ideas. One should read each poem as a poem, and then one sees that his
vision and the mythology embodying it are always growing."
Thus Spoketh P.H. Butter.
And thus agreeeth Randall H. Albright.
Now that wasn't too chaotic, was it, Tom?
;-)
More "America" or "Europe" plate analyses, anyone?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 11:01:25 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake as Mystic
Message-Id: <97053011012579@wc.stephens.edu>
I didn't say that I would not pay attention to the full range of
Blake's thought--obviously I do. I said that I don't have much
patience with (specifically) "the mewling mystic *that some people
construct*"--that's a different category altogether, tied into
floods of New Age blather. I mentioned Bloom's _Omens of Millennium_
in that last post--he has interesting things to say, in that book,
on the distinction I refer to. When people are very careful with the
word "mystic," and precise in their definition of it, then it may
(or may not) be applicable to Blake. I seldom see such care and
specificity, so I tend to treat such suggestions with appropriate
suspicion.
Tom Dilingham
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 13:15:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake and C.L.James Sighting
Message-Id: <970530131538_1175252935@emout14.mail.aol.com>
The current American Poetry Review (May/June 1997) prints a transcript of a
1995 Voice of America interview with Derek Walcott, in which Walcott mentions
both Blake and "C.L. James" (who I am guessing is the C.L.R. James that Ralph
Dumain has been writing about, but Ralph, please correct me if I am wrong).
About Blake, he says (p.42):
"The most original period of any writer's life is when that writer begins to
write. Thomas Traherne says 'I learned the dirty devices of the world.' I
think the dirty devices of syntax, about how to be a writer, can corrupt a
writer in a sense. I think for instance a writer like Blake, trying to get
back to an inner sense of syntax -- you can only have one writer like
that...."
Shortly thereafter (p.43), speaking of the experience of studying the English
school curriculum in the tropics, feeling a separation between what one is
studying and the culture outside the classroom, he says:
"For a while you can live with that and simply file it as a kind of
separation and division. And then you realize as you get older, there's no
division. There's no separation. Because the person who's outside there,
the woman who's walking with her basket, wants her son to be where you are.
And why would you deny her son, you know, because she's black or poor, the
place where you are, because you have been given a scholarship or something?
So there's no incongruity, to me, of having gone through that. And I think
it's a kind of experience that created the sharpness, the acuity, and the
depth, of writers like C.L. James, who's written brilliantly about it in
Beyond the Boundary, and writers like Naipaul, and other writers like Hearn,
and Wilson, Harris, have had that experience. The sense of almost being
disconnected from the world outside, but knowing that one has to push further
on and make that connection."
--Tom Devine
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #64
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