Today's Topics:
what's our status?
Blake List Open (was: Re: what's our status?)
Introduction -Reply
critical editions
Re: Introduction -Reply
Re: Introduction -Reply
Re: Introduction -Reply -Reply
Re: introduction
Re: introduction
Re: [Re: introduction]
Re: Re: Introduction -Reply
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Subject: what's our status?
Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 18:55:01 -0500 (CDT)
From: rpyoder@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Dear Seth,
I want to add my belated congratulations on the birth of your son.
I also want to ask what is the status of the Blake email list. Apparently
you haven't taken the list offline because I still get the occasional
message, but I also have respect for the list as "your party" (if I
remember one of our last metaphors), and I don't want to just barge in.
I'm teaching a Blake seminar this semester and I miss the list.
Paul Yoder
"Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce / Angels" Milton
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Subject: Blake List Open (was: Re: what's our status?)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 99 18:14:20 -0800
From: Seth T. Ross
To: blake@albion.com
> I also want to ask what is the status of the Blake email list.
I never actually took the list offline. I trusted people not to post
during the hiatus.
We're officially open again. Post at will.
Yours,
Seth
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Subject: Introduction -Reply
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1999 09:43:01 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
>>> mark peterson 1/February/1999
08:43pm >>>
Hi, my name is Mark Peterson, I just joined your group. I've been working
through a Master's degree in theology and I've spent countless hours on
Blake's visionary genius, although I'm still wondering whether there is
any
real, practical use in trying to make Blake's visions one's own.
Dear MArk, I'm going to reply in pieces to your questions which I find
very relevant to the whole experience of loving and teaching Blake. From
a personal point of view, Blake has been deeply relevant in that he
addresses the problem of how a good God could create a world in
which so many suffer and which it seems you either gobble others or
are gobbled - in which the Devourer prevails over the Prolific at every
turn, as exemplified in the Worm in the Rose and Tiger in the dark forests
of the Night. He exonerates the Eternal HUmanity Divine by positing a
fallen creator, as so the kabbalists and Gnostics.
Blake intended his readers to make his visions their own by entering
contemplatiavely into the imaginary spaces he evokes and was fully
aware that Priests of all religions force their initiates into mental spaces
too tight for human comfort, as succinctly suggested in those priests
walking their rounds and binding with thorns all joys and desires, and
forcing people into circles where the horizon is bounded, not infinite with
God's love and mercy.
The 'Hammer of Los' is one of mercy since he uses it to smash down
the edifices, crated anew age after age, of religions which are presided
over by cruel deities or the jealous God of the Old Testament.. Thus, it is
not surprising that your using this image ` wasn't very productive in
gathering interest from... students in a class ....[ you were]
teaching on the "Kerygma of William Blake" here in Sacramento, CA at
TrinityCathedral'. I once received a very indignant letter from the Pastor
of a local church who thought it was blasphemy to teach Blake.... having
heard what my student reported of my lectures. Even more bizarre was
the fact that the typist I employed to type my doctoral thesis consulted
with her Church minister who told her she could accept no payment for
doing so because of the dreadeful implications which I tried to make clear
in the thesis. I ended up buying Christmas presents for the promised
amount and laying them under her tree so that she could avoid the taint !
However, in the strangest turn of events, I have been welcomed
heartily and invited to lecture several times to the Religious Experience
Forum at the University of South Africa whose interest extends to the
mystical, and recently gave a lecture at the Catholic University of St
MAry's in Sydney, Australia.
I think the answer is to be totally transparent about the subversive nature
of Blake's vision of the Fall and Redemption ... then those who feel
uncomfortable with the precepts of orthodoxy will come... and the
orthodox may also like to come in order to challenge and defy what they
see as gross misinterpretation of the Bible. Blake, howver, sought to
reconcile Christian , Turk and Jew ... but would probably have been
threatened like Rushdie with death if his ideas really took hold today.
