------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 36 Today's Topics: Vine and WIne as symbols: requested article RE: Golgonooza -Reply -Reply -Reply Re: Golgonooza -Reply Re: Golgonooza -Reply yeep Re: Golgonooza -Reply The Clod and The Pebble Re: Golgonooza -Reply Cockney again ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 09:40:00 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com. Subject: Vine and WIne as symbols: requested article Message-Id: Thank you for your interest in the following small article which I wrote many years ago. I'd be interested in your responses. The recent article on Jesus in Time magazine seems to me to have some relevance to what I say here - especially with regard to Gnosticism and Manicheanism. Pam ------------------- VINE.1 follows -------------------- Some Thoughts on the Vine, Wine and Wine Cups in William Blake and his Illustrations to Edward Young's Night Thoughts . Pam van Schaik In an article for Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, G.E.Bentley, Jr, drew attention to a drinking glass, dubbed `the Felpham Rummer', which is inscribed with the following words - possibly attributable to William Blake: Thou holder of immoral drink I give thee purpose now I think. The possiblity that Blake may have engraved these lines led me to consider what they might imply if he were indeed their author and, consequently, to exploring Blake's frequent use of images relating to the vine, wine and wine cups. As Blake often depicted wine cups in illustrating Edward Young's Night Thoughts, I was also led to look, with renewed interest, at what initally appear to be merely rather bland pictures. In Blake's evocation of the spiritual realms in Eternity, before man fell from Innocence, to drink the `Wine of Eternal Life' is to become intoxicated with the spirit of Jesus. This infuses the recipient with the gift of divine eloquence in which words `redound' from the tongue in bright visions, `Creating Space, Creating Time according to the Wonders Divine / Of Human Imagination'. Similarly, Edward Young likens sublime thoughts to `delicious Draughts of Inspiration' from a pure `stream' which is `full of God' - the only draught capable of quenching man's `sacred Thirst'. The comparisons drawn by both poets are appropriate in relation to Blake's perception of Jesus as the `Vine of Eternity', (see Night Thoughts, 512, p.94)) a symbol which evokes the flowing of the divine sap through all the Children of Eden who are nourished thereby with wisdom, love and imaginative creativity. In essence, they are perceived as being the `fruit' of the `Vine' - an image closely related to that of the Tree of Life. Blake also conceives of each immortal spirit of Eternity as becoming a `member' of Jesus's divine body, and simultaneously, as being united to His `Bride', Jerusalem, when he drinks the wine of the holy spirit. Something of Blake's own vision may be said to be apparent in his illustration to the following lines of Young which would readily have captured Blake's interest: `Angels from Friendship gather half their Joy' and `Friendship's the Wine of Life'. In Blake's so-called `Prophetic poems', the Fall of Man from Eternity where there was total unity between him and God into the separation and multiplicity of the world of nature is evoked in symbolism the opposite of that outlined above. To cease to drink the `Wine' pressed in the `Wine-Press' of Jesus' love is to cease to participate in the sacrament which ensures unity with the `Mystic Union of the Emanation in the Lord' - or the holy union of Jesus and Jerusalem. When the Immortal, Albion, turns away from the divine vision of love represented by the `Wine' of eternal life, his darkened Intellect - personified as Urizen - deems Jerusalem a `Harlot' and casts her out of Albion's visionary paradises. Symbolically, this separation of the feminine from the masculine aspect of divinity, represented by the divine marriage of Jesus and Jerusalem, results in the cosmic catastrophe of all the masculine spirits of Eternity condemning their feminine counterparts as `harlots' and so rejecting the `Images' and `Joys' of love offered by them. Filled with terror, the feminine spirits flee into the cold, dark abyss stretching beneath Eternity and so precipitate the Fall into physical existence. Blake would have had all this in mind in illustrating Young's text in which he refers to `Those boasted Friends to Reason, and to Man, / Whose fatal Love stabs every Joy, and leaves / Death's Terror heighten'd gnawing on his Heart'. Deprived of the generous love of Jerusalem and of their own Emanations, Albion's sons shriek, groan and sob in torment, but their dolorous cries - in travesty of the sacraments of Innocence - are like `wine' to the misled Emanations who now fill their `cups of silver and crystal' with the `Wine of Cruelty' and `of anguish', instead of the `Wine of eternal life'. After rejecting Jerusalem as a `harlot', Urizen elevates `Babylon' - symbolic of all the spiritual qualities opposed to those of Jerusalem, the `Bride' of Jesus - to power . For Blake, all the cities of earth resemble `Babylon', the true whore who prostitutes herself for material, rather than spiritual, values. This is, no doubt why, in his poem, London, he claims to hear , most stridently, the `Harlot's curse' among all the other sounds of woe produced by that city: In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear .... But most through midnight streets I hear How the youthful harlot's curse Blasts the new born infant's tear, And blights with plagues the marriage hearse. Edward Young also sees earthly life as a `painted shrew' and represents life's banquet as no better than hearing the `same old slobber'd Tale' or tasting `the {already} tasted ... at each return /Less tasteful' since man continually `decants' over his palate the vintage of a `flatter year'. He evokes it as `Load, not Life' and as offering quantity rather than quality. This is the vision which Blake tries to project in depicting a large wine bowl surrounded by quaffers who clearly derive no pleasure from what they have drunk, as shown in Night Thoughts, III, p. 24. Young also uses imagery related to wine in likening the brief `Triumph of the pulse' to `A Dance of Spirits, a mere Froth of Joy' mounting up from the heated vinous `Juices' of the body, a `Machine ...scarce ever tun'd aright'. In illustrating these ideas , Blake probably had in mind his own vision of how the spiritual children of Albion, subverted into abandoning their love of Jerusalem, must drink the `nervous wine' of the senses, and be `Fatten'd on Human blood' by the cruelties of Babylon. Young's antidote to succumbing to the `beggarly vile Appetites' of the body is to take large draughts of the `sustenance Divine'. Calling on `Night' as his muse, he creates of darkness itself a `bower' of imagination. Blake illustrates this , using the motif of the grape and vine, so aligning Young's thoughts with his own vision of Jesus as the `vine' and source of all inspiration and appetite for divine love and wisdom. (Blake would, no doubt, have agreed with Young's saying that those `ardent to return' to their true `Home' in immortal realms will touch `Earth's inchanted Cup / With cool Reserve'. In Milton, he writes: "Ah weak and wide astray! Ah shut in narrow doleful form, "Creeping in reptile flesh upon the bosom of the ground! "The Eye of Man a little narrow orb, clos'd up & dark, "Scarcely beholding the great light, conversing with the Void; "The Ear a little shell, in small volutions shutting out "All melodies & comprehending only Discord and Harmony; "The Tongue a little moisture fills, a little food it cloys, "A little sound it utters & its cries are faintly heard, "The brings forth Moral Virtue the cruel Virgin Babylon. "Can such an Eye judge of the stars?.... "Can such an Ear, fill'd with the vapours of the yawning pit, "Judge of the pure melodious harp struck by a hand divine? .... "Can such a Tongue boast of the living waters? or take in "Ought but the Vegetable Ratio & loathe the faint delight? "Can such gross Lips percieve? alas, folded within themselves "They touch not ought, but pallid turn & tremble at every wind." Here, Blake contrasts the `Tongue' which once tasted the `Wine of Eternal Life' ( so endowing man with divine love and the ability to create his own paradises through the living `Word') with the mortal `Tongue' forced to drink Earth's wine of sorrow, pain and cruelty. His reference to the `grapes' which `burst their covering to the joyful air' is, symbolically, to all the lost joys of Eternity which were nourished by Jesus, the `Vine'. In Blake's poetic evocation of the Fall, Urizen's tragic error of rejecting the `Wine of Eternal Life' and drinking instead the poisonous wine of mortal life results in all the loves and graces of Eden being converted into the sexual and selfish loves experienced on earth. Thus, for Blake, his rummer of wine may well have taken on symbolic significance as he gazed into its depths. However, whether or not Blake was the engraver of the words on the rummer, Thou holder of immoral drink I give thee purpose now I think, these succinct lines could certainly be said to be relevant to his symbolic use of the Vine, wine and wine cups. As I have tried to show, these are used by him to evoke the unity of being with Jesus in `Innocence' and man's separation from the divine in the mortal world of `Experience'. