------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 41 Today's Topics: Re: Blake and a Viewer's Vision Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply -Reply Clod&Pebble,MentalTraveller -Reply + FOURFOLD Correction on Harold Bloom Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Re: Blake's Drawing/Painting of Newton REPLY TO ALL THAT STUFF ABOUT THE BODY ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 19:04:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake and a Viewer's Vision Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII R.H.-- Were you referring to Mark's post where he also talked about fourfold vision? i thought that was incredible. i wasn't sure in what format to respond as well. (private or public) i had just a few minor thoughts, but i didn't want to do anything to detract (or distract) from his wonderful post.. "Massively coherent" is a phrase that came to mind.... p.s. do you have a citation for that economist article? matthew dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu On Sat, 20 Apr 1996, R.H. Albright wrote: > Mark Trevor Smith gave a brilliant interpretation of "The Clod and the > Pebble", and I wrote to him privately about it to commend him as well as > further the discussion. Maybe that should have been public, in retrospect. > > http://world.std.com/~albright/ > > -R.H. Albright > > > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 13:27:41 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu Subject: Re: The Clod and The Pebble -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Dear Tom Dill, I was intrigued by your apt reference to Alice and Humpty and spent the weekend re-reading the section about Alice's encounter.There certainly is much in myself that I recognise as Alice-like -but then I was surprised to discover that Humpty was even more pedantic than Alice, in his own inimitable egg-like way. I thought the following very apropos to this particular thread of exchange: "It's very provoking " Humpty said "to be called an egg". "I said you looked like an egg, Sir" Alice gently explained, "And some eggs are very pretty, you know". Pam van Schaik ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 13:50:07 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, MTS231F@vma.smsu.edu Subject: Clod&Pebble,MentalTraveller -Reply + FOURFOLD Message-Id: Dear Mark, I found your remarks on this subject very stimulating. You may be right that single-fold vision is included in four-fold but I have never thought of the Selfhood as included in the completeness of being four-fold. Albion's Zoas, when they are fully extended into the bosom (or `breast') of God are four-fold. In this condition, their fluxile spiritual senses are so expanded away from the small, dark node of their Selfhoods that they participate fully in God's divine humanity. So I think the term is perhaps too ineffable to include the single-fold other than as the minutest speck since that does have to be present to ensure individuality and the freedom to contract into one's unique self . When the Selfhood is entered into so deeply that it obscures the divine vision of love then it becomes dangerous and is the single-fold `sleep' of the soul. So, I suppose I can both agree and disagree with you. Pam van Schaik ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 08:48:21 -0400 (EDT) From: "R.H. Albright" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Correction on Harold Bloom Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This is a re-post from a message I sent last night. Harold Bloom wrote the Commentary, not Introduction, for the following: _The Complete Poems and Prose of William Blake_ Anchor/Doubleday 1988 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Ruegg Bill To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's S&M, and Marx's too... Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII You mean "is a Tyger JUST a Tyger" don't you? _____________________________________________________________________________ "My God, It's full of Stars" * bruegg@ucet.ufl.edu* Bill Ruegg*English*4008Turlington*University of Florida*Gainesville*FL*32611 _____________________________________________________________________________ On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, R.H. Albright wrote: > > Is a tiger JUST a tiger? > Blake had a sense of metaphor. > > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 15:53:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Ruegg Bill To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Drawing/Painting of Newton Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just finished reading Ault's description of this painting in _Visionary Physics_ (p.2-4). It's pretty cool. Ault argues that Blake's "Newton" depicts in visual form "Blake's grasp of the extent to which Newton's vision had the power to provide substitute satisfaction for the powerful contrary drives