Today's Topics:
Re: Ralph's questions
Re: symbolic language
Re: Re Blake and Madness
Re: Blake and "madness" [BRETON]
quotation
Re: Re Blake and Madness
Re: quotation
Re: Re Blake and Madness
RE: Izak's answer
Re: symbolic language -Reply/Jerusalem I, pl 13
Re: Blake and "madness" -Reply -Reply
Re: symbolic or literal?
Re: Re Blake and Madness -Reply/true spirituality
BLAKE RECORDS
Re: quotation
repetition
re. Ralph's questions
Belligerent Blakeans
re: quotation
Blake List break
Re: Belligerent Blakeans
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 09:55:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Ralph's questions
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19980910124838.3cd7c6ec@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Where is Dr. Fraudlander when you need him? I think Tarry, Deeter, Watt,
Edwards, Bouwer, and the irascible Von Shlock have all lost their minds. In
the face of such mental disorganization, I must throw up my hands in despair
of all the idiot responders as well as questioners.
At 09:34 PM 9/9/98, Izak Bouwer wrote:
>However,
>neither the Catholic nor the Protestant nor Moslem Churches
>could be viewed as monolythically deist for ever and ever.
>You're applying Newtonian rules to a field where entities such
>as Catholic and Protestant Churches are but shadows with no
>permanence.
Huh?
>This topic of literal vs transcendent meaning is very
>interesting. I believe that there is a faculty in us that
>can respond to symbolic language aimed at spiritual truth,
>but for this to be allowed to happen the discursive
>intellect must be stilled, e.g. through meditation. It is
>widely accepted that abstract language alone simply cannot
>do the trick (some of the old guys were very sophisticated
>in their reasoning techniques, and would have found
>a way for sure).
I've been writing on and off about these matters for a year at east, perhaps
more? Did I ever aim a protest at symbolic language as opposed to literal
language? What about that huge discussion a year or more about genres,
about the relation between criticism (secular, prose) and Blake's prophetic
utterances (sacred, poetry)? My recent comments were directed at a
particular aspect of Blake's symbolic language which form a rather deceptive
semantic subsystem for the reasons I stated. My capacity for relating to
poetry is second to no-one's, but it has nothing to do with the nonsense you
utter about stilling the intellect. What is the difference between
intellect and intuition other than one is conscious and labored and the
other is spontaneous? The ability to perceive the content is the same.
Either your mind is organized to do so or not. Do you think there is
something superior and spiritual about shapeless blather and drivel?
It os also rather obvious that, just as a picture is worth a thousand words,
so a poem can say in four lines what volumes cannot say in prose. But what
is transcendent or mysterious about this? Of course it's true, but again,
a justification for complete nonsense?
>You seem to criticize Blake's method of using symbolic
>language, whether in poetry or prose, as the medium for
>transmitting his insights. In today's world of "semantic
>universes" you seem to expect that it should be possible to
>express the same insights in abstract language.
No no no. I think one would be hard put to express the insights of the
simplest poems--The Smile, I feared the fury of my wind, The FLY, etc.--in
abstract language. That's why we have poetry. But there is a problem with
the semantic universe that defines Christianity-atheism-belief-unbelief in
the way that it does. If you remember last year's discussions about what a
Blake would be like today, the question of mythologies, science fiction,
etc., this is what I mean about symbolic universes. Blake created his own
and grafted it on to a highly mutated Christian symbolism. Could anyone do
the same today? A contemporary Blake might have to create an entirely
fictional mythology, like a science fiction writer, because we know too much
about the different religions, mythologies, and literatures of the world to
be satisfied by Christian symbolism alone.
>Now I don't
>think that can be done easily, if at all, for the reason
>that the 'spiritual truths' can be recognized and allowed
>to come forward and take on substance in one's being
>only if "mental chatter" is sufficiently stilled.
>When language use is symbolical, the immediate layer of
>literal meaning, at least, is removed and should therefore
>not draw down associated "principles" of the discursive
>thinking machine, usually acting to further obscure
>spiritual meaning.
