Today's Topics:
Re: The Poet?
Greetings & Question on Blake's ties to Freemasons
Blake the poet
Re: Blake's Poetics
RE: Blake the poet
Re: The Poet? -Reply
Re: Blake the poet
Re: Nature
felpham
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Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 12:46:22 -0500 (EST)
From: jwatt@thomas.butler.edu (Watt James)
To: ndeeter
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: The Poet?
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Nate: I couldn't agree more about Blake's persistence in the practice of
his art and his loyalty to the actual, physical processes that involves.
As to his indifference to theory, I don't think it is so much that he
doesn't think (and think CLEARLY) about such matters (see, for instance
the Preface to MILTON and ON HOMER and ON VERGIL and especially THE
LAOCOON!), but that he realizes the trap of abstraction: once you begin
talking about "poems" as though there were such a platonic reality as "the
poem," you fall into the hierarchy of forms (under which, for instance,
hairsplitting arguments are carried out about whether or not certain
things are "permisable" etc. etc.) and you forget that the source of
poetry and people is the same mystery --a kind of energy or, to use the
metaphor of Christianity which is as good --and as limiting-- as any
other, "the Holy Spirit." Our old friend Urizen doesn't like this kind of
chatter because it (a) can't be quantified or measured and (b) is subject
to manipulation for ulterior purposes. Still, there ARE four mighty ones
in each man --and the reader as well as the poet needs to call on ALL of
them. I think, actually, that for a theoretical statement of the origins
and processes of poetry you can hardly do worse than "The Lamb." This is
a brilliantly dense work, one that I have discovered to keep on opening
and deepening the more I enter it. It's the poet speaking to the poem and
it's the poem speaking to the poet; it's the jewel in the lotus and it's
the tao te ching. It is, as well, the mysterious micro/macro reciprocity
explored in the Kabala --tho' maybe Pam would not agree. thanks for the
query, Jim Watt Indianapolis, IN --USA
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Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 18:55:22 -0500
From: "Scott L. Matthews"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Greetings & Question on Blake's ties to Freemasons
Message-Id: <352576EA.3142@virginia.edu>
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Greetings all... My name is Scott Matthews, and I am presently
a student in the English department and the law school at the
University of Virginia, with primary interests in Blake and the
political and economic ramifications of pragmatism and 19th
century liberalism.
I have a general query about something about which I have been
curious: though Blake generally shunned societies of all sorts
and refused to join them, Peter Ackroyd makes an allusion to
the fact that Blake had many friends who were Freemasons. His
early apprenticeship with Basire situated him physically across
from the Freemasons' Hall, over beyond Covent Garden, so he
would have had great opportunity to interact with many Masons,
and given his unconventional politics and religious views, he
would have fit right in. Does anyone know of any documentation
of this, whether in Blake's journals, or the writings of friends?
Any help, rough or refined, would be of great assistance.
Cheers,
Scott Matthews
slm2m@virginia.edu
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Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 21:23:09
From: Izak Bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake the poet
Message-Id: <3.0.1.16.19980403212309.45ffdcb8@igs.net>
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Apart from the fact that Blake used poetry
as a redemptive tool, one of his greatest literary
achievements, according to Foster Damon, was
the perfecting of the =93dream technique.=94 Damon
points out that this permits the tangling of many
threads, abrupt changes of subjects, obscure cross-
references, sudden intrusions, =93even out-and-out
contradictions.=94 Crucial scenes are omitted, Damon
points out, others are expanded out of all seeming
proportion. Damon goes on to say: =93 Nothing like
it had been done in English, to the best of my recol-
lection since Chaucer=92s _Boke of the Duchesse_ or
was to be attempted again until Lewis Carroll wrote
_Sylvie and Bruno_. It is much to Blake=92s credit
that he never reduces his dream-world to the special=20
contents of a single individual=92s mind - a fault=20
committed by his imitator, James Joyce, in _Finnegans
Wake_.=94 (p 143 Blake Dictionary.)
I have a question relating to the statements about
poetry that Blake makes right in the beginning of
Jerusalem. He starts off declaiming =93Reader , lover
of books...=94 obviously imitating the cadences of=20
Shakespeare=92s introductions. He then goes on, a little
further down, with these sentences:
=93When this verse was first dictated to me I
considered a monotonous cadence.... I there-
fore have produced a variety in every line...
Every word and every letter is studied and
put into its fit place: the terrific numbers are
reserved for the terrific parts, the mild &
gentle for the mild and gentle parts..... etc.=94
Now I can swear that I have seen the lines =93the
terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific
parts=94 somewhere in Shakespeare, and think that
Blake is actually spoofing Shakespeare. I however
cannot find this sentence in Shakespeare. Can any-
body tell me where to find it, if in fact Shakespeare
did write it. I feel it should be said by one of the
players in _Midsummer=92s Night Dream_ , but I
cannot find it there.
