------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 57 Today's Topics: Blake sighting Re: Blake in the Movies MORE BLAKE BOOKS Re: Blake in the Movies Re: Albion is sick! America faints! Re: Blake in the Movies Re: Albion is sick! America faints! W.H. Stevenson and More Re: Blake in the Movies Re: Research Paper Re: BLAKE AND POLITICS -- BOOK QUERY Re: Blake's Muddles and Callings Words to Ponder... MEE POSTS LOST Re: Words to Ponder... More Words to Ponder Lao-tzu Translator ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 09:37:06 -0400 (EDT) From: John William Axcelson To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake sighting Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The current issue of *The New Yorker* (27 May) has a review of Ackroyd's *Blake* by one Kennedy Fraser. Accompanying it is a full-page reproduction of a plate from *Milton.* I haven't read the review yet, but it's a good 5 pp. long, and it does promise a view of WB from the world beyond the university gates. Cheers, Jack John Axcelson Assistant Dean Ad. Asst. Prof., English Columbia University jwa2@columbia.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 09:53:17 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake in the Movies Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris Eastwood (c.eastwood@its.gu.edu.au) writes: >"Firey the angels fell > deep thunder rolled around their shores > burning with the fires of Orc" This was quoted in Blade Runner? I own the video, but haven't watched it lately, and definitely not since my Blake revival. Haven't read "America" yet, but... Who said this? The platinum blonde slave-replicant, who is in fact the "chief" of them all? If so, yes, he too is trying to gain "freedom" (in particular, more life) for himself and his fellow "slaves". And yes, he is more than willing to kill anyone, including his creator, to either get the answer for more life or out of frustration that he can't get that life. Also remember that Ford and, if not Ford, other police on Earth, have been ordered to kill him. So in that final struggle with Ford, it's him struggling for his life, not just a vendetta against Ford (although that helps pump him up more...) >The Character is a "Slave" and is trying to gain "freedom" from his "owner" >for himself and the woman that he loves. Considering that he is likely >intending to kill the person he is questioning (and that he is given to >irony) he rolls this off blithely as he appears and surprises the other >fellow. I am wondering if he is feeling that this is a reversal of fate, >and that he holds power over this "master". Reversing the reference of >angels (from rose to fell) may have some meaning... In Blade Runner, we're meant to have compassion for these replicants (ever noticed how Harrison Ford himself often looks like a replicant himself?-- weird-- he's definitely enslaved, too!), and even though Blondie Stud (sorry, I've forgotten his name and don't have time to watch the video right now...), not to be confused with Blondie Pleasure Model (Darryl Hannah), has done some terrible things... how much is he to blame? He was programmed to do that junk for Tress (?) Enterprises. There is something angelic abou him, particularly the closer he comes to death and assumes Christ-like martyrdom positions with the nails in his hands, finally freeing instead of killing Ford and letting the dove go free. The "bad" slave... and wouldn't you be bad, too, in his case, if you had the courage? Courage to fight back was something Blake encouraged... at least at times. Angels fall and rarely rise again except when they die and go to heaven....... that's been my observation in real life. We're all a bunch of fallen angels, aren't we? However, something like a tyger may rise up and attack, which is a different thing altogether. Hope that is of some help. On another note, I saw DEAD MAN last night and found it utterly delightful. Enough references to the real William Blake, and enough disjointed, surrealistic splicing of the images, to remind me particularly of "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." Guys with soot covering their white faces... the town of Machine in this place called Hell... Certainly not a William Blake film, but then Johnny Depp's character was not William Blake, either... The Indian, Nobody, looked a bit like Blake when he put on Blake's hat for a second, though. This particular William Blake (Johnny Depp) once was meek, but after Thel's death he and the Indian Nobody had to go on a perilous path, tracked by villains, and he learned how to shoot to defend himself even as he sunk further into being hunted. I particularly liked the sign inside the last store they entered: "Make your own salvation." Very Blakeian. And then the boat that carried him off to the fairy land (heaven) was sooooo beautiful, and to my eyes at least, very Blakeian, too. A good job, Jim Jarmusch! Cheers. -Randall Albright "No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings." ---from Plate 