------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 106 Today's Topics: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply DAVID AERS -- REVOLUTIONARY CRITICISM? Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply RE: Key Passage in MHH Key Passage in MHH Re:Re: Key Passage in MHH Re: Longitude Re: Seeing many Blakes; seeing more and multifaceted Blakes in three dimensions and liv Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply -Reply Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply -Reply Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply -Reply Re: Key Passage in MHH Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply FW: Key Passage in MHH Key Passage in MHH -Reply Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply -Reply Urizenic element in Blake's own nature? Re: Key Passage in MHH -Reply Re: Key Passage in MHH -Reply ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 09:13:37 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Ralph, How are you defining the word "modern" in your reply to Stern? Surely Blake has little in common with the ideas associated with C20 modernism. Maybe I am misreading the reference of the pronoun "he" when you say He is too much a creature of modernism. Do you mean Blake or Stern? Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 09:55:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: DAVID AERS -- REVOLUTIONARY CRITICISM? Message-Id: <199609011655.JAA04832@igc6.igc.apc.org> Is anyone familiar with the work of David Aers and would care to comment on it? I just read Aers' essay "Representations of Revolution: From _The French Revolution_ to _The Four Zoas_", in: CRITICAL PATHS: BLAKE AND THE ARGUMENT OF METHOD, edited by Dan Miller, Mark Bracher, and Donald Ault (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987), pp. 244-270. The book as a whole I find very disturbing, speaking as one who did not pass through the temporal trajectory of Blake criticism as academia moved into the deconstructive phase. This particular essay, which is written from an ostensibly Marxist viewpoint and laced with feminist pieties, initially struck me as a load of crap, but before I attack Aers, I need a reality check, which means learning more about his writings. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 10:03:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply Message-Id: <199609011703.KAA05032@igc6.igc.apc.org> I wrote that reply on the fly online, as I am doing now, but usually dont do. I do not restrict the term "modernism" to a 20th centruy litereary movement. I use it in the broadest sense, as Mashall Berman does in ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR. I was referrring to Blake as a modernist. That he should flee to antiquity in searcj of resorces from which to combat what he finds most despcable in modernity should not distract us from Blake as a creature of modernity, not of tradition. To think of Blake as a crab crawling backwards turns my stomach. What we need to analyze is the contrwdition within BlaKE: AS A PERSON WHO COULD DO SOMETHING ENTIRELY NEW and unprecedented, while speakking such rubbish as the Bible being the great code of art. IN making such claims, Blake effaces the non-traditoinal, recolutionary nature of his own methdology. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 Sep 1996 16:18:01 -0500 (CDT) From: RPYODER@ualr.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: RE: Key Passage in MHH Message-Id: <960901161801.2025767d@ualr.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Avery, I've always read the prophets' reply to the Blake at dinner as a defining of the nature of divine inspiration. Blake's suggestion, I think, is that the idea of hearing voices or seeing God with "a finite organical perception" is a laughable reduction of the how the divine communicates with the human. Divine inspiration, the round assertion that "God spake to them," alters perception so that their "senses discover'd the infinite in every thing." When I teach Blake or the Bible or Milton I always raise the question of the nature of divine inspiration. It is something I find my students -- even here in the Bible belt -- have not thought much about. I like to recall Bill Cosby's old "Noah" routine to help demonstrate the point -- Cosby's Noah is openly skeptical of the authority of the voice that tells him to build the ark. It's easy to see how such a notion of Godspeak might just look silly. Instead, Blake suggests, when God speaks, the whole world opens up. Paul Yoder ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Sep 96 19:48 EDT From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Key Passage in MHH Message-Id: <9609012348.AA19835@uu6.psi.com> Avery, --The dinner with Isaiah and Ezekiel in _MHH_ is one of my favorite passages, too. I've taken it to mean that by empirical means, by using our senses acutely enough, we can detect signs that there's something beyond the empirical reality immediately perceptible to us (kind of like by using instruments and tools like a telescope and an astrolabe, we can tell that the earth is round, and not flat as our senses would immediately tell us). My sense of the idea of prophecy here is that it simply involves using one's head, one's faculties, and _thinking_. Thus, "the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God." It sounds to me like there's some empirical