Even in online discussions on Blake in this group, ironically, to speak of
Blake's spirituality and mystical insights is regarded by some as being
an `airhead'. As Blake knew, in designating his succinct Proverbs as
being of `Hell' when they are clearly inspired by intuiting the divine
powers, those who espouse truth and seek to build Jerusalem in the
fallen world are, in a travesty of holy self-righteousness, branded as
demonic. It is truly an upside-down world, manifesting in the branches
of the inverted Tree of Life, the womb-like fungus which is an
excrescence in the dark abyss of time and space.....
Hope this gives some insight into the ` successes/failures' and I'm sure
there must be many others who could contribute personal experinces.
My successes , during apartheid, were always phenomenal among the
black people in my class who recognised in Blake a man who found any
form of tyranny insulting to human dignity.
As you rightly say, ` even though Blake's "Eternal worlds" encompass
lhumanity, I still feel strongly that W.B. saw himself as a 'type' of prophet
in the Isaiah-Ezekiel camp (seeing his own genius as both contrary to,
and in service of the "heavenly Jerusalem" which John on Patmos
framed in the language of the Hebrew Bible's vision-- as God's Kingdom
coming...) You ask : can the 'secularized' man or woman in a crisis of
faith, turning to a community of faith, find a place for our friend William
Blake ?' I personally see Blake as the best hope for children of a future
age, such as Blake himself put his faith in. Certainly, he is admired by
local young whites and blacks who have Rastafarian leanings since their
vocabulary also deals with Jerusalem and Babylon ... but of course, the
Rastas oversimplify grossly whereas Blake 's tending of the Minute
PArticulars raises a lovely garden of thought. I think Blake will be loved
for his compassion and probity .... many people who have introduced
themselves to this group as newcomers have mentioned their strong
affection for the poet - a spontaneous response from the heart, not only
the head, and I think this will increasingly be the case in the next century
as the young look for depth and sincerity to guide them in their search for
the meaning of life.
Pam van SChaik, Dept English, Univ of South Africa.
_______________________________________________________
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Subject: critical editions
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 16:14:46 -0500
From: Thora Brylowe
To: blake@albion.com
Hello, all.
I have been using the Norton Critical Edition, available to all impoverished
students, for my citations in my MA thesis on the cultural influences that
played into Blake's dialectics. The editors are Mary Lynn Johnson & John
Grant.
If I were a real scholar, which text would I cite? I see a lot of the older
books & articles use Keynes; newer ones use Erdman. Trinity is offering a
Blake course this semester, so the shelf at the library is a vast desert
wasteland. I did manage to get a Bentely, though. Is that okay, or should
I resort to more drastic measures (such as ILL)--or can I just use my
Norton...?
Thanks,
Thora Brylowe
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Subject: Re: Introduction -Reply
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 12:22:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Ironically, I liked your post and agree with everything you said, balking
only at this one discordant note:
At 09:43 AM 2/2/99 +0200, P Van Schaik wrote:
>Even in online discussions on Blake in this group, ironically, to speak of
>Blake's spirituality and mystical insights is regarded by some as being
>an `airhead'.
I've left these disputes back in 1998 and see no need to begin 1999 with
them in sight. If someone else wants to start an argument, fine, but I'm on
to other topics now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Introduction -Reply
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 17:09:24 -0500 (EST)
From: johnmartinevansiii
To: blake@albion.com
Pam, Mark, et al:
I have read these posts with no small measure of delight. I made a
presentation earlier this year on some similar themes, which may be of
interest to the discussion.
You mention how the proverbs are labelled as from Hell because of their
efforts to establish Jerusalem in the fallen world. Clearly this angle,
and Blake's general "divinity of Man" ideas, are in conflict with the
church, to which he subtly and ironically alludes by placing his words in
the mouths of demons.
I don't think Blake thought of himself as heretical though, and I think
that orthodoxies might gain from viewing Blake as a prophet presenting
simply a different allegorical reading of the Bible, certainly an ancient
and established practice. I have taken Blake, at least in the Bible of
Hell books, to be pointing out the ways in which we read the Bible too
literally and lose access to ways of achieving its fullness here on earth.