of the imagination." He notes the tension between triangular/rectilinear and curved forms, symmetrical and asymmetrical forms, and definite and indefinite forms (particularly the contrast between the sharply delineated human figure and the incredibly complex, chaotic background) in the drawing. Ault observes that "the incredibly powerful and muscular body of the human form in the Newton drawing is rolling itself into the very shape which that figure is measuring with dividers" and concludes that in so doing, the powerful body of the man "has been lured into a mathematical parody of itself." I really like what Ault does with the contrast between the background and foreground of the painting. He argues first that in this contrast, Blake has identified that aspects of Newton's system he distrusts the most: "the aesthetic lures toward definiteness, completeness, and outline, on the one hand, and toward flowing, indefinite fluctuation of perception on the other." But at the same time Blake contrasts these "lures" he simultaneously reveals them for what they are: "The outline of the human figure's left foot sharply contrasts to the fuzzy outline of the rock out of which it emerges. Clearly Blake's suggestion is that the figure's foot is part of the rock or vice versa: that is, the rock is crystallizing into the human form or the human form is dissolving in the indefinite form of the rock. Both analyses are identical. For it is the whole composition and not simply the human figure which is Blake's "Newton." . . . The human figure is constructing a limited, fixed, and unchanging model of his fundamental bodily experiences to stave off the sense of the dissolving quality of the outer world. Yet--and this is the most crucial point of all--it is the very act of constructing the model that separates the world into inner and outer, definite and indefinite, action and background, symmetry and assymmetry. The background is both the cause and effect of the central action." Ault also notes the similarity of "Newton's" face and Blake's, observing that Blake's decision to make the painting self-referential reflects that degree to which he felt a threat from Newton's thought: "If a man of the uncomprimising vision of Blake could be lured toward the Newtonian vision, then it is no wonder that men of less vision had been worshipping Newton as a god." _____________________________________________________________________________ "My God, It's full of Stars" * bruegg@ucet.ufl.edu* Bill Ruegg*English*4008Turlington*University of Florida*Gainesville*FL*32611 _____________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 16:59:43 +0100 From: sarahclayton@earthlink.net (Sarah Clayton) To: blake@albion.com Subject: REPLY TO ALL THAT STUFF ABOUT THE BODY Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I apologize for, in effect, waiting untill the dust had cleared to make my response... But I have been busy trying to graduate from the Bloomin' Academy (which did happen, Saturday Last) and have not had an opportunity to sift trhough the various arguments thrown back at me for my little tirade about Blake's presentation of the Body in his work. Now, I will take a few minutes to respond to the most argumentative selections. >The body divine is not the erogenous zones divine... No, the Body Divine (not the body divine) is Not the erogenous zones. If it were the erogenous zones, it would be "the erogenous zones", in other words it the words would read: *The Eternal zones or Man is The IMAGINATION God himself that is } [Yeshua] JESUS we are all his Members The erogenous zones But we all know that the text does not read this way. (the text is from [The Lacoon] not from the 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell", just in case some of you still think I am relying too heavily on M&H for my quotations) The text actually is: *The Eternal Body or Man is The IMAGINATION God himself that is } [Yeshua] JESUS we are all his Members The Divine Body Now, what is the difference? And what the hell am I doing by suggesting that The Body is central to Blake's Anti-System? Perhaps it would be helpful to ask ourselves at this point what exactly Blake meant by the word "Body". And what do WE mean when we use the word? What do we think of ? what sort of images? Let me be more specific and at the same time less specific: The Body is in the Mind. We fundamentally cannot conceive of "The body" without haveing it exist in the Mind first. But, isn't the mind in the Body? Doesn't it conceive of itself as being internal? In the same way that the brain is inside the Body? THis is where the anti-system comes in. WHatever the body is, it is in the mind as far as we can know anything this is theo nly place it is, and since the mind sees itself as being inside the body...there is a contradiction born. The body contains the mind, so the body is larger than the mind, but the mind contains the body AS FAR AS WE