------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 105 Today's Topics: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply (SPAM) Re: (SPAM) Re: (SPAM) Re: (SPAM) Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Key Passage in MHH ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Aug 96 13:21 EDT From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Message-Id: <9608271721.AA07060@uu6.psi.com> I'm not sure what's so new about your reading of Blake, Pam. Your view of a Blake consistent in his views throughout his works and always unproblematically supportive of women sounds to me too easy. It sounds just like what other critics have done with their favorite authors: Haven't you constructed a Blake in the image of your own values? Doesn't everyone do that? (Even those who have disagreed with you?) One thing I have rarely if ever read in your posts is any sense that you question your own reading. How can you be so sure you are right about this vision you have of Blake? What problems are your readers likely to raise with your reading? I sometimes feel like you're _pushing_ your views on me, and that makes me uncomfortable, and more likely to discredit what you have to say. And anyway, I'm not so interested in how wrong everyone else is and how right you are. If there's one thing I've learned in this profession --it's that contradictory readings can be equally valid: Even Blake says it when he refers to "Two contradictions equally true". I think any publisher is going to be more willing to publish your work if you talk about how your work builds on other, equally valid studies of Blake. Must everyone's hard work be discredited, knocked down, for you to make room for your own? Let's try making spaces and opening dialogue! --elisa - - The original note follows - - Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:48:21 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, DOERRBEC@uni-trier.de Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Resent-From: blake@albion.com Reply-To: blake@albion.com Thanks Detlef, for your sincere reply. I was aware of throwing a `cat among the pigeons' with that question, but having to believe what the Feminists say about Blake does present a very real problem for me as I think that of all poets, Blake is least prone to disrespect for females. But this statement is likely to be the equivalent of `putting my head in a hornet's nest'. As explained in another posting, I can't equate `fourfold' with a contradictory Blake, nor see that using this word is an adequate defence of those who have to segment Blake. I earnestly champion open-mindedness - which includes challenging the moulds into which Blake has been compressed by critics. Unavoidably, I do have to offer a new mould which to those accustomed to many conflicting Blakes may well seem monolithic. I like this forum, but foresee that I shall have to publish my own views if they are to be rightly understood as the snippets of interchange we have only touch the tips of `the iceberg'. Any suggestions for a publisher open to a new Blake? Pam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 19:57:44 -0400 (EDT) From: LOFTIN@bcvms.bc.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: (SPAM) Message-Id: <01I8UZ60NUGS8Y6KCE@bcvms.bc.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT From: IN%"RobertP448@aol.com" 29-AUG-1996 13:59:46.75 To: IN%"loftin@bcvms.bc.edu" CC: Subj: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] Return-path: Received: from emout18.mail.aol.com (emout18.mx.aol.com) by bcvms.bc.edu (PMDF V5.0-5 #10960) id <01I8UMOTQLHS8Y6HOQ@bcvms.bc.edu> for loftin@bcvms.bc.edu; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 13:59:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: by emout18.mail.aol.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id NAA19782 for loftin@bcvms.bc.edu; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 13:57:40 -0400 Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 13:57:40 -0400 From: RobertP448@aol.com Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] To: loftin@bcvms.bc.edu Message-id: <960829135739_190430664@emout18.mail.aol.com> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT --------------------- Forwarded message: Subj: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] Date: 96-08-28 14:37:50 EDT From: KBaizan To: RobertP448 --------------------- Forwarded message: Subj: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] Date: 96-08-28 00:23:56 EDT From: Luck72 To: RIVS268,April1307,KBaizan To: TresHall,MissTchr,Martise To: Z Bear42,JULSEE,KShaboom,Bronco72 --------------------- Forwarded message: Subj: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] Date: 96-08-27 21:08:39 EDT From: KPowersSOD To: BusyBee JD,CF ROYCE,TBurgwald To: PennyPrior,TJMaree,Luck72 To: SODeditor --------------------- Forwarded message: Subj: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] Date: 96-08-27 20:58:24 EDT From: KArmstr112 To: KPowersSOD,KJorge,FrankieD33 To: RLBUFF,TMPica,GTARHODY,KMambo To: DkPr,PEntcorp,SIDEOUTZ --------------------- Forwarded message: Subj: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] Date: 96-08-27 16:15:49 EDT From: Sonta1 To: KArmstr112 --------------------- Forwarded message: From: cbrprod@sirius.com To: obzamzam@aol.com, Sonta1@aol.com, shuie@sprynet.com, lmcbee@redsky.com, breaux@sprynet.com, GinaGatta@aol.com, phunter@sirius.com, dstoe@wam.umd.edu, MtnTop62@aol.com, kathy_maida@hp-sanjose-om1.om.hp.com Date: 96-08-26 13:09:12 EDT >From: JBFriedman@aol.com >Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 08:57:36 -0400 >To: 75244.513@compuserve.com, JEFFREYMOS@aol.com, JBACH@aol.com, > mann@voyagerco.com, Wof999@aol.com, dd@mv.us.adobe.com, nina@slack.com, > 100576.3067@compuserve.com, ali@intacc.web.net, FILMSC0UT@aol.com, > JCOLEPALTO@aol.com, MattesInc@aol.com, EBS@creative.net, > 100416.1601@compuserve.com, ULNB96A@prodigy.com, stevem@ins.dmcc.com, > GarySandrs@aol.com, CarterB@aol.com, lpj@pratique.fr, ACKSOUND@aol.com, > Knowncares@aol.com, URNDY@aol.com, CBRPROD@sirius.com >Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] >Status: U > > >--------------------- >Forwarded message: >From: Rudy_Norton_at_~Audio0@cccpp.com (Rudy Norton) >To: jbfriedman@aol.com >Date: 96-08-23 15:30:17 EDT > > >_____________________________________________________________________________ _ >_ >Subject: Re: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] >From: JACK PHILLIPS at ~Dolphin >Date: 8/22/96 5:56 AM > > >_____________________________________________________________________________ _ >_ >Subject: Re: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] >From: Lucy Letcher >Date: 8/21/96 2:07 PM > > >_____________________________________________________________________________ _ >_ >Subject: Re: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] >From: Gail Bordi >Date: 8/21/96 2:09 PM > >Good luck to all!!! >_____________________________________________________________________________ _ >_ >Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] >From: Michelle Sung-Lee >Date: 8/21/96 12:48 PM > > >_____________________________________________________________________________ _ >_ >Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] >Date: 8/21/96 10:48 AM > > > >>>> >>>>>> GOOD LUCK TOTEM >>>>>> >>>>>> \\\|||/// >>>>>> ========= >>>>>> ^ | O O | >>>>>> / \ \v_'/ >>>>>> # _| |_ >>>>>> (#) ( ) >>>>>> #\//|* *|\\ >>>>>> #\/( * )/ >>>>>> # ===== >>>>>> # (\|/) >>>>>> # || || >>>>>> .#.--'| |---. >>>>>> #'---' ----' >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> This totem has been sent to you for good luck. It has been sent >>>>>> around the world nine times so far. You will receive good luck >>>>>> within four days of relaying this totem. >>>>>> >>>>>> Send copies to people you think need good luck. Don't send >>>>>> money as fate has no price. Do not keep this message. >>>>>> >>>>>> The totem must leave your hands in 96 hours. Send ten copies >>>>>> and see what happens in four days. You will get a surprise. >>>>>> This is true, even if you are not superstitious. >>>>>> >>>>>> Good luck, but please remember: 10 copies of this message >>>>>> must leave your hands in 96 hours... You must not sign on this >>>>>> message... >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> >Gene > > > > > >Received: from iserver.cccpp.com by smtpgate.cccpp.com (SMTPLINK V2.10.03) >X-Envelope-From: gyoshimoto@tele-tv.com >Received: from relay1.UU.NET by iserver.cccpp.com (5.67/1.37) > id AA20490; Wed, 21 Aug 96 10:47:38 -0700 >Received: from telegate.tele-tv.com by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP > (peer crosschecked as: gate.tele-tv.com [204.178.127.20]) > id QQbdtf00806; Wed, 21 Aug 1996 13:45:52 -0400 (EDT) >Received: from tele-tv.com (entrpriz) by telegate.tele-tv.com (5.0/SMI-SVR4) > id AA02919; Wed, 21 Aug 1996 13:45:46 -0400 >Received: from iegate.tele-tv.com by tele-tv.com (5.0/SMI-SVR4) > id AB21858; Wed, 21 Aug 1996 13:45:45 -0400 >Received: from ccMail by iegate.tele-tv.com > (IMA Internet Exchange 2.0 Enterprise) id 21B4AC10; Wed, 21 Aug 96 13:43:29 >-0400 >Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 10:41:17 -0400 >Message-Id: <21B4AC10.1755@tele-tv.com> >From: gyoshimoto@tele-tv.com (Gail Yoshimoto) >Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: good luck totem] >To: okuyama@netcom.com, randy@onlive.com, russknapp@aol.com, > michelle_sung-lee@smtpgate.cccpp.com, dwight13@ix.netcom.com > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 08:17 CST From: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu To: blake@albion.com, LOFTIN@bcvms.bc.edu Subject: Re: (SPAM) Message-Id: <199608301323.IAA23765@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> Dear Seth, I'm sure by now you must be aware that someone is using this list for a chain letter. I think the penalty should be unsubscribing the person who forwarded the junk mail: LOFTIN@bcvms.bc.edu. Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 13:00 EDT From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914" To: blake@albion.com, blake-request@albion.com Subject: Re: (SPAM) Message-Id: <9608301700.AA14422@uu6.psi.com> Seth, --I second M. L. Grant's suggestion. --elisa - - The original note follows - - From: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu To: blake@albion.com, LOFTIN@bcvms.bc.edu Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 08:17 CST Subject: Re: (SPAM) Resent-From: blake@albion.com Reply-To: blake@albion.com Dear Seth, I'm sure by now you must be aware that someone is using this list for a chain letter. I think the penalty should be unsubscribing the person who forwarded the junk mail: LOFTIN@bcvms.bc.edu. Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 12:44:08 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: (SPAM) Message-Id: <96083012440890@womenscol.stephens.edu> I entirely agree with the recommendation of unsubscription. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 13:44:07 +0000 From: sternh@WABASH.EDU To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT It strikes me that one of the differences between Pam's reading of Blake and most peoples' is that she assumes him to be describing the actual. She knows, as Blake miraculously and instantly did too, that a new kind of mindset had closed in over the West finally, and definitively, by the end of the 18th century. It was pragmatic, as in Yeats's"pragmatic, preposterous pig of a world." It was empirical. And it tended to take no prisoners. This was the point when, in rebuttal of Shelley's "Defenss," Thomas Love Peacock pronounced that "a poet in our times": is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backwards." Because Pam does still belong to that same semi-barbarian tribe that Blake belonged to, and because we've all be thoroughly schooled to the tribe of "the inheritors," Peacock's tribe, it's inevitable that Pam, for all her efforts to keep the conduits open between two very different noetic systems, will sometimes strike others as rigid, or, at least, inadequately post modern. And maybe Joel's right that she takes too little into account the Urizenic element in Blake's own nature. But I think it's important to keep open the dialogue between Pam's school and Elisa's. Poetry does sometimes make extreme claims on us, it does sometimes, even today, claim to speak from privileged positions. That's a time-honored place for it stand, smackdab in the middle of what Henri Corbin calls "the imaginal world, " a world that seemed very real to many until recent times. Without vision people do, after all, perish, witness the present. Bert Stern ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 16:15 EDT From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Message-Id: <9608302015.AA06634@uu6.psi.com> Bert, --I like your use of Peacock to shed light on how we should view Pam's perspective. Careful, though: Shelley wrote his _Defense of Poetry_ in response to Peacock's "The Four Ages of Poetry," not the other way around. If Pam can make as brilliant a case as Shelley did for the importance of the a perspective removed from mundane affairs, I'll be very impressed. Can readers of poetry, too, be unacknowledged legislators of the world? (If so, I suspect it is by provoking questions rather than giving out answers.) --elisa - - The original note follows - - Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 13:44:07 +0000 From: sternh@WABASH.EDU Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply To: blake@albion.com Resent-From: blake@albion.com Reply-To: blake@albion.com It strikes me that one of the differences between Pam's reading of Blake and most peoples' is that she assumes him to be describing the actual. She knows, as Blake miraculously and instantly did too, that a new kind of mindset had closed in over the West finally, and definitively, by the end of the 18th century. It was pragmatic, as in Yeats's"pragmatic, preposterous pig of a world." It was empirical. And it tended to take no prisoners. This was the point when, in rebuttal of Shelley's "Defenss," Thomas Love Peacock pronounced that "a poet in our times": is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backwards." Because Pam does still belong to that same semi-barbarian tribe that Blake belonged to, and because we've all be thoroughly schooled to the tribe of "the inheritors," Peacock's tribe, it's inevitable that Pam, for all her efforts to keep the conduits open between two very different noetic systems, will sometimes strike others as rigid, or, at least, inadequately post modern. And maybe Joel's right that she takes too little into account the Urizenic element