From: blake-d-request@albion.com Sent: Friday, November 01, 1996 10:18 AM To: blake-d@albion.com Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #122 ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 122 Today's Topics: Re: Poetry and painting the world purple and red Re: Van Morrison (was Re: ELP CD) Re: /more Bluestockings Re: Van Morrison (was Re: ELP CD) Song is in the air! -Reply Re: Lunar Island -Reply -Reply Blake's post-apocalyptic vision -Reply Re: Poetry and painting the world purple and red -Reply Unidentified subject! -Reply Re: Van Morrison (was Re: ELP CD) -Reply Spanish exhibition catalogue Sorry Re: /more Bluestockings Re: introduction and query Re: introduction and query Re: Lunar Island##2 Hello Keynes rhymes with grains A Biography Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply Re: more Bluestockings-Jennifer's reply Re: "Blake Ball" and CHESS Re: Hello Re: A Biography Reply to Pam A Biography ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 07:22:39 +0900 From: Albion Rose To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Poetry and painting the world purple and red Message-Id: <3277D52D.3B0D@mb.inforyukyu.or.jp> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable P Van Schaik wrote: >=20 > Joshua, Perhaps we could see some of your poetry? Battersea Catherine and William the Fire In a day when excellence tormented delight To a world of sleepers came William the Fire Seeing trees ripe with angels and heavenly sights That burnt every branch like stars in the night Which left him half blind from the dazzling light Which left him half crazy with love. So he roamed and he roamed from field to field In a daze of enlightenment, a bewildered muse In a reasonless world of united divisions Singing to no one his celestial visions=20 Speaking to no one his yearning desire=20 Raging and raging against the fire. Then sweet Battersea Catherine came to his side With dark rich eyes and a heart held high Singing gently to him of love=92s innocence Singing thunderous songs of experience Calling to him to fulfill God=92s desire Saying, =93Wonder is wisdom cast into the fire=94 Said the bright young prophet with fire in his eyes =93Do you pity this form, do you pity my life?=94 =93Indeed in this life I do,=94 she replied =93Then,=94 said young William, =93If you grant my desire=20 =93 I will love you beyond this ocean of time=94 =93I will love you beyond my life.=94 And William taught Catherine all she could know To read and to write and to color his world While the visions pursued him throughout the night And his days were consumed in paradise Young Catherine sat patiently by his side With a love that brought calm to his fire. And oh but the world cared not for this flame So with days upon nights his black curls grew gray But the fire raged on as his time became late And his love for dear Catherine grew And for Battersea Catherine, William the Fire Became all that she knew. And all and all things were far better still When William was lost in divine solitude In his poetry he raged with all of his might He raged against the darkest night He raged against the setting sun And the crimson glow of Albion He raged like a tiger burning bright He raged against the coming tide And all and all through the years of his life Battersea Catherine sat quietly at his side Then late one evening his fire grew dim And to Battersea Catherine, William the Fire said, =93Stay as you are, as you always have been=20 =93An angel to me, I will draw you.=94 Still as the night stood Battersea Catherine, To once more, once more calm the fire within William. In the moment before this great fire died His eyes grew bright and as Catherine cried William burst out singing, =93Catherine is mine!=94 =93Even death cannot still this heart of mine=94 =93Stand away - for Catherine is mine!=94 =93Stand away death - for Catherine is mine!=94 And as Battersea Catherine wept by his side, William the Fire, the prophet, fell silent and died. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 16:41:13 -0800 From: rmcdonell@ucsd.edu (Robert McDonell) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Van Morrison (was Re: ELP CD) Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Isn't there enough room for both Morrison and Westbrook to hold candles before the words of Blake? I very much like the Morrison, do not know the Westbrook, but will try tracking it down. Is it still available? And in what sense is Westbrook's the _original_? > >If you're referring to Morrison's version of "Let the Slave," it doesn't >hold a candle to the original by Mike Westbrook, vocals by Phil Minton >with Kate Westbrook, on _The Westbrook Blake_ (Original Records, 1980), >IMHO. > > Nelson Hilton -=- English -=- University of Georgia -=- Athens > Was ist Los? "Net of Urizen" or "Jerusalem the Web"? > http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 22:11:13 -0500 (EST) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: /more Bluestockings Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Mark, I'm getting tired of having C20 values imposed on earlier ones. Neither WW or Blake would have concidered a woman's other than what you have portrayed. I won't say that women of the time would have agreed with it, but Dorothy did. Look at her journals. It was a time which fostered such a feeling in men. So why fight it? BTW, you should not have cut off my disclaimer at the end of the message. Dirty pool. NOW, I feel like a villain, accused falsely. Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 22:31:47 -0500 (EST) From: Nelson Hilton To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Van Morrison (was Re: ELP CD) Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 30 Oct 1996, Robert McDonell wrote: > Is it still available? And in what sense is Westbrook's the _original_? His score, and his juxtaposition of the Blake passages; sorry I don't know if any recording is available-- nh ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 08:36:15 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: dpvintin@acpub.duke.edu, blake@albion.com Subject: Song is in the air! -Reply Message-Id: David, The poem has a wonderful kinetic energy and heaven-to-earth range of imagery and scope. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 08:51:15 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Lunar Island -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Dear Susan, I'm sorry not to be able to help you further on Island in the Moon... we are about to begin marking end of year exam papers, but also, this poem and "The Mental Traveller" and "Tiriel" are not poems to which I have given much attention ever. I have concentrated mainly on those that fit into the wider Fall-Redemption theme. There are good critics on this, and others on the list will know more. Glad, though, that you like my other comments and thanks for the feedback. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 09:13:39 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, izak@igs.net Subject: Blake's post-apocalyptic vision -Reply Message-Id: Izak, the cyclical nature of Blake's vision of Fall and Redemption as indicated by you is how I see his cosmic narrative too. The concept of `higher Innocnece' posited by many critics, has complicated this to such an extent that , when teaching Blake, I almost have to empower students to set `higher innocnece' aside- as a type of qualification - rather than see it as the central momentum and direction of his vision. Have others had the same problem I wonder? Pam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 09:22:34 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, rjoshua@mibai.inforyukyu.or.jp Subject: Re: Poetry and painting the world purple and red -Reply Message-Id: Beautiful, Joshua.... you capture movingly the inspiration of Blake, and his valuing above all else the ability to feel compassion for another in his future wife, as well as the unceasing devotion of his energies to praising a loving, inspiring God. The burning Tree of Life flashes! Pam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 09:28:59 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: dpvintin@acpub.duke.edu, blake@albion.com Subject: Unidentified subject! -Reply Message-Id: Giles, Please don't leave the list feeling embittered. The line about Christ's fire shining beneath nature's veil is very true to Blake's own vision and may your hymn prosper. I'll pass it on to our Dept of Theology here. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 09:39:50 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, nhilton@parallel.park.uga.edu Subject: Re: Van Morrison (was Re: ELP CD) -Reply Message-Id: I think the Wetbrook version is the one put on as a review in London under the name `Tyger' - and an old recording may be available under this name. I played this music after giving an illustrated lecture on Blake's vision of the Fall and Redemption ( using his own designs) and its rousing rhythms shocked the English Academicians. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 20:43:08 +0100 From: "s.t.a.r.h.e.a.r.t." To: blake@albion.com Subject: Spanish exhibition catalogue Message-Id: <3279014C.5C69@tinet.fut.es> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thank you, Mark Trevor! I'm happy to give the following information for all the people interested in the Catalogue of Blake'exhibition in Spain, april-june 1.996: I've phoned to the "Centre Cultural La Caixa", who organized the exhibition of Blake, and they say that it's too easy to get the catalogue: 1) e-mail to: noa@filnet.es or: 2) fax to: +34 3 4581308, Atnn. Llibreria Centre Cultural The Blake catalogue is in stock. They can serve it at all the world and you can pay as you want: credit cards, postal orders, etc. His price is 3.500 ptas (about $28). They are especiallists in book