Take Urizen. The classic Urizen image for me is the Ancient of Days one
(not definitively Urizen but reasonably supported). He reaches down with
a compass, measuring, imposing standards and units and limits (Urizen from
the greek "to limit" same root as horizon, the limit of sight). In
rebelling from the perfect flux of paradise he chooses perfect stasis.
Paradise then recoils from around him (the kaballistic image I'm so
obsessed with). In these senses the compass is symbolic not just in
measuring the space between the two points, but in the points themselves.
Urizen consigns the world into a series of forked paths, leading from
unity to duality just like the image of the compass. Before Urizen, we
have unity, a perfectly changing one, but unity nonetheless. After him,
we have polarities: here and there, now and then, life and death, religion
and science, man and god, man and woman, parent and child, and so on.
Starting with the divorce of Urizen from eternity and then the divorce of
Los from Urizen, Urizen's efforts splinter the world into a series of
opposites.
Blake means for us to see that our fallen state is the result of Urizen's
actions, not a mistaken moral judgment as in the adam eve melodrama, but
simply a lack of imagination capable of envisioning the unified cosmos.
Blake through Los seems to say that if we could have the imagination to
leap beyond Urizen's divided world, we could regain paradise here and now,
the earthly Jerusalem.
Examining that lack of imagination, we see how Paradise becomes banished
from our lives: imagine a place that is timeless and spaceless, no time
and no where. Yet we live in a world of time and space, of now and here
in relation to then and there. That's Urizen's curse. So something which
is espoused to be without time or space has the appearance of being BEYOND
time and space, resulting in the traditional locations of heaven: at the
end of time (judgment day) and above the sky in the heavens. In both the
temporal and spatial sense eternity exists beyond our horizons, farther
than we can see, and we were the ones who placed it there. Beyond the
horizons implies beyond Urizen, and there is the key: eternity is
incompatible with our Urizenic states of here and now. To access it, we
can sit and wait for time to end and space to stop, OR, as Blake suggests,
we can go after Urizen himself.
This is the standard tenet of all mysticism, not just Blake's. Seen from
one light, mysticism is very silly, mumbo-jumbo, and anti-academic. But
think of mysticism as the attempt to achieve timelessness and
spacelessness in the here and now, the unity of the pre-Urizenic state,
aka Eden. Blake doesn't see this as the work of heathen druids. He sees
it as the work of artists (see the plate where Milton reaches up and
grapples with Urizen's face as Urizen holds the tablets of the decalogue),
and also of religious prophets. I think you would find this aspect of
mysticism in pretty much every religion, maybe least of all Christianity
but only because Christians deny that they do it.
In this sense Blake's mysticism can be seen as a rereading of the Bible,
pointing out that our fallen state may have resulted in mistaken notions
of God's paradise and where it resides, and when we are allowed to access
it. I think this allegory has real value to secularists and theologians,
and certainly it forms the basis of the divinely humanist vision for the
world which Blake put forth and which Pam alluded to at the end of the
post.
Sorry to ramble, but you hit a button. :)
John M. Evans III
Yale University
203-764-7217
On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, P Van Schaik wrote:
>
>
> >>> mark peterson 1/February/1999
> 08:43pm >>>
> Hi, my name is Mark Peterson, I just joined your group. I've been working
> through a Master's degree in theology and I've spent countless hours on
> Blake's visionary genius, although I'm still wondering whether there is
> any
> real, practical use in trying to make Blake's visions one's own.
>
> Dear MArk, I'm going to reply in pieces to your questions which I find
> very relevant to the whole experience of loving and teaching Blake. From
> a personal point of view, Blake has been deeply relevant in that he
> addresses the problem of how a good God could create a world in
> which so many suffer and which it seems you either gobble others or
> are gobbled - in which the Devourer prevails over the Prolific at every
> turn, as exemplified in the Worm in the Rose and Tiger in the dark forests
> of the Night. He exonerates the Eternal HUmanity Divine by positing a
> fallen creator, as so the kabbalists and Gnostics.
