------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 39 Today's Topics: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Re: Clod/Pebble Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Re: Blake's S&M Re: Golgonooza -Reply Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Shelley & Taoism Them & [uz] Re: Blake's Drawing/Painting of Newton Hello Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Re: yeep Re: Them & [uz] Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Re: Blake's Drawing/Painting of Newton ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 17:31:29 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (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" c647749@showme.missouri.edu writes: >The body divine is not the erogenous zones divine... and >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. > >Are you trying to tell us that Blake's great system is about sex? > >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... Tell me about LIMITING, "m". Tell me about lack of imagination. Many in this group take so many things at face value. Like "Marx was talking about domination and sublimation", not sex. But isn't it funny that those are the same terms used in S&M? No one seemed to "get" my metaphorical connection of us sucking the earth's oil dry with the idea of a Vampire in which the rich win and the poor lose. And, by the way, Dracula was a rich Count. I'm blurring lines, aren't I? And I'm telling you that Blake blurred lines alot, too. Any coincidence there? Is a tiger JUST a tiger? Blake had a sense of metaphor. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 18:04:03 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Clod/Pebble Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gloudina Bouwer writes: > 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. Tell me the significance, Gloudina. Don't be oblique! That may be too much like... William Blake? > Are the sheep the submissive ones > and the cattle the dominant ones? It would SEEM that way. > Then why are the sheep so serene, > and why do the cattle look so uneasy? > Only the river knows for sure. And why do they coexist in a line that almost blurs them into one? I don't see the cattle as uneasy, but that's just my take. They look like they have the ability to attack, when needed, though. >By the way, you must have looked at a reproduction >of the Rosenwald copy of Songs of Innocence and >Experience.>>> No. I haven't. >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. Makes perfect Blake sense, to me! I LOVE the way he would change his hand-coloring to connote various things. You know what he was doing when he was playing with those interpretations, don't you, Gloudina? Shhhh.... maybe I shouldn't tell you.... I actually never KNEW Blake, you know! But my guess... and again... it's just MY guess... is that he was playing with the rainbow of experiences, "blurring lines" between supposed symbols of good and evil, to show there was DEPTH and more than one way to look at things. -R.H. Albright ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 18:32:26 EDT From: BPPU83C@prodigy.com (MS TRACEY C GAUGHRAN) To: albright@world.std.com, Blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Message-Id: <097.06400376.BPPU83C@prodigy.com> -- [ From: Tracey Gaughran * EMC.Ver #2.10P ] -- I enthusiastically agree. Blake would have hated some of the pseudo- intellectual posturing that passes for insight around here. Everything cannot be reduced to a system, and some things require the use of the heart as well as the head. A few of the members of this group need to: 1) lighten up and get a sense of humor, and 2) go out and experience life - away from computers AND books!!! I've enjoyed many of the postings to this group, but sometimes I have to wonder where the pure joy, enthusiasm and passion for literature is. I realize this sounds a tad naive, but, to be honest, I'd rather sound earnest and naive than jaded and narrow-minded. My intention here is not to offend. Sarah's posting just seemed like it had the potential to open a door into future discussion of Blake in an atmosphere not so rigorously academic, earthbound and humorless. After all, Blake IS hilarious - AND passionate, and joyful and full of life! Should we not discuss him with equal humor, passion and joy? Just checking your pulse, people......... I AM!! - Tracey. (BPPU83C@PRODIGY.COM) -------- REPLY, Original message follows -------- > Date: Friday, 19-Apr-96 03:31 PM > > From: R.h. Albright \ Internet: (albright@world.std.com) > To: Tracey Gaughran \ PRODIGY: (BPPU83C) > > Subject: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... > > 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. > > > -------- REPLY, End of original message -------- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 96 16:49:25 -0700 From: Seth T. Ross To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Message-Id: <9604192349.AA04382@albion.com> Content-Type: text/plain Jennifer Michael notes: > 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. I've been enjoying the lively discussions on the Blake list, but I think it's neither fair nor appropriate to flame anyone on the basis of their Internet email address or organizational affiliation. This usually cuts the other way, with those from educational institutions flaming those from the .com domain -- in either case, this is two-fold vision based on dubious assumptions about identity. During a recent dinner discussion, theater director and list member George Coates described the Blake list as a sort of Switzerland, on odd and small bit of neutral ground amidst the contentiousness of cyberspace. As someone who's maintained independence at some personal cost, I value this status and hope that we all can leave the mind-forged manacles of position and affiliation at the border. Have a great weekend one and all. Yours, Seth Ross List-maintainer PS To leave the Blake list, send an email to blake-request@albion.com with the word "unsubscribe" as the SUBJECT of the message. If this doesn't work, please be patient as I strive to cull the list manually. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 19:44:35 -0400 From: grayrobe@pilot.msu.edu (Robert M. Gray, Jr.) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's S&M Message-Id: <199604192344.TAA165495@pilot07.cl.msu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pardon me for making the mistake of believing that any of Blake's thought and/or meaning resides outside of THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL. My point was not (or at least wasn't intended to be) that Blake's poems are *not* about the body or sexuality, but that there was more there; but now I see that I was mistaken, that the "Priests in black gowns...walking their rounds," the "mind-forg'd manacles," the blood running down Palace walls, and all those names of people and places in MILTON & JERUSALEM are really only about the body and sex. How could I have been so blind? Well, now I know that I needn't worry about all that other stuff anymore, just the MARRIAGE. Thanks for clearing it up for me. Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. Uh oh, now I'm confused again... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 16:56:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Golgonooza -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII R.H.-- You're absolutely right. Gregory coined the phrase "double bind" in the fifties here in Palo Alto with Jay Haley, Weakland, Jackson, Watzlawick, et al.. Gregory would agree completely. You'll find in Bateson's later work "Mind & Nature" "Angels Fear" etc. that he also talks about "double description" (which I believed help inspire his student Francisco Varela to publish his "Both/And" symbolic predicate calculus).... And this too "double description permeates Blake as well... (Heaven & Hell, "double vision", doors of perception and so much more...) thanks for the comment... matthew dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, R.H. Albright wrote: > One thing I'll say about Gregory Bateson that applies to Blake. In STEPS > TOWARD AN ECOLOGY OF MIND, he talks alot about double-binds. That's what > Blake is talking alot about, too. > > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 16:59:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jennifer-- Thank you... a nice, helpful, important and subtle (to me at least) point... matthew dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, J. Michael wrote: > I, too, have puzzled much over this poem, but I don't agree that the line > > >And builds a heaven in hell's despair." > > is equivalent to > > > makes a heaven even as it sinks in its own hell. > > "Hell's despair" apparently means "the despair of hell", but that despair > may belong to hell itself (i.e., hell despairs because a heaven is being > built) or to the subject who is in hell. Is it possible to make a heaven > and sink into hell at the same time? You may say that it makes a heaven > for another while making hell for itself, but that isn't quite what the > poem says. > > Perhaps we should pay more attention not only to the parallel constructions > of heaven and hell in the poem, but also to the words "despair" and > "despite." > > Jennifer Michael > > > > > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 17:03:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Great Tom-- one of my favorite topics (humpty dumpty)! i recently copyrighted a story called "The Return of Humpty Dumpty" The nursery rhyme leaves us kind of flat after all (no body could put him back together again....) The story has been well received, but i need an illustrator... does anyone out there illustrate children's books? matthew Dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu On Thu, 18 Apr 1996 tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu wrote: > How convenient to be teaching