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 08:59:00 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, virtual@leland.Stanford.EDU Subject: RE: Golgonooza -Reply -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Matthew, Thanks for the interesting query to which I hope others will respond, too. Yes, I think that Blake's Urizen represents the vengeful God of the Old Testament (as evoked in Nobodaddy as well as the longer poems). Also, that, as you suggest, Christ's emohasis on forgiveness is endorsed throughout Blake's works. "To set another before Self" seems to be the most central thrust of his themes. This is the debate in the wonderful Clod and Pebble and selflessness and usefulness to others is also what the lowly , but divinely inspired Lily of the Valley, Cloud and Worm all try to teach Thel in The Book of Thel. The Accuser and the Forgiver are consistently contrasted in Blake's poetry because he saw `sin' as inhering in the fallen state of Experience in which we are enclosed in the contracted Selfhood, rather than expanded into divine Selflessness. I'm not quite sure what you mean by `Christ as legal discourse' in Swedenborg. I'm hoping that our library will consider buying the entire Arcana Coelestia as I only have one of these volumes which I recently bought in London - and I haven't come across exactly the reference you mention. Pam van Schaik ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 09:34:49 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, virtual@leland.Stanford.EDU Cc: enghhh@showme.missouri.edu Subject: Re: Golgonooza -Reply Message-Id: Matthew, As I recall the footnote on Golgonooza was in a very slim Selection of Blake's poems by Bateson. I'v hunted for it here in my bookcase at work without success ( it was probably borrowed by a student or colleague) but will look at home and also see if I can't find it there. It may have been in a Glossary of terms at the the end of the book. I really did not wish to sound ungracious towards Bateson . The footnote (or single sentence next to an italicised entry on Golgonooza) stuck in my head because, when I encountered it, I was shocked that any revered Blakean could dismiss Golgonooza so lightly. Perhaps it was an erratic moment of frustration. on Bateson's part which lodged in my head and popped out like a jack-in the -box. It may take a while, between marking and lecturing, but I'll keep looking. Moreover, despite my delight in Kathleen Raine's work, I think she, too, once intimated that she was puzzled by Golgonooza. I may have better luck with locating this reference. Anyway, waht you say of Gregory has restored my belief in his stature. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 10:38:16 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, virtual@leland.Stanford.EDU Cc: enghhh@showme.missouri.edu Subject: Re: Golgonooza -Reply Message-Id: Matthew, I found a copy of Selected Poems of William Blake (but not my own marked one) and found the following reference on page 93: `{Blake's} symbols become increasingly esoteric.... and the new key words such as spectre, mudane shell, emanation and the like are almost as unintelligible as Ulro , Golgonooza and Ololon. (They can be learnt by heart, but the non-professional resents having to do so.)' I think these were the words that stuck in the craw of my mind - but the joke is on me - the Editor of this collection wasn't Gregory Bateson but F.W. Bateson (published by Heinemann, 1957). Moreover, the statement hardly stirs me any longer - at the time when I was writing my doctorate, they filled me with indignation since I could not understand how anyone immersed in Blake could dismiss central symbols in this way. Now I'm older and more tolerant - I hope. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 12:14:06 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com Subject: yeep Message-Id: Dear Bert, Having successfully sent an Ascii text file , as requested, to Blake @ Albion, I'm now trying to send it similarly to you, on the YEEP. So here it comes like a bird on the wing, if all goes well. I have to fill in for soeone who has contracted Bell's Palsy on Friday, lectruing on Macbeth and The Glass Menagerie. Was struck by the differing ways in which Shak creates the foul ambivalent ethos in almost incantatory ways and will relate this to the way the images on screen do the same in the modern play. Will also be looking at the the way wry pathos replaces the true tragic sense in T> Williams. Best wishes, Pam ------------------- YEEP.1 follows -------------------- The `Yeep' It all began when there was nothing in particular that she felt like doing - the game of talking to the "Yeep", that is. Perhaps it began because she was alone in the hilltop Spanish villa - for a whole week, without the two small children who usually filled up every gap in time. At first, she was elated, but when the Spring rain set in and she was stranded without even a good book to read - and discovered that the nearest bus-stop was miles uphill and the promised beach, miles downhill - she became a trifle sad. It was then that she first heard the "Yeep", or felt it tugging at the skirts of her consciousness like an inconsolable little child. She called it a "Yeep" because, as she walked from room to room, it drew attention to itself with a plaintive "yeep" or two. She stopped in mid-stride, listening to this never- before-heard voice of her own mind. "Do stop that yeeping," she admonished