philosophy in here: Our senses are enough to show us God-- God doesn't have to make a special guest appearance. Of course, it seems pretty clear what Blake thought of Locke, but I think Blake may be building something onto Locke--something he thought Locke didn't recognize. . . I also think this passage may be related to "inner light" theology--which claimed that every individual has a divine spark. Imagination implicity comes into play too, doesn't it? Blake conjures up an idea that he had dinner with Isaiah and Ezekiel (which conjuring has also been read as evidence of madness). But, mad or no, he uses that conjured up dinner, a figment of his mind, as evidence for a claim about prophecy! Which circles back to your point, Avery, that the prophets were firmly persuaded they had heard God, but--well--didn't actually pereive God at all. I _think_ Blake is saying some strange things about a) the mind, and b) how it perceives infinity. . . Curious stuff that always stumps me. What do you think? --elisa - - The original note follows - - Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 09:06:32 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Key Passage in MHH Resent-From: blake@albion.com Reply-To: blake@albion.com 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 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 20:44:19 -0400 From: WaHu@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re:Re: Key Passage in MHH Message-Id: <960901204417_399119054@emout16.mail.aol.com> On the Nose, Avery. Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 05:24:07 -0400 From: WaHu@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Longitude Message-Id: <960902052407_514304793@emout09.mail.aol.com> The recent little book might be of interest to those who have an interest in the Age of Blake. It is a history of the pursuit of an effective way of determining one's exact position while all at sea, a subject which naturally obsessed Britain; and as Parliament offered a prize of something like 90.000 pounds for a workable solution, it was a pet project of thousands of cranks and quacks. Issac Newton tried to win the prize. Remember the Hawaiian Islands were not until after the United States existed! This was because there was no way to determine longitude, and these Islands are remote. (were remote) I even think that part of Blakes hatred of government was based on his knowledge of the existence of this prize--at least he would have considered it as symptomatic of what was wrong with Commercial Britain. And he would have known that Senor Newton lusted after the dough---equivalent to what? a billion dollars today? And what if a Dutchman or Frog figured out a solution first? Or, gulp, an American. Incidently, the earliest solution to latitude is the reason all those pirates have eye-patches. You had to stare at the sun directly through cross hairs to determine local meridian! Blake's knowledge of the existence of this prize, and he would have known, everyone knew-- as if the U.S. govt offered a Trillion Dollar Prize for something-- might also explain his insistence on a "flat earth" "infinite plane" (But when I urged the Circumnavigation of the Globe, Mrs. Blake announced dinner.)[I paraphrase Robinson's Diary] The actual solution? Two reliable clocks. The spectre of Urthona could have told you, come on! read Longitude, it is very entertaining. Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 12:30:30 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Seeing many Blakes; seeing more and multifaceted Blakes in three dimensions and liv Message-Id: Dear Joel, I liked your impassioned reply very much. Do you remember that lovely line in Eliot's "Four Quartets" about `garlic and sapphires' embedded in the fallen `axle-tree'? You don't have to disagree with me over `Urizenic temples' as I don't hold the view that this earth has no beauty or delight for the senses. Quite the contrary. My emphasis was on distinguishing between what Blake sees Urizen as having built and Los's structures. My own reading impels me to seeing Los as the creator- figure in `Tyger' since, in the longer poems, the earlier , imperfect worlds which Urizen spawns in the abyss are imperfect - to such an extent that he is revolted by his own creations when he walks through the fallen realms and encounters half-formed monsters symbolic of disorganised passions. Both Tharms and Los expunge these earlier worlds and Los restores some warmth and `symmetry' of beauty to all the passions which he `frames' in mortal form. These are the forms in flux which Enitharmon helps him imprint with fixed form so that their disorganised cruelty and rage may have some `limit'. Thus, I see the `Tyger' and all the other Devourers of this world as partly rehumanised by Los's efforts. But I'm almost giddy with delight at the possiblilities presented by the kind of dialogue we have been having ... we could, in forums such as these, begin to see literature having a real effect on life - un uplifting one - which is, I think, how Blake and Yeats and many others, saw it. I mean, I also see it as delighting and entertaining, as Sidney did, just for the record, and in case you all think I hardly touch ground because of my insistence on bringing Eternity into the equation. But, how can we ignore Eternity, even in daily life if that is indeed our true home from which we constantly come and return? Anyway, my fingernails