------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 23 Today's Topics: Re: Question: God's Hiddeness and Songs of Experience -Reply -Reply Re: Milton Opera Update Re: questions relating to _Milton_--the poem and the opera adapttion Introducing...a newbie Re: questions relating to _Milton_--the poem and the opera adapttion Keynes anecdote (was Re: questions relating to _Milton_--the poem and the opera adaptation) Introductions Pam van Schaik Mark Trevor Smith Re: Keynes anecdote (was Re: questions relating to _Milton_--the poem and the opera adaptation) BLAKE AND MARX COMPARED BLAKE & THE MODERNS (1) BLAKE AND THE MODERNS (2) -- HEGEL Jerusalem the hymn ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 11:28:49 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: kerze@oxy.edu Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Question: God's Hiddeness and Songs of Experience -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Dear Michael, It seems to me that Eckart's emptiness which is filled by the divine is the key to all mystical experience (and at the risk of reaping derogatory comments, I should like to be perfectly without a protective persona in declaring that I, like many others, have experienced this state and emerged from it with psychic gifts and some visionary ability - although not with material, or other forms of tangible success!). I think Blake knew this which is why he insists on overcoming the spectre of the ego, the Selfhood (as Los does, despite nearly succumbing to Urizenic vision intially). To empty self is not to lose all sense of one's own individualty and create a void - it is simply to allow room for the divine and immortal portion of oneself which, in Blake's opinion, is never separate from the love and mercy of God. That is, we can always expand our imaginations into the `bosom' of God since we are `members' of God's `eternal humanity divine'. To know this is surely to be redeemed from being a Human Abstract' and freed to become like, or acquire the spiritual attributes, described in `A Divine Image' and represented by Jerusalem throughout Blake's work. In kabbalistic terms, this could be seen as equivalent to having all one's radiances cleared of the dregs of the Winepress of the mortal world and restored to the `wine' of eternal life - to gathering together again all our fallen divine sparks - just as Los tries to gather those of Albion and forge them into forms reatining some semblance of their original divine `symmetry'. Unlike the Post-modernists, I do perceive a coherent narrative of the Fall and Redemption behind Blake's series of seemingly disparate visions. I suppose, in replying to you, I am trying to weave together an answer simultaneously to some of the points re wine and Blake's syntax raised by others. I find all of you out there very stimulating! Pam van Schaik ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 15:42:29 -0500 From: Golgonooz@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Milton Opera Update Message-Id: <960329154229_259312005@emout09.mail.aol.com> Thanks Jennifer for your comments about using," the phrase "feminine self." Although it sounds simpler, it also doesn't adequately represent the complex relation between "self" and "other", in my opinion". We are trying to use as much original poetry as possible of Blake & Milton for the opera. However, I am constantly reminded that most audience members need basic dramatic clarity and the subtler complexities will only be revealed to those who experience this work (and hopefully Blake's original) more than once. Dana Harden ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 15:43:41 +0000 From: sternh@WABASH.EDU To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: questions relating to _Milton_--the poem and the opera adapttion Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Just a footnote re the "Jerusalem" chez Fabians query. Wasn't John Maynard Keynes, brother to Geoffrey, a member of the society? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 15:10:23 -0600 (CST) From: Darlene Sybert To: blake@albion.com Subject: Introducing...a newbie Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am a doctoral candidate at the University, with an emphasis in the six major Romantic Poets and a minor in critical theory. My course work is completed with my exams scheduled for summer (tentively) and my dissertation yet to begin. In my spare time, I teach an honors college section of freshmen comp that is "paperless" (Writing with Computers; it uses a list, a home page, and a MOO instead) and a "paperless" section of a literature class (intro to modern world lit). I have three grown sons: one is a poly sci grad from Whitman College in Washington State; a second is also a doctoral candidate here at the University, also teaching Writing with Computers. My home