From: blake-d-request@albion.com Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 1996 1:21 PM To: blake-d@albion.com Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #133 ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 133 Today's Topics: Take off mailing liste -Reply Re: Blake's Characters: Ahania et al Re: Vesely & Devine : An Answer Re: feminist bores and antivisionary elections Re: Blake Archive and e-texts Re: Urizen Question Re: Urizen Question Re = Tharmas and Enion Re:Re: "GOD" et moi Re: Blake's Characters: Ahania et al Re: Re:Re: "GOD" et moi re: trust (was "Re:Re: `GOD' et moi") Re: Blake's Characters: Argh! The Goddess Fortune in-you-know-where. Re: The Goddess Fortune in-you-know-where. oops old E, new E, and good ol' K oops #2 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 12:34:52 -0600 From: Mark Trevor Smith To: blake@albion.com Subject: Take off mailing liste -Reply Message-Id: Send your request to blake-request@albion.com Put nothing in the body of the message, but on the subject line put unsubscribe >>> Marie Anderson 11/16/96 08:26pm >>> Please take me off the Blake mailing list. Marie@ozemail.com.au Marie ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 10:48:38 -0800 From: Steve Perry To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Characters: Ahania et al Message-Id: <3290AF86.4A49@infogenics.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I cannot understand why Blake's "Jerusalem" has not become compul- > sory reading for "Feminists" seeing as how even the male Zoas even- > tually do not dominate as players in this great cosmological > epic. Eventually Jerusalem is the emanation of "All Human Forms.. > even Tree, Metal Earth.." > > Gloudina Bouwer > Thank you Gloudina, this is precisely why I have been so irritated by this whole "feminist" thread. I just can't see how anyone who has seriously read Blake can call him a chauvinist or misogynist without paying attention to WHAT HE SAYS. After all, we know little about him, and less about his times. He seems to tell us again and again in plain English that the division of the sexes is the result of the fallen state, and he tells us again and again that the paternalism of Urizen or Nobodaddy are part of the dis-integration of the Zoas. I argued in an earlier post that it is hard to find good metaphors about gender that are not based on ones contemporary understanding of gender, but Blake is pretty empathic about the sexes. I suppose though one could make the argument that Blake is an atheist after reading MHH, and a vivisectionist after reading "The Tyger", and a Pederast after reading "A Little Girl Lost". "One thought fills a dissertation..." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 13:15:40 -0600 (CST) From: Suzanne Araas Vesely To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Vesely & Devine : An Answer Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Gloudinia: I am hesitant to accept your appreciation, because I do not have any problem with "feminists," only with those who try to impose _their_ agenda on eveyone else. Hardly a thing confined to one sex: it seems to me that women _are_ behaving like quite a few men I have known when they get into that. Or more to the point, the genders impose all the time on each other. Which is why "mutual forgiveness of each vice" is a necessity, and why Blake had to join the ranks of those who recognize all too well the "spectrous fiend" in themselves--myself included in the sometimes antivisionary company. But, in my defense, I am hardly "Urizen-dominant"; I write poetry (which I will forever spare the list of Blake readers) and I love Blake's nonlinearity. My husband is the one with the Ph.D. in Math, but he has a better heart than Blake ever gave Urizen credit for. Lets hear it for a wealth of possibilities--even those that Blake, though I love his work, may not have imagined. Suzanne Araas Vesely ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 12:54:31 -0600 (CST) From: Suzanne Araas Vesely To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: feminist bores and antivisionary elections Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Scott Leonard seems to be on to an important point. And that's why "androgyny," in the usual sense of it, will not do to explain Blake's handlong of women. I believe that Blake's view of the real Christian forgiveness as being _mutual_ forgiveness suggests this "feeling" of which Scott writes. It occurs between male and female. I think, though, that Blake's females tend to be more repentant than his males, perhaps ironically, or perhaps it is Blake making use of the long judaeochristian tradition of the female transgressor. Suzanne Araas Vesely On Mon, 18 Nov 1996, Scott A Leonard wrote: > Steve Perry & all: About the problems of metaphorically representing the > fully awakened (and therefore gender-integrated) Albion, I'd say that the > core of the problem seems to be that form itself--or at least form as we > understand it in the spatio-temporal sense--will no longer exist. Thus > imagining Albion as hermaphroditic (as some suggest might be helpful) > seems pretty crudely connected to our fallen world of materiality, space, > and time. The fully integrated essence of maleness and > femaleness--whatever we take those categories to "mean" in our > time--seems unrepresentable in any terms that derive from our current > fallen, enclosed