------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 13 Today's Topics: Milton... Re: Jim Morrison Milton... Supernatural Re: Supernatural Re: Help on Hod and Netsah Re: Van Morrison Re: Help on Hod and Netsah Re: Supernatural BLAKE, GERMAN IDEALISM, AND FEUERBACH Bard/Earth and Dumain. Supernatural and.... Blakean Sadism Re: Blakean Sadism Re: Blakean Sadism an inquiry into the ghost.... Re: Blakean Sadism RE: an inquiry into the ghost.... Re: BLAKE, GERMAN IDEALISM, AND FEUERBACH Re: Blakean Sadism Chimney Sweeper Re: BLAKE, GERMAN IDEALISM, AND FEUERBACH Re: Blakean Sadism Re: Re[2]: BARD'S VOICE / EARTH'S ANSWER ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 12:07:45 -0500 (EST) From: Jonathan Epstein To: blake@albion.com Subject: Milton... Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hello all. As I have introduced myself before, I am an undergraduate english major writing my theis on Blake's _Milton_, using it as a means to show an exploration into the Self. Since there are very many well-read Blake enthusiasts on this mailer, I thought I would ask if anyone has any leads. I have a handful of books on _Milton_ which are proving to be helpful, but am also interested in delving into some of his other poems, but wouldn't know where to begin to tie them into the search for Self-examination and understanding. If you have any ideas or leads which you think worthwhile to pursue, could you please get back to me. You could e-mail me personally at: epstein@dickinson.edu so as not to clog the mailing list with my requests. I would really appreciate this, and am looking forward to listening in on more Blake conversations on this mailer. I thank you in advance, Jonathan Epstein epstein@dickinson.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 13:02:54 -0600 (CST) From: "DR. JOSIE MCQUAIL" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Jim Morrison Message-Id: <01I1QX3C1J8I99I8TP@tntech.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Actually, re, Van Morrison. Yes, Van Morrison had adopted Blake as a "model" poet, I think. Again, check out the album, A Sense of Wonder. He has set a Blake poem "The Price of Experience" to music (I think it is a passage taken from Jerusalem). There is also a song called "Ancient of Days" and "A New Kind of Man." Van Morrison was also influenced by Yeats, which may be how he came to Blake. I saw a book about him and leafed through it, I recall that he thinks of himself as a modern "bard." He's Irish, so the attraction to Yeats is natural, or national, as the case may be. I like him a lot, but don't know his music real well. I read that he is extremely shy about performing and therefore hardly ever tours. I did see him on David Letterman not too long ago with Sinead O'Connor! He messed up and she kept laughing. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 96 16:33 EST From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Milton... Message-Id: <9602282134.AA20957@uu6.psi.com> Jonathan, --I recommend reading _Milton_ and _Jerusalem_ together, but this _may_ get you into more murky water than you bargained for. . .--Elisa - - The original note follows - - Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 12:07:45 -0500 (EST) From: Jonathan Epstein To: blake@albion.com Subject: Milton... Resent-From: blake@albion.com Reply-To: blake@albion.com Hello all. As I have introduced myself before, I am an undergraduate english major writing my theis on Blake's _Milton_, using it as a means to show an exploration into the Self. Since there are very many well-read Blake enthusiasts on this mailer, I thought I would ask if anyone has any leads. I have a handful of books on _Milton_ which are proving to be helpful, but am also interested in delving into some of his other poems, but wouldn't know where to begin to tie them into the search for Self-examination and understanding. If you have any ideas or leads which you think worthwhile to pursue, could you please get back to me. You could e-mail me personally at: epstein@dickinson.edu so as not to clog the mailing list with my requests. I would really appreciate this, and am looking forward to listening in on more Blake conversations on this mailer. I thank you in advance, Jonathan Epstein epstein@dickinson.