> Blake intended his readers to make his visions their own by entering
> contemplatiavely into the imaginary spaces he evokes and was fully
> aware that Priests of all religions force their initiates into mental spaces
> too tight for human comfort, as succinctly suggested in those priests
> walking their rounds and binding with thorns all joys and desires, and
> forcing people into circles where the horizon is bounded, not infinite with
> God's love and mercy.
>
> The 'Hammer of Los' is one of mercy since he uses it to smash down
> the edifices, crated anew age after age, of religions which are presided
> over by cruel deities or the jealous God of the Old Testament.. Thus, it is
> not surprising that your using this image ` wasn't very productive in
> gathering interest from... students in a class ....[ you were]
> teaching on the "Kerygma of William Blake" here in Sacramento, CA at
> TrinityCathedral'. I once received a very indignant letter from the Pastor
> of a local church who thought it was blasphemy to teach Blake.... having
> heard what my student reported of my lectures. Even more bizarre was
> the fact that the typist I employed to type my doctoral thesis consulted
> with her Church minister who told her she could accept no payment for
> doing so because of the dreadeful implications which I tried to make clear
> in the thesis. I ended up buying Christmas presents for the promised
> amount and laying them under her tree so that she could avoid the taint !
>
> However, in the strangest turn of events, I have been welcomed
> heartily and invited to lecture several times to the Religious Experience
> Forum at the University of South Africa whose interest extends to the
> mystical, and recently gave a lecture at the Catholic University of St
> MAry's in Sydney, Australia.
> I think the answer is to be totally transparent about the subversive nature
> of Blake's vision of the Fall and Redemption ... then those who feel
> uncomfortable with the precepts of orthodoxy will come... and the
> orthodox may also like to come in order to challenge and defy what they
> see as gross misinterpretation of the Bible. Blake, howver, sought to
> reconcile Christian , Turk and Jew ... but would probably have been
> threatened like Rushdie with death if his ideas really took hold today.
> Even in online discussions on Blake in this group, ironically, to speak of
> Blake's spirituality and mystical insights is regarded by some as being
> an `airhead'. As Blake knew, in designating his succinct Proverbs as
> being of `Hell' when they are clearly inspired by intuiting the divine
> powers, those who espouse truth and seek to build Jerusalem in the
> fallen world are, in a travesty of holy self-righteousness, branded as
> demonic. It is truly an upside-down world, manifesting in the branches
> of the inverted Tree of Life, the womb-like fungus which is an
> excrescence in the dark abyss of time and space.....
>
> Hope this gives some insight into the ` successes/failures' and I'm sure
> there must be many others who could contribute personal experinces.
> My successes , during apartheid, were always phenomenal among the
> black people in my class who recognised in Blake a man who found any
> form of tyranny insulting to human dignity.
>
> As you rightly say, ` even though Blake's "Eternal worlds" encompass
> lhumanity, I still feel strongly that W.B. saw himself as a 'type' of prophet
> in the Isaiah-Ezekiel camp (seeing his own genius as both contrary to,
> and in service of the "heavenly Jerusalem" which John on Patmos
> framed in the language of the Hebrew Bible's vision-- as God's Kingdom
> coming...) You ask : can the 'secularized' man or woman in a crisis of
> faith, turning to a community of faith, find a place for our friend William
> Blake ?' I personally see Blake as the best hope for children of a future
> age, such as Blake himself put his faith in. Certainly, he is admired by
> local young whites and blacks who have Rastafarian leanings since their
> vocabulary also deals with Jerusalem and Babylon ... but of course, the
> Rastas oversimplify grossly whereas Blake 's tending of the Minute
> PArticulars raises a lovely garden of thought. I think Blake will be loved
> for his compassion and probity .... many people who have introduced
> themselves to this group as newcomers have mentioned their strong
> affection for the poet - a spontaneous response from the heart, not only
> the head, and I think this will increasingly be the case in the next century
> as the young look for depth and sincerity to guide them in their search for
> the meaning of life.
