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blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 101
Today's Topics:
Re: Re:Re: Thel-Thel -Reply -Reply -Reply
Re: `going too far'
Re: Re: Eternity and Pictures -Reply
Re: Eternity as Scent & Charlie's answer
Re: `going too far'
Re: `going too far' -Reply
Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply
Re: LYCA -Reply
Re: LYCA -Reply
Pam's Reading --and how far to go
Introduction
Re: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply
Re: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply
Evil Be Thou My Good
Thel's "problems"
Re: LYCA -Reply -Reply
Re: LYCA -Reply -Reply
Pam's Reading --and how far to go -Reply
Re: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply -Reply
Re: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply -Reply
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 11:34:24 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: blake@albion.com, tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu
Subject: Re: Re:Re: Thel-Thel -Reply -Reply -Reply
Message-Id: <s210684a.067@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Tom , for me there is nothing in Blake's vision of Eternity which remotely
resembles Milton's "fugitive and cloister'd virtue". If one closely reads
what BLake says about the Emanations and their Zoas in Eternity, then
one sees that Eternals are exposed to each other's mental visions -
entire universes in which each Eternal, god-like, creates whatever is in
his soul to create and these visions become manifest in Beulah where
there is sufficient light and shadow to allow thought -forms to become
visible. God is seen as the fountainhead and those who expand into his
bosom as partaking of his Divine Humanity. Eternals who like each
others' visions freely mingle their soft fibres in love, commingling their
essences . Those who dislike each others' visions roll apart in
thunders and avoid each other. So Thel is returning sensibly (not
retreating in defeat) to the fullest possible expression of energy (which
is one of the reasons why Blake decries passivity and sees it as the
opposite of energetic good).
This view of Blake does not depend on knowledge of Kabbalah - it is in
his own poems and I only began to see how it fitted hand-in-glove with
Kabbalah long after completing doctoral studies exclusively on BLake's
poetry. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 12:14:20 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: blake@albion.com, WaHu@aol.com
Subject: Re: `going too far'
Message-Id: <s21071ca.093@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Can a poet who writes "The road of excess leads to the palace of
Wisdom" be dismissed as going `too far' (as Hugh does) when he
endorses a Platonic and neo-platonic viewpoint? Why should this elicit
what sounds like sneers? Even Shakespeare has Hamlet say that `there
are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your
philosophy'. Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 12:17:06 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: blake@albion.com, chaz@take3soft.com
Subject: Re: Re: Eternity and Pictures -Reply
Message-Id: <s2107260.097@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, Charlie! I think these are,, indeed, the central
themes of Blake. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 15:35:28 -0500 (EST)
From: WATT <WATT@Butler.EDU>
To: Albion Blake <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Re: Eternity as Scent & Charlie's answer
Message-Id: <5128351513081996/A74226/OVID/11A86BE31800*@MHS>
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Medieval Nominalism is with us yet only it has got itself an up-to-date name
(Scientific materialism). Its essential character is unchanged (as Blake notes
individuals come & go; states remain); it's still a lonely and joyless search
for certainty married to an ironic distancing which depends for its effect on
scorn & horror in the audience. So pray for them; all of them --"it's a mad,
mad mission; sign me up!" Jim Watt
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 19:17:19 -0400
From: WaHu@aol.com
To: VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za
Cc: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: `going too far'
Message-Id: <960813191719_455710283@emout18.mail.aol.com>
Going to far? I'm always in favor of going too far. Not going anywhere is
the issue. If Thel doesn't want to go to the drive-in movies with the nice
young man because she has to study for an algebra exam, she's got problems.
And who are you calling a Platonist/neo-platonist? Me? Them's fightin'
words. Blake? How perverse. And while I always give points for perversity,
a perversity that wants to move Blake toward a conventional morality is dull.
Your reading of Thel is dull.
Excuse me, I'm late for the monthly meeting of the Iconclasts' Club.
Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 09:32:28 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: WaHu@aol.com
Cc: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: `going too far' -Reply
Message-Id: <s2119d46.099@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Dear Hugh, I,m calling Blake a Platonist or neo-Platonist, as does Kathleen
Raine, and several other published critics ... not you who, if I understand
you correctly, would find any world, not of this earth, `dull'. But Blake's
world of Innocence in Eternity (despite our conventional associations
with this word, `Innocence') is not dull, but infinitely varied because of
the intense creativity of those who live in the mental fires of God's
humanity. Surely to be most fully humane is not to be equated with moral
dullness and repression of energies which Blake associates with
Urizen. For Blake, the world in which all things have to have a
permanent form is dull because change is so slow and barely perceptible
where things have a fixed form. So , in judging Thel a ninny and as
opting for dullness, I think you are simply misunderstanding what I say. I
can't explain fully here, but will try to get the doctoral thesis on the Web
... but then this is academic and you might find it too dull to read. But, if
you like communicating on-line, and don't find this dull, why would you
find Blake's `mental wars' in which Eternals exchange ideas and create
worlds, dull? Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 07:02:57 -0400
From: WaHu@aol.com
To: VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za
Cc: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply
Message-Id: <960814070257_501006246@emout10.mail.aol.com>
Pam,
Kathlene Raine is an idiot. She is valuable only because everything she says
is wrong. She is dangerous for the same reason. You seem to believe your
own reading of Blake is True or Real or Something. That all these goofy
constructs like Eternity and Beulah (and your Beulah sounds perilously like a
Mormon one--my favorite american wackos) are Real, and that if we have faith
all will be revealed to us when we die.
Blake wrote poems. Works of fiction. And more or less clearly labeled them
as such. He didn't find tablets buried in his backyard and move to Utah. He
was not a fool entangled in a religious snare. You are.
However sweet you make it sound, however pure your intentions, the fact that
you mis-interpret the nighmarish and ghastly lands of Har and Heva--- makes
you a danger to yourself and others.
Har and Heva are Ronald and Nancy, the former First Couple. Go figure.
Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 10:15:07 EDT
From: joelmw@juno.com (Joel M Wasinger)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: LYCA -Reply
Message-Id: <19960815.081307.2887.1.joelmw@juno.com>
Pam:
To begin, I should say that your first reply to Darlene states well
(delightfully and with appropriate citations) many of the tensions and I
do believe that ultimately the most compelling response will be the one
which manages to reflect whatever is good and whole in Blake and his
system, which respects (but also battles with) the insight and expression
of the author. I think I share many of your concerns about bad and/or
simply lazy criticism. The mention of Yeats in the context of this
freedom to appropriate reminds me of one my favorite lines of his (and
forgive the potential inaccuracies, I don't have my Yeats volume here to
check):
Coat let them take it
For there's more enterprise in walking naked
which I read, in part, as an artist's reply to his art being
misappropriated. And that's a whole other discussion.
Seems to me that the most apt expression of the appreciation one has for
Blake or Yeats (or whoever) is to respond in kind. The fuller one
perceives, appreciates, participates in the author's vision, the more
substantial one's response will be. It's all about resonance. That's
one of the reasons I'm drawn to Blake -- because he resonates with the
bible. Part of what's so fascinating about the new testament is the way
it resonates with the old.
If you pay any attention to Blake or the bible, you'll see that the
appropriation often violates many of the tenets of proper
contextualization (perhaps improperly so-called). If we limit to
"verifiable" context, we might as well join the disparagers who call
poetry mere fiction, fiction less than reality, faith a delusion, doubt
intellect, reason god. Part of my agenda is fueled by biblical critics,
literary critics, theologians and the like who either (or both) stop at
their reasonably-verifiable understanding of the author's intent or use
the author's intent and system as just another vehicle for their own
monolithic, droning, restrictive, fragmented and/or propagandist
philosophy. Blake and other scripture are subject to the same dangers
and relying on intentionality is no safeguard. Moreover, the system as
well as the poem may be badly molded to the trends of society or to the
contours of one's own physiognomy. The distaste we feel when a poet is
misused and abused has as much to do with the spectred limitations of the
critic as with the specific approach that critic has taken to or away
from the text and/or the system. Some faces just don't give much light.
In any case, I'd rather see Blake violently misappropriated into a new
context than meekly mulched down into the same old ones. Mulching is
generally what misappropriating critics do and even if the system appears
to be new, it's shallowness and lack of imagination reveal it to be the
same old reductionism or merchandizing. Either way, if what the
responder does, whether close to the original poet's intent, is good,
it's good; if it's not it's not.