herself - or it. "I worked hard and travelled far to get here, so make the best of it!" It, however, yeeped sadly again. "What exactly do you want?" she asked, feeling annoyed, rather than scared, and sufficiently curious to insist on an answer. But, before it could reply, she thought she heard the voice of her father say: "Don't worry. You're alright, you know. Perhaps you're sad because you love so many things and wanted so much to like this place, too. You don't like to admit that you don't". "Yes", she agreed, so glad that `someone else' had understood her silly yeeping that she ignored the irrationality of THIS `someone' sounding like her dead father. She decided to suspend disbelief for a while and continue this unexpected conversation, for lack of anything better to do. "What do you do where you are?" she asked, and was surprised to receive the answer, "I'm busy enough - making it happen". "What happen?" she asked. "Whatever I love. Where I am, you have to love something for it to happen at all. It only happens, and stays, if you love it - if you don't, it disappears. When I first came here, I wasn't able to keep anything. Nothing stayed. I `grew' a pipe, lit it, and it `left' as soon as I put it down! But down where? I imagined a table to put it on, but it didn't have any legs - not till I thought of the loveliest I could imagine. Then, there they were!" The idea of everything swimming in and out of being, and the oddity of her father's dilemma, made his daughter laugh. "What else happened at first?' she asked, incredulously. "Well, it didn't take too long to find everything I'd ever loved. I found myself walking along a beach, and the water was cool, but nothing else - until I remembered, with a rush of love, its pull, push and slide and how the light used to glance off its peaks and ripples. Then I remembered the soft pressure of the sun on my ear. I turned under the sun until I could feel it everywhere. It was like standing under a warm shower. Then, I became the waves, the sand and the light - and only then did everything feel real." "You mean you have to love and become one with all you see to have it at all? That's hard work!" "Try it", said her father. "Try imagining a single blade of grass properly." She tried: "Let's see. It's stiff, yet soft; smooth - no, rough-edged and furry. Oh, I wouldn't even be able to have a blade of grass where you are. I can't even describe it!" "What do you love most about it? Is is that it is soft to run on? Does it tickle your toes and spring back under your weight?" "Yes, all of those things. But I'd want much more than grass - what of trees, birds, flowers, shadows, wind, and a sky with clouds? How do you have the energy to become all of those? I think I'd end up being nothing more than a stone if you have to make everything, moment by moment." "So you might", her father replied, "but perhaps you're tired now. Do you want to stop talking?" "Of course not. This is interesting." "Alright, what of birds? If you had to imagine them, what would you create?" "Swallows, dipping into water; small humming birds hovering over bright flowers; yellow weavers plucking grass, seagulls screeching .... It would never be enough to have only a few. If I begin thinking `birds' then it seems nothing but ALL birds would do. In the end, you must want to have everything that ever existed? You'd have to be like God - to leave nothing out. If you did leave out anything, wouldn't everything look like a flickering, nonsensical film?" "You learns to be only what you most love in the instant. You couldn't soar, rustle, creep, surge and shoot, bob and hop all at the same time - unless you could love a whole scene in all its minute detail, simultaneously." "Let me try again" she said, closing her eyes. "What, I wonder , would I most love if I were there? Giraffe running at dawn .... perhaps I could even ride on one - or be the dawn, the rider and the giraffe. I'd feel the air rush by, and the thud of hooves, and the rise and fall from solid earth with hair and blood lifting, and smell the tangy scent of trodden, juicy grass ...". "Complete with sweat and thudding heart?" her father interposed. "Oh, the more I try to see a world where the body and gravity and weight wouldn't matter, the more they seem important", she said ruefully. "I think I see that words can't possibly explain make and sustain anything lovely enough. Only the love of each moment - and being everything in that moment - could create the next moment. Yet, when I was imagining the scene, it felt so timeless". "Had you taken a long enough ride on your giraffe, your muscles would have grown tired and you'd have suddenly found yourself lying in a hammock in the shade!" "How happy you must be then ... if you see a mosquito, you could turn it into a canary...." "No, not always happy. Where you are the world makes you, as much as you make your world. Here, my world is what I am." She tried to visualise the implications of this. "You mean, if I feel sad, it is because something outside of me is affecting me, but where you are, sadness is in you - like my `Yeep'? But,then. isn't the `Yeep' what drives one to know what one needs and loves?" "Precisely what I tried to tell you in the first place", said her father. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 18:25:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: P Van Schaik Cc: blake@albion.com, enghhh@showme.missouri.edu Subject: Re: Golgonooza -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Pam- I would be fascinated to see if Bateson had made such a comment... He was always so overbearing and intimidating in asserting that we students were nothing because Blake was so far above us little people whom he instructed. He also implicitly and explicitly would put himself and his father below Blake. He always quoted his father's stricture that no scientist ever compared to the greatest artists, and if there ever was a God, and you wanted to imitate the work (and Great Song) of God, you could only be an artist, as compared to say, a scientist." I will say that Gregory was prone to use the word "nonsense" in footnotes and asides under his breath, so that your comment remains intruiging.... As I say, I would be fascinated if he stated it, and if he did, maybe his daughter would be willing to comment on it. I remember when he showed me an original Job engraving from his family's collection, it was a moment of maximum reverence for him.... Thanks for checking!!! Matthew Dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu On Wed, 17 Apr 1996, P Van Schaik wrote: > Matthew, As I recall the footnote on Golgonooza was in a very slim > Selection of Blake's poems by Bateson. I'v hunted for it here in my > bookcase at work without success ( it was probably borrowed by a > student or colleague) but will look at home and also see if I can't find it > there. It may have been in a Glossary of terms at the the end of the > book. I really did not wish to sound ungracious towards Bateson . The > footnote (or single sentence next to an italicised entry on Golgonooza) > stuck in my head because, when I encountered it, I was shocked that > any revered Blakean could dismiss Golgonooza so lightly. Perhaps it > was an erratic moment of frustration. on Bateson's part which lodged in > my head and popped out like a jack-in the -box. It may take a while, > between marking and lecturing, but I'll keep looking. Moreover, despite > my delight in Kathleen Raine's work, I think she, too, once intimated that > she was puzzled by Golgonooza. I may have better luck with locating > this reference. Anyway, waht you say of Gregory has restored my > belief in his stature. > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 22:01:06 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: The Clod and The Pebble Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi. I've been a member of the Blake group for about a week now. I've seen some very interesting things come into my "in" box, which is a refreshing change from some other groups... which shall remain nameless, at least for now. Let me give "my side of the story" to some of what I've seen as well as what I've instinctually felt and been developing as a feeling toward Blake. Just a whirl, OK? The Clod and The Pebble People can dance around this thing and say "well, maybe the clod's a romantic and the pebble's a cynic", but listen precisely to what Blake says it is: LOVE. To me, this poem is about the extremities in LOVE called dominance and submission that we call sado-masochism. Now everybody gets upset when you bring up the word: sadomasochism. They think it's pathological and sick. But really, it's just extremes in behavior. The rainbow of colors in love lie between the two poles. So when someone says God is somehow cruel or bad and Jesus is somehow the good guy... I say "What?" They're both creatures of the same condition. The only way you'll ever get away from the God of the Old Testament AND the God Blake knew as Jesus is in termination of the dialectic, otherwise known as death. What Blake does, in his multi-colored depth, is show the complexity. For example, I say "The Clod and The Pebble" is about sado-masochism. Read the text alone, and I think it's pretty straightforward on that point. But add the illustration, and then you have a much more complex message. There are the sheep with their eyes closed (like the clod?) drinking water side by side with the oxen with their eyes open (pebble?). But even the way he draws them, it's like perspective going backwards... the sheep in front small, the oxen bigger. They MERGE into one line. And so this gets in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I'm not going to tackle the poem, just the title. Blake is fusing these two, all the time. The Tyger poem. We all know it's supposed to be scary. Right? Wrong! It's compelling, it's beautiful, it's man's branding of the tiger that's sick. Tigers were being hunted