Gloudina Bouwer
=20
=20
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Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 13:50:23 -0600
From: jmichael@sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake's Poetics
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Here, I count seven syllables per line in everything but lines 1, 2, and
>4. He's writing in septameter. Of course, more lines would have to be
>scanned...
>
>I say he's writing blank verse too, just not the pentameter blank verse.
Yes....John Hollander, in _Rhyme's Reason_, uses Blake's work as an example
of "fourteeners," which are actually a variation of the common-measure
stanza you identify as Dickensonian:
>2) Often, I've said this before, he employs the ballad stanza form. The
>old sing-song Dickensonian "da DA da DA da DA da DA, da DA da DA da DA,
>da DA da DA da DA da DA, da DA da DA da DA."
If you take a 4/3/4/3 quatrain and rewrite it as a couplet, you have two
lines of iambic heptameter. So although Blake's prophetic books often
*look* very different from his Songs, they often *sound* similar.
Jennifer Michael
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Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 12:39:09 -0800
From: "Steve Perry"
To:
Subject: RE: Blake the poet
Message-Id: <000101bd6009$b8c4cf80$01646464@perry1.perry>
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It is very interesting to note that Joyce at some point said that he wrot=
e
_Ulysses_ word by word but _Finnegans Wake_, letter by letter. Imitation
indeed!
steve perry
>It is much to Blake=92s credit
> that he never reduces his dream-world to the special
> contents of a single individual=92s mind - a fault
> committed by his imitator, James Joyce, in _Finnegans
> Wake_.=94 (p 143 Blake Dictionary.)
>
> I have a question relating to the statements about
> poetry that Blake makes right in the beginning of
> Jerusalem. He starts off declaiming =93Reader , lover
> of books...=94 obviously imitating the cadences of
> Shakespeare=92s introductions. He then goes on, a little
> further down, with these sentences:
> =93When this verse was first dictated to me I
> considered a monotonous cadence.... I there-
> fore have produced a variety in every line...
> Every word and every letter is studied and
> put into its fit place: the terrific numbers are
> reserved for the terrific parts, the mild &
> gentle for the mild and gentle parts..... etc.=94
> Now I can swear that I have seen the lines =93the
> terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific
> parts=94 somewhere in Shakespeare, and think that
> Blake is actually spoofing Shakespeare. I however
> cannot find this sentence in Shakespeare. Can any-
> body tell me where to find it, if in fact Shakespeare
> did write it. I feel it should be said by one of the
> players in _Midsummer=92s Night Dream_ , but I
> cannot find it there.
>
> Gloudina Bouwer
>
>
>
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 09:20:06 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: The Poet? -Reply
Message-Id:
I like very much your suggestion, Jim, that "The Lamb" can be read as
evincing the micro/macro of the Kabbalah, as can "The Fly". For me,
almost everything in BLake reflects this since all things can expand into
gods, or contract into `worms' when self-involved. I think Blake
consciously evokes the `Big' and `Small' faces of God in all that exists,
which is why every particle is holy.
Pam
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Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 11:19:25 -0500 (EST)
From: jwatt@thomas.butler.edu (Watt James)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake the poet
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Gloudina asks about Blake's remarks on the verse in the preface to
Jerusalem. I don't know about whether or not shakespeare has something
along the lines of what Blake writes, but it is a deliberate echo of
Milton's remarks on the verse of Paradise Lost, the relevant passage
being: "Not without cause ... both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime
note have rejected Rime in both longer and shorter works, as have also
long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself to all
judicious ears, trivial and of no musical delight; which consists only in
apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out
from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a
fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good
oratory."
Jim Watt
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Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 23:03:55
From: Izak Bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Nature
Message-Id: <3.0.1.16.19980406230355.3d4ff59c@igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
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Has anyone commented on the following =93positive=94
use of the word =93Nature=94 by Blake? It comes from
_J_77 lines 16-23: =93He [a Watcher & a Holy-One] answer=92d:
=91Jesus died because he strove/ Against the current of this
Wheel [of Religion]; its Name/ Is Caiaphas, the dark
Preacher of Death,/ Of sin, of sorrow & of punishment:/
Opposing Nature! It is Natural Religion;/ But Jesus is
the bright Preacher of Life/ Creating Nature from this
fiery Law/ By self-denial & forgiveness of Sin. . . . =94
Izak
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Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 12:05:50 -0600
From: rpyoder@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: felpham
Message-Id:
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So, I've had a paper accepted for the NASSR/BARS conference this summer in
England. While I'm there I would like to check out Felpham or what's left
of it. As members of this list know, Felpham was the village where the
Blakes lived 1800-1803 under William Hayley's patronage. There was some
discussion on this list a few months ago about how to pronounce "Felp-am,"
but I don't recall any remarks about whether the village still exists or
any remarks about Blake's cottage there. I haven't been able to find
Felpham on my English roadway map, but in his correspondence Blake suggests
that it is near Chichester, which looks to be about half-way between
Brighton and Southampton. Can anyone help with information about the
location of Felpham and any remnants of the Blake-Hayley circle in that
area?
T