arts of all the world, and they have a web: http://www.connet-arte.com/noanoa You can get many others great books from Blake (I bought all them!), even at less prize than private book shops. It is because they are a cultural foundation of an important spanish bank ("La Caixa"). They can inform you via e-mail of the books available: they are many kind (No, I don't work for them, I am only an Urizenic Chemical Engineer!!!) My personal opinion about the spanish Blake catalogue: for his prize, it's a great and nice book. It's full colour in large formate, with all the pictures exposed in Barcelona with commentarys in bilingual edition spanish/english, plus some interesant articles, p.e. the relathionships beetwen Blake and the spanish visionary painter Goya, who lived in the same years that WBlake, (even somone says Goya knew the Blake works and they were in letter contact..., well, I don't like Goya, I think that he is too much "urizenic!") The exhibition was great!! about 200 items: early Basire works, Songs of Innocence and Experience, works from Jerusalem, complete Job, complet America, complete The Divine Comedy, the great Newton (from the Tate), some of Heaven&Hell, some of the Daughters of Albion, strange works like XIX siecle spanish editions of "El Quijote" ilustrated for Blake (Yes! it's true...). You can get all in the catalogue. It was fantastic, I was on the exhibition about 30 times!!, with confferences, poetry reading... A big success in Spain and fully quoted in the spanish press and TV. Enjoy Blake! Yours truly, Agustin (from Tarragona, Spain) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 20:51:43 +0100 From: "s.t.a.r.h.e.a.r.t." To: blake@albion.com Subject: Sorry Message-Id: <3279034F.4995@tinet.fut.es> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry, I made a mistake when typing the adress of the art bookshop of the "Centre Cultural La Caixa". This is the right adress: http://www.connect-arte.com/noanoa/ Agustin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 06:50:06 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: /more Bluestockings Message-Id: <199610311450.GAA00326@dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com> Dear Jen, thanks for some great information on *Island in the Moon* and the Bluestockings as what I presume are objects of Blake's satire or praise (having never read the work, I've no idea which)...but I am anxious to look at both "Island" and "Reading Blake's Songs." Susan ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 07:59:54 -0800 From: David Rollison To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: introduction and query Message-Id: <3278CCFA.71B7@marin.cc.ca.us> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit J. Michael wrote: > > Virginia, > > In teaching Blake's lyrics to students who are themselves artists, you'll > have an enviable opportunity to give the designs equal and complementary > consideration. If you're looking for secondary material, your students > would probably be interested in WJT Mitchell's _Blake's Composite Art_ and > Jean Hagstrum's _William Blake: Poet and Painter_, which present different > views of the relationship between the verbal and visual art. Other good > sources on the visual art include Morris Eaves's _William Blake's Theory of > Art_ and his more recent book, _The Counter-Arts Conspiracy_. But then > there's also Joseph Viscomi's _Blake and the Idea of the Book_, which > details the physical aspects of the process. Gosh, I could go on and on . > . . . Of course, many of these books would be too expensive for students > to buy individually (although Mitchell and Hagstrum are both available in > paperback, if they're still in print). > > If your students have Web access, you should also check out Nelson Hilton's > web site, where they can see the _Songs_ in all the different sequences in > which it appeared. > > Jennifer Michael Jennifer, can you give us the URL for this website? thanks ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 10:53:56 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: davidr@marin.cc.ca.us Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: introduction and query Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> If your students have Web access, you should also check out Nelson Hilton's >> web site, where they can see the _Songs_ in all the different sequences in >> which it appeared. >> >> Jennifer Michael >Jennifer, can you give us the URL for this website? thanks The Blake Digital Text Project is at http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake/home.html >From there, you can either look at the Songs in their different arrangements, or at the "e-E," the complete Erdman text in electronic form. Incidentally, although you need considerable memory to download it, the latter is a wonderful resource for those who don't have easy access to a complete printed edition of Blake. Even for those who do, it's an easy way to search for words and phrases, making the traditional concordance obsolete. I think the notes are not yet included but soon will be. Thanks again to Nelson Hilton for putting this resource on the web! Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 18:26:50 +0100 From: N Cohen To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Lunar Island##2 Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think the book you are seeking is 'An Island in the Moon, A Facsimile of the Manuscript Introduced, Transcribed, and Annotated by Michael Phillips, with a preface by Haven O'More. It is (was) published by Cambridge University `Press in association with Institute of Traditional Science, 1987. It is a beautifully produced book and I doubt if you could get a copy today, except in a good library. The Library of Congrss number is 83-7812 Incidentally it is dedicated to Arnold Fawcus (of Trianon Books and a friend of mine before he died) and Geoffrey Keynes. Dr Norman Cohen ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 20:02:52 -0600 (CST) From: fkazemek@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU (Francis & Cheryl) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Hello Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT I just joined the group the other day. It's a pleasure to see so much passion and interest in an author I dearly love. I first read Blake in some depth as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico in 1971 with Morris Eaves. I've been hooked since. I'm involved in literacy education, and work with pre-service and in-service school teachers. Many of them, and their students, are excited when I share the Songs with them. Present readers might not be familiar with Nancy Willard's A VISIT TO WILLIAM BLAKE'S INN,a picture book which won the Newbery Award (that's for the best children's book published in the USA that year) in 1980 or 1981. Check it out to see how a gifted writer captures Blake's spirit. I'm also a Van-the-Man Morrison fan (Robert McDonnell and Nelson Hilton). If you listen to almost any of his recordings since the 1979 INTO THE MUSIC, you'll find references to Blake. Van has gone to school with Blake, Yeats, and others. Once again, glad to be aboard. Francis ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 21:23:10 -0500 From: WaHu@aol.com To: Blake@albion.com Subject: Keynes rhymes with grains Message-Id: <961031212309_1549412571@emout19.mail.aol.com> It was my distinct pleasyre (a typo but I kinda like it) the other day to find Geoffrey Keynes memoirs: Gates of Memory Oxford Press 1983. I cannot reccomend it too highly. Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 23:58:34 -0500 From: AGater1038@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: A Biography Message-Id: <961031235833_1114055487@emout16.mail.aol.com> I just read a book review on Peter Ackroyd's book _Blake: A Biography_ and I was wondering if anyone here has read it. It sounded like it might be a little different than the typical biography of Blake's life. If you have read this book, would you reccomend it? - Or - Does anyone know of a really thourough biography? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! - Anita AGater@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 23:02:05 -0800 From: "Joseph W. Murray" To: Subject: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence Message-Id: <199611010754.XAA01980@post.everett.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Have just read book that I highly recommend: Roger Shattuck's FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE. >From Prometheus to Pornography. He deals extensively with Milton and that contemporary of Blake - de Sade. He only touches on Blake in reference to Swedenborg, but he has a footnote on Blake on page 319. The text he is referencing is about Walter Pater where Shattuck says-"The classic epic and the modern novel have unstintingly celebrated the impulse toward experience. Yet the most concentrated treatment of the impulse comes out of the philosophical-moral musings of a retiring Oxford classics scholar in the late nineteenth century. Walter Pater's "Conclusion" in STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE (1873) reads so much like an impassioned manifesto of modern aesthetic hedonism that Pater himself chose to remove it from the second edition. "It might possibly mislead some of those young men into whose hands it might fall," Pater explained. Oscar Wilde knew the "Conclusion" by heart and called it "my golden book." Here lies the Siren song of our era and the voice of an unrepentant Faust. "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How can we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame , to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.Failure is to form habits." A candle flame, a streaming, consuming flux that somehow maintains constancy of form, offers the