------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 38 Today's Topics: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Re: Blake's Drawing/Painting of Newton Clod&Pebble,MentalTraveller The Blurs of Innocence and Experience Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Clod/Pebble Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 12:52:41 -0400 (EDT) From: "R.H. Albright" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rob says that I'm "misunderstanding" Pam and that we should be like sheep in following "classical" interpretations of Blake, consider his whole universe,etc. Here is one quote I pulled: Given all of the elements and complexities of Blake's system (primarily, I think, the various "states"--innocence/experience as well as Ulro/Generation/Beulah/Eternity--although social institutions and ideologies enter into this as well), the poem, as you say, is indeed about the "contrary" extremes of love, but it is not an endorsement or upholding of those contraries; rather, it is a recognition of them, because ultimately, in the Blakean system, they are not dialectical contraries at all; they are "divided," more like, say, Luvah/Vala or actually Los/his Spectre, than Good/Evil or Reason/Energy, due to the fallen (or for Marx, alienated) world of time (history). Basically, Rob and Pam disagree with me. I'm not going to play the record again, metaphorically. My first two postings on the Clod and the Pebble articulate how I see it. And it's not my Marxist sunglasses, or my S&M vision that's superimposing the images onto the poem. The poem, in its text, is about extremities that you can call a number of different words. Romantic versus cynic? Whatever. What I find, on first reaction to a "different" interpretation of this poem, to be sad, is the amount of reductionist visions these postings against my vision of the poem imply. Do we need to read S. Foster Damon's Blake Dictionary, or take "Clod and the Pebble" in the context of all these other works that Pam and you quote? Can't we look at them with our own eyes and SEE? For those of you in academia, hey, enjoy. But for those of you who want to breathe life into art FOR YOU, in 1996, MAYBE using Damon just as I MAYBE used THE ECONOMIST in my analysis of the Newton painting (if you read the article, you'll see there was alot of ME talking, merely using Economist as a starting point), you've got to get out of these snippy little writeoffs. It is OBVIOUS that the Clod and the Pebble is about extremes that you could call sadomasochism. It is also OBVIOUS that the illustration blurs the issue into a more complex form than any reductionist thing like "sadomasochism" could call it. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 13:09:16 -0400 (EDT) From: "R.H. Albright" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jennifer writes:> > If everyone knows what despair is, then why can I read the line in two > ways, as I tried to show in my previous message: either the despair > belongs to the clod or to hell? If the clod is really a masochist, would > it really find "despair" in the "hell" of submission to another's desires? > > Furthermore, if everyone knows what despair is, why do you need to > "translate it into your own modern vocabulary"? If Blake is just a "source > text" for you, then write your own poems, by all means. By "pay more > attention," I mean READ, just as you do when you say of S&M that "It's > right there in the text!" Jennifer: I am SURE you don't mean (smile) to condescendingly mean that I did'nt "read" the Clod and the Pebble? You're blurring what I was providing as background on my subject of S&M with my reading of the poem, or am I wrong? I mean, T.S. Eliot was right when he said, "That is not what I meant at all!" Maybe I'm misreading you? But it sounds condescending, to say I can't both read and talk about Blake as well as write my own poems. And I also have already shown what my "interpretation" of the Clod and the Pebble is. As far as what Blake meant-- well-- to an extent it matters, and to an extent it's a mute point. Hamlet: was he mad or was he sane? The Mona Lisa: is it a self-portrait of DaVinci or what IS IT about that woman that is so enigmatic? So, to look at your text, I don't see what you mean. I see you attacking me, when I am actually agreeing with you that there's ambiguity in there. As for why I defined "despite", it's not used in modern English- at least not in MY conversational modern English- as much as despair, and that's why I chose to define it. The poem is out of Blake's hands now. We, the readers, interpret. I'm not going to reductionistly go through every Song of Innocence and Experience to prove my point that it's a blur... but I AM going to show you some very big flaws in thinking that there's as much differentiation as even Blake would have you believe with the titles one of these