in Blake's day, just like wolves were hunted, and no doubt the killers justified their bounty as "Well, I got rid of THAT bloody symbol of Satan." And where are we today? Wolves and tigers are both nearly EXTINCT. What members of what race are the ones that were truly evil? Sadomasochism is all through Blake, and he depicts it so beautifully. The classic God giving birth to Adam is another example. Adam's like nailed, flat on his back, but is God taking a "sadistic" pleasure in the act? I think not. I think he's baffled, saddenned perhaps by the legacy with which he's infusing life into his "alter ego." We WERE created in God's image, you know. And Adam, it's not like he's a mere masochist. He's strong. He looks like "Oh God... what AM I getting into?" And of course he has no choice. None of us do. It's with my late 20th century exposure to Buddhism that I come to Blake, as well. I see the dialectic of tick-tock, clod-pebble, God-Jesus, God-man, Man-tiger, and it is only natural that it split into a chromatic complexity that's beyond ever really fathoming. Does this make any sense? I could go on and on... but just wanted to make a start. I think I already told you about my little Blake WebSite, but if you're new to the group or haven't seen it yet, it's: http://world.std.com/~albright/blake.html It doesn't go nearly into as much detail as I'd like to with this group. And for those of you heavy-duty Blake scholars, it will probably seem "lite"... but, hey, I'm an artist myself who happens to have been very influenced by the guy. Take it easy. I'll tell you my take on the depiction of Newton in another essay. Or maybe you should tell me your view of the Newton drawing/watercolor, first. -R.H. Albright ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 18:32:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: P Van Schaik Cc: blake@albion.com, enghhh@showme.missouri.edu Subject: Re: Golgonooza -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Pam- I just got this message.. I was pretty darn sure about Gregory on that point. I'm not sure if F.W. Bateson is any relation (he may well be), but although it may not burn as much for you now as then, based on my intimate knowledge with that glorious bear of a man, Gregory would have no hesitation whatsoever upon hearing that comment in arising from his grave with the classic Batesonian insult: "Tell me, what else does a schoolboy not know?" (delivered typically to adults...) Matthew Dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu On Wed, 17 Apr 1996, P Van Schaik wrote: > Matthew, I found a copy of Selected Poems of William Blake (but not my > own marked one) and found the following reference on page 93: > `{Blake's} symbols become increasingly esoteric.... and the new key > words such as spectre, mudane shell, emanation and the like are almost > as unintelligible as Ulro , Golgonooza and Ololon. (They can be learnt by > heart, but the non-professional resents having to do so.)' > > I think these were the words that stuck in the craw of my mind - but the > joke is on me - the Editor of this collection wasn't Gregory Bateson but > F.W. Bateson (published by Heinemann, 1957). Moreover, the statement > hardly stirs me any longer - at the time when I was writing my doctorate, > they filled me with indignation since I could not understand how anyone > immersed in Blake could dismiss central symbols in this way. Now I'm > older and more tolerant - I hope. > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 21:19:02 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: BLAKE@albion.com Subject: Cockney again Message-Id: <96041721190209@womenscol.stephens.edu> I must apologize to the list for posting an inaccurate memory (all too common, I fear, in my life). During the earlier thread about "cockneys" I said that I had not noticed any reference in Ackroyd's biography that would suggest he considered Blake a Cockney. That was near the end of my first reading through of the book. Today I was checking back on a few details, and the word "cockney" leaped at me from the page (a cackling demon of correction derisively pointing the finger of scorn at my emptied head)--to wit: "He did not need to travel any further because he saw, literally *saw*, Eternity there. But these conditions helped to shape the kind of artist he became: he was a Cockney visionary, and takes his place with Turner and Dickens as one of the great artists of London" (92). In this context, there is nothing pejorative or uncomplimentary about the use of "cockney," but merely the suggestion of a man of the workng classes born in London. Obviously Bentley was correct that Ackroyd calls Blake a cockney, but I cannot see how there is a question of "evidence" one way or the other, since the term seems not controversial in these sentences. Tom Dillingham (tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu) -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #36 *************************************