From: blake-d-request@albion.com Sent: Sunday, December 15, 1996 1:28 PM To: blake-d@albion.com Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #142 ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 142 Today's Topics: BLAKE, SPIRITUALITY .... & MISCOMMUNICATION -Reply Blake list admin message (was: Re: holiday mail request) -Reply Re: Howard Roark? -Reply sweet moans (was Re: anti-patriarch-reply) Re: Howard Roark? -Reply -Reply Interesting parallels ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 13:35:13 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, rdumain@igc.apc.org Subject: BLAKE, SPIRITUALITY .... & MISCOMMUNICATION -Reply Message-Id: I'm really interested to see Ralph agreeing with Bert - because Ralph that gives me a sneaking suspicion (which I've harboured right from the start,when I first joined this list) that you and I would find much to agree about. Now, I gather from what you say that you lump me with the petit bourgeouis and consider that I have an old-fashioned archetypal approach to Blake. (Please give examples of where you see this?) I have ALWAYS been in opposition to people who see life in terms of mental boxes of one sort and size or another and left behind me all home comforts to travel the entire world, learning and teaching as I went. .. so rid yourself of that particularly glib image of who I am. Moreover, why should labelling of my assumed personality type replace genuine and courteous discussion on this list? You also seem to assume that I bring in Jung and Yeats into interpreting Blake, which I do not. I mentioned that I would be including poems by Yeats, such as "Under Ben Bulben" and extracts from Jung in a course which I hope to offer to fourth year students which will deal with the spiritual quest in literature. Now, when we come to discuss the texts selected for this, there will be no abstractions, such as you assume, nor no rending of each out of their mythologicial, political or other, contexts. Those who wish to go on to do MAs or PhDs on any of the writers represented will be encouraged to do so. The Course will merely present the imaginative expression of interest, by writers of various cultures, in matters such as the nature of god - if such exists- and the ways in which human beings invest their lives with deeper meanings. No literary models, old-fashioned, or new-fangled will be necessary. Students approach as they see fit - hopefully with delight in the vitality of the ways in which others express themselves creatively. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 13:58:50 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake list admin message (was: Re: holiday mail request) -Reply Message-Id: Thanks Seth for a wonderful year of communing. Pam van Schaik. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 06:32:15 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Howard Roark? -Reply Message-Id: <199612111432.GAA08455@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com> Hi, Pam, I would like to know more about your kabbalistic readings of Blake. What evidence did you uncover for Blake's readings in the Jewish mystics-- (if the sources for Blake's kabbalistic reading are well-known, I apologize in advance for my ignorance)--? Have you thought about posting your paper on one of the electronic journals (i.e. Romanticism on the Net)? Some of the conference papers at NASSR will appear there by invitation, and my understanding is that this does not preclude their appearing in other, "printed" venues. Susan You wrote: > >I'm not sure how to resolve the issues raised re spiritual reading of Blake >since I find the application of currently popular literary theory to Blake >reductionist for the same reasons that Steve Perry would find the >application of any model so - even a kabbalistic one. Moreover, most of >my work and understanding of Blake precedes any attempt to apply >another, kabbalistic, model. What excites me is the the Kabbalistic model >, which I began investigating many years after my original close >response to the contrary images of Blake's text, fitted exactly... that is, I >found that the ways in which I had interpreted Blakes' vision of the Fall >initially seemed to be perfectly corroborated by every new insight I >arrived at through becoming familiar with the symbols and ideas of an >entirely new discipline. If you are really interested, I could put up pape >by pae of my argument in my intended book ... but this would perhaps not >be in my best interests if I wish to publish the ms??? Believe, me, you >have seen the merest tip of a very deep iceberg in my postings. An >easier way would be to do a mutual discussion of Jerusalem, as I >suggested earlier, then Ralph and others could put their interpretations >side by side with my own , and students and other Blakeans can judge >for themselves which readings are reductionist. Since Blake's themes >deal with the Fall and how to regain Eden, and Jesus is a central figure in >all of his longer poems, I hardly see how a spiritual (though very >unorthodox) reading can be avoided. I prefer Minute Particulars to a >general , abstract discussion and Blake's words are always a pleasure >to contemplate again. However, as Universities here are on vacation for >the Summer, this would be an idea for next year. Meanwhile, thanks to >all for a scintillatingly happy year of mental challenge. .. warmest wishes >for Christmas. > > ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 13:00:03 -0500 (EST) From: Nelson Hilton To: blake@albion.com Subject: sweet moans (was Re: anti-patriarch-reply) Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 10 Dec 1996 TomD3456@aol.com wrote: > In Bill Moyers's series "The Language of Life," > Robert Hass makes that point quite simply: He recites Keats's lines "She > looked at me as she did love,/ And made sweet moan." That last line, he > says, was an erotic experience for him as a teenager [me too!], How about "A Cradle Song"? Sweet moans, dovelike sighs, Chase not slumber from thy eyes. Sweet moans, sweeter smiles, All the dovelike moans