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:50:42 +0200 (IST) From: Pak Fook Kon To: blake@albion.com Subject: Supernatural Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am new on this list. I am currently stuying Songs of Innocence & Experience by Blake. This is my first exposure to Blake and I am here to learn. Could anybody help me with the idea of the supernatural in Songs of I&E? I can see the natural in these poems but I wonder where the supernatural is. Also, I would like to be pointed to sources which deal with the themes of Songs of I&E. If this thread has been discussed before, please feel free to reply personally to me. I don't want to clutter the list. Thanks! Pak Fook kpf@bible.acu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 19:01:46 -0500 (EST) From: Alexander Gourlay To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Supernatural Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Pak Fook Kon wrote: > I am new on this list. I am currently stuying Songs of Innocence & > Experience by Blake. This is my first exposure to Blake and I am here to > learn. Could anybody help me with the idea of the supernatural in Songs > of I&E? I can see the natural in these poems but I wonder where the > supernatural is. Also, I would like to be pointed to sources which deal > with the themes of Songs of I&E. If this thread has been discussed > before, please feel free to reply personally to me. I don't want to > clutter the list. Thanks! > > Pak Fook > kpf@bible.acu.edu > The first place you will find the supernatural in Songs as you leaf through -- though not the first place it can be found -- is probably in the picture that is the frontispiece, and in the "Introduction" to Innocence, of which it is an illustration. Certainly that child, like all the angelic and Christ-like intercessors who appear later in Innocence, fits most definitions of the supernatural. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 23:29:09 +0000 (GMT) From: Mae Tang To: blake@albion.com Cc: Mae Tang Subject: Re: Help on Hod and Netsah Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Greetings! If I may jump in here... On Wed, 28 Feb 1996 sternh@WABASH.EDU wrote: > If you have "a few minutes," could you help me with Hod and Netsah. > I am trying to meditate the Sefiroth, and am doing so clumsily. This is probably not really the list to discuss QBL on, but then again, what the hey! :) I will try to throw in some of my own, very subjective ideas about QBL and the Romantics as well, somewhere along the way... I've been meditating on the QBListic Tree of Life for just over a year now, using a meditation that works by mapping the Tree over your body, and shifting states of consciousness from each Sephiroth along the Paths. That's Bill Heidrick's Tree meditation from his _32 Emanations_, which is available on the WWW, and is, IMO, one of the best and most user-friendly works on "modern progressive" QBL that I've come across so far. E-mail me if you want the address of the Website. Either that, or I could e-mail you a copy, although the lines are likely to wrap on screen (should print out OK), and I'll have cut it into two parts due to the length. > Imean > simply trying to make a palce for them in my own phenomenol;ogy, my own > consciousness. But instead of finding them easier as I descend, I find > them more elusive. I find this interesting--- I work right now by ascending the Tree... If you'll pardon the curiosity, how exactly do you meditate with the Sephiroth? > My problem is in part ignorance of the Biblical > literature behidn the names--so that for me words like "Splendor" and > "Eternity" don't quite mean anything yet. What are your sources for translation? In all the writings that I've come across so far, Netzach is usually translated as "Victory", rather than "Eternity". Hod can sometimes be translated as "Glory". > Does splendor suggest that Hod > hints already at shekinah, and that the radiance of thigns itself is the > left leg? Are you standing facing in-wards on the Tree or outwards? What I do places Hod at the right hip. In terms of personal states of mind, I'd associate Hod with the "Glory of the rationally awake" (_32 Emanations_), and with being aware of and utilizing your own personal space, especially in rational matters. It'd be things like... figuring out how to bake a cake, by following the instructions in a cookery book. Netzach, IMO, would be more like enjoying the cake once you've baked it, or adding the ingrediance by estimation and taste, rather then measuring them out strictly... And so on. > And why is Hod also onnected with prophecy. I'm not sure that I've heard of this one before... I know that the Sepira of Hod is associated with magical workings, since it corresponds to Mercury... That in it's own way, (although I think this'd be more the Sephira of Chokmah), could also correspond in a fashion with the idea of the LOGOS--- don't know if that would count as prophecy. Is there a specific source that you read that mentions such a connection? I'd be interested to know more that if so. > I would liek to > think that Netsah as Eternityh (and al;so connected with Prophecy) has to > do with the very ongoingness of things, the kind of guarantee that in *The > Fate of the Earth* Jonathan Schell some fifteen years back said was revoked > by imminent environmental disaster. "Netzach is Victory of the wisdom of experience" (_32 Emanations). :) Sounds to me like a pretty good "snap" with what you say there... > But I feel very sloppy about all this, without adequate ground. The meditation, or knowledge of QBL in general? After a year, I'm starting