From: blake-d-request@albion.com Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 1996 4:20 PM To: blake-d@albion.com Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #124 ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 124 Today's Topics: Lunar Island et al. Re: Bluestockings behind Blake's antifeminist passages Re: Lunar Island et al. Re: Lunar Island et al. Re: Lunar Island et al. Re: Lunar Island et al. Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply Re: Bluestockings behind Blake's antifeminist passages Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence Re - Blake's Characters Re: Hello Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence Blake's Characters Re: Blake's Characters Re: "Blake Ball" and CHESS -Reply Blake's Characters -Reply Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply -Reply Re: Blake's Characters -Reply Re - Blake's Characters -Reply Proverbs of Hell good-bye Re: Blake and Nietzsche, once again Re: Blake's Characters "GOD" and Mr Blake? Re: Proverbs of Hell Thanx ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 18:21:22 -0500 From: UNGPAKORN <106165.613@compuserve.com> To: "INTERNET:blake@albion.com" Subject: Lunar Island et al. Message-Id: <199611011821_MC1-B8F-295F@compuserve.com> Hi! Thanks for the comments in answer to my speculation about satire in this. I had a feeling the opportunity for satire was just to good for Blake to miss in The Island. Any good ideas as to exactly who is the target of the satire?? Can anyone suggest a good anotated Blake for me to try? Possibly this would be of one or two of the better known works as they seem to be the ones I have seen most often, a recomendation from such a lofty band of reviewers would be of some value to me... May I enter into the fray regarding Blake's misogyny (or not as the case may be). In my humble opinion the fact that Blake was not more chauvanistic than he appears to be is to his eternal credit, considering the times he lived in. Any assesment of his relationships has to be based on an assesment of the social conditions of the age. When society as a whole grossly undervalues the contributions of women then it is no surprise that individuals take a similar line. Or did some one say this already in more words? John Oxford UK ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 19:17:55 -0500 From: WaHu@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Bluestockings behind Blake's antifeminist passages Message-Id: <961101191754_221363660@emout16.mail.aol.com> Suzanne I think your argument is excellent. Thank you. Similar "antifeminist" passages may be studied in Strindberg & Ibsen, say, who experienced powerful concerted and dangerous attacks from right-wing bluestockings in their day. FROM THE REALM OF PURE SPECULATION: I can imagine Blake, Infant Iconoclast, attending a meeting of intellectual souls, and can imagine his disappointment to hear women speak the same moralizing cant as men. Analagous I should say to listening to a Black right-wing Republican. They do exist, but you have to special order them. Implicit in this speculation is my impression that Blake does want to idealize women, does do so, but is flexible enough to rethink on the fly when the result doesn't work--either spiritually or logically. There is always a sexual tension in Blake--he appears to have desired women, but not, that we know, to have done much about it (compared to Boswell, say!). So his problem is to know when to damn relaxes and bless braces. Again, thank you Suzanne for the excellent comment. Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 17:13:33 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Lunar Island et al. Message-Id: <199611020113.RAA24521@dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com> You wrote: > >Hi! >Thanks for the comments in answer to my speculation about satire in this. I >had a feeling the opportunity for satire was just to good for Blake to miss >in The Island. Any good ideas as to exactly who is the target of the >satire?? >Can anyone suggest a good anotated Blake for me to try? Possibly this would >be of one or two of the better known works as they seem to be the ones I >have seen most often, a recomendation from such a lofty band of reviewers >would be of some value to me... >May I enter into the fray regarding Blake's misogyny (or not as the case >may be). In my humble opinion the fact that Blake was not more chauvanistic >than he appears to be is to his eternal credit, considering the times he >lived in. Any assesment of his relationships has to be based on an >assesment of the social conditions of the age. When society as a whole >grossly undervalues the contributions of women then it is no surprise that >individuals take a similar line. >Or did some one say this already in more words? > >John >Oxford UK > > Hi, John--- I hope I don't detect a hint of English irony in your description of our "lofty band of reviewers"---! The most recent annotated edn of the complete poems is, I think, edited by Stevenson (Lomgman, 1989). The old Sampson variorum edn of the poetical works (OUP 1905) has been reprinted several times, and as recently as 1978. There is an annotated student edn ed. Kennedy (London: Collins, 1971), and an old Life with selections edited by Alexander Gilchrist (1880) is annotated. I can't say, however, how inclusive is either edn. Susan ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 23:16:57 -0500 From: BLAKERR1@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Lunar Island et al. Message-Id: <961101231656_135092081@emout17.mail.aol.com> REMOVE MY NAME FROM THE LIST PLEASE. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 02:49:49 -0500 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Lunar Island et al. Message-Id: <961102024947_221498685@emout16.mail.aol.com> John- I think the best annotated text to read Blake in is the Longmans edition, edited by W. H. Stevenson. Don't use just one set of annotations -- but if you have to choose just one, I'd recommend Stevenson's. --Tom Devine ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 03:26:18 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Lunar Island et al. Message-Id: <199611021126.DAA09699@dfw-ix3.ix.netcom.com> You wrote: > >Hi! >Thanks for the comments in answer to my speculation about satire in this. I >had a feeling the opportunity for satire was just to good for Blake to miss >in The Island. Any good ideas as to exactly who is the target of the >satire?? >Can anyone suggest a good anotated Blake for me to try? Possibly this would >be of one or two of the better known works as they seem to be the ones I >have seen most often, a recomendation from such a lofty band of reviewers >would be of some value to me... >May I enter into the fray regarding Blake's misogyny (or not as the case >may be). In my humble opinion the fact that Blake was not more chauvanistic >than he appears to be is to his eternal credit, considering the times he >lived in. Any assesment of his relationships has to be based on an >assesment of the social conditions of the age. When society as a whole >grossly undervalues the contributions of women then it is no surprise that >individuals take a similar line. >Or did some one say this already in more words? > >John >Oxford UK > >Hello, John-- The message I sent you yesterday does not appear (for whatever reason), so I repeat it here: The old annotated variorum edn of Blake's POETICAL works (ed. John Sampson) has been reprinted several times; the latest edn (I think) was printed 1978. There is an annoted student edn (London: Collins, 1971), and the early standard life w/ selections by Alexander Gilchrist contains annotations.  Someone in the meanwhile has suggested and posted a note on the Stevenson edn (Longman, 1989). Happy hunting. Susan ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 02 Nov 1996 10:36:58 +0000 From: sternh@WABASH.EDU To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Re Blake and Nietzsche, I recall that a man named Constantine Stavrou wrote a dissertation on the subject at the University of Buffalo when I was an undergraudate there, in the late forties or early fifties. I suppose it is available if someone wishes to renew the exploration. Bert Stern ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 11:33:45 -0600 (CST) From: Suzanne Araas Vesely To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Bluestockings behind Blake's antifeminist passages Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hugh: Thanks for the vote of confidence. By no means were all of the bluestockings such reactionaries as was Hannah More; not that I think that you were implying this. But the more liberal ones were pro-Bacon, Newton and Locke, or so it seems so far--any information to the contrary welcome. I already know that Wollstonecraft developed her reservations in _Maria_, which perhaps heartened Blake when he saw it posthumously, along with corrections in favor of the poetic imgination intended for a revised _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_. Thanks for the reference to Ibsen. I have been buried in Blake, but I plan to read Ibson's plays soon: curiosity about what use Adrienne Rich was making of him when she made the phrase so important, "When we dead awaken." Suzanne Araas Vesely ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 14:56:01 -0500 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence Message-Id: <961102145558_1181360140@emout03.mail.aol.com> Joe- Thanks for your long quote from Pater and for your passionate sermon about the misuse of Blake's Proverbs. I remember Blake's statement about a critic who quoted a Shakespeare character (Theseus, I think) out of context, saying "Shakespeare said...". Blake commented: "Thus Fools quote Shakespeare." The Proverbs of Hell are the voice of the Devil, not of William Blake, and the Proverbs need their contrary as well -- the Bible itself, or the teachings that grew from it. There's so much to say about this that I'll just shut up now, but I appreciate your remarks. --Tom Devine PS- Maybe, in the cycle of things, it's time for The Divorce of Heaven and Hell. I hope Heaven gets custody of the kids! Hell's a good place for adolescents to muck about in -- it's part of the rites of initiation -- but it's no place for kids. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 21:17:43 -0500 (EST) From: bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re - Blake's Characters Message-Id: <199611030217.VAA06094@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In my kitchen I have a picture of Ahania. It is a print of the title page to "The Book of Ahania." Ahania looks sunken beneath the waves of a blue ocean, her arms helplessly thrown out above her, her hair streaming behind her . The other day I tried to think of what else this picture reminds me. And then it came to me. It reminds me of a picture by some pre-Raphaelite painter of a drowned Ophelia. So I started thinking: if Ahania is a type of Ophelia, is Hamlet also a Urizen, a fallen Urizen? So I went back to Northrop Frye's "Fools of Time" and there it was: in a section entitled "My father as he slept: The tragedy of order" Frye talks about Shakespeare's tragedies of order (Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Hamlet.) Trying to explain the universe of Shakespeare's work, he says "...the ordered society in Shakespeare is, to use Heidegger's term, ecstatic: its members are outside themselves, at work in the world, and their being is their function." (p. 29, Fools of Time.) So all this set me to thinking, not only of Ahania before she was hid in darkness, now weeping on the verge of Non-entity (E 87). I started thinking of Urizen, the unfallen Urizen. Urizen is mostly contemplated as the fallen Urizen, the Zoa of cognition. But surely it behoves us first and foremost to contemplate Urizen's unfallen nature. Urizen is surely a type of the unfallen Lucifer, the shedder of light (the Dutch call safety matches "lucifers.") Urizen is therefore that part of Man that throws light on, investigates and contemplates what is there. But with light producers (matches, candles, flashlights), there is one drawback. The light can illuminate only to the limit of its range. The light source therefore also demarcates the range of the surrounding darkness. To cope with that must have been hard for Urizen. It must be difficult to accept that limitation. And not accepting the limitation may have played a part in Urizen's fall, in "Urizens slumbers of abstraction" (E 86). So who is Ahania, before she was pushed into the outer darkness? Surely not only Pleasure, as Foster Damon indicates in "The Blake Dictionary." Surely Ahania, in her rightful state as the emanation of Urizen before the fall, is the "soft cloud of dew" falling "in showers of life on his harvests." She finds babes of bliss on her beds. "Bursting on winds, my odors, My ripe figs and rich pomegranates In infant joy at thy feet, O Urizen, sported and sang." (E 88) Alas, until the Break of Day, Ahania remains an outcast. At the end of "The Book of Ahania" she says: "But now, alone over rocks, mountains, Cast out from thy lovely bosom, Cruel jealousy! selfish fear! Self-destroying, how can delight Renew these chains of darkness..." (E 89) There is a postscript to all of this: I looked up the description of Ahania 1 (title page) in Erdman's "The Illuminated Blake" and found that she is apparently not submerged in the ocean. He says: "Above a curved horizon, her body touched with blue against a blue sky..she soars away yet turns her head, owl-like over her shoulder." This often happens to me. It is because I do not do my homework. But forever now, the Ahania in my kitchen is floating in fathoms of water. Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 11:25:22 +0000 From: "Thalia's Nix" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Hello Message-Id: <199611031124.LAA03919@saturn.ndirect.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Francis enthused : > 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. Is anyone aware of a mailing list for Van ? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 09:32:40 -0500 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tom Devine and Joe Murray: I have obviously missed a great deal of intelligent discourse on the unwise use of "the road of excess" as practiced by those degenerate 60s generation kids and the ones who stare into MTV for hedonistic guidance. However, these past few messages seem to dismiss the half-truths of Blake's "Proverbs from Hell" and the reductionist/mechanistic view that the 1960s were *all* wrong. How can anything be all wrong, OR all right? But maybe that's what you two and others have been saying all along! I beg to differ with these 1990s "Just Say No to Whatever" people who don't see the joie de vivre in "The Proverbs from Hell", perhaps his most accessible, fun, authority-questioning roller coaster rides. It is, for example, in this poem, that what might be called the Evil Angel *for once* looks chipper, full of life, and much better than the pale, almost vampire-like Good Angel. Now, having said that, of course, you're right! We should have the 10 Commandments and other contrarian Heavenly views put back in place. The French Revolution, for example, went down in flames precisely because of the lack of respect for rule of law. "The Garden of Love", in _Songs of Experience_, may have been replaced by "Though Shalt Not" (i.e. 10 Commandment) laws, but if anyone thinks that Christ the Revolutionary, whose 2 additional commandments included simply, "Love thy neighbor as thyself", is anything more than a Romantic prescription for disaster-- need to think of the fate of communism, for example. Each according to their need? And Blake himself-- is a "mature" thinker one who espouses that good revolutions include demolition of the five senses, shutting down nascent capitalism, in favor of: "All you need is love"? - John Lennon Clods need pebbles, and pebbles need clods. Otherwise, we'd all get smashed, trompled under foot, like a clod, or be so selfishly and cruelly absorbed that we hard-heartedly exploit people and the earth without thinking of the consequences of our actions, like a pebble. -Randall Albright http://world.std.com/~albright/blake.html Where no one is advised to drink from standing water............... ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 13:29:58 -0500 (EST) From: bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake's Characters Message-Id: <199611031829.NAA07108@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pitying the Lamb of God Descended thro Jerusalems gates To put off Mystery time after time & as a Man Is born on Earth so was he born of Fair Jerusalem In mysterys woven mantle & in the Robes of Luvah He stood in fair Jerusalem to awake up into Eden The fallen Man but first to Give his vegetated body To be cut off & separated that the Spiritual body may be Reveald (E 363) Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 18:29:56 -0500 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Characters Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "Tyger, tyger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? "In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? "And what the shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? "What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? "When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? "Tyger, tyger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" ---"The Tyger", _Songs of Experience_ -Randall Albright http://world.std.com/~albright ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 08:47:26 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Blake Ball" and CHESS -Reply Message-Id: we're about to begin sorting exam papers, so will just say that, personally, I would separate Fallen Luvah (Orc) from Luvah as he was in Innocence and Los's Spectre from Los so as to preserve clearly who is on the `good' side. You may have to use other than black and white pieces to avoid the cliche of black=evil. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 09:52:54 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, TomD3456@aol.com Subject: Blake's Characters -Reply Message-Id: Your interesting posting certainly makes one think hard, Tom! I agree that the author one chooses often reflects aspects of one's own nature and needs. While writing my doctorate on Blake, exploring all that Urizen represents helped me cope with the general Urizenic ethos which one encountered at every turn, including at work. I think the Zoas and Emanations represent the whole range of spiritual conditions from Innocence to experience and back to Innocence, providing an alternative mythology re the Fall and Redemption. I suppose they are archetypes whose behaviour serves to suggest the spiritual errors which all of us need to avoid and overcome in order to be truly divinely human and attain to the `lineaments of gratified desire' in the fullest sense of those words.... which is essentially to regain unity with all that exists and specifically with the god within all of us. Pam van Schaik ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 10:02:13 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, aeolian@everett.com Subject: Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply -Reply Message-Id: I think that when Blake says:`Sooner murder an infant in its cradle ...' and `the road of excess.. ' etc - often used to justify lawllessness and cruelty - he always assume that, from all else that he says, there is the basic proviso that all action should be selfless - and all forms of love, inclusing the sexual, ideally so. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 10:10:12 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, albright@world.std.com Subject: Re: Blake's Characters -Reply Message-Id: Hi there Randall. Blake's characters are, I think, allotropic since, even in Innocence there is constant movement between spirits who are either fully expanded into God's light, or, less expanded in Beulah. In Innocence there is thus constant change between Energy and Repose. Then, when Urizen commences the process of the Fall, we watch the darkening and contracting of all the Zoas and Emanations who pass through at least 28 (lunar?) stages or increasingly darkening spheres. They darken in Head, Heart, Loins and Stomach (this probably derived from Swedenborg's elaborate musings). So this would seem to be what Randall describes as allotropic. There is never stasis- whether in Innocence or Experience - so Randall, I don't think you can construe my so-called `all-in-one theory' ( a misleading reduction) as an over-simplification. I wrote an entire doctorate(and now book) on these changes, after all. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 10:26:24 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, izak@igs.net Subject: Re - Blake's Characters -Reply Message-Id: Exactly, exactly, Gloudina. This is what I have been trying to intimate on-line and explored in depth in my doctoral thesis. To understand the fallen Zoas, one first has to understand what they were like in Innocence.... not to do so is to leave out half of the story - the divine beginning and end. I fully agree about Ahania's pouring showers on the harvest of Urizen in Eternity. All of the Emanations, being one in will and desire with their Zoas, do reflect all that is within their Zoas in their pure breasts (as Oothoon points out). They all help to raise the divine harvest of wisdom in Eternity. Pam van Schaik ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 10:33:52 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, albright@world.std.com Subject: Proverbs of Hell Message-Id: The Proverbs are not of `Hell' in truth but only seem so to the orthodox.. Blake explains, wittily, that he culled them while touring `Hell', (because they are so radical) but really means that he culled them while walking among the fires of inspiration. Selflessness, however, must be seen as a given behind all that he says .. and Randall is correct in responding to their vitality and vigour. It is true, though, that they can be misinterpreted and so used to justify wrongdoing and licence. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 10:12:23 -0500 (EST) From: Mary Beth Jipping To: blake@albion.com Subject: good-bye Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks to albion for sponsoring this list and to all participants for their insightful and passionate comments. Unfortunately, all I can do is lurk here and have found it increasingly difficult to do the reading required for me to give worthwhile feedback. I've learned a great deal from you all and hope to benefit from your knowledge via the archives when I can. I'm a biochemist by trade and a writer by avocation and no Blake scholar. Mary Beth Jipping ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 19:45:36 MET From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER" To: sternh@WABASH.EDU, blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake and Nietzsche, once again Message-Id: <63A4C029B7@netwareserver.uni-trier.de> November 4th, 1996 On Saturday, Bert Stern stated that > Re Blake and Nietzsche, I recall that a man named Constantine > Stavrou wrote a dissertation on the subject at the University > of Buffalo when I was an undergraudate there, in the late > forties or early fifties. I suppose it is available if > someone wishes to renew the exploration. > I believe to remember that a more recent comparative study by Harvey Birenbaum was published in c. 1991 under the title *Between Blake and Nietzsche* by some US American university press. _____ . . ' \\ . . |>> O// . . | \_\ . DW Doerrbecker . | | | . Kunstgeschichte im FB III . . . | / | . Universitaet Trier, D-54286 Trier . . . | / .| doerrbec@uni-trier.de . ..o u| ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 11:48:59 -0800 From: David Rollison To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Characters Message-Id: <327E48AB.3168@marin.cc.ca.us> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit R.H. Albright wrote: > > "Tyger, tyger, burning bright > In the forests of the night, > What immortal hand or eye > Could frame thy fearful symmetry? > > "In what distant deeps or skies > Burnt the fire of thine eyes? > On what wings dare he aspire? > What the hand dare sieze the fire? > > "And what the shoulder, & what art, > Could twist the sinews of thy heart? > And when thy heart began to beat, > What dread hand? & what dread feet? > > "What the hammer? what the chain? > In what furnace was thy brain? > What the anvil? what dread grasp > Dare its deadly terrors clasp? > > "When the stars threw down their spears > And water'd heaven with their tears, > Did he smile his work to see? > Did he who made the Lamb make thee? > > "Tyger, tyger, burning bright > In the forests of the night, > What immortal hand or eye > Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" > > ---"The Tyger", _Songs of Experience_ > > -Randall Albright > > http://world.std.com/~albright But this is misquoted: the last line is "Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"! That switch from "could" to "dare" is pretty important. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 15:34:27 -0500 From: UNGPAKORN <106165.613@compuserve.com> To: BLAKE Subject: "GOD" and Mr Blake? Message-Id: <199611041535_MC1-B9F-9553@compuserve.com> Hi all, I am deliberately trying to be provocative now. I have opinions in this matter but I am not as well read as those of you that seem to be able to write pages on almost any subject. (No insult intended) I think that Blake was a believer of something but his acceptance of orthodox or any other sort of christianity was challenging and at times ambiguous. I am thinking of Marriage Of Heaven And Hell here, but please make suggestions and I'll read up. This is one bit of prose I realy love, that stuff about the worship of god and angels turning blue etc. Oh yes and the halucinagenic trip through worlds, this is for me a parody of biblical epics. Am I sticking my neck out? Its how it grabs me anyhow. I am enjoying reading all your messages. My ability to contribute is, lacking, and my confidence, and the fact that I dont know my subject as well as some of you obviously do, please let me stimulate some words on a subject of my own choosing?? Cheeky aint I? John Oxford UK ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 14:47:22 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Proverbs of Hell Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I agree with Randall and Pam that the Proverbs and their "half-truths" have to be seen in the context of an oppressive orthodox morality, to which they are intended as corrosive correctives. At the same time, the comments of Joseph Murray and TomD suggest that those proverbs have lost their force in a culture that no longer suffers from orthodoxy in that way. To take them literally also is to miss the satire in them--yet I don't think there's any satire in "The lust of the goat is the bounty of God." Just as the "road of excess"is used to justify all sorts of irresponsible hedonism today, Blake saw the Biblical proverbs being used, out of context, to impose a loveless moral code and to rob humanity of its divine potential. So he offered the "Bible of Hell" as a counterbalance, knowing it could be misused like any other scripture. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 15:34:24 -0500 From: UNGPAKORN <106165.613@compuserve.com> To: BLAKE Subject: Thanx Message-Id: <199611041553_MC1-B9F-9552@compuserve.com> To all who suggested annotated versions for me to try............ I'll track one or two of these down. John Oxford UK -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #124 **************************************