is in Western Washington, halfway between Seattle and Portland on five wooded acres. (I'm in Missouri because I got my Masters in a unique creative writing program here.) Darlene Sybert http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html Offices:Tate Hall, Rm 6 or 16 (knock), or ZooMoo Tu Th 1:30-3:30 or by appt. (882-3460 or 884-6902) ***************************************************************************** The universe is not to be narrowed down to the limits of understanding which has been man's practice up to now, but the understanding must be stretched to take in the image of the universe as it is discovered. -Bacon ****************************************************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 19:49:42 -0500 From: WaHu@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: questions relating to _Milton_--the poem and the opera adapttion Message-Id: <960329194942_181154136@emout07.mail.aol.com> Keynes was not a Fabian Socialist. He was an extremely high muckymuck in the British Treasury--to the point of being its rep at the Versaille peace talks. There is a good essay on him in Bloomsbury Lions by Leon Edel. Leonard Woolf was a fabian. This has to be the only discussion group where Maynard Keynes would be referred to as Geoffrey's Brother....I find that amusing, even sweet. Sorry everyone, for this minor digression. Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 22:38:11 -0500 (EST) From: Nelson Hilton To: blake@albion.com Subject: Keynes anecdote (was Re: questions relating to _Milton_--the poem and the opera adaptation) Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 29 Mar 1996 WaHu@aol.com wrote: > This has to be the only discussion group where Maynard Keynes would be > referred to as Geoffrey's Brother > ... > Sorry everyone, for this minor digression. Apologies, too, for continuing it: In 1978 I visited Geoffrey Keynes, accompanied by my father. After looking at marvellous pieces in his collection, we had tea, which Sir Geoffrey, then in his nineties, prepared himself. During our conversation my father related how he had recently left a position as professor of economics--at which point Keynes turned to him and asked, "Have you ever heard of my brother?" Nelson Hilton -=- English -=- University of Georgia -=- Athens Was ist Los? "Net of Urizen" or "Jerusalem the Web"? http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 15:58:46 -0600 (CST) From: HXNEWSAM@ualr.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Introductions Message-Id: <960330155846.2023ca54@ualr.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT My name is Heather Newsam and I am a senior at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I am currently involved in a Blake Independent Study Class, and yes it may be the notorious class whose members have invaded this list. My intended empahasis in graduate school (if I ever get one to admit and fund me) will most likely be Blake and a kind of poetic soup whose recipe would include Milton and the first generation of Romantic poets. Any time not spent reading and studying, is spent behind the reference desk at my university's library. I work part-time as an assistant to the reference librarians, honing my research skills with each, not always relevant, question. The other few spects of uncluttered time are spent over coffee with my "intended," who will most likely be appearing on this list in the near future. The major work I have done with Blake, and I guess you could call it my favorite reading, is the idea of pre-existance in his poetry. I wrote an extensive paper that applied Middle Eastern Religions to the Book of Urizen and at the same time Wordsworth's Intimations Ode. It was rewarding research that I hope to apply to another paper in the near future, and even though my dissertation at this point is a long way off, it's a possibe topic. So, that's me in a nutshell and I hope to meet all of you over time. Heather Newsam ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 14:34:42 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Pam van Schaik Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Pam- Hopefully the harm associated with any risk of reaping derogatory comments was averted. When you mentioned the kabbalah, it reminded me of one of the ways that Blake had the last laugh with respect to Sir Isaac Newton's "single vision". At Cambridge University Newton made arragngements that his most important works would be opened and examined two hundred years after his death because the world at that time was not ready for his most important work. Well, two hundred years came and went without incident. However, on the 250th anniversary of his death, Queen Elizabeth asked Gregory Bateson and four other notabes to read these posthumous works and report back to her. Gregory reported back that most