KNOW IT, therefore, the Mind is larger than the body. This may sound like ludicrous nonsense. BUt there is a point to be made here. The point is that the Duality of Mind and Body can only exist if both concepts do not cancel each other out: birth of the contraries. Blake's contaries are a form of anti-negation. Plato's mind/body split IS negational. Blake presents a view of the mind and body as being Contrary and not Oppositional. And like a very astute person on this list has mentioned, the contraries were once ONE and not Dialectic oppositions. Blake further forges an anti-system by pairing the concepts, thus: what was once only of the plationic realm (the divine, the eternal) is now physical...made flesh...and what was once only vegetable or physical and not mental (the body) is now something mental. We have now the terms: The Divine Body (the Body Divine) and the Eternal Body. These concepts are opposed to THe Natural Man and conceived as part of the Soul or Imagination, which goes against the Platonic conception of the Body as having no place within the construction of the Soul or Imaginative or Mental forms. It may be a dense paragraph that I have just written, or maybe it is clear as day. Let me continue where the text continues. (of the Eternal Body:.........) *It manifests itself in his Works of Art (In Eternity All is Vision) All that we See is Vision from Generated Organs gone as soon as come Permanent in THe Imagination; considered as Nothing by the Natural Man If: [The Eternal Body] manifests itself in [Man's] Works of Art.... AND All that we See is Vision from Generated Organs ..[ephemeral] BUT Permanent in The Imagination; what kind of equation is Blake constructing? The Eternal Body is Imagination and vision...the eternal Body is an Imaginative body...not the brain but the mind...and not the natural scientists mind but the artist's mind...not the deductive reason but the creative BODY (again, what other word could psossibly be used). This is a Synechochal construction...this is a HUGE metaphoric THING...encompassing all things and/or ideas and/or God himself and/or the Divine Body... Now, the Divine Body is not the literal equivalent of the Eternal Body...the Divine Body is seperated in the text from God Himself, yet, the two concepts together make the Eternal Body. So, The Eternal Body is God himself and is also the Divine Body. Which is not to say that the Eternal Body is either God himself or The Divine Body but that it is both. And it is not to say that the Eternal Body is the sum of the parts The Divine Body and God himself. The text may suggest that the Sum of the Divine Body and God Himself is Jesus of which we are all members, and that Jesus is the Eternal Body of which we are all members, a problematic conception is apparent, because if Jesus is the sum of God and The Divine Body, that would make Christ Larger than God, and how can that be if Christ is God's Creation? Does this imply that God and The Divine body are lesser concepts than Christ? BUT, There is another possibility. This is the outline of a process, not a heirarchy. God himself is the first perception (the character of God, thus: identity) and Thus An Identity has been formed "I " and then the perception of a Body, perhaps by the "I" or by God himself, (in this case, A Divine Body)...The perception completed, Jesus is conceived, As a total body...The Eternal Body...of which we are all members. (who is "we"?) We are the members of The Eternal body when we see oursleves as we. Whoever perceives of (himself or not-himself) as having or being the Divine Body or having or being God Himself in the text is a non-designated (or non-static) identity, and in this case, that which is always becoming identity is THE IMAGINATION. Back to the question of the Body, either the Eternal Body or the Divine Body, as a sexual idea: As a Metaphor The Eternal or Divine body are be based on figurative principles, having a human face, a human form. Blake represents the Hermaphroditic form as a Fallen form, the place of loss of sexual distinction, or loss of sexual identity. The imagination is not a place where sexual distinction is lost but a place where it is multiplicitous. The Hermaphrodite is a like a Plant. The Imagination is All Sexual Forms. The Sexual identity of Adam and Eve is static, though defined, and thus less than the Eternal body and greater than the Hermaphrodite. Sexuality cannot and should not be seperated from Imagination...that would be a fallen form of imagination and thus Hermaphroditic. Energy is the form of the Imagination...and sexual, Just as a tear that is cried is a sexual thing, and at the same time an intellectual idea, contrary but not oppositional. The organs are generated from the Eternal body, from the imagination, and as they were created from imagination so will they be destroyed, but the form, which is energy, and sexual and A BODY is permenant. This is basically