This is pernicious nonsense. Chatter still or no, you can only perceive
what your life experience has taught you to perceive. You can't pretend to
be open-minded or anything else. Either you've got it or you don't. If you
don't, you develop yourself until you do get it. You and your pals on the
list seem to think there is something high flown and spiritual about being
naive and ignorant. You also seem to think Blake himself would countenance
an attitude conducive to favoring marshmallow fluff for brains. And that is
why you will always be confused.
"One basis for science and another for life is a priori a lie." -- Karl Marx
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 14:36:26
From: Izak Bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: symbolic language
Message-Id: <3.0.1.16.19980910143626.4bef5178@igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
At 12:05 PM 9/10/98 +0200, Pam wrote:
>Blake himself believed in Minute Particulars rather
>than abstractions - >. . . >In his Songs, the natural
>world is clearly reflected while at the same >time,
>the poems have metaphysical and spiritual implications.
>In doing >so, perhaps he was influenced by Swedenborg's
>Proposition in 1788 >'That the Word of the Lord is Holy,
>and that it containeth a threefold>sense, namely
>Celestial, Spiritual and Natural which are united by
>Correspondences'.
Pam: Thanks for posting this. Your quote from Swedenborg
is especially apt. My wife Dina, who is at present
rereading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,”
and is in an especially snippy mood on account of it ,
says that a statement I made in an earlier posting to
the effect that [the philosophy of] “modern science”
would still fall under “atheism” in Blake’s use of the term
is an oversimplification. I quite agree with her.
This reminds me of the story of Mara saying to the Buddha
that the very ground he was sitting on belonged to Mara,
and what right did he have . . . and the Buddha touching
the ground replying that the earth was his witness . . .
It is this force of Mara/Satan that wants to entice us
to see the world of appearance as all that there is,
that Blake has it against -- not "science" as such.
Newtonian science, in its laws of mechanics and gravitation,
for example, describes a “clockwork universe” in which
events are uniquely determined by a given set of initial
conditions. Although this scheme is useful for understanding
- and manipulating - ‘nature’, or external phenomena,
it of course forms a gross obstacle to appreciating the
world of the Imagination as put forward by Blake. Perhaps
there is a sense in which quantum mechanics, for instance,
removes the grosser obstacles in Newtonian science to
our appreciation of the spiritual dimension in us, but the
person that makes it his sole reality is still worshipping
the ‘God of this world.’
Izak
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 11:48:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Re Blake and Madness
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19980910144208.0ea74e0e@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 03:42 PM 9/10/98 +0100, Tim Linnell wrote:
>No: Blake explains quite clearly in 'There is no Natural Religion' that use
>of the senses alone limits us: "The desires & perceptions of man untaught by
>any thing but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense.".
>Now I don't happen to agree with him, but the reading is very
>straightforward and not in the least splendid, really.
Splendid or not, Tim, it's actually a very interesting reading, when you
take it as a critique of empiricism. One of the keys to understanding how
Blake's thoughts are put together is to understand how Blake uses his
religious resources (rather than a competing mundane philosophical
tradition, which if it even existed, was not available to him) to combat
empiricism and mechanical materialism. Though I am getting a bit off the
track, it's also essential to remember that Blake's opposition to "reason"
is an opposition to all kinds of theology besides natural theology and not
just an opposition to natural science. One of the problems regarding the
"symbolic" vs. the "literal" is to always keep in mind that the only thing
"literal" that matters to Blake is human subjectivity, the capacity of the
mind to be free of certain repressive restraints. He neither knew or cared
one way or the other about the specific content of the physical theories of
Newton or Descartes or any of them. Rather, Blake sussed out the overall
ideological functioning of these ideas in society and attacked them on the
plane of ideology without bothering to separate out the scientific from the
ideological content. This is just one of Blake's many conflation in seeking
to bypass liberalism and the Enlightenment. To me this is as plain as day,
intuitively obvious, but there is plenty of evidence for me to prove my case.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 11:49:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake and "madness" [BRETON]
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19980910144212.0ea77dd4@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
At 10:58 AM 9/10/98 -0400, Bert Stern reminded us of Andre Breton:
>Everything leads me to believe that there exists a certain point, a state
>of mind in which life and death, the real and imaginary, the past and the
>future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be
>perceived as contradictions. It would be useless to seek in Surrealist
>activity any impulse other than the hope of determining this point.