to get some idea of the degree of my own ignorance, which is a step up from when I started out not knowing anything at all... ;) > I liked very much your letter on Bard/Earth. How in the hell did > they get into that odd adversarial notion? I didn't see this letter, so I may be jumping in somewhat out of context. If so, please forgive me and ignore my ramblings. It's occured to me that the Romantics seem to be doing somewhat odd things on the QBListic Tree... An aversion to Reason in favour of emotion and feelings, things like what Wordsworth says about "a wise passiveness", etc, and the emphasis on trusting your instincts and achieving union with nature all suggest to me that they are ascending via the Middle Pillar and the Pillar of Mercy on the Tree, but spurning the Pillar of Severity... Perhaps that goes with a reaction against rationalism. Blake-wise, I do wonder about reading him Kabbalistically... What little I've read of him so far suggests to me that if he was drawing on Kabbalah, he was using it differently--- I hesitate to use the word "unorthodox". Would anyone out there have an suggestions for bits of Blake that to them suggest Kabbalah that I could read up on? I know there's a fair bit of critical writing on Blake and Kabbalah out there, but I'd enjoy a personal discussion on that, perhaps dissecting a poem or two that way "live", either on this list or via personal e-mail. The ideas that Blake puts forward in his _Visions of the Daughters of Albion_, for instance, suggest the Path of Gimel to me, which would actually also correspond to the Tarot Trump of the High Priestess (probably the Papess in older decks, if my faulty memory works), who is a woman and a Virgin... In some traditions, maybe even a vrigin in the same way that Oothoon is--- open to every Virgin joy. Hope some of this was helpful, and not too boring in the main... :) Best wishes, Mae ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:36:47 -0800 From: Devine/Apple@eworld.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Van Morrison Message-Id: <960228163646_26234078@hp1.online.apple.com> I don't know the Van Morrison setting, but "The Price of Experience" is a passage in the Four Zoas. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 21:29:43 -0800 From: The Cruising Chaos To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Help on Hod and Netsah Message-Id: <199602290529.VAA05209@polaris.pacificnet.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:42 AM 2/28/96 +0000, you wrote: >If you have "a few minutes," could you help me with Hod and Netsah. >I am trying to meditate the Sefiroth, and am doing so clumsily. Imean >simply trying to make a palce for them in my own phenomenol;ogy, my own >consciousness. The planets assosciated with the sephirot might be a bit informative: Binah: Saturn Chesed: Jupiter Geburah: Mars Tipareth: Sol Netzach: Venus Hod: Mercury Yesod: Luna Malkuth: Earth ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:49:47 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Supernatural Message-Id: <9602291654.AA21587@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> of I&E? I can see the natural in these poems but I wonder where the >> supernatural is. One of the themes of Innocence is that the supernatural is exactly where you are looking at the natural: the two are not separate. The Lamb is not just a metaphor for Jesus or God as a supernatural being: lamb, child, and God are a single divine entity. You'll find out as you read more Blake that "nature" and "natural" become dirty words. This may come as a shock until you realize that what Blake is condemning is the idea of nature as a force outside human beings and as a world of the senses that marks the limit of potential experience. "To Tirzah," usually placed toward the end of Songs of Experience, illustrates the alienation from nature which is the other side of the worship of nature. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:23:53 -0800 From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Cc: cmacphee@upei.ca Subject: BLAKE, GERMAN IDEALISM, AND FEUERBACH Message-Id: <199602291923.LAA29276@igc4.igc.apc.org> OK, I've exhausted my sources on Blake and Hegel. Pursuing Mary Lynn Johnson's review of Blake scholarship, to supplement the MLA BIBLIOGRAPHY on CD-ROM, I stumbled upon the following very important article: Trawick, Leonard M. "William Blake's German Connection", COLBY LIBRARY QUARTERLY, vol. 13, no. 4, December 1977, pp. 229-245. Now why didn't I think to look for German idealism and German Romanticism in general? OK, unless somebody out there does this for me, I'll try it out next time I make it to the proper library. But still, are there other sources on Blake and German idealism I've missed? Finally, my most burning question: is there anything on Blake and Ludwig Feuerbach? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 17:30:55 -0500 From: izak@igs.net (Izak Bouwer) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Bard/Earth and Dumain. Message-Id: <199602282230.RAA01380@host.