Today's Topics:
Re: felpham
Re: felpham
Re: felpham
Albion
Gnosis - knowledge
Gnosis - knowledge -Reply
Hi + The Tyger, The Lamb
An odd Blake sighting
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Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 15:38:47 EDT
From: ReyahnKing
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: felpham
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Hello!
Felpham appears to be between Bognor Regis and Middleton-on-Sea i.e. on the
coast south-east of Chichester. If Middleton-on-Sea isn't on your map, try
Littlehampton or Worthing but Bognor Regis is the nearest town. You would
take the A259 from Chichester. Once you get to England, you'll be able to get
a better map.
Reyhana
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Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 08:41:15 -0700
From: marcia baker
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: felpham
Message-Id: <3530E09B.74A9@flash.net>
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Paul--I visited Felpham several years ago. You can reach it by taking
the train to (I believe) Bognor Regis and then taking a bus or taxi.
Blake's cottage is well-marked and anyone in town can direct you to it.
A sign asks you not to disturb the owners and a high wall is around the
garden, so you cannot see into it. I will look for my notes soon and
send you a more detailed e-mail. Marcia
rpyoder@ualr.edu wrote:
>
> 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?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul Yoder
>
> "Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce / Angels" Milton
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Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 09:08:57 GMT
From: jlord@ull.ac.uk
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: felpham
Message-Id: <98041409085696@ull.ac.uk>
Hi - Felpham is still there, close to Bognor Regis in Sussex. It is within
walking distance (about a mile and a half) of Bognor railway station. Blake's
cottage is still standing, and looks charming, but it is a private house,
so you can't get in! It is situated in Blake Road (no less). You can walk
down the road (more of a country lane, really) to the pub where WB
unceremoniously deposited Scofield in 1803. The pub, alas, burned down in 1945,
but the present building was erected on the site of the old one. While you are
in that part of England, do stop off on your journey at Chichester, to see
the Guildhall, where WB stood trial in 1804. From London, you can easily take
in both sites by train in a single day. Good luck - John Lord
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Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 09:02:32 -0500
From: jmichael@sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Albion
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[I've posted this on NASSR-L as well; apologies for the cross-posting.]
Can anyone point me toward a reliable history of "Albion" as a mythic name
for England/Britain? My Romanticism students have been asking about it, as
it turns up not only in Blake, of course, but in Shelley and Keats as well.
Drabble's _Oxford Companion to English Literature_ describes it as an
"ancient name" perhaps derived from the Latin _albus_ for the white cliffs,
but she doesn't cite any appearances before Blake. I would appreciate
examples of earlier uses, but I'm especially interested in how and why the
name became so important for at least some of the Romantics.
Thanks,
Jennifer Davis Michael
University of the South
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Date: Tue, 14 Apr 98 12:41:23 +0100 ( + )
From: Paul Tarry
To: Blake Group
Subject: Gnosis - knowledge
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Gnosticism is a recurring theme within Blake Online and it has always
intrigued me in the way that mysterious unknowns do. I was really
interested therefore to come across the following passage in a book
which I think is the best and most enlightening I have read in many
years. Here's the passage:
Gnostics explained their situation in the world by means of elaborate
accounts of creation and a complex myth of redemption. Bentley
Layton (1987) has helped us understand the structure of this gnostic
mythology. Four scenes unfolded in evolutionary sequence. In the
first scene, spheres of power called emissions or emanations were
generated by the highest god, pure spirit. These formed a spiritual
universe called the entirety, both enveloping and being enveloped by
the highest god, a sort of aura of self-reflection that expanded in
concentric spheres of ever greater distance from their divine
generator. In the second scene, the material universe was created
as an imperfect copy of the divine universe by means of some error,
or deceit. This tragedy was an indispensable moment in all variants of
the Gnostic myth of creation, though it was variously described.
Somehow, usually at the lower reaches of the spiritual universe,
something went wrong. A female emanation generated a false desire
or gave birth to a monster or fell out of the entirety into the formless
matter below. Some myths say that she tried to imitate the creation of
the highest god but could not do so because she acted alone.
Others say that her offspring, Ialdabaoth, a malformed, blind, and
envious power, was the one who created the material world in order
to rule over it in imitation of the highest god. In a third scene, humans
were created and the divine spark implanted in the ancestral gnostic.
In one prominent version of the myth, Ialdabaoth was tricked into
letting this happen by one of the more beneficent powers of the world
above, and the protognostics were identified as the generation of
Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. Ialdabaoth's response was to
encase the gnostics in bodies and drug the human race into
forgetting its divine origin. In the fourth scene, a revealer appeared
from the realm of light to rekindle the spark of gnosis and show the
gnostics the way back home.
..................................................................