days. > Do you see what I mean? I'm not one of those who squeamishly > insists that there can't possibly be any S&M in the poem; quite the > contrary. I just don't think that, having established that, we know what > Blake's attitude toward sadomasochism is. This is a Song of Experience, > after all, and these songs present a range of attitudes toward the > "realities" they describe. > Songs of Innocence spoke of realities, too. More later. And again, I repeat, if we can't see these things and breathe life into them without fear of... oh, that's not what the author intended, or.. you MUST not have read that book... it's very anti-Blake, in my opinion. It may be why only professors and grad students seem to be talking in this group, and I find it OK for your own particular missions, but not for the bigger mission of helping anyone, high school kid, undergrad, whomever... enjoy and see beneath the surface of these seemingly "simple" songs. -R.H. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 13:13:47 -0400 (EDT) From: "R.H. Albright" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sarah Clayton wrote a beautiful e-mail... and All I have to say is THANK GOD someone in this group has a) a sense of humor b) a broader sense of Blake than just the academic vision that he would have HATED. c) isn't afraid to be ALIVE. -R.H. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 12:35:26 -0500 (CDT) From: hmm To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, R.H. Albright wrote: > Well, Pam has just done what I knew would happen. "In no way does Blake > endorse sado-masochism" or something to that effect is your last line. > > But it's right there in the text! I mean, some can say Hamlet was crazy > and some can say he was totally sane, but... I can see why one could validly read S&M into the poem, but that doesn't make it as obvious as you want it to be. I see sacrifice for the sake of the loved one more than sacrifice for the sake of pain in the clod's words. Self-sacrifice does not necessarily equal masochism. does the lover like the pain for its own sake or because through that pain, happiness is created for the loved one? > It's all open to interpretation Pam. But my interpretation is CLEARLY > there. The clod doesn't care for itself.. it gives of itself for > another... makes a heaven even as it sinks in its own hell. That's > masochism. Sorry. You have a problem with the stigma, the false belief > that S&M is pathological and not just two poles or a rainbow. Why do you keep assuming people aren't seeing S&M in the poem the way you are because they have some problem with S&M? I personally don't really care that much one way or another, but I still don't see it in the poem. It might also be helpful to remember that masochism isn't necessarily confined to sexuality. m c647749@showme.missouri.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 12:44:41 -0500 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Message-Id: <9604191749.AA23136@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well, thanks to Ms. Clayton's helpful barking, I see that this discussion has, uh, evolved far beyond my argument with Mr. Albright over the meaning of the word "despair." Of course the body is central to Blake's work. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be devoting an entire (and ever-growing) chapter of my dissertation to that centrality. But in your tirade against Mr. Gray, you make the equation body=sexuality, which is exactly the kind of materialism Blake resists. Here's a quotation you left out: "Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more." (_Jerusalem_ 77) This plate, in fact, threatens to undermine Blake's faith in the body because it suggests a dualism between spirit and matter which he rejected earlier. My point, however, is that by repeatedly associating the body with imagination, Blake is asserting a function for it that includes sexuality but is not limited to it, just as at the end of _Milton_ he has Milton cast off the "rotten rags" and the "sexual garments" from the divine body of Albion. To support Mr. Gray's point, power can take a number of bodily forms (war, for example) that are not exclusively sexual. To say that "The Clod and the Pebble" is only and entirely about sadomasochistic sex unnecessarily limits the poem's range of meaning. What, for example, do you make of _The Book of Thel_, another poem with a talking clod of clay? It surely has a lot to do with sex and involves giving oneself for another, but it culminates in a vision of the grave. Does reading that poem shed any light on "The Clod and the Pebble"? Of course, if you want to say everything is about sex, then it's impossible for anyone to disagree with you, isn't it? Sort of like that psychology class I took years ago, where they told us that everything we do can be reduced to the rat pressing a bar to get a food pellet. Well, the Blake list has given me my daily ration of S&M. Have a good weekend, all. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 12:54:56 -0500 (CDT) From: hmm To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Drawing/Painting of Newton Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, R.H. Albright wrote: > Jon Drnjevic recommends reading a book to understand the drawing/painting I > mentioned about Blake's Depiction of Newton. > > My question is: > Have you seen the drawing/painting, Jon? It's probably safe to assume the book has a copy of the drawing... > If so, why don't you tell the group what YOU think of the drawing? > > Blake would want you to rip through that "book" and try to see with your > clear-stained eyes, and talk directly, don't you think? I think John's suggestion was not meant to say "This writer's got it all figured out." There is more to Blake's views of Newton and science than one drawing. I'm assuming this book mentions Blake's treatment of Newton as a whole, drawing on more than one picture, placing that picture in a larger context. Now I haven't seen the drawing, but I've read a fair amount of Blake, coming across various references to Newton and science. Blake doesn't seem to have anything against science itself. Instead, he takes scientists to task for reducing their visions exclusively to what they can apply the scientific method to. It's not that science is 'wrong' or useless, but that it's limited and constrained. Newton's fault (and by extension the Enlightenment's) was not that he was a scientist, but that he considered science the whole truth. This is why Blake refers to 'Newton's sleep' somewhere (sorry...can't remember the piece, and i don't have my blake handy) -- by reducing existence to scientific formulae, he misses some of existence's most important aspects. m c647749@showme.missouri.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 96 12:45:56 CDT From: Mark Trevor Smith To: blake@albion.com Subject: Clod&Pebble,MentalTraveller Message-Id: <9604191805.AA24604@uu6.psi.com> I see a resemblance between the attitudes expressed recently about Clod & Pebble and those expressed about "The Mental Traveller." Many interpret MT to be Blake's vision of spirit vs. body. I instead interpret it as a vision of the horrors of limited double vision (a step above single vision, perhaps, but still trapped below triple and fourfold vision). The sado-masochism of MT, like the SM of C&P, is an excruciating trap into which we corner ourselves when we see the enemy as only other. As revealed in many works, especially chapter 3 of Jerusalem, we must become that hated other, as Jesus becomes Satan, before we can escape the limits of oppositional contraries. Without contraries is no progression, but with only contraries is only the ratio of mutual torture as in C&P and MT. Similarly, when we only excoriate Urizen as only other, as only enemy, we forget the necessity for the bounding line, in other words we forget the necessary role of limits in relation to creativity. Neither can exist or progress without the other (see Prolific/Devourer), but the attempts at mutual exclusivity, instead of stopping the circle, just make it more painful, as the end of MT is just like the start of the poem but even worse. Fourfold vision, I maintain (and I welcome other interpretations of single-double-triple-fourfold vision), is the difficult-to-define (perhaps impossible to define, but only possible to act, live) inclusion of single vision (Newtonianism has its constructive place, as some have pointed out), double vision (always present in Blake, as he tells Trusler) that can get trapped in simple oppositions, triple vision which sees the unsavory unity of me and my enemy. Fourfold vision allows God to become as man is so that man can become as God is, a MYSTICAL ontology that throws us outward with centrifugal force into the minute particulars of existence, always denying categorical centralizations (like mine here, even) and always demanding the wiry bounding line of individual existence. Anyway, that's part of my understanding of Blake's myth, and I thank all those who have contributed recently to stimulate me to respond. If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise, and there are many ways to understand that gnomic epigram. I have developed my thoughts with the help of many sources, including Nicolas of Cusa and other mystics, and Hazard Adams's marvelous PHILOSOPHY OF THE LITERARY SYMBOLIC. I learned most from Michael Cooke, in his ACTS OF INCLUSION and in his vibrant body, taken from us in a car accident several years ago. Mark Trevor Smith mts231f@vma.smsu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 14:01:04 -0400 (EDT) From: "R.H. Albright" To: blake@albion.com Subject: The Blurs of Innocence and Experience Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. --William