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ah, this newsgroup is suddenly Blake-fan heaven! Everybody, please keep on talking. Nothing about Feuerbach in there, but plenty of other Germans in M. H. Abrams "Natural Supernaturalism".. Holderlin, Schelling,Schiller, Fichte etc. I am devoted to this book.Not only for what it tells me about Blake, but also for the insights it gives into the whole Romantic movement, both in England and on the continent,with its insistence that the Romantic movement was in the last analysis a religious movement. Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 17:12:49 +0200 (IST) From: Pak Fook Kon To: blake@albion.com Subject: Supernatural and.... Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks for the responses to my questions so far. I would like to add another perspective to my previous question. Could anyone help me by letting me know how Blake was concerned with the supernatural (or in what ways was he concerned with the supernatural)? I am refering to the Songs of I&E. The more I read Blake, the more I like what I read. It's challenging to me though. Thanks. Pak Fook kpf@bible.acu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Mar 96 01:11:24 EST From: JMOSER41@PORTLAND.CAPS.MAINE.EDU (julie moser) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blakean Sadism Message-Id: Does anyone know if there are any sources on a Blake-De Sade connection that I can't find via my crappy campus (actually, it's the whole state library system that lacks) or is anyone currently doing research on the connection? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Mar 96 09:06 CST From: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu To: blake@albion.com, JMOSER41@PORTLAND.CAPS.MAINE.EDU (julie moser) Subject: Re: Blakean Sadism Message-Id: <199603011510.JAA12588@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> See Mario Praz and Camille Paglia. And maybe some Brenda Webster and Margaret Storch? -- Mary Lynn ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 09:10:25 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blakean Sadism Message-Id: <9603011514.AA06741@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Does anyone know if there are any sources on a Blake-De Sade >connection that I can't find via my crappy campus (actually, it's >the whole state library system that lacks) or is anyone currently >doing research on the connection? Mario Praz in _The Romantic Agony_ (second ed., 1970) briefly connects Blake to de Sade, but he's more interested in the later Romantics (and those we would be more likely to call Victorians). Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Mar 1996 03:14:56 -0400 (EDT) From: LOFTIN@bcvms.bc.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: an inquiry into the ghost.... Message-Id: <01I1T54RN35U8Y5E38@bcvms.bc.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT of a flea? I'm speechless. Help! Clue me in on this circus of a picture. Please. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Mar 96 11:31:43 EST From: JMOSER41@PORTLAND.CAPS.MAINE.EDU (julie moser) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blakean Sadism Message-Id: While I am new and just discovering the connection, here is what I found sound far (I have read Paglia, but not the others, so thanks very much for the references). Sade and Blake both seem to hold the same disdain for the churche's view and handling of the poor and weak (I'm immediately reminded of Blake's Holy Thursay (both of them) and The Chimney Sweeper as an example) as a power manuever rather than compassion. On a whole, both seem to deal with freedom in much the same way, to a point. Blake's "mind-forged manacles" are smashed by Sade in his rejection of society's laws and 'moral' codes. He appears to be as religiously conscious as Blake in his critiques (though Blake is much more subtle). They also both seem paganistic to me. There are definately differences between them but I think their methods lead them to the same thought bubble. In the end, both seem to want us to re-enact Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in breaking down our socially structured ideologies. Jules ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Mar 96 14:31:00 EST From: "Fabian, Matthew" To: "'SMTP:blake@albion.com'" Subject: RE: an inquiry into the ghost.... Message-Id: <313750AA@smtpgate1.moodys.com> Blake was repeatedly visited by "ghosts" throughout his life, although the frequency of appearances could pick up from time to time. Most ghosts were of almost everyone famous you could think of (e.g. Shakespeare, Titian, Dante, Milton--who asked Blake to correct a part of Paradise Lost that he, Milton, now knew to be false). Blake's most terrifying vision was the flea, who appeared in his apartment, shaped like a man, bloodthirsty. One hand was a thorn, one was a bloody cup. Arthur Symons gives a great description of these in his biography WILLIAM BLAKE. By the way, everyone, let me introduce myself. I'm Matt Fabian, a Blake fan from New York City. -Matt ---------- From: blake-request To: blake Subject: an inquiry into the ghost.... Date: Friday, March 01, 1996 3:14AM of a flea? I'm speechless. Help! Clue me in on this circus of a picture. Please. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Mar 96 14:28:01 EST From: Kevin Lewis To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: BLAKE, GERMAN IDEALISM, AND FEUERBACH Message-Id: <9603012007.AA00360@uu6.psi.com> In the bygone sixties I wrote an MA paper on Fuerbach and then a PhD dissertation on Blake, fascinated in turn by them both. I do not know of any criticism which links them, and I think it would be difficult to try. Feuerbach, after all, is a materialist sort of guy, thinking like a Hegel in a circle, thinking like an idealist in that tradition, creating a closed system. Whereas Blake, as many on this list will testify, is not an idealist and not a materialist, and furthermore (as Leo Damrosch has put it rather well), is amazingly modern or perhaps post-modern in his suspicion of thinking and system-making even as he creates his own lest he be enslaved mentally by someone else's. Feuerbach places imagination in the service of human self-glorification as a species. Blake assigns to imagination the only possible truly human life and, as it were, sets it free to create its own world in despite of the ever-preying multi-form spectral consciousness. On the surface, there may seem to be some similarities. But I think Blake and Feuerbach ascribe categorically different properties to the imagination, and for categorically different ends. That's my two cents. It's been years since I went back to the translated text of Feuerbach. Kevin Lewis kelewis@univscvm.csd.sc.edu http://www.cla.sc.edu/relg/lewis.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 18:12:24 -0800 From: Devine/Apple@eworld.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blakean Sadism Message-Id: <960301181223_26426226@hp1.online.apple.com> I agree with what Julie Moser has written so far, but let's not overlook the obvious. Blake has the voice of the devil say "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desire," but he's not recommending infanticide-- it's there to emphasize the horror of nursing unacted desires (a point that was lost on W. K. Wimsatt, alas). De Sade, I suspect, might not blink at the murder, if it ended in an orgasm for one of his characters. But Julie's questions are good ones. Blake and De Sade both criticize social and religious hypocrisy. So why does Blake feel so much more wholesome and constructive than De Sade? Here's one thought: Blake says, somewhere, something like this: Complete liberty is possible only in the imagination. (I wish I have the text before me -- this is from memory.) You cannot have Liberty in this world without Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the enslavement of the half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue. That's just the way it is. Does De Sade admit that much reality into his critique of moral codes? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Mar 1996 21:15:53 -0500 From: wildcelt To: blake@albion.com Subject: Chimney Sweeper Message-Id: <3137AF59.527C@p3.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello to all, I have just started reading Blake and looking at engravings and I must say I have missed out. Would someone be so kind as to tell me what Blake was thinking about in The Chimney Sweeper in Innocence and experience. I am interested in the contrasting ideas in the two works. As I said I am new at this and thanks for any help or ideas Leo ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 18:20:41 -0800 From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: BLAKE, GERMAN IDEALISM, AND FEUERBACH Message-Id: <199603020220.SAA16190@igc4.igc.apc.org> Kevin, thanks for your feedback. Although much of your commentary offended me, some of your thoughts could be productively expanded. I didn't mention why I was interested in juxtaposing Blake to Feuerbach, but please don't assume that I regard them as kindred spirits. But let me say that if anyone could be so idiotic as to see a likeness in Blake and de Sade, then a putative Feuerbach-Blake affinity is as respectable as any of the other noxious imbecilities I've been reading lately. To set up an abstract comparison based on some formal properties common to two people is the most asinine approach to intellectual endeavor I can possibly imagine, especially when those two figures are inherently irreconcilable enemies. Now why am I interested in Blake and Feuerbach together? I'm not telling just yet. Could you be the same Kevin Lewis from a year ago who wrote something contrasting Blake and Coleridge? I agree with you now as then