Carroll's _Through the Looking Glass_. > In chapter 6, Alice encounters Humpty Dumpty, who gives her lessons > in epistemology and lingustics--to wit: > > "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful > tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor > less." > "The question is," said Alice, "whether you *can* make words > mean so many different things." > "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-- > that's all." > > Oh, that old dryasdust and pedantic Alice! > > Tom Dillingham (tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu) > > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 17:07:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII All- It looks like I am surrounde my more knowledgeable folks than myself on this topic... I do remember however what the sadist said to the masochist when the masochist said "Hit me....please" To which the sadist replied, "NO!" On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, hmm wrote: > 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 23:48:27 EDT From: BPPU83C@prodigy.com (MS TRACEY C GAUGHRAN) To: Blake@albion.com Subject: Shelley & Taoism Message-Id: <097.06423472.BPPU83C@prodigy.com> -- [ From: Tracey Gaughran * EMC.Ver #2.10P ] -- Everyone -- I am a graduate student working on a paper examining the connnections between Shelley's philosophic outlook and that of Taoism (and eastern philosophy more generally) - with particular attention to the poem Mount Blanc. I have had little success in my search for material on this subject, despite the fact that the similarities between Shelley's outlook and Taoism appear to be overwhelming. If anyone has any suggestions on where I might find some relevent articles or essays (or anything! PLEASE HELP!), or would like to voice their opinions/ideas on this matter, please e-mail me at: BPPU83C@PRODIGY.COM (or) gaughran@pilot.msu.edu GRACIAS!!!! I AM!!! -- Tracey. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 01:43:42 -0400 From: grayrobe@pilot.msu.edu (Robert M. Gray, Jr.) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Them & [uz] Message-Id: <199604200543.BAA78011@pilot10.cl.msu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" First of all, I would like to apologize for the tone (and the sending) of my last message. It would've been better left unsaid. I will now "duck" out of the current debate between "academics" and "the living," but I would like to make one point before I go, for what it's worth. When I want to read a poet who makes me "feel," I read someone like Tony Harrison, Walt Whitman, or Maya Angelou; when I want to "think," I'll read someone like Eliot, Milton, or Emerson. This is not to say of course that Whitman doesn't make me think or that Eliot doesn't make me feel, but what I love about Blake (and what I would think most of the people on this list, academic or not, love as well), what makes him so special, is that he makes me (all of us) do both, that he demands a great deal of both. We could all stand to do more of both. Enough or too much, Rob ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 15:13:25 +0300 From: jlehto@helium.pp.fi (jlehto) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Drawing/Painting of Newton Message-Id: <199604201213.AA08594@personal.eunet.fi> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I remember reading years ago a Blake book, don't remember its name, but there were some interesting observations concerning the Newton picture... The writer pointed out that Newtons posture was similar to that of the demiurge ("Ancient of Days") stooping down to limit the darkness with his pair of scales. He also linked this stooping posture to the image of Nebucadnezzar on all fours. He said that the portrayal of Newtons countenance resembled the features of Blake's spiritual Enemies: great hook nose, thin lips, cruel intent gaze... Lastly he added some comments about the rocky foreground of the picture; Newton's body rests on a rock that is colored with the "unorganized Blots & Blurs" ... he contrasted this with the "Glad day" where Albion triumphantly emerges from similar blots & blurs.. It's back to lurking...( oh and by the way,a tip to "amateurs" like myself: the master key to much of Blake's imagery is not in Cabbala or Swedenborg, but in the books of Jacob Boehme, who presents us a godhead who constructs the universe with much pain & groaning in the abyss of his desire ) jlehto ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 09:40:06 -0400 From: "adam r. marcotte" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Hello Message-Id: <199604201340.JAA03527@ns.norwich.