No matter how sincere our motives, if we try to sing a pitch ('d his
mansion . . . ) we're not tuned for, we can still pull the theme in the
wrong direction. Better to enjoy the music and harmonize in acchord with
our own range. Sometimes we'd seem to be apart but the symphony is more
than one note and a good song is susceptible to multitudes of variation.
Not that we shouldn't stretch to hear the piper; indeed, "the most
sublime act is to set another before you."
It gets back to resonance. To resonate, you have to sense
(hear/see/smell/ken/intuit/etc. but imagine above all) what the author or
text is saying -- and sometimes, what the author is hearing. That may be
(and perhaps most often is) helped by the context of the author's other
work and system. Sometimes, adapting to one's own weakness or the
author's requires that something be skewed. Maybe the poet says
something that he doesn't realize he's saying (sue me and flame me, but
it happens); maybe Blake has beautiful vision but he's limiting himself
in ways I choose not to (it's inevitable, even with Blake; it's that
whole many-membered body thing); maybe I'm not ready for the system but I
glimpse the spark. Even if you get it wrong, if you put yourself in the
right community (both textually and interpersonally) the willingness to
boldly contend with the text, even out of context, even wrongly, is bound
to work. To contract the proverbs of Hell and Heaven: the fool in his
folly on the road of excess plowed the worm and, stone against stone, he
was sharpened.
We'd be better off if we (and I speak as much to myself here as to
others) did adopt and go out and live (with personal insight perhaps, as
you mention, but moreso with burning desire) it. But I'm drifting and
pulling out of context again.
Blake, I believe, favored closure to the extent that he favored form and
a sharp outline. He also favored the purging and salutary 'fires of
Hell.' The subject, I suggest, should never be merely interpretation but
apocalypse, the 'melting of apparent surfaces,' 'displaying the
infinite,' to 'wash off the Not Human.' So, Blake built but he also
burnt and rebuilt and calls us to do the same. If we succeed, we neither
blur nor obscure but clarify and reveal. Perhaps the structure must be
razed, but we'll raise it again. Hey, "I'm just an ordinary guy burnin
down the house" and Blake's "writings are the linen clothes folded up."
Finally, I take Blake's poetry seriously; I take it damned seriously;
I'll take it where it leads me and if I've the strength and good cause,
I'll take it where it might not want to go; but I AM, sure as hell,
taking it with me. It'll still be there when I've gone but maybe it will
have some company.
joel
> Dear Joel, the points you raise re freedom to appropriate the artistic
work
> of another as one likes are difficult to resolve , I think, since they
impinge
> on the relationship between art and life - a subject dear to Yeats'
> heart . My own initial interest in Blake was fueled by critics who
had,
> however, very freely appropriated Blake `violently into a new
> context' which, in my opinion, did not at all do justice to the poet.
Thus,
> as an interpreter, I too had to begin by reconsidering all the texts
and
> trying to see where I thought critics had misappropriated. There are
dangers,
> particularly with Blake, who rewrites the story of the Fall as well
> as proposes a whole new social contract, in simply seeing the poems
as
> isolated units. Such an approach results in skewing meaning to suit
> the latest trends in literary theory or simply to suit one's own
> personality. I doubt whether any Blake lover, though, so completely
adopts
> whatever it is assumed that the poet believes in as to go out and live
it ,
> without personal emedation and insight. Even Christianity is as
various as
> its practitioners. But, you are stating, I think, what many students
> feel when one tries to present a coherent view of Blake -- namely, why
should
> Blake have favoured any form of closure? Perhaps he would have
> encouraged the breaking of all mental chains and boxes , as implied
> in "No Bird soars too high if it soars with its own wings". Still, if
> the subject is clear interpretation of a poet or artist, one does have
to try to
> walk in step with the creator of what we admire rather than simply blur
> his/her ideas. No? What do others think? Pam
>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:15:18 +0000
From: sternh@WABASH.EDU
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: LYCA -Reply
Message-Id: <v01530500ae3893206af2@[161.32.27.160]>
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>
The old question of misprison will continue to huant us. Enormous
force is made available available to the misreader of texts--witness not
simply Blake on Milton and Yeats on Blake and Harold Bloom on everyone, but
also the Christian Testament on the Jewish Testament, the Kabbalah on the
Torah.