>
> --Andr=E9 Breton
Breton wanted to unite the real and the imaginary, waking state and dream.
Not surprising he was inspired by Hegel. Breton was interested in the
occult and primitive religions, but he hated Christianity with immeasurable
vitriol, and he was himself an atheist. Now I can't be sure what firm
perswasions Breton held to. Probably he didn't believe as the practitioners
of Santeria and Voudon that Alejo Carpentier wrote about believed, but
Breton's position does bring up some subtleties that could stand
investigation. And one of these subtleties does relate to Blake: that is
the question of whether Blake considered his visions to be literal or
symbolic. (Cf. last years' discussion.) Now I'm not entirely naive about
the state of mind Breton describes as some would think. I used to
experience this myself. The ambiguity lies in the particular fulcrum of 'as
if' upon which it rests. Precisely in this state of mind, one does not
separate things out into what is literally and what is only symbolically
true. From a psychological standpoint, this question does not register in
the psychological state in question, and if Blake was in such a state as he
probably was, that accounts for the inherent ambiguities in his statements
about it and in our sober analyses of it. But as I say, these matters
belong to poetry and not to prose. The drivel spouted about quantum
mechanics and science and all the rest are distressing examples of prosaic
minds vainly striving to be poetic, whereas they miss the point completely.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 14:36:32 -0500
From: RPYODER@ualr.edu
To: BLAKE@albion.com
Subject: quotation
Message-Id: <980910143632.20a42994@ualr.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
I recently ran across a watercolor print by Blake identified by the Yale
Center for British Art as "The widow embracing her Husband's grave." It's a
nice little piece, that resembles somewhat a late plate in *Jerusalem* (somewhere around plate 94 or 95) in which "Britannia" is shown lying atop the not-
yet-risen body of Albion. The watercolor includes a caption, apparently in
Blake's hand, that reads:
Prone on the lowly grave -- she drops --
Clings yet more closely to the sensitive (?) turf
Nor heeds the passenger (?) who looks that way
The "passenger" (if I read that correctly) refers to the man and woman who
are walking through the churchyard, looking at the woman lying atop the grave,
who, of course, takes no notice of the passers-by.
Does anyone recognize the quotation in the caption? *Night Thoughts*? *The
Grave*?
Thanks,
Paul Yoder
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 14:06:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dushyant Arun Viswanathan
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Re Blake and Madness
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
> When I stood in my garden a few weeks ago watching a meteor shower above the
> whispering trees that surround my house, wondering at the wonderful scale,
> beauty, and majesty of it all, I felt no need for anything more than nature.
> I often feel that yearnings for a spiritual otherness are rather like
> yearning for an ideal partner, and forgetting what a wonderful and beautiful
> person one is already married to. Certainly such view are not incompatible
spirituality is not about an "otherness"...duality is what mythology
is for- creating an "other" to worship, an "other" that has symbolic
meaning...but
real spirituality is about self, is about the nature of existence, of
what we are given, what is real...going deeper. empiricism looks at the
surface; true jnanam, true understanding attempts to go to the root, to
the essence, and true spirituality seems to find unity in essence. at
least this is the way the ancient traditions such as the druids, vedic
indians, ancient aryans, and other traditions looked at the world. of
course in the more primitive traditions, such as that of the new testament
and the koran, religion becomes a superstitious faith in a holy
other...and often empiricists and scientists take these latter traditions
to be what true religion is, and they look upon spirituality as a whole
with derision...true spirituality uncovers what empiricism can never
behold.
spirituality is not about escapism from reality, as the above passage
implies...first of all, there is nothing real about the "natural" world,
that you so adore....if you alter dopamine levels in your brain, you will
see the world in a completely different manner...empirically, we can only
take in what the senses and the neocortex will afford. take one person
with "normal" dopamine levels, and have him look at a door...then take
another person with low or high dopamine levels, and he will perhaps see
pink elephants flying through the door...thus the utter pointlessness in
empiricism, or trying to get anything out of the world percieved by the
senses.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 22:13:27
From: Izak Bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: quotation
Message-Id: <3.0.1.16.19980910221327.3aeffb02@igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hi Paul: Yes, it is an (unused) illustration to _The Grave_
by Blair. It is reproduced, for example, in David Bindman's
_William Blake-His Art and Times_ p.128. In 1805 Blake made
forty drawings and water-colours, including this one, which
was, according to Bindman, singled out for commendation by
Flaxman.