> Pam van SChaik, Dept English, Univ of South Africa.
>
> _______________________________________________________
>
John M. Evans III
(203)764-7217
Yale University
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Introduction -Reply -Reply
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 08:39:15 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
As I said, long ago, Ralph, I think we have more in common than you
think. I was hurt by being singled out as a target ever since joining this
list. It is not my intention to recommence the debate which was never
based on any real perceptions of the other, but the virtual heads of
newcomers have often enough been snapped off for me to deliver a
generalised warning as to what they may be confronting in taking a
mystical view. Pam
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: introduction
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 11:01:54
From: Izak Bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
>From: mark peterson
>If any of you Blakeans have attempted to start local 'Blake
>discussion groups' within a church /bible study context-- can you let
>me know about your successes/failures
We did not have a discussion group within a church context, but
we ran a “Blake Workshop” continuously for eleven years in a town
in Eastern Canada. It was a place with a secular university and a
Catholic liberal arts college on the same campus. When the staff
of the English department of the secular university showed no great
interest (although some of their graduate students said that it was
the best thing that had happened to them) we moved to the
Catholic College where the Workshop prospered and the students
attended regularly, as did professors from various departments.
We would have the occasional invited guest, ranging from Hindu
meditators to lay persons with an interest in Blake’s mythological
landscape to Northrop Frye himself. (I might add that this Catholic
College awarded the present Dalai Lama an honorary doctorate.
It seems to me that the Catholic Church here in Canada is very open
to contact with Buddhism and the present Dalai Lama, even though
the policy of the Canadian Government is apparently to hold the
Dalai Lama at arm’s length and opt for friendship with China.)
I do not think you should worry too much about attendance. We had some
of our best Workshops in years when the number of people attending were
not very high. The fructifying influence of consorting with Blake
works where even a few are gathered. We used our advertisements as a way
of acquainting a larger population with Blake. Copies of striking Blake
illustrations with quotations from Blake seemed favourite items for
students to collect and provided fodder for conversation even among
those who would probably never see the inside of a Blake Workshop.
I have recently come in contact for the first time in my life with Buddhist
liturgy and at the same time have noted that D.T. Suzuki called Swedenborg
the “Buddha of the North.” There are several scholars that reckon that
Swedenborg’s influence on Blake is generally underestimated. The more I
try to understand Swedenborg, the more I think I understand not only Blake’s
“thinking” but also the methods he uses in his poetry to situate and
insinuate
his hearer into approaching a psychological universe where heavens and hells
are not constructs to be sneered at but psychic realities to be looked at
and seen for what they are. When I read the enumerations of the counties
of England or the tribes of Israel woven by Blake into his narrative, I have
always felt energized by it but could not understand why. Now I get the
same feeling from Buddhist visualizations, even although in the end one
is always instructed to dissolve the visualized creation.
Gloudina Bouwer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: introduction
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 11:57:12 -0500 (EST)
From: johnmartinevansiii
To: blake@albion.com
Your email reminded me that I had forgotten to mention Northrop Frye, who
has written extensively on the subjects currently in discussion.
-John
On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Izak Bouwer wrote:
>
> >From: mark peterson
>
> >If any of you Blakeans have attempted to start local 'Blake
> >discussion groups' within a church /bible study context-- can you let
> >me know about your successes/failures
>
> We did not have a discussion group within a church context, but
> we ran a “Blake Workshop” continuously for eleven years in a town
> in Eastern Canada. It was a place with a secular university and a
> Catholic liberal arts college on the same campus. When the staff
> of the English department of the secular university showed no great
> interest (although some of their graduate students said that it was
> the best thing that had happened to them) we moved to the
> Catholic College where the Workshop prospered and the students
> attended regularly, as did professors from various departments.