are literally dirty with touching ground - I,ve been digging up leaking water pipes in the garden for the last week. {+++++++} With a toothy Britishy sort of smile, Pam ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 13:06:09 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, EEB4@PSUVM.PSU.EDU Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply -Reply Message-Id: As i tried to intimate in the message you quote, I find it difficult to convey what I think I have to offer Blake criticism in the form of isolated snippets. In these, it is not possible to be self-reflexive while at the same time trying to present a view (as concisely as possible) which goes contrary to the views already expressed by critics. Sorry if you are feeling so pushed by the views I express that you feel you have to repel them. This, for me, is the first opportunity I have had to level a few (surely mild, so far?) attacks on the Establishment. Yes, of course, we are all prone to seeing Blake in our own image. But then, haven't you found that this applies to everything one encounters - especially to religion? I think all institutions reflect the common demoninator of the limited views of those who vote on how to build them. Constantly challenging the `mental chains' that forge new institutions and `empires' is, I think, what Blake has to teach us. So, I'm sorry if I should be construed , so early in this exciting game, as only another of those bullies who wants to build a mental empire of my own. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 13:40:59 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, sternh@WABASH.EDU Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Thanks you very much , Bert, for correctly interpreting my stand and the problems that go with it. Yes, indeed, even in our small department, I am seen as either Pollyanna-ish or insufficiently post-modern , not only for my stand on Blake, but also because I resist others colonising my mind with their own new pet theories - as if literary theories do not themselves partake of the flux of all ideas. I hate, for example, to see The Tempest treated as if it were only about the `colonised' and the `colonisers' when all of Shakespeare's comedies and romances are so rich in spiritual nuances. I was perhaps privileged to to be able to read Blake and Shakespeare as I chose to - without having to impose literary models on these. So, yes, you rightly identify my `tribe' as that outmoded one to which those I admire most belong. If I get a chance to do so, I'd like to teach and construct a course on "The Spiritual Quest in Literature". I'd like to bring in inter-disciplinary thought here - for example, the Classical view (as in Ovid' s Metamorphoses of the Fall, Hesiod's Golden Age, the Promethean legend, Arcadia, etc). All ideas welcome - perhaps together, we could initiate a new (?), revive an old (?) approach to reading literature. It might be more transforming of our intellectual environment than some we've all been exposed to. Does this sound horrible politically incorrect? Please don't misunderstand me .... there is no need to exclude what is PC ... only put it back in perspective so that it does not become another `mental chain' that takes decades to shake off - and one which could lead to a new form of `people's education'. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 13:53:14 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, EEB4@PSUVM.PSU.EDU Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Dear Elisa, I'm not quite sure of what your view of me exactly is: do you see me as so having my head in the clouds that I see poetry as having no reference to `mundane affairs'? Quite the contrary is true, as indicated in the replies to letters opened before this one `above'. I don't want to put my head in any one's mental `box' , nor assume their `mental chains' and so , equally, I do NOT expect everyone to fall on their faces before the interpretations I offer. I do want an open forum in which to discuss the ideas of others as opposed to my own. I do see that literature - and the ways it is taught - have a very direct bearing on society and that we all have a very real responsibility not to stifle creative response and thought by any kind of model. If the model is currently fashionable and that's its only merit, then I find it restrictive. If it illuminates the subject , then I do not resent it. Please let me know if I am still failing to grasp something in this debate.... I realise my `language' or adopted rhetorical professional persona is not quite the same as yours. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 07:45:16 -0500 (CDT) From: William Neal Franklin To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Key Passage in MHH Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 10:57:40 +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 What turns Ralph Dumains' stomach obviously can't be of much concern to me, since I seem to be part of it. But with as much "due respect" as I can muster, I invite him to consider that the "modernism" that was most visible to Blake was Urizenic methodizing. It was the wounded triumph of reason, after all, that is the essential aftermath of the fall. That triumph Blake properly understood as a noetic system that marginalized the imagination, and reduced it to a desultory decorative function ("The languid strings do scarecely move! / The sound is forc'd, the notes are few!") ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Sep 96 16:46:43 UT From: "John Hubanks" To: "Blake List" Subject: FW: Key Passage in MHH Message-Id: Forgive me for seeming ignorant, but did Mr. Franklin have an obvious point to make here? If there is any explicit meaning to this message, it has eluded me. If someone (preferably the man, himself) could enlighten me, I would be most appreciative. ---------- From: William Neal Franklin Sent: 02 September 1996 07:45 To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Key Passage in MHH The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 Sep 1996 09:23:07 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: BLAKE@albion.com, GASKINS@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU Subject: Key Passage in MHH -Reply Message-Id: Avery, My own favourite passage in MHH is `Proverbs', Plates 7-10, but also the two lines just before they begin: How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five? These relate quite closely, don't you think, to the ones you like, in that Ezekiel says he eats dung in order to raise `other men into a perception of the infinite'? I think this also has a bearing on what we were discussing re Thel and the possibility that `death' exists even in Arcadian Beulah. (Please note- I am being / trying to be/ self-reflexive in using `possibility', while thinking this is a fact.) Pam ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 Sep 1996 12:14:23 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu Subject: Re: holding C.A.S. -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Tom, I get the uncomfortable feeling that you may be referring to me as a reductive `latter day anthroposophist' for attempting a `spiritual' reading of Blake. I do hope not as my insights are certainly not based on Blavatsky and co - rather they are completely in accord with the views expressed by Shelley in his Defence of Poetry (which I re-read yesterday with great delight .... thanks very much Bert for bringing this into the discussion). I take it that I am the defender you refer to in :" 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. " I do see the spiritualism as inherent in Blake's poetry because I believe him totally when he says things like: ... dear Reader, forgive what you do not approve, and love me for this energetic exertion of my talent. Reader! lover of books! lover of heaven, and of that God from whom all books are given, Who ... To Man the wondrous art of writing gave: Again he speaks in thunder and in fire! Even from the depths of Hell his voice I hear ..... Therefore I print; nor vain my tyoes shall be: Heaven, Earth & Hell henceforth shall live in harmony. Here, (in Plate 3 of `Jerusalem') , he most eloquently addresses readers whom he expects will understand and forgive him the oddity of his claim that God is his inspiration and he, as poet, merely the vehicle through whom God makes known that peace and harmony will prevail again - that the rift between life in Eternity and the `Hell' of mortal life (where cruelty and inhumanity mostly prevail) will be healed. Here is surely a man of sustained vision and faith in God - a God, however, whom he has to liberate from the `box' which centuries of `priests' and others have crafted so that His humanity is scarcely discernible. Of course, if you wish to be philosophical about whether the spirituality inheres in the reader or the poet himself, then one needs to go into a whole new category of debate. I think Popper deals with issues such as this? But I'm not qualified to debate such issues in any depth. When you say: 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); your choice of `the game was fully revealed' makes me feel like a hare that should be racing for cover from hounds! Why so derisive? Yes, I would be prepared (given time free from marking) to defend my view of Shakespeare's plays (excluding Titus, however, at least for the moment) as spiritual dramas. I could scan in a note I wrote for English II Drama students on `Much Ado', but with Honours (4th Year) students, I go into more detail... but have no written notes. My drift is that there are neo-platonic elements even in `A Comedy of Errors' and that the comedy in most cases, revolves around the miracle of man being given a `second chance' . That is, divine providence miraculously steps in to bring about a restoration of what was `lost' (e.g. innocence in `A Winter's Tale' as well as a daughter; a lost dukedom and the concomitant power to rule wisely in `The Tempest'; a balanced attitude towards femininity and having mastery in `Taming of the Shrew'). I see man as presented as a giddy thing (forgive the gender conscious `man') who needs divine help to avert tragedy - so, in each comedy, tragedy is potentially present so as to represent the miracle of its being averted. Tom goes on to say: " 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--" Comical? Why? I'm well aware of the already cliched argument that old-fashioned lit crit had a hidden agenda of preserving the status quo (Personally, I think that a misleadingly sweeping generalisation) and that to be PC one should now provide a Marxist or post-modern reading of everything. Our present English II course caters precisely to this type of reasoning and provides grand scope for post-modernism. What I was reacting to is that I was forced