The quotation is from near the beginning of the poem:
"Prone on the lowly grave of the dear man
She drops . . .
. . .
Clings yet more closely to the senseless turf,
Nor heeds the passenger who looks that way."
Izak Bouwer
At 02:36 PM 9/10/98 -0500, Paul Yoder wrote:
>I recently ran across a watercolor print by Blake identified by the Yale
>Center for British Art as "The widow embracing her Husband's grave." It's a
>nice little piece, that resembles somewhat a late plate in *Jerusalem*
(somewhere around plate 94 or 95) in which "Britannia" is shown lying atop
the not-
>yet-risen body of Albion. The watercolor includes a caption, apparently in
>Blake's hand, that reads:
>
>Prone on the lowly grave -- she drops --
>Clings yet more closely to the sensitive (?) turf
>Nor heeds the passenger (?) who looks that way
>
>The "passenger" (if I read that correctly) refers to the man and woman who
>are walking through the churchyard, looking at the woman lying atop the
grave,
>who, of course, takes no notice of the passers-by.
>
>Does anyone recognize the quotation in the caption? *Night Thoughts*? *The
>Grave*?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Paul Yoder
>
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 07:32:40 +0100
From: timli@controls.eurotherm.co.uk (Tim Linnell)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Re Blake and Madness
Message-Id: <199809110632.HAA03037@merlot.controls.eurotherm.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>spirituality is not about escapism from reality, as the above passage
>implies...first of all, there is nothing real about the "natural" world,
>that you so adore....
i don't entirely disagree with your point... in that observations are always
subjective to a degree and made through imperfect organs... however we can
reach a consensus about what we see... when the same standards of perception
and measurement are used.... two people with high dopamine levels would not
see the same elephants... but they would most likely... see the same... door...
Anyway, I'll take my chances in the natural world, thanks: I like it here.
We'll both know who was right in 100 years or so, so let's agree to meet and
compare notes then.
Tim
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 08:35:32 +0200
From: Huw Edwards
To: "'blake@albion.com'"
Subject: RE: Izak's answer
Message-Id: <71B7CE499BB9D111909A0060B03C49A115E5AA@netchevy.publicis.co.za>
Content-Type: text/plain
I suppose that depends on how well you use those words.
> ----------
> From: Paul Tarry[SMTP:paul.tarry@btinternet.com]
> Reply To: blake@albion.com
> Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 1998 1:29AM
> To: Blake Group
> Subject: Re: Izak's answer
>
> Sometimes the things you see can be too much for the words that say
> them.
>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 09:34:59 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: symbolic language -Reply/Jerusalem I, pl 13
Message-Id:
Izak, I fully agree that Blake had nothing against Science as such, as in
Eternity, in Innocence, he depicts Eternals as delighting in debate on
Science and Architecture ... and any form of mental pursuit in which the
Poetic Genius could be aired and displayed. He would have esteemed all
men of genius who exercised their imaginations selflessly as he
equated this with building Golgonooza, and ultimately restoring the holy
city of Jerusalem. But not all mental pursuits are benign since Urizen's
mental vision of holiness is the cause of the Fall of man, and of man's
continuing misery. This is why all of Los's labours are devoted to
overcoming such `Self-righteousness conglomerating against the Divine
Vision' (Jerusalem I, 52) and to breaking down all other spectral mental
constructs which cause humans to see their bodies as merely mortal:
for whom those waiting to enter the bodies which Los creates for them
become oblivious to the truth that `not one sigh nor smile nor tear,/ One
hair nor particle of dust, no one can pass away' even though those who
enter their bodies think it is the `only substance'.(Ibid. 64-66)
This is all, perhaps, related to the story of the Buddha you shared with
us.
Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 09:51:06 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake and "madness" -Reply -Reply
Message-Id:
Bert, the mental state Breton describes can surely be equated with
Blake's Beulah which, if entered into is a place where contrarieties are
equally true? By contrast, to see only with the limited senses is to enter
a state where lies seem truth:
This Life's dim windows of the Soul
Distorts the Heavens from Pole to Pole
And leads you to believe a Lie
WHen you see with, not thro', the Eye. (Everlasting Gospel)
THis can't be dismissed as deriving from schizoid episodes or drugs
since it is Blake's habitual, and carefully chosen, way of viewing human
existence.
BUt the following quoatation from Swedenborg seems to come closest to
the state which the lines from Breton evoke:
A person is guided into a particular state which is halfway between
being asleep and being awake... All his senses are as alert as when he
is fully awake physically ...more acutely sensitive .... In this state, spirits
and angels have been seen and heard and, remarkably, toughed. Then
virtually nothing of the body intervenes. (Heaven and Hell, 44)
THere is perhaps a relation to the mind going into alpha waves here, as
in states of meditation which release one from the restraints of the
Selfhood?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 10:17:08 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: symbolic or literal?
Message-Id:
Mr leger-de-main is at it again
THinking only he has a brain.
Even doggerel can convey meaning clearly.
Blake himself thought that what he wrote described literal reality, like
the Prophets of old:
The Prophets describe what they saw in visions as real and existing
men, whom they saw with their imaginative and immortal organs...
(Decriptive Catalogue, 37)
Blake similarly writes:
I see Albion sitting upon his Rock in the first Winter,
And thence I see the Chaos of Satan & the World of Adam...(Jerusalem I)
In order to open the eyes of mortals to the inward worlds within them
which expand into Eternity, Blake has to visualise on the stage of his
mind the entire Fall, while at the same time, making it clear what he thinks
of the mean-spirited minds he encounters in the Schools, Universities
and Churches of the world. So here, the symbolic and literal worlds
are blended into poetic drama which is intended to free the mind from
prejudice.
When Leger-demain calls any spiritual observation slop, then the ongoing
battle between building and destroying Golgonooza/Jerusalem is
resumed. And whenever anyone scores a point against him he calls
foul by sneering and name-calling.
Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 10:28:04 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Re Blake and Madness -Reply/true spirituality
Message-Id:
Dushyant, I think you raise very valid and relevant points in your posting
re the `other' and unity. What I love about Blake is that his vision allows
for both . He perceives us all as `Members' of god's divine body, and so
as participating in a unified field of energy, even here on earth, where
we are under the illusion that we are all separate from God.
All of this is implied in the opening Chapter of Jerusalem:
"Awake! awale P sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand!
"I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine;
Fibres of love from man to man thro' Albion's pleasant land."
Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 12:25:16 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Henriette Stavis
To: rdumain@igc.apc.org
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: BLAKE RECORDS
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE
Dear Ralph,
It would seem that I've promised you too much. The book that I carried=20
home was BLAKE RECORDS and not BLAKE BOOKS. So there isn't anything on=20
German idealism, Hegel & co.
But since you haven't seen the book, I thought you might be interested in=
=20
the table of contents:
PRELUDE=09=091737-1757=09Family and Milieu
PART I=09=091757-1779=09The Visionary Apprentice
PART II=09=091779-1799=09From Artisan to Artist
PART III=091800-1805=09Patronage and Dependence
PART IV=09=091806-1818=09Independence and Obscurity
PART V=09=091818-1827=09The Ancients and the Interpreter
PART VI=09=091827-1831=09A Fading Shadow
POSTSCRIPT=091831-1833=09'God protect me from my friends'
APPENDIX:
a) B.H. Malkin 'A Father's Memoirs of his Child' (1806)
b) H.C. Robinson 'Vaterl=E4ndisches Museum' (1811)=20
c) J.T. Smith 'Nollekens and his Times' (1828)
d) Allan Cunningham ' Lives of...British Painters' (1830)
e) Frederick Tatham MS 'Life of Blake' (?1833)
f) H.C. Robinson 'Reminiscences' (1852)
Hope this helps,
Henriette
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 08:08:47 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: quotation
Message-Id: <98091108084696@wc.stephens.edu>
Paul Yoder's quotation does indeed come from Robert Blair's "The Grave"--
(72-84)--his version is a bit garbled, but the relevant lines are:
Prone on the lowly grave of the dear man
She drops; whilst busy meddling memory
In barbarous succession, summons up
The past endearments of their softer hours,
Tenacious of its theme. Still, still she thinks
She sees him, and,indulging the fond thought,
Clings yet more closely to the senseless turf,
Nor heeds the passenger who looks that way.