perfect image for intensity of pure experience, its "splendour", as Pater writes earlier. In what follows, as in the first sentence of the above quotation, it is difficult to detect how sheer experience attains to any wisdom beyond itself. In his closing lines, Pater tries to convert this hedonism into aesthetic epicureanism and adopts the phrase "art for art's sake." But the fleeting intensity of experience wins out over the permanence of art. "We are all condamnes as Victor Hugo says...we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love. Only, be sure it is passion-that it does yield you this fruit of quickened, multiplied conciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire for beauty, the love of art for art's sake, has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments sake." This alluring voice makes Goethe's Mephistopheles sound like the strutting clown he really is. Tepid in most of his other writings Pater here finds the subltle appeal of Satan seducing Eve in PARADISE LOST.Pater's curiously explilcit phrasing was not to be surpassed in our time by Alfred Kinsey counting orgasms and Michel Foucault sacrificing himself to l'experience limite. A strong tradition within modern literature has led us toward this worship of pure experience without restraint of any kind.*(footonote)-We can locate this tradition, for example, in William Blake's PROVERBS OF HELL."The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." We shall never know how much diabolical irony lurks in those words. Blake's following proverb extends the claim. "Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity." Blake's apparent appeal to license and daring leads us back to La Rochefoucaluld's matching maxim, "Weakness, rather than virtue, is vice's adversary" and then forward to Nietzsche's THE WILL TO POWER: "...the seduction that everything extreme exercises: we immoralists, we are the most extreme". The unconstrained tone of these maxims makes them highly enticing, particularly to young minds , as Pater understood. Yet such maxims are unlikely to pass Kant's fundamental test that a truly wise maxim is one that everyone should be able to follow. In these cases, if everyone did, the result would hardly look like a livable society. (returning to the paragraph)- However, what looks to Pater like " a hard, gemlike flame" can escalate into forms of violence and destruction in order to sustain that fleeting intensity. In the most extreme and disastrous cases, we reap not "ecstasy", but serial killers. Writings like the grisly novels of Sade and Bret Easton Ellis, along with splatter movies and tv programs, fulfill Pater's program of "getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time". Is there any reason why we should welcome them? For, contrary to my Jimmy Walker epigraph for Chapter VII ("No girl was ever seduced by a book"), books and images wield strong powers of seduction. One man's "hard gemlike flame" may light unpredictable fires in the neighborhood." This reminded me of a posting to the list a month or two ago by a student who wondered whether Blake had anything to offer to humanity as far as guidance in his writings. I believe he said he felt Blake was similar philosophically to Neitzsche. Does anybody remember that posting or am I imagining it? Joe Murray aeolian@everett.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 11:26:06 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, aeolian@everett.com Subject: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply Message-Id: Joseph, Being present at the point of focus of the most vital energies and so perpetually in flux that habit does not form, sounds very like Blake's vision of Innocence in Eternity - which is, I suppose, why instinctively you go on to quote `The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom'. For Blake, the continual flux and mingling of one's spiritual essences with that of others sustained spirits in Innocence because it prevented a permanent Selfhood from developing - the equivalent of the restraints imposed by habit. On earth, intensity , as you point out, can lead to good or bad. The same intensity in a world governed by selfless love, as is Blake's Eden and Beulah when spirits are fully expanded into god's light, leads to ecstasy. Pam van Schaik ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 07:19:44 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: more Bluestockings-Jennifer's reply Message-Id: <199611011519.HAA25370@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com> Dear Jen- This repsonse was sent Wed but must be drifting in cyberspace somewhere as it has not appeared at Albion.com--I think this is due to the caprices which my netserver has recently begun to display since I've joined the Blake list--so much mail that I keep getting kicked out of my mailbox by my server (I am going through and printing a great many because they contain