>From "Who Wrote The New Testament ? The Making of the
Christian Myth" by Burton L. Mack (HarperCollins 1995), pages 256
-7. What a fascinating book this is, a real diamond in cutting through
the layers of Mystery. Time and time again Mack shows through
example what Blake knew through intuition; that the church is based
on humbug. Just as I was munching my Cadbury's I was chewing
over the truly nasty idea that Jesus died for our sins - what
remarkable fictions permeate easter eggs and sours our minds. I
wholeheartedly recommend this book, it proved very enlightening for
me as a reader of the New Testament who always thought Jesus
sounded a bit schizophrenic. As for Gnosticism and Blake, well I am
even more intrigued than ever, the influence seems....clear ?
Best
Paul
Mark 10:17 -22
-Good teacher, what must I do...?
-Why do you call me good ?
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 11:28:11 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Gnosis - knowledge -Reply
Message-Id:
Paul,
I think there are certainly clear parallels between Blake and Gnositicism
and also Kabbalah. You quote:
" These formed a spiritual universe called the entirety, both enveloping
and being enveloped by the highest god, a sort of aura of
self-reflection that expanded in concentric spheres of ever greater
distance from their divine generator."
Blake makes much of the Centre and Circumference in his
imagery, which suggests something similar, and Jerusalem is the `aura'
or `emanation' surrounding Jesus., just as Brittania is the aura
surrounding Albion, and just as each herb, tree, and flower and cloud
mirrors clearly his/her mate. All this recalls to my mind, Yeats' "mirro on
mirror refledted is all the show".
The creation of the material universe by a fallen demiurge is clearly
represented in Urizen's fallen , cold world in the abyss.... corresponding
with the lines you quote:
" In the second scene, the material universe was created
as an imperfect copy of the divine universe by means of some error,
or deceit. This tragedy was an indispensable moment in all variants
of the Gnostic myth of creation, though it was variously described."
Re the deformed monster, there are many serpent forms in the imperfect
worlds which result from the rending apart of the four zoas and their
separation from their emanations. The separated females, being
incomplete spiritually, no longer mirror the divine humanity and so weave
a fallen fabric of materiality, as suggested in:
"Somehow, usually at the lower reaches of the spiritual universe,
something went wrong. A female emanation generated a false desire
or gave birth to a monster or fell out of the entirety into the formless
matter below. Some myths say that she tried to imitate the creation of
the highest god but could not do so because she acted alone.
Others say that her offspring, Ialdabaoth, a malformed, blind, and
envious power, was the one who created the material world in order
to rule over it in imitation of the highest god."
Well, as I don't want to write a treatise here, I'll stop but the parallels are
many, and even more precise re the kabbalah. Thanks for raising this
topic again.
Pam
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 16:39:29 +0200
From: Zeusz
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Hi + The Tyger, The Lamb
Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980415163929.006ab154@post.hem.hu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Hi,
I am a kind of new guy here.
I=B4m from Budapest, Hungary. I would like to get in to an English faculty a=
t
a university here in Budapest.
I would apperciate any comments, reviews, essays on the 2 works mentioned
in the subject.
Thx
ZZZZZ
+---------------------------------+
| __ (\_ _/) __ | ZEUSZ
|(_ \ ( '> +---------+ <' ) / _) | mailto:zeusz@post.hem.hu
| ) \/_)=3D | ZEUSZ | =3D(_\/ ( | mailto:zeusz@freemail.c3.hu
| (_(_ )_ +---------+ _( _)_) | UIN:7315852
+---------------------------------+
...DOS never says "EXCELLENT command or filename"
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 14:08:33 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: An odd Blake sighting
Message-Id: <98041914083305@wc.stephens.edu>
The Arts section of today's New York Times (p. 12) includes what I
assume is a reproduction of a poster that will probably be seen (or
perhaps has been seen) around New York for some weeks to come, since
it advertises the new Nicholas Hytner production of Shakespeare's
_Twelfth Night_, which opens June 19. The relevance to Blake--the
design of the poster is a straight steal (but with no acknowledgment,
and no indication of the poster artist) from Blake's illustration to
Canto 31 of Dante's _Divine Comedy_--specifically the magnificent
image of the giant Antaeus, his feet perilously perched on the face of
a rock cliff, his body bent impossibly over and his right arm extended
to place Dante and Virgil down into the final circle of hell. While
Blake's Dante illustrations are not among the most familiar of his
works, this particular image is fairly well known. The poster does
not reproduce the great nude body of Antaeus; rather, it shows
a young blond and androgynous figure, clad in the ripped garments
of someone perhaps shipwrecked, in the pose of Antaeus, leaning
down toward a hand emerging from the water below. (The figures
of Dante and Virgil are not there, but everything else about
the poster reproduces the basic design of the Antaeus image.)
I assume that the androgyny of the leaning figure alludes to the
crossdressing and gender bending of the play; I do not remember
any references in _Twelfth Night_ to Antaeus, so I am not sure
what the connection would be, though of course the yearning of
the separated brother/sister Sebastian and Viola might be
the intended evocation. In any case it would be a very
interesting question to put to the artist of the poster--just
what point, if any, has the allusion to Blake? Or Dante?
Tom Dillingham
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End of blake-d Digest V1998 Issue #25
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