of the writings dealt with alchemy and the kabbalah. Although Gregory saw little merit in them, the point remains that Newton also was trying to free himself from "single vision". When you speak of the difference between the two types of wine, I'm reminded that quite a bit of blood was shed over this issue. The consubstantiationists believed that that the wine really was the blood of Christ and the sacramental wafer was the actual body of Christ, whereas the transubstantiationists felt that the wine and wafer were merely symbolic. In some sense this parallels Blake's emphasis on the symbolic in opposition to Newton's "single vision". Would you consider publishing your paper on Blake's illustrations to "Night Thoughts" online? Matthew Dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 14:37:34 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Mark Trevor Smith Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark- No problem at all about your recent posting. As for Dumain, perhaps he's at the library prepping for vigourous discourse... Matthew Dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 14:40:33 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Keynes anecdote (was Re: questions relating to _Milton_--the poem and the opera adaptation) Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 29 Mar 1996, Nelson Hilton wrote: > > In 1978 I visited Geoffrey Keynes, accompanied by my father. After > looking at marvellous pieces in his collection, we had tea, which Sir > Geoffrey, then in his nineties, prepared himself. During our > conversation my father related how he had recently left a position as > professor of economics--at which point Keynes turned to him and asked, > "Have you ever heard of my brother?" > > Nelson Hilton -=- English -=- University of Georgia -=- Athens > Was ist Los? "Net of Urizen" or "Jerusalem the Web"? > http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake > > Nelson- What was it like to meet Keynes? What engravings did you see? How inspired were you? Matthew Dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 22:00:08 -0800 (PST) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com, marxism2@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Subject: BLAKE AND MARX COMPARED Message-Id: <199603310600.WAA08433@igc4.igc.apc.org> BLAKE AND MARX: IN REVIEW: Doskow, Minna. "The Humanized Universe of Blake and Marx", in: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE MODERNS, edited by Robert J. Bertholf and Annette S. Levitt; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987; pp. 225-240. Doskow starts out with this claim: "Both William Blake and Karl Marx address themselves to the central philosophical problem of their times, the relation of human subjectivity to the external world." Further down the author states: "... both attempt to bridge the gap between subject and object posited by their Enlightenment predecessors by proposing an extension of the subject outward through consciousness and activity thereby creating a humanized universe as well as a fully developed self." Both Blake and Marx are concerned with the self-objectivication of human beings through productive activity. Doskow sees Blake's epistemology as a total reversal of Locke's, so that human consciousness is active rather than passive. Blake opposes his own sensuality -- activity of the senses -- to Locke's notion of the senses (p. 227). Imaginative activity for Blake is not one faculty divorced from the others: it is not just intellectual, scientific, artistic, and perceptive, but it is all of these, and very importantly, _physical_. Blake's poetry is filled with images of human labor (pp. 228-229). Marx's GRUNDRISSE is cited once (on work as positive, creative activity), but virtually all of the Marx material comes out of the 1844 Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts, quite aptly, I would say, as these manuscripts represent the highest point achieved by Marx as Young Hegelian, indeed the highest point of social integration achieved by philosophy as philosophy. Marx's own comments on the history and labor of the senses are delineated with the similarity to Blake in mind (p. 231). Now we come to the causes of man's wretched state: "For Blake, the answer lies in man's loss of imagination, while for Marx it lies in the alienation of his labor under capitalism. Yet these answers are not as different as they may at first appear, for the causes, evidences, and consequences of each are almost identical. Both writers see a distortion of human subjectivity which extends outward to encompass the world and results in distorted practices and a distorted world which are further reflected by the subject." (p. 232) Further: "For Blake, the subject-object distinction underlies and exemplifies the lapse of human imagination which destroys the unity of the