observable in Blake's entire method...all of his work is figurative...the paintings and drawings, the poems...each character is a SEXUAL identity...the Four Zoas (as an easy example) being perhaps the most erotic prophetic poem to exist in the cannons of Western Academia. The important thing is to never divide the body against the mind in Blake, and never exteriorize sexuality in Blake while internalizing the intellect...this is a process Blake illustrates in the Character of Urizen. For Blake, the exteriorization of sexual identity and the interiorization of intellect is a road leading straight to Ulro. And so, yes, Sado-Masochism is a completely relevant method of critique when it comes to Blake's Poetry. As is the critique of Perversity, deferal of desire, and all the other games that the Imagination plays out upon its surface. Next: >Are you trying to tell us that Blake's great system is about sex? Blake's great system is not a system. There are open systems and there are closed systems and there are things in-between the two by varying degrees, but Blake's "system", as is Los's "System", is not "system" but a warring against systems... by inversion, by using logic against logic, by using religion against religion by using imagination against all pre-supposed heirachical systems...he hammers out a large whole in the wall that keeps us within locked up in systems. Use, the work is cosmological and archanic and mythological and and and...And it attempts to encompass science and politics and religion, BUT it does not attempt to deconstruct sexuality...upon sexuality it builds, and as such creates towards the human and away from the usurpation of the human. The Human system (though it is anti-system, for no one sees all of the system at once and thus, the system does not exist...not as a system, at least....) Is the Body Divine the Human Imagination (which contains God and the Divine body). Now that I have beaten that into the ground....next: >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'... This is simple. Breast is not a synonym for heart. If it were one could say "The Heart is like a Breast." without feeling stupid. "Breast" in romantic poetry, or almost any poetry at all, is connected to "Heart" not by simile (or synonym, but lets just pretend you meant to say simile, since we are discussing metaphors here) but by proximity. The synechocal arrangement is implied perhaps, in that the Breast is a whole of which the heart is only a part, but i have always felt that the general conception that Breast meant heart was a malaise frown in the mind of man due to the popularity of Hallmark cards. The Human Breast...this is something that a lover can lay his head on and by proximity hear the heart beat of another...The breast is what is peirced with an arrow that eventually reaches the heart and ceases life. But, the breast is the surface, not the internal. And it is precisely this emphasis which must be retained in understanding the Notion of the Human Breast: Specifically, we are talking about Surfaces in Blake...apearances and visions and images and imagination and bodies that can be desired and touched and that are wet with tears or turn red with fire. we are not talking about some weird egyptian idea that the soul floats on into his afterlife in the cave of the heart, and we are espescially not talking about a system that gloricies the organs (internal) and negates the luxuriant surfaces. For the organs or what Fallen Man Shrinks into. As we see in the Book of Los: *"And his downward borne fall. chang'd oblique Many ages of groans: till there grew Branchy forms. organizing the Human Into finite inflexible organs." Perhaps someone can do a word search for "heart' in all of Blake's works and prove my argument invalid by the context of "heart' but, regardless of what Bloom says about internalization...blakes "internal" imagination is alwats organized upon surfaces and not internal/external compartments...the surface being more like a moebius strip...where you can never retain either an internal or external position. For something to be in the human breast, it is both internal and external...emanating from the center of the Human, and yet not bound up inside the heart. The seduction, the sensual quality of the word "breast" is intentional. Jennifer wrote: >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... First, the five senses are indeed secondary and limited, as they pertain to the organs and as they are the shrunken doors to perception that are dominant in this age. But, the relationship between Seeing with the Eye and Seeing with Vision is fundamentally synechdocal. It is easy to see the vegetable or natural body as the part of the whole, the Whole being the Divine Body just as Sexual Energy is the synechdoche for The Energy of the Eternals or Eternal Fire. But, there is also a reversal that must take place: For in Blake, anything that cannot be perceived