beguiles. Nelson Hilton -=- English -=- University of Georgia -=- Athens Was ist Los? "Net of Urizen" or "Jerusalem the Web"? http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 11:49:34 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, reillys@ix.netcom.com Subject: Re: Howard Roark? -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Hi, Susan, Thanks for the interest and advice re Romanticism on the net...I'll try to do something in the New Year about this. The critics who intimate kabbalistic influences are Bloom, Raine, Hirst, to mention a few, but they do not investigate the actual texts of Blake in close relation to the imagery, symbolism and narrative of the Fall and Redemption and role of the Messiah as I do in my ms. I find correspondences on all these levels which simply fit like a hand in glove to the work I did before knowing anything at all about kabbalah, This led me to rejoice inwardly ( excuse real old-fashioned language here as I'm being continually interrupted and am resorting to whatever comes to mind quickly) as I felt that it vindicated the interpretations I had arrived at in both theses on Blake. Elisa, thanks for your note .... have to desert my post now to fetch a child who thought she was waitressing, but isn't ...... Some time, Ralph, I'd like to discuss the dark side ... we have plenty of that here ... neighbours getting raped and murdered, for example, and I don't aspire to sanitizing anything. When artists leave behind words that can illuminate the lives of generations to come, however, I don't insist on whoever reads their words knowing all about the writer's warts emotionally and spiritually in the very same moment that they are engaging for the first time with , and delighting in, the vitality of the texts. Somewhere, light shone , even if momentarily, in the darkness to produce greatness and Blake reminds us to honour men of genius .. and those most inspired, the most. Out of action for a while, Pam ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 13:39:26 -0500 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Interesting parallels Message-Id: <961215133925_2018315326@emout17.mail.aol.com> I want to apprise you of a marvellous book I have just read: "Of Water and the Spirit," by Malidoma Some', an African now living in California. Some', a member of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso, describes traditional tribal beliefs that parallel Blake's ideas in some very interesting ways. Here's what he quotes one of his elders as saying, at the beginning of the first night of his initiation ceremony: "Walking slowly around the circle, [the fifth elder] spoke incessantly and breathlessly as if he were in a hurry to get a job done. Somehow what he said did not sound strange to me or -- I found out later -- to anyone. It was as if he were putting into words something we all knew, something we had never questioned and could never verbalize. What he said was this: The place where he was standing was the center. Each one of us possessed a center that he had grown away from after birth. To be born was to lose contact with our center, and to grow from childhood to adulthood was to walk away from it. 'The center is both within and without. It is everywhere. But we must realize it exists, find it, and be with it, for without the center we cannot tell who we are, where we come from, and where we are going.' He explained that the purpose of [initiation] was to find our center.... 'No one's center is like someone else's. Find your own center, not the center of your neighbor; not the center of your father or mother or family or ancestor but that center which is yours and yours alone.'... He said that each of us is a circle like the circle we had formed around the fire. We are both the circle and its center. Without a circle there is no center and vice versa..... 'When there is a center there are four live parts to the circle: the rising part in the east and its right side, the north, and the setting part in the west and its right side, the south. All human beings are circles. Our setting part represents the coolness of water. It provides the peace of the body and the soul, and bridges the gap between how we look on the outside and how we are on the inside. It brings us to our family, the village, the community. It makes us many. The god of the setting side is the god of the water, the water we drink, the water that quenches our thirst. 'Its opponent is the rising part, the fire, the god that makes us do, feel, see, love, and hate. The fire has power, a great power of motion both within us and without. Outside of us, it drives us toward one another, toward the execution of our respective duties, toward the planning of our lives. We act and react because this rising power is in us and with us. Inside of us, the fire pulls the spiritual forces beyond us toward us. The fire within is what causes our real family -- those we are always drawn to when we see them -- to identify us. From the realm where the ancestors dwell this fire can be seen in each and every one of us, shining like the stars that you see above your heads. Imagine what would happen if we did not have that fire. You would be a dead star, invisible, wild, and dangerous.'... I find some of the parallels to Blake very interesting (esp. the "four live parts" of the circle!), and thought you would as well. Some' is a member of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso. He was taken away from his village by French Jesuits when he was 4, and brought up in Jesuit schools till the age of 20. Then he escaped back to his village and, eventually, underwent initiation into their traditional beliefs. Later, he was sent back to the West by the village elders and earned Ph.D.'s from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. The book, first published in 1994, describes his experiences up through his initiation. It's available now as a Penguin "Arkana" paperback. Good stocking-stuffer! --Tom Devine -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #142 **************************************