At the same time, strong misreadings depend on strong readings.
Until we have been transformed by a work of art, we can hardly transform
it. The worst kind of misreadings, and probably the most common, are those
we make in order to remain who we are already, thus avoiding the encounter
with otherness that lies waiting for us.
I like what Marc-Alain Ouaknin has to say about this in "The Burnt
Book: Reading the Talmud": "Interpretation implies the bursting open of a
literary space: the text is no longer to be considered in its linerarity,
but in its spatiality, its volume." I like also Andr=E9 Gide's desire that
his readers not understand him too early.
So I'm with Pam re the necessity of reading the part against the
whole, understanding, of course, that the whole is shifting, evolving, as
we read, even as we ourselves are.
As to WaHu (sounds Like Yahoo), though I lean toward his Thel
rather than Pam's, Blake DID find tablets buried in his backyard and move
to Utah. He took his poems from dictation. He modestly or immodestly did
not consider himself to be the author of them. And as to his writing
fiction, was it to that genre that he committed himself when he wrote:
"Mark well my words, for they are of your eternal salvation?"
Bert Stern
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 13:13:50 -0500 (EST)
From: WATT <WATT@Butler.EDU>
To: Albion Blake <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Pam's Reading --and how far to go
Message-Id: <3450131315081996/A98048/OVID/11A87B4D2D00*@MHS>
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Dear Pam: Hang in there no matter what they say. The only reading (of Blake
or 'Reality') that's true and real IS your own. "Prudence," remember, "is a
rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity." And "believe Christ & his Apostles
that there is a Class of Men whose whole delight (when they aren't courting
Prudence) is in Destroying." [Erdman, 35 & 95 for you fn checkers out there]
Jim Watt
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 17:28:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: jerikson@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu (Jeffrey C. Erikson)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Introduction
Message-Id: <199608152128.RAA08215@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I'm new to this list, and remember reading somewhere that I should introduce
myself. So . . . I'm Jeffrey Erikson, a graduate student in English at the
Ohio State University, who did a thesis as an undergraduate relating Blake
to deconstruction and Judeo-Christian thought (yes, it was more specific
than that, but I'm not about to go into more detail here--"I was young and
foolish then; I feel old and foolish now," They Might Be Giants).
I'm curious as to the current debate going on--seems rather heated, but I'm
only getting the tail-end of it because I only started receiving postings
today. Something about Thel and misreadings. Could someone e-mail me at
"erikson.1@osu.edu" to fill me in? Or is the list archived somewhere that I
could go back and look up the roots of this debate. Let me know: I'd
appreciate it
--Jeffrey Erikson
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 17:07:50 -0700
From: "Joseph W. Murray" <aeolian@everett.com>
To: <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Re: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply
Message-Id: <199608160005.RAA22077@post.everett.net>
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----------
> From: WaHu@aol.com
> To: VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za
> Cc: Blake@albion.com
> Subject: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply
> Date: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 4:02 AM
>
> Pam,
>
> Kathlene Raine is an idiot. She is valuable only because everything she
says
> is wrong. She is dangerous for the same reason. You seem to believe
your
> own reading of Blake is True or Real or Something. That all these goofy
> constructs like Eternity and Beulah (and your Beulah sounds perilously
like a
> Mormon one--my favorite american wackos) are Real, and that if we have
faith
> all will be revealed to us when we die.
>
> Blake wrote poems. Works of fiction. And more or less clearly labeled
them
> as such. He didn't find tablets buried in his backyard and move to Utah.
He
> was not a fool entangled in a religious snare. You are.
>
> However sweet you make it sound, however pure your intentions, the fact
that
> you mis-interpret the nighmarish and ghastly lands of Har and Heva---
makes
> you a danger to yourself and others.
>
> Har and Heva are Ronald and Nancy, the former First Couple. Go figure.
>
>
> Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com
Hugh,
My,my,my,my. Raine is an idiot and Pam a fool. Did your mother teach
you that or did you learn it in school.Such vitriol regarding
interpretation
of "works of fiction."Might refer you to a passage in what has been
for millenia been considered the most profound wisdom literature
by many: Jesus' Sermon on the Mount; in particular-
Matthew 5:22.