by the Human Imagination can BE. Which is why the God of the Church is Nobodaddy and the Church's ideologies constitute the Web of Religion... Anything that is seperate from the human is Mystery, used to subjugate the masses. Energy, truly human energy is Sexual. Energy is desire...is beyond reason, is without restraint, is the peak of the bodies (and as part of the body, the mind's) capabilities...it is only limited by reason. The same idea is more crudely laid out in Lacan ... Jouisance being the moment of pure pleasure/energy/desire where thinking (reason/rationality) cannot take place. So, while I agree with the remarks about the five senses as being fallen, I fundamentally disagree with the mandate that there is more than the body...there is a larger existance...but this larger existance IS THE BODY, although the eternal body...And One does not reduce anythiong when identifying it as sexual energy...sexual energy is eternal fire. (unless of course, you happen to be watching a bad porn flick, and mistaking its simualations for Sexual Fire.) > 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) Aha...but again...the shadow. The shadow is the part of the Whole...although a very flat, very dead part of the whole...but, the shadow is attached to the whole, nonetheless. If the body is so corrupt...why does he use the word at all when talking about the Eternal... He Says: ETERNAL OR IMAGINATIVE BODIES with INTENTION. HE DOES NOT SAY ETERNAL OR IMAGINATIVE S O U L S. >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. No, it does not. Blake was not a Dualist. He was a Moebius Stripist. :-) There is no internal or external to the surface of the Eternal body...just more and more identities and more and more Fire. Less and less deadness, The fire of the imagination is greater than the fire of the body alone...but the Body is in THE IMAGINATION. And the Imagination is THE BODY. >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. Fine, sure...that's what I said almost....EXCEPT, ask yourself: what energy is there that is not sexual? Solar Energy? Electrical Energy? Quantum Energy? Why do those little particles get attracted to each other and then sometimes repell each other? Perhaps they are Sado-Masochists, Perhaps they are not, Perhaps they are sexual beings...Perhaps they are not.... Perhaps they only exist because we do. ANd when we see them, we see them with our own eyes that have been shrunken from Vision to organs and then further still to Telescopes and Microscopes...but ...we still see the same the residue of something...what is it? It seems to have a character of a sexual nature as soon as we begin to understand it...And then, what happens when we begin to understand (with our imaginations) the way we understand this sexual nature...we see it is a play that is coming from something larger...Of course...but this is the way that the imagination plays...sexually, through sexual identification...not A-Sexual identification. What kind of play would you have if Romeo and Juliet had no sex. Easy question. Ok, what kind of epic poem would you have if Dante was a Neuter and Beatrice was a Neuter? Hmmm What about Blake? What character is there in Blake that is not sexual defined? (the hermaphrodite...sure...ergo?) And what is Milton casting off when he casts off his sexual garments? His life. Yes. But guess why Milton gets to play still in Blake's texts? He gets to play in Blake's texts because Milton is A TEXT. BUT, that text. So...what is there that is beyond sexual identity? the voice of the author, who is both male and female because the text contains both...etc etc... >To support Mr. Gray's point, power can take a number of >bodily forms (war, for example) that are not exclusively sexual. No, Jennifer. War is a reduction of Sexuality, not the other way around. War is a Deferal of Sexual Satasfaction...it is in Blake's own words: A SEXUAL PERVERSION. In fact, I WOULD Go so far to say that just about everything about Power and everything that is Power or Constitutes Power (and I do mean Power as Domination vs. submission and probably any other kind of power under the sun) , all forms of POWER relationships, all POWER that is not Explicitly Sexual is SEXUAL PERVERION of one flavor or another...A Perversion of Sexual Relationships and Sexual Desire. >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"? Sure it does. > >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..sort of like, but not really. What you are saying, Jennifer, is that if I say All Bodies Are Human Bodies then that is like saying All We Are can be reduced to the Human....which for you is sort of like saying we are all reducible to pieces of govno. Hmmm. Weird. Mr. Gray wrote: >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. You are extremely welcome. LONG LIVE THE ETERNAL BODY hehehee -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #41 *************************************