senses. Which, of course, isn't very helpful. But I > think that it the reawakened Albion could be imagined at the level of > feeling. An existence wherein it isn't a curse to be a poet or prophet > who has the gift of sight into the nature of things but is always already > prevented from finding the "rare word for the rare desire." An existence > wherein joys multiply and no spectrous longing for a greater variety and > greater intensity of connection haunts even the most simple pleasures. > > Or so one supposes..... ;-} > > Scott A. Leonard > ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 12:27:56 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake Archive and e-texts Message-Id: <199611182027.MAA29892@dfw-ix4.ix.netcom.com> Dear Sandy, I was at NASSR this past wkend and attended Viscomi's talk and slide presentation on the Blake Archive. He was not able to enter into great detail about the issues you have raised, but did touch upon such concerns. I suspect that if anyone can answer your question it is Prof Viscomi, who, I did not know until Friday, was once a printmaker himself. You probably already know that there are, or are going to be (I haven't tried this function out yet) enlarging and "ensmalling" capabilities on these e-images, which, given the quality of Viscomi's e-reproductions, may be a viable substitute for viewing the originals with a magnifier. I hope this information lies within your sphere of interest and is not reiterative of "scholarly minutiae" (long may it wave!) with which you are already familiar. To others, it is the scholar's job and his responsibilty to bring neglected texts or versions of texts to light, in the most accurate versions possible. Discussions about semi-colons and colons may seem like academic nitpicking, but they are representative of a larger and a higher standard of accuracy wch those in the profession seek to attain. Susan Reilly ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 17:01:43 -0500 (EST) From: Bill Ruegg To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Urizen Question Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII As one of Alex's instructors (Ron Broglio, another member of this list, is the other) I appreciate the restraint shown by the many knowledgeable people on this list in not answering his question. Alex had to come up with an answer to the question below (which was originally posed to me by Donald Ault in a graduate seminar I had with him) for himself. If any of you e-mailed him privately please let me know. Now that his assignment has been turned in, it might be an interesting point for the list to discuss. I'd be interested in your thoughts. * * * Bill Ruegg http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/~bruegg/ "The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." --Will Blake On Mon, 11 Nov 1996, Alex J. Rodriguez wrote: > I was wondering if anyone could help me with this question for a paper of > mine regarding the First Book of Urizen: > Locate one or more points of resistance to reading (you may consider the > strangeness of punctuation, information that seems to be missing or which > should not be there, character's names or actions, events, etc.) in the Book > of Urizen and discuss what functions such points may have in dislodging a > "normal" reader's comfortable belief in a stable and homogeneous "real" world. > > Any help would be greatly appreciated! > > > Alex Rodriguez > ************************************************* > alxgator@afn.org http://www.afn.org/~alxgator/ > > GO GATORS! > > 704-107 S.W. 16th Avenue > Gainesville, Fl. 32601 > (352) 380-9616 > ************************************************* > ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 21:05:11 -0500 (EST) From: Ronald S Broglio To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Urizen Question Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Adding to Bill Ruegg's comments, I find that the places of resistance are most interesting because they are sites where competing perspectives (of the narrative) are competing. Understanding why a particular site offers resistence (to the reader or to a character's perspective) helps us to see what is at stake in that particular moment of the narrative. Ron Broglio > Locate one or more points of resistance to reading (you may consider the >strangeness of punctuation, information that seems to be missing or >which should not be there, character's names or actions, events, etc.) in >the Book of Urizen ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 22:05:19 -0500 (EST) From: bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re = Tharmas and Enion Message-Id: <199611190305.WAA10500@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thank you, Mark. I wish you would continue talking about Tharmas and Enion. I find it so much harder to keep to- gether in my mind what those two are all about. I cannot accept Foster Damon's explanation that Tharmas represents the senses, and hence the physical body, (even if the body "is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses" (MHH4). Neither can I see Enion reduced by Damon to "the generative instinct." I mostly take an intellectual shortcut and inter- pret Tharmas for myself as the Zoa of the Instinctual Energy, but it probably is a dangerous oversimplification. Enion is really a rather important player in the Prophecies: mother of Los and Enitharmon. Also, when Urthona fell, his Spectre was born from Enion's brain. My question is: could one see the little Boy Tharmas and the bright Girl Enion in the Gardens of Vala as akin to the talk of the Child in each of us that has been discussed in the pop-psychology of recent years? Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:11:33 -0500 From: WaHu@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re:Re: "GOD" et moi Message-Id: <961119001132_2081478692@emout07.mail.aol.com> In a message dated 96-11-18 10:08:04 EST, you write: << Hi Hugh Obviously you are "of the faith", Those unbelelievers like myself will find your blind faith (is that what it is?) hard to take, I feel Blake was a believer and not a knower, his faith, if any stems from the times he lived in >> My Atheistical credentials are impeccable, thank you. And Blake was a knower and not a believer. The words we're really looking at here are gnosis and pistis--a less familiar term today than gnosis. Pistis is from pist-ay-oh the greek word for faith, but more accurately trust. Trust of course is useless in human affairs, hence the words collateral and hostage and money. If we cannot trust human beings whom we can see, how can we trust god whom we cannot? Which is why people trust god. Because god does not exist, god can be trusted. Blake KNEW this. It is part of his argument. It is why both atheists and god -believing jerks claim him. Oh, and about the Ear. In Mark the ear is not glued back on. In the hopelessly sentimental Luke it is. Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 07:34:16 -0600 (CST) From: Suzanne Araas Vesely To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Characters: Ahania et al Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 18 Nov 1996, Steve Perry wrote: > I cannot understand why Blake's "Jerusalem" has not become compul- > > sory reading for "Feminists" seeing as how even the male Zoas even- > > tually do not dominate as players in this great cosmological > > epic. Eventually Jerusalem is the emanation of "All Human Forms.. > > even Tree, Metal Earth.." > > > > Gloudina Bouwer > > Gloudinia, many feminists _have_ read Jerusalem. what they see is that the final scene has no females in it, unless one counts the depiction of Enitharmon at her spindle. There are some pretty convincing arguments that Blake has shortchanged women; do people the justice of reading before condemning or judging--it is only what BLake asked for himself.> > > Thank you Gloudina, this is precisely why I have been so irritated by > this whole "feminist" thread. You talk about feminism as if it were a unified system. An examination of feminist writings on BLae would clearly show that this is not th case. Comparre, for example, the work of Alicia Ostriker and Margaret Storch. I just can't see how anyone who has > seriously read Blake can call him a chauvinist or misogynist without > paying attention to WHAT HE SAYS. After all, we know little about him, > and less about his times. See above remarks to Gloudinia. Also: I think that there is a fair amount of information about Blake's times, if one will take the trouble to dig. Ackroyd's study, _Blake_ does a good job of placing Blake in his milieu. He seems to tell us again and again in plain > English (!?) Blake was not one for "Plain" English, he can be interpreted in various ways. I do not necessarily agree with everything feminist on Blake, nor do I find symbolic interpretations unimportant, but your apparent need for a monolithic understanding of Blake as only symbolic and nothing more really annoys me. > ... it is hard to find good metaphors about gender that > are not based on ones contemporary understanding of gender, but Blake is > pretty empathic about the sexes. Simply not true. the notion that the feminine ought to be absorbed into the masculine dates back to Blake's time, and current feminist interpretations are not in some little shell devoid of reference to the past. As far as Blake has express empathy for the sexes, I think that you really need to go back over some of te characterizations of the feminine in BLake that are in _Jerusalem_. True, there are empathic things, but they are not so readily to be found as passages which show women as confused, victimized, or mean, like Vala. You need to consider that part of the whole of Blake. I am not interested in using it to question BLake's stability, but I am asking what he is _doing!_ Try this quote, for example. I think there is an explanation in context, but just look, ;for once, at the emotional impact, in this statement written by Blake next to his illustration of the goddess Fortune: The hoe of a Shit house The Goddess Fortune is the devils servant ready toKiss any ones Arse." (Erdman, 689) Or go back and reread "Thou mother of my mortal part..." Or reread the night of Enitharmon in Europe, when she glories in teaching the little girl secresy. Feminists have argued that there is an emotional charge behind the "symbolic" in anyone's writing. I think that this is a legitimate issue to raise. I think that much, but not all of BLake, can be understood symbolically or historically. But Blake is not my God, nor do I believe that he would want me to make him his God. He speaks of his own shortcomings, shows them all too clearly in his private notebook, but accepts that > I suppose though one could make the argument that Blake is an atheist > after reading MHH, and a vivisectionist after reading "The Tyger", and a > Pederast after reading "A Little Girl Lost". > > "One thought fills a dissertation..." > Your ignorance of my work is pardonable. Your readiness to judge work that has been published without bothering to readit is not so pardonable. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:41:01 -0800 From: "Joseph W. Murray" To: Subject: Re: Re:Re: "GOD" et moi Message-Id: <199611190932.BAA09929@post.everett.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Luke was a physician, hence his interest in the man's ear being healed. A physician usually is not the most sentimental of people. ---------- > From: WaHu@aol.com > To: blake@albion.com > Subject: Re:Re: "GOD" et moi > Date: Monday, November 18, 1996 9:11 PM > > In a message dated 96-11-18 10:08:04 EST, you write: > > << Hi Hugh > Obviously you are "of the faith", Those unbelelievers like myself will find > your blind faith (is that what it is?) hard to take, I feel Blake was a > believer and not a knower, his faith, if any stems from the times he lived > in >> > > My Atheistical credentials are impeccable, thank you. And Blake was a knower > and not a believer. The words we're really looking at here are gnosis and > pistis--a less familiar term today than gnosis. Pistis is from pist-ay-oh > the greek word for faith, but more accurately trust. > > Trust of course is useless in human affairs, hence the words collateral > and hostage and money. If we cannot trust human beings whom we can see, how > can we trust god whom we cannot? Which is why people trust god. Because god > does not exist, god can be trusted. Blake KNEW this. It is part of his > argument. It is why both atheists and god -believing jerks claim him. > > Oh, and about the Ear. In Mark the ear is not glued back on. In the > hopelessly sentimental Luke it is. > > > Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 11:21:14 -0500 (EST) From: Nelson Hilton To: blake@albion.com Subject: re: trust (was "Re:Re: `GOD' et moi") Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Good point!-- and let's add the revealing etymological connection: trust ==> troth ==> truth (what we take on faith!) Hence "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." This might take us by vicus of recirculation back to the of-course-impossible but there-was-at-some-point-a-Real issue of wee Will and mum and dad. Trust/truth must in part be rooted in early experience--in no sense a simple state... A collateral issue is how or whether one trusts words, language-- for like money, words are signs whose value depends on the collective trust in the entire cultural economy, the house of being burning in the ether around us... Nelson Hilton -=- English -=- University of Georgia -=- Athens Was ist Los? "Net of Urizen" or "Jerusalem the Web"? http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake On Tue, 19 Nov 1996 WaHu@aol.com wrote: > ... Pistis is from pist-ay-oh > the greek word for faith, but more accurately trust. > > Trust of course is useless in human affairs, hence the words collateral > and hostage and money. If we cannot trust human beings whom we can see, how > can we trust god whom we cannot? Which is why people trust god. Because god > does not exist, god can be trusted. Blake KNEW this. It is part of his > argument. It is why both atheists and god -believing jerks claim him. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 10:05:41 -0600 (CST) From: Suzanne Araas Vesely To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Characters: Argh! Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 19 Nov 1996, Suzanne Araas Vesely wrote: > > > > > I cannot understand why Blake's "Jerusalem" has not become compul- > > > sory reading for "Feminists" seeing as how even the male Zoas even- > > > tually do not dominate as players in this great cosmological > > > epic. Eventually Jerusalem is the emanation of "All Human Forms.. > > > even Tree, Metal Earth.." > > > > > > Gloudina Bouwer > > > to which I replied, Gloudinia, many feminists _have_ read Jerusalem. what they see is > that the final scene has no females in it, unless one counts the > depiction of Enitharmon at her spindle. There are some pretty convincing > arguments that Blake has shortchanged women; do people the justice of > reading before condemning or judging--it is only what BLake asked for > himself.> > > Hence the "aargh." I was popping off too much with regard to this, without explaining myself fully. I do believe that the very end validly claims a union. The feminist question is, is that union earned legitimately, or at the expense of the female? There are valid reasons to think that the latter migbt be the case: the apparent full submission of Brittannia to Albion. The absence of any female in the great human conversation in the chariots of fire at the end. Just quoting these few lines don't answer the question. I believe that Blake was very well aware of gender problems in the old representations, and he did some very clever things to get around them: using the tradition of antifeminism (updated with allusions to women's involvement with the popularization of the hated natural philosophy) as a _felix culpa,_ for instance. And with that, I think that it's time for my Spectre to shut up and go do something useful. Fiendishly yours, Suzanne Araas Vesely ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 