world and is responsible for man's unfulfilled, limited, and oppressed condition in it. This arbitrary division by the subject within himself prevents the extension of the subject outward, limits man to only objective perceiving and thinking, cuts him off from everything else in the universe, and proclaims universal reification." (p. 232) Moreover, "But nature too is limited by this process, As other opposed to self, the dehumanized universe is left in dead objectivity cut off from its subjective essence, which is man." (p. 232) This of course is the world according to Newton and Locke. There are some technical problems I have with this characterization, but I am most concerned about the overly bloodless characterization of Blake's view. The subject-object distinction and the loss of imagination by themselves are not sufficient explanations, even within a mythological universe. Blake is not operating with the reactionary feudal objective idealist notion of Universal Mind to be found in Hinduism or neo-Confucianism, according to which there is no disharmony in the order of things save in the illusion of individual existence. No, the division has already occurred within the Eternal world itself, the result of which is the tyrannical cosmos of Urizen. The "imaginative" failure is a failure within the cosmic order, and not just a failure of the empirical finite human subjects usually studied by philosophy. Hence the illusion of separateness is not merely a trick of the individual mind, who only has to change the way it thinks in order to recognize the cosmic harmony, but rather a result of an oppressive order that has occurred in reality, although this reality is not seen as fundamentally material in its provenance and causation. So I do not agree with this inadequate characterization of Blake's treatment of the subject-object relation and always remain suspicious of any attempt to reduce Blake to a petty bourgeois subjectivist philosopher, though this is a minor quibble in this case, since I think that Doskow is above reducing Blake to that. The world that results from the alienation of labor as characterized in the 1844 manuscripts is very much like the fallen world described by Blake: atomistic, isolated existence, being an island of subjectivity in a world of dead objectivity, loss of meaning and relatedness to others, etc. In terms of the solution to this dilemma, there are further parallels between Blake and Marx: "For Blake error not only has to exist, but it also has to be consolidated, come to a crisis, and be recognized before it can be removed; for Marx the contradiction between labor and capital has to exist and be recognized in self-consciousness, be sharpened and reach a crisis in order to hasten the resolution of contradiction in transcendence." (pp. 236-237) And note! -- "Although Blake and Marx see political change as absolutely necessary, neither envisions the reintegration of man accomplished through purely political means." (p. 237) Some might be surprised at this characterization of Marx, and others might be surprised at the portrayal of Blake as a political animal. However, Doskow is convincing both with regard to Blake (pp. 237-238) and Marx. For Marx communism is not the end, not as a political system, for in its higher stage human self-realization is the goal, and not "communism". This passage from Marx is usually only cited by Marxist-Humanists such as Raya Dunayevskaya, and of course it comes from the 1844 manuscripts. In sum, this is a creditable article, though its treatment of the topic is far from exhaustive. It shows in certain decisive ways a deep affinity between Blake and Marx, while glossing over important differences as well as other similarities. Obviously, the two came from different traditions, experiences, and ontological commitments, but we can learn a lot from their juxtaposition, especially when we tri-angulate Blake with Hegel and his heirs. Though not competent as a professional philosopher, Blake nonetheless leapfrogs over certain stages of conceptual development to arrive at a point which neither Hegel nor any of the Young Hegelians save Marx could reach (though Feuerbach and Hess made some decisive strides) -- precisely at the point where Marx reached his greatest "visionary" (for lack of a better word) if not scientific depth. (I shall treat Marx's understanding of the relation between self and environment, also a deep concern of Blake's, which Marx continued to explore in THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, another time.) Understanding the similarities and differences between Blake and Marx can also illuminate both the advantages and the costs of such leapfrogging, as well as the comparative advantages of contemplative understanding and political activism. However, both envisioned the overcoming of the division of labor, the