Blake Well, I see everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of giving their OWN clear-tained views of Newton, so I won't stop by giving you some more of mine on how Blake is BLURRING Innocence and Experience all the time. The following are merely my reactions to the illustrated poems. Challenge me, if you want. Or better yet, give me YOUR interpretation. First, from SONGS OF INNOCENCE INTRODUCTION (to Innocence) It all sounds rather jolly, doesn't it? And yet, this "child" on a cloud WEEPS when the poet pipes a merry song. Why would that happen? I mean, kids cry when they're hungry, but when a merry tune is being played? What's happening here? Is it because the child isn't really a child, already knows this is sugar and spice but that there's a REAL world out there with heartache, roses with thorns? It keeps repeating in variations: "he wept to hear", then "he wept with joy to hear"... until Blake finally turns it around to be a rural pen (he hated the Industrial Revolution, didn't he? It's obvious in poems like THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER, also in "Innocence.) and he "stains" his pen to make it "water clear. NOW what's happening? Isn't water clear, to begin with? Or is he admitting that he's fallen, and in order to get back to TRUE innocence, TRUE clarity, he has to make it clear? But why a STAIN? Doesn't clear water get rid of stains? Obviously not. Innocence isn't as innocent as it looks. ECCHOING GREEN I'ts in innocence, but... what's that old guy with the white hair being mentioned doing there? In the illustration, a woman caresses them in one part of the poem, then they're "led" by a guy pointing at the end as darkness falls on the green. Even in innocence, there's stuff lurking around that makes you know it can't last. How does the woman who "guides" the kids" taint their experience, without even knowing it? INFANT JOY The kid has no name, but since we're in innocence, oh... let's call it "joy." THE LAMB Let's tell the lamb what it stands for, too: Christ. Why? Because in both the infant's and lamb's cases, they can't call themselves ANYTHING. They're NOTHING except how Blake impregnates them with meaning. THE LITTLE BLACK BOY Oh, great! Even in "Innocence" his only hope is to become white (this is shown clearly in the illustration), probably when he dies, right? And is accepted by Jesus. Jesus is looking at him, white, "cleansed" of his blackness. Sick. This is about hard-core racial discrimination, folks, even though it's in an "innocence" bunch of poems where such a thing shouldn't happen. and now from SONGS OF EXPERIENCE INTRODUCTION to Experience The Bard has "heard The Holy Word." Do you think Blake would want us to act like sheep and just blindly follow him? If we're not going to turn away anymore, why does -- what? Earth? Blake? us?-- still turn away? We're grownups now. We can take it. But there's a part of us that's still innocent, that wants to be protected from the hard-core message that he's may be prepared to deliver. This poem, by the way, is illustrated like it's in the clouds, not firmly entrenched in reality at all. It visually loks like a fantasy. Experience? EARTH'S ANSWER to the Bard in Experience Earth's an old hag, isn't she. She's been around for awhile. But the illustration just looks like a beautiful, if dark, forest with a snake amidst the ferns or whatever they are. So is Earth asking the Bard to "break this heavy chain..." or to "free Love with bondage bound?" My my. S&M and she doesn't like it. Doesn't like the father of men, either. He's "cruel, jealous..." and more. But in asking for liberation, isn't Earth aware of the promise of Innocence... of that Bard in the sky with beautiful stars in the previous poem? CLOD AND THE PEBBLE Oh God, not this again! But half the poem is about kindness! Experience doesn't taint Blake's brush clear of that fully half of the equation. THE LITTLE GIRL LOST She sees a future where earth will awaken from its sleep, and then... in this paradise or utopia of tomorrow... "the desart wild become a garden mild..." Ah, can't you smell the warm summers that never fade away? But this is romanticism, not cynicism! It's innocence, told to use by a seven year old girl (even though in the illustration she's grown up and kissing her husband... maybe he's HER garden mild). THE LITTLE GIRL FOUND Who's that cute beast that introduces the illustrated poem? Yes! It's tigger, as Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin would say! Isn't s/he cute! TYGER, TYGER Is mesmerizing... but who is REALLY branding that tiger with these Satanic images? Man. And it was man/men who were hunting both tigers and wolves in Blake's day, and probably snorting "I killed that Satan beast!" as they brought home the dead trophy. And dead is the right word, because tigers and wolves are now nearly extinct. In the illustration, the tiger doesn't even look threateningIt looks cute, like a giant kitty! That's enough for openers. Plus... my lunch break is almost over! Blake blurs and mixes the color palette all the time in these songs. Look at the illustration for THE FLY. It could also have been used for an INNOCENCE poem. Even when talking about death-- and that, in fact, is the title page... he's romantic about it. He sees a life beyond death. For example, in that title page, we see a man and a woman paying their respects to a super-imposure of two versions of the "man" who is dead. Meanwhile, up above in heaven, people are dancing. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 13:10:47 -0500 (CDT) From: hmm To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, Sarah Clayton wrote: > 1. Marx is a materialist. The Body is the most primary element of Marx's System. > 2. Blake's system IS COMPLETELY ROOTED IN THE BODY DIVINE, THe DIVINE BODY, > THE HUMAN FORM, THE BODY BODY BODY BODY....Jesus! What is wrong with you > (academic) people? ;-))))))) The body divine is not the erogenous zones divine... > AND I quote: > a. ..."Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast" > THE HUMAN BREAST IS NOT THE "NOTION" OR "IDEA" OF THE BREAST, BUT > THE BREAST ITSELF!!! How do you know? I always assumed he meant 'breast' as a synonym for 'heart', in its metaphoric sense -- 'men forgot that they created their deities'... > b...."Energy is the only life and is from the BODY and Reason is the bound > or outward circumferance of Energy. Energy is Eternal Delight" > ENERGY does not come from the idea (reason), from the external, > (circumferance), or from Hell, (the bound), Energy comes from the body. The > body is particular and everyone has one. Simple as that. Perhaps it would > helpt to call it "The Great Ephemeral Skin" ? (see Lyotard) (everything is > the body) > > c...."Man has no Body distinct from his Soul foir that calld Body is a > portion of the Soul discerned by the five Senses." > I believe there is a distinct difference between a dead body and a > live one. One has energy, one doesn't. > however, the body that MAN has....is a live one. and that live one > IS Energy...NOT DISTINCT FROM THE SOUL, in other words: the same thing as > the soul. not seperate. SO...If you want to say that energy is just nice > and well-mannered and doesn't think about sex...well, you would be guilty > of the first major sin, the sin of exteriority, in other words: you are > probably a castrated acadamecian who dreams of one day reducing eerything > he encounters in life to a theory, yes, a SYSTEM (not an Anti System or > DIABOLICAL SYSTEM, as blake intended) so that you can ultimately be free of > the troubling inconvenience Pain, or of Life itself ( a more polite, > abstract way of putting it, lest you don't catch my drift). Don't know if gray is castrated or not, and since my apparatus was complete and functional last time I checked, I can't speak for them. but I don't see this direct connection you keep making between the body and sex. The body is about more than sex -- it's about perception (and, important to Blake, the limits of that perception). While sex can (and does) play in important role (though possibley more for its social treatment than for its existence per se), it is not the be and end all. neither body nor energy equal sex. > >What I am getting at can... > >perhaps be found in that catch phrase about sexual harrassment--it isn't > >about sex; it's about power. S&M is quite parallel as a structure to Marx's > >capitalism and whatever you want to claim Blake is talking about > >(love/religion/states/capitalism/etc.), but that doesn't make them the same > >thing (i.e., that doesn't make capitalism about S&M; if anything, it makes > >S&M about capitalism, but that seems more suitable for another list). > > Oh, .....oh oh oh oh oh oh ......Would it be allright if I barked here? > BARK BARK BARK BARK, GRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUF. Thank-you. Let us just assume > for a moment that thee is such a thing called the Body Politic. Let us just > assume that Frye was right for once when he spoke of Blake's abhorence for > the way that the Church devours and diminishes the human body, turning it > into a part of the One instead of a whole unto itself, among the many like > itself, and that this reduction (and subsequent opression) is entirely a > political one and has nothing to do with true religion or spirtuality. Eh? > Did I lose anyone there? > Allright, just checking: You, my dear Mr. Gray, are tryng to tell us that > Blake's Great System is about Power? Power? Like ...Like Authority? Like > Capital? Like ...like Blake is talking about a Real Power like ...like > what? Like POLITICS? Something ABOVE the body? SOmething GREATER than the > BODY? Something ABSOLUTE? _R E A S O N_ PERHAPS? > AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH Are you trying to tell us that Blake's great system is about sex? > > Is that what Blake is trying to teach us, Dear Mr. Drab, er Gray? is he > trying to take us to those absolutes that the body itself just fails to > produce? > > _N_O_T_ By Blake's own words, the body is by nature a limiting force... 