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi! Let me introduce myself since I'm eager to start following the few messages I've gotten since I subscribed (last night). I am a junior-high English Teacher in rural NY, and I have been working on my master's paper at SUNY Cortland. I am exploring WB's optimism, and hope to have my thesis done in the next few months. This summer would be a good time. Also, I have started a William Blake site for critical analysis. I've looked around at a lot of pages so far, and decided that I wanted to create a library of textual references and commentary for Blake's work, and provide links to those sites that provide a good graphic support. While not to oversell this in the first message, if there is anyone currently on the list who might be interested in submiting criticism, you can visit my homepage (listed below). As I said, I am eager for discussion, but must start out with an apology for what will inevitably be brief messages. While I have time during the evening hours for thinking, I also have acute overuse injuries in both hands from (you guessed it) typing. 10 minutes is about all I can type at one time. :-( Other interests include Argentine Tango, stained-glass work, and hiking. Reading is "brain-food" for my classes and I get hungry every once in a while, too. I'm hoping that I will have something intelligent to say in the future. Adam Marcotte ---<<---@@ marcotte@norwich.net Web Page updated 4/18/96, 6:30 p.m.: http://www.lookup.com/Homepages/89618/home.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 10:11:03 +0000 From: sternh@WABASH.EDU To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT I was glad to read Seth Ross's note this morning. Our list was beginning to sound a bit too much like the world. Exuberance IS beauty, but rancor cuts us off from the healing process, the "Divine Salvation," that, finally, we come to Blake to share. So one of the texts we might keep in mind as defining is the one from [you should pardon the generic Man]: "Mutual in one another's love and wrath all renewing we live as one man; for contracting our infinite senses we behold multitude, or expanding, we behold as one, as One Man all the Universal Family, and that One Man we call Jesus the Christ; and he is in us, and we in him live in perfect harmony in Eden, the land of life, giving, receiving, and forgive each others trespasses." Maybe we could talk a bit about that Family. I'm not a Christian, but the notion of common humanity that's implicit here, because it's so nearly a lost notion, needs talking about today more than ever. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 10:11:07 +0000 From: sternh@WABASH.EDU To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: yeep Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Dear Pam: thanks for your story. I'm going to pin it up for a talisman and see if it sharpens my facilities. It touched me much. I'd just come up from breakfast, where I watched a scruffy mourning dove preening on a branch of the redbud where we have our feeder. It's a lovely day after big storms, and watching her pick nits from under her wing was a gift from the morning. Anyway, your piece has me taking in the rest of the morning with hungrier eye. Reminded me of driving through the Catskills with a friend, a painter, on a similar day, and he turning to me, after taking in the landscape for a while, and saying: "I couldn't imagine this. Could you imagine this, Bert?' and it was a variation on your theme. Do let me FAX my piece to you, since I've delayed so long. If you'll send me a number. I'm truly humble about the essay, which is unequivocally a novice piece, but I'd be very greatful for any response you can give me. I enclose a couple of last week's poems, in the way of news. Neither hads a title yet. It is good to attack Plato, it is good for us. With his "arguments" always loaded, and his putrid forms. Aren't they putrid, sitting there like statues staring down their noses at the vicissitudes of flesh? So we perish here and have pimples. How bad is this really, compared to the marble repose, the smug perfection, the entirely fulfilled postures of the Idea against which the flights of our own mere birds are aberrations, and the sweet song you sang to me in my sleep last night was fragile and poor, not yet part of that coda, that chorus that nothing sings in the chill chambers of nowhere? Reb Katzman's hair was tangled with sticks. He could no longer speak. Animals came to the threshold of his hut for crumbs that he didn't feed them but let drop from bread he made from seeds of wild grasses. He ate boletus raw, that he picked in the woods where they hid as leaves by the fallen oak. No one could say how the Rebbe lived through winter on the bag of flour he bought in the village when the road was still open, on the pocketful of dried fruit. When he fell asleep he imagined flight. But language was a skin rash that never went away. Words are red on the skin of things, he told the squirrel at the door. I soothe them with the silence I have gathered around me, I have learned to pray without them. But they press against me buzzing in swarms, like insects. The skin of everything is reddened with them, they are like fiery angels that guard Eden's gate. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 12:07:28 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Them & [uz] Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hey, Rob. The road of excess leads to the gates of wisdom. No need to apologize. I personally don't separate "academics" and the "living." There's alot of gray area in there to say, "What do you mean by academic?" I happened to use school for avant-garde independent studies that were based soundly enough on "source texts" for them to pass the English department's stamp of approval. I did NOT go to Space Cadet Academy, but I frankly wouldn't care if some of the people in this group do. Blake was a mystic-- a space case, in some sense of the word, himself. As far as Whitman and Emerson, I would again blur a line where instead you make a distinction. Emerson prophesized Whitman's coming in his essay "The Poet." Emerson WAS a poet, very concerned with getting people in touch with their feelings as well as thoughts. Whitman himself would have admitted Emerson was his mentor, as were Frederick Law Olmsted, Henry David Thoreau... and the list goes on in time through a ripple effect into Nietzsche, William James, and more. To me, the thing that is unique about Blake is how strong he was both as a visual artist and as a poet. By being, in a sense, one of the first multi-media artists, he is an inspiration of great magnitude. We now have films where we can somewhat merge novels and plays with music and more. In Blake's day, what he was doing was as revolutionary as Whitman breaking with the conventions of poetry construction. -R.H. Albright http://world.std.com/~albright/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 15:21:48 -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, R.H. Albright wrote: > Tell me about LIMITING, "m". Tell me about lack of imagination. Many in > this group take so many things at face value. Like "Marx was talking about > domination and sublimation", not sex. But isn't it funny that those are the > same terms used in S&M? No one seemed to "get" my metaphorical connection > of us sucking the earth's oil dry with the idea of a Vampire in which the > rich win and the poor lose. And, by the way, Dracula was a rich Count. I'm > blurring lines, aren't I? And I'm telling you that Blake blurred lines > alot, too. Any coincidence there? > > Is a tiger JUST a tiger? > Blake had a sense of metaphor. Hope you don't mind if I blur my replies to your private and public messages, but I dont really remember which came from which, so I"m just going to throw it all out here... It's not that we're not 'getting' your interpretations, but that we don't entirely agree with them. I think the S&M reading is interesting and stimulating. I don't think you're just making something up. I just see something different. Sometimes I agree with the academics; sometimes I don't. I don't automatically discount an interpretation simply because someone thought of it before. Do you think you're the ffirst one to read S&M into Blake? Who I agree with (or disagree with) doesn't make me a sheep: the methods I use to come to those agreements or disagreements do, and you have no idea how any of us came to our interpretations -- don't assume we just read some dead white guy's book and said, 'oh...he must be right.' Some do, and I dislike them as much as you do, but I've found that there are fewer of those people on this list than one would expect. Since we're on the subject of assuming, I say you assume things of people because that's what your posts imply. Your responses to others' disagreements appear to boil down to either, "it's so OBVIOUS" or "Why can't you get past your prejudices against S&M?" both of these responses assume something -- either the reader is blind or frigid. One last thing: before you go off on me about my 'fucking attack mode' I think you should reread some of your posts, paying special attenttion to your tone. You don't think calling people sheep is confrontational? You don't consider your reply to Jon, who simply suggested you look over a book that may add to the Blake/Newton issue, an attack? You set the ground; I only reply in kind. oh, btw...I do want to thank you for adding to my list of insults. You see, after 23 years of being me, it's rare I hear an insult I haven't heard before. But I have tto admit, I've never been called unimaginative before...) m c647749@showme.missouri.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 16:56:23 -0400 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Drawing/Painting of Newton Message-Id: <960420165622_518316181@emout07.mail.aol.com> jlehto- I would appreciate any suggestions on where to start with Boehme. I've found him very difficult reading, even more so than Blake. So I'd appreciate any suggestions you might post for a first Boehme experience and for any good biographical or critical sources. Thanks, Tom Devine -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #39 *************************************