in Blake's own nature. But I think it's important to keep open the dialogue between Pam's school and Elisa's. Poetry does sometimes make extreme claims on us, it does sometimes, even today, claim to speak from privileged positions. That's a time-honored place for it stand, smackdab in the middle of what Henri Corbin calls "the imaginal world, " a world that seemed very real to many until recent times. Without vision people do, after all, perish, witness the present. Bert Stern ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 14:58:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Message-Id: <199608302158.OAA15668@igc6.igc.apc.org> Stern's post is just too ridiculous. There is nothing backward looking about Blake in the sense described. He is thoroughly a creature of modernism. Becuase, given his pecialiar cricumstances and sefl-education, he went back and used the bricabrac of the past for entirely modern concerns, in oppositon to the empiricism of official society, does not make him backward-looking. Blake is entirely-forward looking, so forward looking, he doesn;t have Hegel's social-democratic patience; rather Blake wants to leap over the entire pperiod of modern capitalism into the post-capialist future. That is his negation of his own historical present. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 20:29:47 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Message-Id: <96083020294740@womenscol.stephens.edu> It's also worth remembering that Peacock's _Four Ages_ was ironic and written in jest; depending on one's view of Shelley, his response was either a humorless and sobersided overreaction or an eloquent reaffirmation--actually it was both, and few are likely to equal its power. As for the latter-day anthroposophy that passes for a "spiritual" reading of Blake, it has been around since Ellis and Yeats, and others, and is no less reductive and denaturing than any other "imposed" theoretical construct. It is amusing to see the defender of spiritualism inveighing against the "theorists" for distorting or reducing the power of literature, as though the spiritualism were *intrinsic* to Blake's poetry (instead of resident in the head/eyes of the reader), while historical or psychological interpretations are necessarily (by her definition) *extrinsic* and imposed from outside. The game was fully revealed in the bemoaning of the historicist readings of Shakespeare; apparently _The Tempest_ is every bit as "spiritual" a work as all of Blake (and one wonders if the critic is prepared to extend to Shakespeare the same notions of unified vision and spirituality from beginning to end of the career--makes fascinating business of _Titus Andronicus_ for sure); the notion that viewing _The Tempest_ with awareness of the responses of the age to the colonialism and enslavement of native peoples is somehow "reductive" of a great spiritual drama is certainly comical--the spiritualist reading of _The Tempest_ denatures and rarefies it for sure, but hardly can be said to enrich our sense of its complexity. I suppose if one defines acceptable literature as that which "uplifts" by focusing our attention on "higher" things, then only a narrow range of literature is acceptable, or one finds ways to identify "intrinsic" spirituality in works that one has chosen to like. As we know, various ages have exercised great ingenuity in "moralizing" the classics to incorporate them into the Christian spiritual worldview, and Boccaccio's allegorical process saved the pagan works from purifying fires, but I fail to see how these methods were any less intrusive or extrinsic than the prevailing fashions in theory today. As has been suggested, Blake's works are open to many kinds of interpretation and part of the fascination is the unending dialogue among competing methods; those methods that claim exclusive access to the "truth" about Blake's vision and that pretend to silence the competition are certainly Urizenic in the old guy's most misguided and repressive mode. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 09:06:32 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Key Passage in MHH Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII In 1957, Martin K. Nurmi argued that the key passage to understanding "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" was the Printing House in Hell passage (Plate 15). I have held privately (though I have never argued it in print) that a better one is the Dinner with the Prophets Isiah and Ezekiel (Plates 12-13). I see in it a subtext in which Blake is assuming the same kind of authority as the prophets who never heard the actual voice of God, but whose firm persuasion that what they "saw" was so correct as to have the same force as a command from God. Reactions? Any passage you like better? Avery Gaskins -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #105 **************************************