'a portion of the soul discerned by the five senses'. Elsewherre Blake makes a point of pointing out how confining and limited those senses are. There is more than the body; the body is a piece of a larger existence. To reduce it to a sexual energy is not really different from reducing it to a storehouse of reason... m c647749@showme.missouri.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 15:02:08 -0400 (EDT) From: izak@igs.net (Izak Bouwer) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Clod/Pebble Message-Id: <199604191902.PAA23882@host.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" That a man contemplating a clod and a pebble thinks that the eyes of the sheep are shut, and the eyes of the cattle are open seems to me of such significance, such significance. Are the sheep the submissive ones and the cattle the dominant ones? Then why are the sheep so serene, and why do the cattle look so uneasy? Only the river knows for sure. By the way, you must have looked at a reproduction of the Rosenwald copy of Songs of Innocence and Experience.There indeed it looks as if the eyes of both head of cattle are wide open, and the eyes of the sheep do look shut. In the King's College Copy however the eyes of at least one of the cattle seem closed, and the eyes of some of the sheep do not look totally closed to me. Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 16:17:42 -0500 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Message-Id: <9604192122.AA20817@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well, I said I was signing off for the weekend, but R.H. Albright has accused me off the list of insulting him, and I feel compelled to clear up any misunderstanding. I never intended my responses as a personal attack, just as I'm sure he didn't mean to personally attack those who disagree with his reading. If I sounded condescending, it's because he didn't seem to understand why I would say "consider the parallel constructions using heaven and hell, and the meanings of the words 'despair' and 'despite.'" I rephrased that as "READ" not to suggest he wasn't reading, but to clarify my point. To me, "read" means not only "translate into 20th century English," but consider the nuances of the word beyond your first impression of it. By "pay attention to," I meant "consider further"--not necessarily "pay attention to what I think it means." Condescension works both ways. Is it not condescending to insist, several times, that a poem means only one thing, and then say "It's right there in the text" when someone disagrees with you? Or to suggest that they're speaking from their own moral inhibitions? You've asked me for my interpretation of "The Clod and the Pebble." Here it is. The whole poem parodies the passage in Corinthians that celebrates "Love" as an abstraction, while also presenting a pair of views that are negations rather than contraries, because they cancel each other out. From the point of view of the clod and the pebble, love cannot be both selfless and selfish, it can only be one or the other. There is no possiblity, in other words, of pleasing oneself and another at the same time. I pointed out that this is a song of Experience not to suggest that the songs of Innocence have nothing to do with reality or do not contain ambiguities, but rather to suggest that Experience, like Innocence, has its own limited view of reality: witness the Tyger, to which the speaker reacts with fear but which, as you said earlier, is a thing of beauty and energy. Therefore the two alternative pictures of "Love" are not necessarily a direct reflection of "reality," any more than "The Human Abstract" is unequivocally "true." They do, however, show love fractured as self is divided from other (the primary division in Blake). If there were no separation between self and other, there would be no need to choose between pleasing another and pleasing oneself. My problem with the sadomasochist reading is that presumably the masochist does have pleasure in receiving pain, so by submitting, it would "seek itself to please." Otherwise, as you've noted, we actually do agree on some points. I would hate to think my ".edu" address would intimidate or stifle anyone, but given the routine manner in which academics are insulted on this list merely for being academics, I think we should be the ones on the defensive. In the friendship of opposition, Jennifer Michael -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #38 *************************************