7, Proverbs of Hell, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" http://world.std.com/~albright/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 06:52:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: MORE BLAKE BOOKS Message-Id: <199605241352.GAA07531@igc2.igc.apc.org> BLAKE BOOK REPORT Oy, have I got more Blake books. First, what I did not buy: Ellis's bio of Blake is available for about $13. Ackroyd's bio can be found at a discount in several places, and on the street almost at half price. I picked up BLAKE'S HUMAN FORM DIVINE by Anne Kostelanetz Mellor for $10. There are several copies available. This book looks mighty familiar; perchance was it discussed on the Blake list? Looks fascinating to me. I also bought FANTASY & REASON: CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY by Geoffrey Summerfield. There is a chapter on Blake as the apotheosis of this genre. Normally I wouldn't be interested in this topic, save for two recent stimuli. The discussion here of Blake in his social context stimulates me to acquire more pertinent background literature. The other impetus came from just having purchased an hour or two previously a unique book on the black bildungsroman, which made me think about something that had not entered into my project before, i.e. the experience of childhood. I was startled to find a quote in this book from a lecture by CLR James on the importance of childhood experience that I knew nothing of. Then I realized that this area was important to my epistemological concerns. Hence I decided to plunk down the $12.50 for Summerfield's book. I also picked up a $5 copy of SUSPENDED JUDGEMENTS by John Cowper Powys, which has a chapter on Blake. Of the many authors treated, Blake is one of the few who really endures for Powys. A few days ago I finally broke down and bought Mitchell's BLAKE'S COMPOSITE ART. I also picked up a copy of ROMANTIC CRITICISM 1800-1850 for 50 cents. As I mentioned in my last post, I have ordered Mee's book. I just love this stuff. Moreover, my various interests seem to feed one another. So many books, so little time. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 10:04:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Alexander Gourlay To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake in the Movies Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 24 May 1996, Chris Eastwood wrote, in part: > > In one scene [of "Blade Runner"]a character recites > > "Firey the angels fell > deep thunder rolled around their shores > burning with the fires of Orc" > > as he is entering a room (to intimidate and question a person) > > The piece is (I think) related to part of "Preludium to America" but I'm not > sure ... The quote is roughly the beginning of Plate 11 of America: Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc These are the thirteen American Angels belatedly and indignantly rising in opposition to Albion's Angel, responding to Orc's call for revolution. Sandy Gourlay ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 10:38:26 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Albion is sick! America faints! Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gloudina Bouwer writes: >Since the population of the U.S. is three to four >times that of England, is it not to be expected >that more second or third tier Blake scholarship >would be published in the U.S.A. than in England? >Are there more first tier Blake scholars in the >U.S. than in England? (And please, Frye and >Bentley are Canadians, and therefore cannot be >counted.)>>>>>> Goodness. It almost sounds like a caste system, Gloudina! And am I to fall on my knees to Frye or Erdman? That wouldn't exactly be using my own wings to fly, would it? In fact, this first-rate, second-rate stuff reminds me of my FIRST independent study at Brown. A man by the name of Mark Spilka, renowned as one of the great scholars on Lawrence in America... had even met Frieda... and written _The Love Ethic of D.H. Lawrence_..... at first I thought things would go smoothly. The study was on comparative apocalyptic (and other) visions of Lawrence and Doris Lessing. (Talk about needing to create her own system! _The Golden Notebook_..... only to melt down at the end! But Lessing is another of these authors who often writes in her Introduction to such memorable books as MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR, and I merely paraphrase because I'm not sure which one it came from: "I write because I am utterly convinced that everything we know will be swept aside in the next 20 years..." And that was way over 20 years ago...) At any rate, I thought we'd get along well, but this "first-rate" scholar and I had very differing, at times, highly charged and clashing, states of opinion throughout the entire semester. For one thing, he wouldn't go along with at least the speculative theory I had that Lawrence was at least partially repressed gay. For another, he really HATED the idea that _Women in Love_ had alot of S&M going