such good information). This is why I wrote--to thank you for pointing me to Leader's annotations on the Bluestockings in Blake's *Island in the Moon*-- I will be alert to such references when I read it. Thanks again! Susan ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 09:52:38 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: P Van Schaik Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Blake Ball" and CHESS Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Jennifer, the confrontation between the tiger of wrath and horse of >instruction would work well on the proposed chess board, don't you >think? In chess, I would certainly oppose Jerusalem to Vala as queens, >as they are oppsed in the fallen world, metaphysically... but this would >involve having Jesus as `King' and fallen Luvah as the opposed `King'. >In this way, the chess pieces would essentially represent the divine >vision of selfless love in opposition to those lulling ALbion's children into >the torments of love and jealousy in the fallen world. The `horse' could >be a chess `horse' in Vala's ranks, which would mean that the` tiger' >would be a `knight' in the service of Jerusalem. Pam van S Yes, that all makes sense to me. . . But fallen Luvah is Orc, isn't he? and he and Jesus do bear some similarities (energy and love repressed and sacrificed). When I first read about the chess set, I was skeptical because some of Blake's characters seem more "embodied" than others. Urizen, for example, is drawn so often, but what about Tharmas? There's also the tendency of characters to shift identities, as when the qualities assigned to Urizen in the early works get transferred to Satan. And what about Urthona, who encompasses Los, Enitharmon, and the Spectre? Should they be depicted as one person or three? I'll have to think about this more when I have more time. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 10:49:31 -0500 From: Virginia DeMeres To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Hello Message-Id: <327A1C0B.1520@rsad.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It's interesting you should mention Nancy Willard. The book is charming and just as a point of information so is she. I studied with her years ago and used to babysit for her son (now very much grown). Thanks for reminding me of it. Virginia *)* ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 10:28:34 -0600 (CST) From: Suzanne Araas Vesely To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: A Biography Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Anita: I have read the Ackroyd biography and I think that it is both scholarly and fun to read, in fact, a must-read. There is room for disagreement with Ackroyd, but all in all, it is a great piece of work. Suzanne Araas Vesely On Thu, 31 Oct 1996 AGater1038@aol.com wrote: > I just read a book review on Peter Ackroyd's book _Blake: A Biography_ and I > was wondering if anyone here has read it. It sounded like it might be a > little different than the typical biography of Blake's life. > > If you have read this book, would you reccomend it? > - Or - > Does anyone know of a really thourough biography? > > Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! > > - Anita > AGater@aol.com > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 12:25:18 -0500 (EST) From: dpvintin@acpub.duke.edu (Giles David) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Reply to Pam Message-Id: <199611011725.MAA16174@argus.acpub.duke.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Giles, Please don't leave the list feeling embittered. The line about >Christ's fire shining beneath nature's veil is very true to Blake's own >vision and may your hymn prosper. I'll pass it on to our Dept of Theology >here. Pam Au contraire - I feel empowered. Thanks for your encouragement. By all means pass on my work to the Department...hope they're working night and day to restore poetry to the godhead. Let's hear it for prosperous hymnwriters as well as angels of analytics! (You couldn't spare a dime, could you?) Yours truly, Theophanous Doggerel. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 12:19:22, -0500 From: LVDP51A@prodigy.com ( PAUL SCANLON) To: blake@albion.com Subject: A Biography Message-Id: <199611011719.MAA25022@mime4.prodigy.com> Anita, I haven't had the pleasure of finishing the book yet, but its approach does differ from the more familiar _Prophet Against Empire_ by Erdman. Ackroyd tends to present Blake and his works as less a byproduct of his turbulent times and more as a heretical prophet of culture and theology. Though this is an oversimplication of his book's overall message, I do think it offers some less reductive historical analyses into Blake's life and passions than Erdman's earlier text. I'll continue reading his book. Lets try to keep in touch! - Paul -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #122 **************************************