12:05:07 -0500 (EST) From: bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: The Goddess Fortune in-you-know-where. Message-Id: <199611191705.MAA29403@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Susanne Araas Vesely indicates that the following can be found in Erdman 689: The hole of a Shit house The Goddess Fortune is the devils servant ready to kiss any ones Arse Celestial Globe Terrestrial Globe On design No 16 "Hell Canto 7 (Goddess of Fortune in a pit.) HOWEVER, according to the Blake Concordance it is to be found in Erdman 668 (and also in K 785). This brings me to a very important question, one I have been pestering my husband to answer for quite some time. "How is it possible for all Erdman's and Keynes's all over the globe to have the same numbering?" My husband responds out of the bright Urizen part of his psyche: "Of course, IT STANDS TO REASON that they are all the same. Why would they otherwise use such a system?" Now however, the lingering question in my mind is about to be resolved. If Suzanne does possess an Erdman with that quotation on p. 689, all Erdman's are not equal and my hus- band will have to apologize. I cannot help but read Blake's remarks on design No 101 (a diagram of the Circles of Hell) also on E 668. This is Upside Down When viewd from Hells Gate But right When Viewd from Purgatory after they have passed the Center In Equivocal Worlds Up & Down are Equivocal Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 12:27:19 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Goddess Fortune in-you-know-where. Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Now however, the lingering question in my mind is about >to be resolved. If Suzanne does possess an Erdman with that >quotation on p. 689, all Erdman's are not equal and my hus- >band will have to apologize. Susanna is using the revised edition of Erdman (1988), as I am. I believe the concordance was based on the earlier edition, which must be the one you have. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 12:28:25 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: oops Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry I mangled Suzanne's name in my response to Gloudina. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 20:45:30 MET From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER" To: bouwer , blake@albion.com Subject: old E, new E, and good ol' K Message-Id: November 19th, 1996 nota bene: I write, *horribile dictu*, before re-reading! Gloudina Bouwer points out and asks: > Susanne Araas Vesely indicates that the following can be > found in Erdman 689: > The hole of a Shit house The Goddess Fortune is the devils > servant ready to kiss any ones Arse Celestial Globe > Terrestrial Globe > On design No 16 "Hell Canto 7 (Goddess of Fortune in a pit.) > > HOWEVER, according to the Blake Concordance it is to be found > in Erdman 668 (and also in K 785). This brings me to a very > important question, one I have been pestering my husband to > answer for quite some time. "How is it possible for all > Erdman's and Keynes's all over the globe to have the same > numbering?" Here's a preliminary answer in three parts: (1) I have never seen a copy of the Blake Concordance (edited by Erdman et al., 2 vols., Cornell UP, 1967) which identifies anything but Keynes page references; in fact, work on the Concordance led to the production of the first Erdman-Bloom edition (in 1965). (2) The Keynes text (based on the first edition of 1925 and on the Centennary Edition of 1927) was re-paginated for the 1957 Nonesuch edition. Subsequent printings (such as the popular OUP edition) contain a number of silent corrections of typos plus a supplement of newly traced material *at the end*. The pagination of the vast majority of pages has therefore remained unchanged in the Keynes text for nearly forty years, and it is this (stable) sequence of pages upon which the Concordance was based. (3) Since 1982 the text you have labelled "Erdman" (and which we are all used to abbreviate as "E000") exists in *two* versions that differ in their pagination. The earlier 1965 [1st edn.]/1970 [4th rev. printing] Erdman is *The Poetry and Prose of William Blake*, almost complete with the notable exception of the letters. This was followed in 1982/1988 by Erdman's fully revised *The Complete Poetry and Prose* -- entirely reset (I believe), more text, more pages, and hence a different pagination. Now let's hear from Susanne Araas Vesely and Gloudina Bouwer which of the two versions of Erdman's edition they've consulted. Of course, both are worth having (especially if, when checking the context of a quotation in an important study of Blake's poetry and art published before the new E superseded old E, you wish to avoid having to consult first the Concordance, then Keynes, and finally the earlier Erdman edition). --DW Doerrbecker ######################################## # ***The road to ignorance is paved # # with good editions.*** # # -- George Bernard Shaw # ######################################## ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 20:50:17 MET From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER" To: blake@albion.com Subject: oops #2 Message-Id: Just as Jennifer Michael I'm awfully > Sorry I mangled Suzanne's name in my response to Gloudina. --DWD -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #133 **************************************