to mark a question I did not set which did not invite debate on `The Tempest' , but constrained the struggling, disadvantaged students into seeing Prospero as a `coloniser' and Caliban as `colonised'. I get angry because of all the richness of the play which is excluded by this - particularly the notion that all of nature has been affected by the Fall - a notion which allows a broad canvas for the comedic resolution in which all regain their freedom and virtue and forgiveness are rewarded. Since the play appeals to the whole man - not just the political man - I resent my students being forced into glib mental boxes that don't even serve to illuminate and free the mind from prejudices, but which simply arouse anger and resentment.... and , ironically, this is done, not intentionally, but almost by default - a question set in a hurry and/or with the hope of showing how guilty the white man feels here for the past. I believe we should rather make amends by behaving always as if we all are part of a divine Brotherhood. This was my view throughout the Apartheid years and is consistently so now. I dislike cosmetic gestures. Hope this makes my views clear. Tom goes on to say: " 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." I don't reject literature that is not `uplifting' , but my own preference does tend that way, and among those I see as spiritual are Hopkins, Eliot, Yeats, the Metaphysicals. Tom continues: " 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. My answer to this is that I think Blake hated the moral law imposed by Urizen on ALbion's Children and so would think that to abstract neat morals from his works would be to do him the greatest disservice. Tom then says: "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. Here, I presume, Tom, that you see me as wishing to `silence' dialogue and as claiming `exclusive access to the truth about Blake'. Please explain what I have said that leads you to this conclusion. How would you recommend being obviously self-reflexive so as to avoid being seen in such a crude light? Why is it OK for everyone else to state their views unchallenged in this way? Does their rhetorical register automatically define them (like some chemical scent) as post-modern, and hence self-reflexive and OK? I see myself as trying to define the places where the interpretation of others has profoundly disturbed me and , in my opinion, does no justice to the great poet whose work I love. Pam van Schaik. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 Sep 1996 12:22:57 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, sternh@WABASH.EDU Subject: Urizenic element in Blake's own nature? Message-Id: Bert mentions Joel as concerned that the Urizenic element in Blake's own nature be taken into consideration. As I genuinely have a problem seeing such a thing in Blake's own nature, I'd really like to hear what others have to say about this. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 08:53:30 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: Key Passage in MHH -Reply Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Pam, I like the "Proverbs" too. The whole concept of "marrying" heaven and hell suggests to me that Blake is asserting that both places are illusionary. They are devices of Urizen to keep human imagination encased, rather than liberated. Humans who subject their creative imagination to codes (religious, social, whatever) are simply reflecting the enslavement of Los's creativity to the strictures of Urizen (or is it the other way around?) and once someone has found a way to see the illusions, he/she can speak the truth boldly without worrying that the encased may interpret the words as coming from hell. As for the connection to death in Arcadia, I must be a little dense this morning. I need a some more explanation from you. ( I wrote this in haste and need to back up and explain that when I use the terms heaven and hell, I am thinking of those images promulgated by established religions. His concept of Eden is a kind of heaven, I suppose, just not the traditional one.) Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 11:23:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Ronald S Broglio To: blake@albion.com Cc: GASKINS@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU Subject: Re: Key Passage in MHH -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Here is a small line of flight from Pam's post on MHH. How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five? Now to Visions of Daughters of Albion Arise you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy! Arise and drink your bliss, for everything that lives is holy! [Said by Oothoon and in contrast to Theotormon's limitation to his "senses five."] Now to The Four Zoas MS The bat winged phallus illustrated on various pages of the Zoas and very evident on page 42 (using Mango & Erdman Facsimile edition). Now to the pencil drawing of Albion Rose or Glad Day. Here is yet another bat winged phallus. While the male figure (Albion?) crushes a serpant or worm, the phallus flies free. All this extra-sensory flying seems to move toward a new spiritual-sensual world normally closed off to humans. Does anyone else have some reflections on flying phalli? ron http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/~rbroglio/ -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #106 **************************************