J.W. Murray
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 21:16:50 -0400
From: ted ross <erato@atl.mindspring.com>
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply
Message-Id: <1.5.4.16.19960816011650.2df7fdf0@pop.atl.mindspring.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I agree with Hugh that Pam is not reading Thel in the way Blake intended -
that she is overlaying a great deal of Blakean mythology on top of it and
obscuring the poem's very simple meaning: the existential realization that
we must create meaning now, and not wait for it to be conferred by another,
which is another way of saying that we must see the eternity in ourselves.
Blake's battle cry to create a system rather than be enslaved by another's
certainly contrasts with Thel's passive weeping and gulping listening to the
worm and the cloud. I believe Blake at his word in this one, although I
certainly lack Pam's depth of knowledge of the background of Har: there is
no way to avoid the fact that Blake is musing about the terror of the
eternal, which he resolves in this poem. Obviously he at one time felt the
need to conquer this fear in himself. This poem is his soul's answer to his
qualms. Thel is obviously the passive, fearful human unable to bring meaning
to her life and lost in vacillating musings on the pointlessness of
everything. You'd be lucky if she had an algebra exam, since she certainly
would NOT be much fun to take to a drive-in. I certainly do believe, along
with Jennifer M., that the fact that she is a virgin is significant: she has
not yet given her essence to others in the selfless love that Blake avers.
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
"come in,' she said, 'I'll give you shelter from the storm.'
Bob Dylan
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 21:43:25 -0400
From: WaHu@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Evil Be Thou My Good
Message-Id: <960815214324_457618324@emout17.mail.aol.com>
Right. So now I'm the Village Atheist. Curious that all of my attackers
take offense at my calling poems works of fiction. As if that were somehow
an insult. One suggests that I look at the stars twinkling in heaven to know
there is a God! I told Blake about that when he phoned me the other night.
He had a good long laugh.
Fiction is a good thing. For example, Bleak House is a novel by Charles
Dickens, which he wrote for money. None of the characters ever really lived,
none of the events ever occurred. It remains one of the only REAL things
left from the 19th Century. I like it better than anything by Blake.
Dickens had a much larger heart than Blake; and Blake's heart is large.
In a private message from Pam she says I have demonized her reading of Blake
and she will no longer communicate with me. Fine. I never wanted to talk
directly to her. And I did not demonize her reading. (This is one of those
tricky words, demonize, that folks with decent educations trot out when they
are steamed). For as the woman said, you cannot idealize something without
also demonizing it. And, presumably, vice versa. No where did I idealize
her reading. (So I can't have demonized it, see? I said she was dull, for
crissake.) I will say that whatever Platonic vibes she seems to be picking
up in Thel are probably from another closer influence on Thel, Dr. Johnson's
Rasselas. (Thanks for the tip Northrop, I love you man).
I have always suspected from the virulence (sic?) of his attack on Dr.
Johnson a closet affinity for the old geeser by Blake. As though the Doctor
were something Blake ate in his youth that he never digested. Blake would
have been asked by some timid souls to leave this list had he said it about
any of our pious bretheren.
(Dr. Johnson had a disease that made him wink and blink. How cruel of Billy
to call attention to it.)
And oh, I forget. How many people did the newspapers say were killed by my
displeasure with Pam's reading of Thel? When do I go on trial at the Hague?
I do come from Hell. I will not readily surrender Blake's Corpse to the
Angels.
It belongs to me! (oops, I've slipped off into Faust, beg pardon. Another
work of Fiction. I'll bet dollars to donuts there's a Faust.com somewhere
where a goodly proportion of the subscribers believe every word of Faust is
true.)
Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:57:04 +1000
From: ANN.J.SULLIVAN@student.anu.edu.au (Ann Sullivan)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Thel's "problems"
Message-Id: <v01510100ae39a2e0f1f6@[150.203.132.23]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I am wondering if Hugh Walthall would like to say a few words about why it
is that he thinks that for `Thel' to choose to study for an exam in
preference to going to "the drive-in movies with the nice young man" it
necessarily follows that she has "problems".