on (to put it mildly, "dominance and submission" themes)... and I escaped his tyranny with a "B" and moved on to a new Marxist Semiotician advisor for the remaining 3 studies. So... Spilka is first-rate. I guess so. But the more I read WOMEN IN LOVE, the more I think Lawrence WAS pushing boundaries that involved cruelty for... of alot of reasons. Anyone interested? Write to me personally. Another story: Paglia, in her brilliant little WOMEN IN LOVE essay in _Vamps and Tramps_, at least discusses central themes of the book in an engaging way, acknowledging William Blake as a kindred spirit on page 335 of my paperback edition... and yet I've heard nothing but sneers from this group toward Paglia. What tier does she belong on, compared to Spilka? Depends on what you want to do with Lawrence, I guess. >In Japan >Blake is apparently intensely studied.>>> I've heard that Nietzsche is particularly admired in Japan, which always intrigued me... (again, write to me personally if you want to know why... since it's even further down a crooked road away from Blake... basically, he talks and thinks so much and half of Zen is NOT knowing...) But Gloudina, how much do you think they need "Bible Cliff Notes" and "Damon in Translation" to really understand the Bard? Or else, are they merely fools on a folly until they start at Genesis and end in Revelations, and keep Damon at hand? Is Orc a character that can be self-explained within the poetic context itself, or self-referentially confusing, as Tom Devine once discussed in an Escher drawing? Where to start with Orc? I know that I can read Japanese poetry, Chinese, parts of the Bhagavad Gita... and why? Because everywhere, people cry, fall in love, love nature, mess up with nature, mistake the identity of their friend as foe and accidentally kill him, get drunk, get old... there are universal themes, and even if I'm missing some of the original culture's depth... if it's true poetry, its truth SHINES THROUGH. How much would you say is needed for a context on Blake? Should you read a critic on Blake before reading Blake's work, particularly if you're Japanese? How much can you get by with "Cliff-note-like" texts to give you context of the source texts to which Blake himself was referring as well as the time in which he lived to then enter Blake's world itself? -R.H. Albright ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 09:38:55 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake in the Movies Message-Id: <96052409385549@womenscol.stephens.edu> The allusion in _Blade Runner_ is to the opening lines of plate 11 in _America_: "Fiery the Angels rose, & s they rose deep thunder roll'd/ Around their shores; indignant burning with the fires of Orc" If the lines from the screenplay are quoted accurately (I have seen the movie more than a dozen times, but have never copied out those words), then the variation on the original is interesting. Roy Batty, the "replicant"/"android"/"skinjob," envisions himself as a tragic hero. Like the creature in Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_, he confronts his creator with the accusation that he has been wrongly rejected/neglected, and blames the creator for his own violent/evil actions. In this, the Frankenstein creature equates himself with Lucifer, the best loved and most brilliant of all the angels, who leads the rebellion and precipitates the fall of the angels (one of Blake's favorite images). Frankenstein's creature vows to make evil his good and echoes Satan's claim that wherever he is, is hell, nor is he ever out of it. Roy Batty has more limited points of reference--he knows he is doomed to terminate at a predetermined moment, and wants to be extended. His maker, Dr. Tyrell, admires (even ogles) his beauty and intellectual/physical superiority to most humans, but cannot grant his wish for eternal life. Unlike Lucifer, who never manages to get around God's defenses, Roy crushes the skull of his creator in one of the most brutal murder scenes on film. It would be possible to see Roy Batty as a Urizen figure, with Zhora and Pris as his Enitharmon and Rahab (or possibly Tirzah and Rahab would be better parallels), but it is hard to think of an equivalent for the brutish fourth replicant who is hung upon up on faked photographs. The reason for resisting these parallels is that Tyrell is obviously no Los, nor is the Deckard figure. Batty again waxes poetic in his great death scene and there are echoes of both Blake and Milton in that sequence as well. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 10:36:11 -0500 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Albion is sick! America faints! Message-Id: <9605241541.AA21726@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Since the population of the U.S. is three to four >times that of England, is it not to be expected >that more second or third tier Blake scholarship >would be published in the U.S.A. than in England? >Are there more first tier Blake scholars in the >U.S. than in England? (And please, Frye and >Bentley are Canadians, and therefore cannot be >counted.) I was not excluding Frye and Bentley when I referred to "North Americans"--or do Canadians not like that term? I don't know how you define "first, second, third tier," and I hesitate to start making lists for fear of omitting someone through my own ignorance. Suffice it to say that although I have been influenced by Blake critics on both sides of the water and around the world (including Jon Mee from Australia!) the *majority* of those in my pantheon, and on my bookshelf, happen to be North Americans. Of course, since scholars move around so much, especially from the UK to the US (e.g. Christopher Ricks--a Keatsian and Miltonist, but not, so far as I know, a Blakean), national categories have become practically meaningless. I wasn't interested in adding up points for either side so much as gauging the relative importance of Blake to academics and nonacademics in the different countries. Have a good weekend, all. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 11:59:11 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: W.H. Stevenson and More Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" W.H. Stevenson writes in the Penguin Poetry Library, 1988, Introduction to William Blake's selected poetry: first, Stevenson mentions "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" as "his chief prose work." "The difficulty is not to be solved by finding a missing key. It is something less systematic; the problem of Blake himself. 'I know I am inspired!' is the foundation of his obscurity as well as of the dynamic enthusiasm. He was ambitious for fame; he longed for, even demanded, an audience as enthusiastic as himself... But he had a naive, almost arrogant confidence in the power of his own inspiration. Burning with fire, convince that to hear him must be to applaud, he failed to realize that he must address himself to the minds of his audience before they could hear him. He never made any concessions to them, and as a result they made none to him. He sought to project his inner enthusiasms on to the public, but chose one method after another that esnured that his audience would regard his enthusiasms, not as inspiration, but as mere eccentricity or worse." To me, this is a strong echo of the P.H. Butter comments in the Everyman edition to _Selected Poems_ that I typed and sent on May 7th. What's going on here, folks? Mark Trevor Smith, as I recall, replied that he thought Butter was BLIND... that no one could care MORE about his readers than Blake. I'm still trying to formulate how to describe my approach to Blake. Basically, it's one where we only know the tip of the iceberg of mental "differences" in people. While it may have seemed that I have tiptoed around words like "madness" by instead using words like "special," it's because I don't accept the theory that Blake was mentally "ill". But it is obvious to me that Blake was different, or special, like many artists... and unlike an artist such as David Bowie (who happens to come from a family of schizophrenics and other mentally unusual types), he didn't change his voice enough to get that fame he so craved... and why? I think he was following his inner voice(s)... but I agree with Paglia that these long prophetic poems are languishing. People don't get them, they don't have the time. To whom is Blake talking? How far into his own maze does he demand that a reader go? Bowie, on the other hand, was bent on success, and changed his music to make it "popular" even if just to make enough money to then go into wildly unpopular things again. This may simply mean that Bowie is a better schizophrenic, as Edward Friedlander suggests in his beautiful Blake paper, than Blake. It may also be that Blake was too determined to get the truth out, HIS way, to even take a breather... which, to me, lands me back into Friedlander's theory. Why does R.D. Laing blithely mention Blake in his major works? (Laing was a proponent of trying to let psychotic people lead as "normal" and unmedicated a life as they could.) Blake was able to function quite well among his community, although it must have been like living in the Radical Fringe of the 1960s multiplied by a factor of five, in my opinion. And although never solitary, Stevenson notes that he was hard to get along with at times. What do you think of this letter, again thanks to Friedlander's WebSite: "Hayley wrote to a friend in 1802 concerning his new protege: '[Blake] would produce Works of the pencil, almost as excellent & original, as those works of the pen, which flowed from the dear poet [William Cowper], of whom he often reminds me by little Touches of nervous Infirmity, when his mind is darkend with any unpleasant apprehension .' --from To Lady Hesketh. Quoted in Bentley, p. 106." -R.H. Albright ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 13:01:24 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake in the Movies Message-Id: <96052413012420@womenscol.stephens.edu> As a