unity of theory and practice, the end of purely contemplative existence, and the end of the intellectual class as the lords of culture. (Ralph Dumain, 31 March 1996, 12:53 am) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 23:40:57 -0800 (PST) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com, marxism2@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Subject: BLAKE & THE MODERNS (1) Message-Id: <199603310740.XAA13751@igc4.igc.apc.org> BLAKE AND THE MODERNS -- EXERCISES IN COMPARISON (1) In re: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE MODERNS, edited by Robert J. Bertholf and Annette S. Levitt; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. I have already reviewed Minna Doskow's "The Humanized Universe of Blake and Marx", clearly the best and the one unequivocally worthwhile essay in this volume. I am inherently suspicious of comparative studies, especially when it comes to Blake. So many have misappropriated Blake for pernicious ends -- Yeats, Ellis, the Surrealists, Raine, Harper, or some of the dumbbells in cyberspace who would link Blake to the Zen Buddhist interpretation of quantum mechanics -- all based on dubious comparative methods, which in the final analysis rest on abstracting certain properties of Blake that correspond to their own interests -- e.g. the imagination -- and reducing Blake to the level of their own paltry, reactionary ideologies. I feel to spit. The introduction to this volume ("The Tradition of Enacted Forms") has many virtues, not the least of which is the repudiation of Eliot's reactionary vision of culture. And there is this delightful passage: "Blake is the most extreme and the most modern of the Romantics; none of his contemporaries or immediate followers went as far as he in pursuit of political, philosophical, or artistic revolutions." (p. xi) However, the interposition of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the following page -- two reactionary misfits who have nothing whatever in common with Blake -- once again reminds us of the intellectual bankruptcy of the English professor, surely the lowest form of intellectual life. I cannot judge the judiciousness of all the comparative exercises in the book, however, since I read only two further essays. The first was "Blake, Ginsberg, Madness, and the Prophet as Shaman" by Alice Ostriker (pp. 111-134). The key to Ginsberg's claim to be a disciple lies in the role of prophecy (p. 113). Another point of comparison is their treatment of "madness", which is seen by both poets to be superior to conventional stupidity, i.e. the imposition of "reason" leads to "insanity" (p. 114 ff). Blake is seen to be inspired by the techniques of Blake (e.g. "The French Revolution") and Burroughs (p. 124). The theme of insanity is traced in three of Ginsberg's poems: "Howl", "Kaddish", and "Wichita Vortex Sutra." The shamanic function of the poet is also addressed. However interesting these comparisons are, their establishing of commonalities between Blake and Ginsberg is rather shallow, for these very points of comparison are very general and don't get to the specifics of their world-views or methodologies. I am a great admirer of Ginsberg, but he is an airhead. His analysis of Blake is one-dimensional. His speech published as BLAKE AND YOUR REASON is most instructive about Ginsberg's strengths and weaknesses. The strength is the very literalness with which Ginsberg analyzes Blake's imagery (the literal imagination) -- interesting to see how one poet absorbs another. But the weakness lies in Ginsberg's inability to grasp Blake's thinking. Indeed, Ginsberg's own shallow pop culture Buddhism, his narcissism and characteristically American anti-intellectual superficiality and mechanistic conception of mysticism, his self-abasing discipleship to petty thugs like Pound, Casady, or his dishonest gurus -- this entire complex of Ginsberg's mentality make it impossible for him to deal with Blake's intellectual vision on its own level. That Ostriker cannot recognize this is damning, but then, that shallowness too is typical of the American artsy-fartsy crowd. END OF PART ONE (Ralph Dumain, 31 March 1996, 2:30 am EST) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 00:56:13 -0800 (PST) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com, marxism2@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Cc: jschwart@freenet.columbus.oh.us Subject: BLAKE AND THE MODERNS (2) -- HEGEL Message-Id: <199603310856.AAA17275@igc4.igc.apc.org> BLAKE AND THE MODERNS -- EXERCISES IN COMPARISON (2): HEGEL In re: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE MODERNS, edited by Robert J. Bertholf and Annette S. Levitt; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. I have already reviewed the introduction, Minna Doskow's "The Humanized Universe of Blake and Marx", and Alice Ostriker's "Blake, Ginsberg, Madness, and the Prophet as Shaman." Before I get to the last essay I will review, I must mention one substantive if passing reference to Hegel. The essay is "Blake, Eliot, and Williams: The Continuity of Imaginative Labor" by Leroy Searle (pp. 39-72). The Hegel reference is on p. 46: according to Searle, The Four Zoas anticipates Hegel's master-slave dialectic, but it is not a traditional narrative with a beginning or resolution. OK, the second of the two essays besides Blake and Marx to review is "William Blake and the Problematic of the Self" by William Dennis Horn (pp. 260-286). I read this whole essay in order to understand the context for the passing references to Hegel. The essay deals with subjects that I generally consider beneath me: Harold Bloom, the anxiety of influence, the death of the author. Horn is cross with Bloom because his use of the Freudian notion of repression nonetheless postulates the existence of the integral self in the Unconscious, even in the Lacanian version. There is some question of Modernism vs. Romanticism, Hume, Hegel vs. Kant. I should have taken more detailed notes, but who cares? More interesting is the putative likeness of Blake to Kant: the I and objects of appearance are interdependent in perception. For Blake, the self = error = Fall of man (also on p. 268). Self-consciousness is the Fall (pp. 268-9). Another interesting assertion: Blake was negative toward fallen cognition. The Fall results in selfhood and external objects. The material world = mental enslavement. I am an unhappy camper. I don't believe Blake's attack on "selfhood" has anything in common with the dehumanized postmodern assault on the self. Blake recognizes something that the sausage-factory of the literary industry will never recognize -- concrete individuality and the minute particulars, which must be protected in their definite and determinate forms. I don't believe Horn is telling us the truth. There are two interesting references to Hegel, however. The first comes in the wake of a discussion of Urizen and the self-objectification of Reason, on p. 272, when Hirsch is cited (p. 73) to the effect that The Book of Urizen is Blake's PHENOMENOLOGY, written twelve years before Hegel's. Blake's dialectic is contrasted to Hegel's, and Blake is claimed to be closer to Kant. Anyway, there is one useful contrast of Blake and Hegel. Blake's view is that this world and its God are evil. There is a further comparison on p. 278. Blake and Kant are compared again, and Kant is seen to correspond to Blake's Generation. Blake saw the categories of understanding as Hegel did, as steps in reason's self-recognition. However, pace Hegel, this is a recognition of error, exposing the falsity of self and the independent world of nature. I can't digest all this right now, but I do think Blake's gnostic portrayal of this cosmic order as evil is different from and a more correct view that Hegel's Geist. Sadly, Horn is more interested in pursuing postmodern concerns. He is eager to point out that not all Romanticism hypostatizes the self (p. 280). Derrida is not new. Coleridge's BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA is deconstructive (p. 281). De Man is quoted here. Horn concludes (p. 283) that postmodernism is like the Romantic era in abandoning the illusion of permanence. What a waste. What a pathetic waste of paper. The fetishization of the indefinite, indeterminate, randomness, dissolution and dehumanization -- this is postmodernism but has nothing to do with Blake, not a thing. They became what they beheld. (Ralph Dumain, 31 March 1996, 3:46 am EST) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 14:02:46 -0500 From: "Leslie O. Segar" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Jerusalem the hymn Message-Id: <315D8556.474C@wmblake.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In his note of 3/26, Kari Kraus asks about the development of Blake's lyric prefacing "Milton" as a hymn named "Jerusalem", and expresses his surprise that the hymn became an anthem for the Fabian socialists and was still sung in the industrial areas of England. Check out the film (from the '60's, I believe) "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner" with (I think) Alan Bates. It is a remarkably good film, as I remember it across a lot of years, and one of the most memorable scenes takes place at the Borstal (home for juvenile delinquents, cf. Brendan Behan's "Borstal Boy") to which the hero has been committed. All of the boys are at chapel, and the hymn they sing is "Jerusalem". It is thunderously moving, and the image of those boys, singing that hymn, is what is in my mind when I read "Holy Thursday" and "The Chimney Sweeper" poems. LOS http://www.wmblake.com/los/home.html -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #23 *************************************