Ann Sullivan.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 08:41:14 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: blake@albion.com, sternh@WABASH.EDU
Subject: Re: LYCA -Reply -Reply
Message-Id: <s214345d.069@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Dear Bert, I found your eloquent reply inspiring and particularly apt at
just this particular time. Yesterday, someone asked me "Do you have
any form of unifying view of literature?" and the answer that came
most naturally was that I see it as esentially a catalyst which transforms
the psyche of the reader. So, I'm just beaming with this renewed proof
of our burgeoning interconnectedness, despite the distance between
here and there. As you say, linearity becomes spatiality or, as Donne
says:"One little room becomes an everywhere". Moreover, yesterday, I
found a book called "Christ Sparks" , dictated to the author (I think his
name is also BLoom) by these same `sparks',( in Blakean manner, no
doubt) in which it is asserted that we are in process of regaining our
lost divine unity. To some, it would appear a `whacky' notion, and even
my scepticism was on the alert - nevertheless, I could share some
snippets if there is interest out there. Perhaps BLake was right in
seeing, at the end of his Prophetic Books, the divine human just waiting
to be rediscovered in all things, and all those shadows (creating
dullness, WaHU) fleeing as the light dawns. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 09:45:37 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: blake@albion.com, joelmw@juno.com
Subject: Re: LYCA -Reply -Reply
Message-Id: <s2144363.002@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Dear Joel, I'm knocked out of my socks with joy by what you and Bert
say. Such joy that I've been openly laughing with delight to see Blake's
great `Song of Liberty' become a living reality. Again, I find it
quasi-magical that you should use the word `resonance' re Blake and
the Bible -as this is the one I chose when trying, in the Introduction, to my
`book' on Blake to explain how knowledge of Kabbalah illuminates one's
understanding of Blake and vice versa. Moreover, yesterday, I found
myself asserting more vigorously than ever in my life my resentment at
any literary theory (or deemed necessary politically correct stance)
which threatens to `colonise' my mind or the minds of my students. (I had
been marking scripts on "The Tempest" in which students had been
asked (in keeping with their supposed needs, to write about Prospero
as `colonizer, and Caliban as the 'colonised') and had been roused to a
pitch of `honest indignation' because of what happens to the magic of
this potentially redemptive spiritual text when approached with such
mental blinkers. I then went to an interview - the status of all of us in the
English Department is currently been reviewed - and it was here that the
spirits of you and Bert must have combined with my own , and my
suppressed irritation, as I launched into a full-blown spiritual defence of
literature. I found myself using metaphors like "I'll defend this view tooth
and claw!" (much to my own surprise as such images are not exactly
typical of me) and then looking ruefully at my own clipped nails, kept
short for the piano .. I found words flew from my mouth with
impassioned conviction in the power of art to liberate even God from a
mental box! So, oh, yes, though I too love an `embroidered coat', I stood
`naked' and thank you mental warriors out there from the bottom of my
heart for restoring my faith in the human imagination.
One further thing, I cherish the idea of starting a course on The Spiritual
Quest in Literature ( a venture which was virtually approved of at the
interview yesterday). Perhaps we could rebuild Jerusalem together?
A Blake says:
...if once you let the ripe moment go
You can never wipe off the tears of woe.(Note0book 1793)
Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 11:37:33 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Pam's Reading --and how far to go -Reply
Message-Id: <s2145dac.055@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Dear Jim, Thanks for the encouragement. Yes those Classes of Men are
found everywhere - I've been contending with them, and you certainly
seem to have been too. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 11:40:42 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply -Reply
Message-Id: <s2145e44.057@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Thanks Joseph, Sounds as if you listen to Aeolian harps and listen to the
`wind that blows through you'. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 11:49:27 +0200
From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
To: blake@albion.com, erato@atl.mindspring.com
Subject: Re: Re:Re: `going too far' -Reply -Reply
Message-Id: <s214607f.063@alpha.unisa.ac.za>
Dear Ted, I simply can't conceive of Blake as having `terror of the
eternal'. He died singing hymns on his death-bed and saw the eternal
form of his recently passed away brother as well as the divine human
spiritual forms of all things when looking `through' the eye and not `with'
its contracted pupils. As I'm very busy proofreading work which has to
go out NOW, can't say more, but hope others out there will contend for a
while with these issues. Pam
--------------------------------
End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #101
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