> We would have the occasional invited guest, ranging from Hindu
> meditators to lay persons with an interest in Blake’s mythological
> landscape to Northrop Frye himself. (I might add that this Catholic
> College awarded the present Dalai Lama an honorary doctorate.
> It seems to me that the Catholic Church here in Canada is very open
> to contact with Buddhism and the present Dalai Lama, even though
> the policy of the Canadian Government is apparently to hold the
> Dalai Lama at arm’s length and opt for friendship with China.)
>
> I do not think you should worry too much about attendance. We had some
> of our best Workshops in years when the number of people attending were
> not very high. The fructifying influence of consorting with Blake
> works where even a few are gathered. We used our advertisements as a way
> of acquainting a larger population with Blake. Copies of striking Blake
> illustrations with quotations from Blake seemed favourite items for
> students to collect and provided fodder for conversation even among
> those who would probably never see the inside of a Blake Workshop.
>
> I have recently come in contact for the first time in my life with Buddhist
> liturgy and at the same time have noted that D.T. Suzuki called Swedenborg
> the “Buddha of the North.” There are several scholars that reckon that
> Swedenborg’s influence on Blake is generally underestimated. The more I
> try to understand Swedenborg, the more I think I understand not only Blake’s
> “thinking” but also the methods he uses in his poetry to situate and
> insinuate
> his hearer into approaching a psychological universe where heavens and hells
> are not constructs to be sneered at but psychic realities to be looked at
> and seen for what they are. When I read the enumerations of the counties
> of England or the tribes of Israel woven by Blake into his narrative, I have
> always felt energized by it but could not understand why. Now I get the
> same feeling from Buddhist visualizations, even although in the end one
> is always instructed to dissolve the visualized creation.
>
> Gloudina Bouwer
>
John M. Evans III
(203)764-7217
Yale University
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Re: introduction]
Date: 3 Feb 99 10:01:18 PST
From: mark peterson
To: blake@albion.com
blake-request@albion.com wrote:
>From: mark peterson
>If any of you Blakeans have attempted to start local 'Blake
>discussion groups' within a church /bible study context-- can you let
>me know about your successes/failures
We did not have a discussion group within a church context, but
we ran a “Blake Workshop” continuously for eleven years in a town
in Eastern Canada...
Gloudina, your response made my day-- thank you. It really was great to hear
about the eleven year Blake group (!) I've read both Suzuki and Swedenborg
(I've heard that D.T.Suzuki was the first to translate Swedenborg to a wider
oriental audience early in his career), and although I believe the Swedenborg
influence on Blake can be overstated (as in the Swedenborg society's book
Opposition Is True Friendship), your right that it truly helps in
understanding some of Blake's roots.
With your background in Buddhism, you must be familiar with Thomas Merton's
work as a Catholic and Blake enthusiast (I wish Merton spent more time on
Blake-- I haven't seen much that he wrote in actually interpreting Blake, just
fond references generally to his early poetry). Is there anything else you
could share about the Catholic College you mention(?)
Thanks again for the response, and you're right about 'group
numbers/attendance'; however, as this web site shows-- teachers DO need
students (and the benefits of Blake for a wider audience was pointed out by
Pam S.'s response very accurately). Mark Peterson
____________________________________________________________________
More than just email--Get your FREE Netscape WebMail account today at http://home.netscape.com/netcenter/mail
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Re: Introduction -Reply
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 13:21:04 EST
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com, john.evans@yale.edu
John,
Right on! I loved your message, as also Mark's self-introduction. I just
want to ask what you meant by
>So something which
>is espoused to be without time or space...
Espoused? Is this intentional or just a typo for "supposed"? (Having read
Blake for many years, I question every odd usage I don't understand.)
--Tom Devine
PS - I'm querying you offline, because this is just a nit. I try to keep from
posting nits on the list.