that Blake is a distinctively modern figure. I am highly offended by the notion that Blake is somehow postmodern, esp. with respect to an alleged "suspicion of thinking and system-making." This really burns me up, but let's put that aside. I also find strange your contrast of Blake with Feuerbach on the basis of human self-glorification vs. imagination as humanity. However, from your disquisition I am stimulated to think of certain differences, in the midst of similarities, relating to the issue of abstraction in the Hegelian sense. Feuerbach's attack on Hegel involves the criticism of alienated abstraction as opposed to concrete sensuous human life. Yet Feuerbach's own philosophy for all the propaganda about sensuousness, is also curiously abstract, very poor in substantive content, as Marx was later to criticize. Perhaps you are hitting on this with your otherwise misleading phrase "self-glorification". Perhaps there are affinities between Feuerbach and Blake in comparison with Hegel, and then decisive differences between the two in a number of dimensions, one of them being the issue of the abstract and the concrete. In this respect, Blake was certainly ahead of Feuerbach, regardless of the leap Feuerbach made beyond Bruno Bauer. Finally, you say something very interesting: >But I think Blake and Feuerbach ascribe categorically >different properties to the imagination, and for >categorically different ends. Here I am at a loss. I haven't gotten to the point where I know anything about Feuerbach's views on the imagination, so I would appreciate some elaboration. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 11:36:58 -0500 (EST) From: "Bryan A. Alexander" To: Devine/Apple@eworld.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blakean Sadism Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There's also the very close but radically different worlds within which we cannot fail to place Sade and Blake: the former lived and wrote within a France that went from the ancien regime, its disintegration, the Terror (wherein he was a judge), Napoleon; the latter in a reactionary Britain that defeated its rebellion. Perhaps some of the wholesomeness comes from the lazy comfort of not dealing with practical politics? Bryan Alexander Department of English email: bnalexan@umich.edu University of Michigan phone: (313) 764-0418 Ann Arbor, MI USA 48103 fax: (313) 763-3128 http://www.umich.edu/~bnalexan On Fri, 1 Mar 1996 Devine/Apple@eworld.com wrote: > I agree with what Julie Moser has written so far, but let's not overlook the > obvious. Blake has the voice of the devil say "Sooner murder an infant in > its cradle than nurse unacted desire," but he's not recommending > infanticide-- it's there to emphasize the horror of nursing unacted desires > (a point that was lost on W. K. Wimsatt, alas). De Sade, I suspect, might > not blink at the murder, if it ended in an orgasm for one of his characters. > But Julie's questions are good ones. Blake and De Sade both criticize social > and religious hypocrisy. So why does Blake feel so much more wholesome and > constructive than De Sade? > Here's one thought: Blake says, somewhere, something like this: Complete > liberty is possible only in the imagination. (I wish I have the text before > me -- this is from memory.) You cannot have Liberty in this world without > Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the enslavement of the > half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue. That's just the > way it is. Does De Sade admit that much reality into his critique of moral > codes? > > ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 12:06:27 -0800 From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Re[2]: BARD'S VOICE / EARTH'S ANSWER Message-Id: <199603022006.MAA13961@igc4.igc.apc.org> I finally went into deep storage to retrieve a good slice of my Blake collection which never got unpacked after my last move. I found I have more stuff than I thought, especially as related to the critical literature of the Songs of Experience. As it turns out, I have Northrop Frye's BLAKE: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS, E.D. Hirsch, Jr.'s INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE: AN INTRODUCTION TO BLAKE, Morton D. Paley's TWENTIETH CENTURY INTERPRETATIONS OF SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE, David W. Lindsay's BLAKE: SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE, and my treasured original edition of Joseph Wicksteed's BLAKE'S INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE. I may comment on some of this material as I read it if I stumble across something particularly noteworthy, as I commented on Gleckner and Leader. Anyway, I am still in the dark on the past decade of Blake scholarship. So tell me, am I still missing noteworthy scholarship on the Bard/Earth dialectic? -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #13 *************************************