postscript to my earlier comment on Roy Batty's assault on his creator in _Blade Runner_ [and this may well be stretching things too far, I admit in advance]--plate 18 of Blake's _Milton_ portrays (according to David Erdman) the panicky figure of Urizen clutching the stone tablets of the law but sinking into dissolution--the spiritual figure of Milton strides forward to rescue him--ERdman says "Milton . . . uses. . . his hands to save the human form of his adversary"--in the illumination, Milton stretches his hands to either side of Urizen's head in a gesture quite similar to Batty's as he approaches Tyrell. We must keep in mind that in the world of _Blade Runner_, the replicants differ from human beings primarily because of their amorality which is a product of their total lack of affect--their inability to empathize with other creatures. (This makes them almost perfect Randian objectivists, for what that's worth.) Of course much of the irony of _Blade Runner_ resides in the exploration of just how minimal that difference is, and how little practical difference it makes. There are various reasons for tracing the affinities of Philip K. Dick and Blake, though the screenplay of _Blade Runner_ significantly alters and to some extent distorts Dick's _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_--so much so that it is almost an independent work of art and only marginally dependent on the novel. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 14:09:11, -0500 From: VViseCrack@prodigy.com (MR PETER E LEDDY III) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Research Paper Message-Id: <199605241809.OAA27986@mime4.prodigy.com> hello it is peter I know you are on right now. would you like to help me out with my poem. I know I could find stuff on my own but you know what your talking about and I only have 3 days to do my research paper. Would you help me it is 2:09 now write me back. Peter Leddy VViseCrack@prodigy.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 14:58:23 -0400 From: Broglio Ronald S To: blake@albion.com Cc: rbroglio@ucet.ufl.edu Subject: Re: BLAKE AND POLITICS -- BOOK QUERY Message-Id: <199605241858.OAA24764@angelou.ucet.ufl.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii The Mee book is quite fine for a new historicist look at various points where Blake intersects radicals of the 1790s. Mostly, Mee is trying to link Blake to lesser known movements. I recall the chapter on Druids to be particularly interesting. Some of his links are controversial (to me); that is to say, he finds similarities where I find differences. For example, I find his link between Paine and Blake to be tenious (as I've noted at http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/~rbroglio/p&b.html) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 14:25:04 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's Muddles and Callings Message-Id: <96052414250398@womenscol.stephens.edu> I had vowed not to engage in controversy or even to contradict anyone when I came back on this list, but I am going to break my vow and take vigorous exception to the posting that had the above subject heading. It opines that "Blake's writing is a muddle, because. . ..I believe Blake was a "special" person . . . he was reaching for enigmas that simply couldn't be explained . . ."etc. Horsefeathers and poppycock. There was and is nothing "muddled" about Blake's writing. Whether we assume with one school of interpretation (Frye-ish) that his whole works can be seen as a single edifice, all interpretable from the same set of theoretical assumptions, or acknowledge with more biographically/historically oriented readers that Blake s views evolve and cohere gradually over a period of years, in neither case can we conclude there is a muddle. Blake's thinking is clear and his symbolic or mythic narratives, while complex and sometimes obscure, yield themselves to careful and intelligent (not to mention visionary) reading; once they do, they are models of clarity even with the internal contradictions and cruxes. The fact that a reader finds a "muddle" is not Blake's fault nor is it a feature of Blake's work. I will paraphrase an old proverb-- A book is like a mirror, if an ass looks in, no disciple will look out. I find it particularly interesting that a person who seems to be engaged in a months' long single-minded competition with himself for top honors in posting masses of misinformation, confusion, cliches, solipsistic speculation and, yes, muddleheaded thinking, would have the gall to suggest that William Blake is a "muddle." If you want "clarity," go read Robert James Waller--that's about the right speed. As I have observed before, Blake had the last word on this subject: "That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care." Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 16:10:34 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Words to Ponder... Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "Motto to the Songs of Innocence & of Experience" by William Blake "The Good are attracted by Men's perceptions And think not for themselves, Till Experience teaches them to catch And to Cage the Fairies & Elves. "And then the Knave begins to snarl, And the Hypocrite to howl, And all his good Friends show their private ends, And the Eagle is known from the Owl." ------------------------------------------------- from "Beauty and the Beast" by David Bowie (*note: commas added do delineate original line breaks) "Weaving down a byroad, sing The Song That's my kind of Highroad Gone Wrong MY MY smile at least you can't say no to The Beauty and the Beast "Something in the Night, Something in the Day nothing is wrong, but darling Something's in the way there's Slaughter in the Air, Protest on the Wind someone else inside me, someone could get skinned how? MY MY, someone fetch a priest you can't say no to The Beauty and the Beast darling "I wanted to believe me I wanted to be good I wanted no distractions like every good boy should..." --------------------------------------------------- "The Voice of the Ancient Bard" last song from _Songs of Experience_ by William Blake "Youth of delight, come hither, And see the opening morn, Image of truth new born, Doubt is fled, & clouds of reason, Dark disputes & artful teazing. Folly is an endless maze, Tangled roots perplex her ways: How many have fallen there! They stumble all night over bones of the dead, And feel they know not what but care, And wish to lead others when they should be led." -------------------------------------------------- end of "Beauty and the Beast" by David Bowie "Nothing will Corrupt us Nothing will Compete thank God Heaven left us standing on our feet. MY MY The Beauty and the Beast" --------------------------------------------------- "My Pretty Rose Tree" from _Songs of Experience_ by William Blake "A flower was offer'd to me, Such a flower as May never bore; But I said, 'I've a Pretty Rose-tree,' And I passed the sweeet flower o'er. "Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree, To tend her by day and by night; But my Rose turn'd away with jealousy, And her thorns were my only delight. --------------------------------------------------- My my. -R.H. Albright http://world.std.com/albright/blake.html "I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; they they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning." ---from Plates 21-22, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 14:20:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: MEE POSTS LOST Message-Id: <199605242120.OAA12634@igc2.igc.apc.org> I lost today's posts on the Mee book. Could somebody please forward me a copy? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 14:26:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Words to Ponder... Message-Id: <199605242126.OAA13369@igc2.igc.apc.org> If I had time, I would launch a campaign against Albright's adolescent drivel. I have been in a great mood lately, but this flap over Skopal's article in SOCIAL TEXT has me so inscenced against the charlatanism of Stanley Fish, Andrew Ross, Smelly Aronowitz, and the entire pomo ilk, I am once again on the warpath against all gibberish-spouters. Albright, I'm sick of you playing with your feces online. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 19:44:07 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: More Words to Ponder Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "Every being in the universe..." by Lao Tsu "Every being in the universe is an expression of the Tao. It springs into existence, unconscious, perfect, free, takes on a physical body, lets circumstances complete it. That is why every being spontaneously honors the Tao. "The Tao gives birth to all beings, nourishes them, maintains them, care for them, comforts them, protects them, takes them back to itself, creating without possessing, acting without expecting, guiding without interfering. That is why love of the Tao is in the very nature of things." --------------------------------------------- "The Fly" by William Blake "Little Fly, Thy summer's play My thoughtless hand Has brush'd away. "Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? "For I dance And drink & sing Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. "If thought is life And strength & breath, And the want Of thought is death, "Then am I A happy fly, If I live Or if I die." --------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 21:50:54 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Lao-tzu Translator Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Stephen Mitchell did that particular translation of "Every being in the universe" by Lao-tzu. His translation of the poem is in _The Enlightened Heart, An Anthology of Sacred Poetry_, which he edited. (1989, Harper and Row) He also included the following by William Blake: "To See a World in a Grain of Sand" and "Eternity" -R.H. Albright -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #57 *************************************