("passenger" in that period was still more or less equivalent to
"passerby")
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 08:16:56 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: repetition
Message-Id: <98091108165652@wc.stephens.edu>
I apologize for posting the response to Paul's query, offering
information for a second time--I had not read through all my
messages. Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 15:59:27 +0200
From: Huw Edwards
To: "'blake@albion.com'"
Subject: re. Ralph's questions
Message-Id: <71B7CE499BB9D111909A0060B03C49A115E5B1@netchevy.publicis.co.za>
Content-Type: text/plain
Ralph
Silence is the language of God
Not only is the essence of spirituality within, it is also
unique to the self: a very basic precept which you seem not to have
grasped. Your reference to spirituality being some kind of search for
superiority hints more at your own insecurities than at the ignorance of
'idiots'. As do your other petulant outbursts. Perhaps you should
appeal louder to Dr Fraudlander. The incomprehensible academic rhetoric
that you use is as much based on opinion as everything else in this
world.
Admittedly, my experience of this board is limited, but my
perception thus far is of you trying to reduce everything to a "my
brain is bigger than your brain scenario". Hardly expected from one who
claims to have a "capacity for poetry second to no one". Oh come on
Ralph! Might I suggest a little humility.
Huw Edwards
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 16:36:08 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Henriette Stavis
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Belligerent Blakeans
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
These last few weeks, I've been following the discussions on the list
intently. In fact, the list has been so lively that I'm in a continual
race to keep up with the reading. I, therefore, apologize for responding
at such a late date to something that Nathan Deeter wrote on the 29
August.
Reading Mr Deeter's entry, and quite a number of the entries before and
after, I am perhaps just a little amazed at the slightly belligerent tone
that has crept into the list. I'm new at internet-discussion groups, so
this may be just a normal spell of academic distemper, but since many of
the people on the list seem to have literature as their job and hobby,
I'm surprised at the intolerance.
One of the things that I teach my students is that as long as they can
argue well for their opinion they are allowed to have any opinion they
like. I make a point out of saying that I will give them a good grade,
even if I disagree with them, if they have a sound, logical
argumentation.
And although Blake says that without contraries there is no progression,
he also writes that when the four zoas are in disharmony, Albion will
remain in a state of slumber.
So perhaps we should show ourselves to be good Blakeans and try to agree
to disagree without resorting to discourteous and undignified bickering.
Henriette
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 10:12:40 -0500
From: RPYODER@ualr.edu
To: BLAKE@albion.com
Subject: re: quotation
Message-Id: <980911101240.20c0332f@ualr.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
Many thanks to Izak, Tim, and Jennifer for pointing me in the right direction.
Paul Yoder
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 98 09:32:26 -0700
From: Seth T. Ross
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake List break
Message-Id: <9809111632.AA04501@albion.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
Hi all. I'll be turning off the Blake List this weekend, so get your posts in
now. We'll be back on Monday.
Cheers,
Seth
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To leave the Blake List, send an email message to
blake-request@albion.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the
SUBJECT field. Please use the address blake-request@albion.com
for all administrative queries.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 98 09:58:36 -0700
From: Seth T. Ross
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Belligerent Blakeans
Message-Id: <9809111658.AA04661@albion.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
> ... when the four zoas are in disharmony, Albion will remain in a
> state of slumber.
Zzzzzzzzzz ...
> So perhaps we should show ourselves to be good Blakeans and try
> to agree to disagree without resorting to discourteous and
> undignified bickering.
Concur. See neighboring content nexus at
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/index.html
---
A\ Seth Ross "Create like a god,
A A\ Albion.com command like a king
A A\ 415.752.7666 & work like a slave."
--Guy Kawasaki
--------------------------------
End of blake-d Digest V1998 Issue #63
*************************************