------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 70 Today's Topics: "Harmonious madness!" Re: Night ThoughtsDoes anyone know how many illustrated copi Re: Blake's "America" Re: Blake and "madness" -Reply Re: Blake's "America" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" Re: "Harmonious madness!" and Wordsworth and Grant ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 14:40:18 CST From: "Edward Friedlander, M.D." To: blake@albion.com Subject: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <184D8444DD@ALUM.UHS.EDU> > "Excuse my enthusiasm, or rather madness, for I am really drunk > with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into > my hand, even as I used to be in my youth." > > I see rhetoric here, but where is the pathology? or even the similarity to > a pathology? > No more than in the "harmonious madness" for which Shelley pleaded from the skylark! My position's always been that "inspiration" and "madness" have something in common that's worth studying -- not to devalue the first, but to up-value the second! The entire subject is extremely complex -- we're looking at the roots of the imagination, after all! I certainly look forward to getting a chance to read Hawe's book on hyperbole in Blake's time. I consider the question unsettled (and perhaps unsettlable) but intriguing. (I'm still with Crabb Robinson -- "genius? .... manman?.... all of these? ) But "a man who never alters his opinions...." Hope we'll continue. I'm enjoying this thoroughly. If any list members are ever near the Kansas City area, please visit. (Do you think Blake would have enjoyed our favorite regional pastime, skydiving?) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jun 96 15:36 CST From: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu To: Blake , "Denise E. Gigante" Subject: Re: Night ThoughtsDoes anyone know how many illustrated copi Message-Id: <199606142038.PAA26440@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> There is only one original set of 537 watercolor designs for Night Thought, now in the British Museum (reproduced in Grant, Rose, Tolley, Erdman, eds., 1980), from which 43 designs were selected for engraving (see Essick and LaBelle's Dover edition). Twenty-two (or so) of the books of engraved designs were hand-colored by professional colorists in two main color schemes. There have been several essays (by Paley, Grant, Helmstadter, Chayes, and others) and at least one dissertation (on how the designs comment on (criticize, react against, occasionally affirm) Young's poem. According to people I know who have given a great deal of time and thought to the matter, the text-design relationship is far more complicated than it may at first appear. -- Mary Lynn Johnson ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 16:08:11 -0500 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's "America" Message-Id: <9606142113.AA21217@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Sooner or later, somebody's going to ask me, "Who else was writing >pro-American Revolution meditations at the same time as Blake?" Can >anyone direct me to some good reading that won't be over my head? I'm sure others will know more, but you might look at Anna Seward's "Verses Inviting Stella to Tea on the Public Fast-Day, February, 1781." [available in Roger Lonsdale's anthology of 18c women poets] The war had not been going well for Britain, and the king had ordered a day of prayer and fasting. The tone of the poem is hard for me to pin down: first she seems to be mocking The abstinence from beef and whist, Wisely ordained to please the Lord, And force him whet our edgeless sword, Till, skipping o'er th' Atlantic rill, We cut provincial throats at will; and so on. But then the poet is rebuked for inviting her friend to *tea*, which is the source of all Britain's woes. I should point out that the poem was not published until 1791. I'll be interested to hear what else you find. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 21:04:25 -0400 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake and "madness" -Reply Message-Id: <960614210424_217640415@emout14.mail.aol.com> Pam, Thanks for your comments on the Hasidic and Kabbalistic resonances of Blake's "enthusiasm." Could you supply the references for your Boehme and Kabbalah quotes? I am very interested in these areas but as yet very ignorant, and would appreciate knowing which books they come from. --Tom Devine ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 19:23:43 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's "America" Message-Id: <96061419234298@womenscol.stephens.edu> The Library of Congress published a volume, _English Defenders of American Freedoms, 1774-1778_ compiled by Paul H. Smith. This was part of the American Revolution Bicentennial celebration; the volume should be available in most good history collections. The pamphlets included are by Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, Baron Rokeby, Catherine Macaulay, John Cartwright, and Willoughby Bertie, Earl of Abingdon. Needless to say, none of them competes with Blake, but he, of course, had the advantage of writing with hindsight in 1793 or so. Bernard Bailyn has published a number of distinguished histories of the British response to the revolution. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 22:41:04 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <96061422410392@womenscol.stephens.edu> Excuse me, but the term is not "hyperbole," it is "manic rhetoric," and I tried to be clear that the material discussed in Hawes;s book pre-dates Blake's maturity, though it slightly overlaps his childhood (Christopher Smart died in 1771--Blake would have been about 14). By all means, read Hawes. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 02:30:29 -0400 From: CaroleM250@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <960615023028_414664051@emout13.mail.aol.com> In a message dated 96-06-14 16:41:08 EDT, you write: >No more than in the "harmonious madness" for which Shelley pleaded >from the skylark! My position's always been that "inspiration" and >"madness" have something in common that's worth studying -- not to >devalue the first, but to up-value the second! > Yes indeed! Also, "Madness" is different things to different people. We are, after all, creatures of personal perspective. Carole Moran ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 15:00:59 -0400 From: Warnwood@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <960615150059_329176974@emout16.mail.aol.com> Dr. Friedlander writes: > My position's always been that "inspiration" and >"madness" have something in common that's worth studying -- >not to >devalue the first, but to up-value the second! >The entire subject is extremely complex -- we're looking at >the roots >of the imagination, after all! I've been lurking along with this topic for some time now, and though I doubt that I've a great deal to add to the discussion, I'm surprized that a fairly crucial distinction has yet to be made. In speaking of visions, hallucinations, dreams or the inspirations for poetry, paintings, pieces of music or other works of art, we are talking about things which, in and of themselves, seem to arrive unbidden into the consciousness of a person. They come to us from . . . wherever, whether you wish to identify that place as the unconscious mind, the imagination, the spirit world, messages from the Great Beyond -- your guess is as good as the next guy's. You can make up any term you like. Most of us seem to feel that they come from "within," but there are probably an equal number of folks who would say they arrive from "outside" themselves. (And some of them are insane!) That's not an argument I particularly want to get into at this point, but the distinction I do feel should be made is between what the artist does with his inspiration, and what the inspiration does with the madman. I was struck, early on in the conversation, by Dr. Friedlander's use of the phrase "wondrous visions" of the schizophrenic, and I found myself wondering how "wondrous" the schizophrenic might feel about them. Never having suffered from the disease (or have I? No, you haven't. Thanks. Dont' mention it.) I can only go by written accounts and the observations by doctors of the people they treat. The experience, as I understand it, is far from "wondrous." The sufferer is at the mercy of emotional tidal currents that are almost totally out of his control and which only recently seem to have become somewhat manageable through the applications of drug therapy. Set this experience beside that of the artist, who receives inspiration and then, by a consciously willed mental effort and through the application and mastery of technique, transforms it into a shape "outside" himself through which his perceptions, thoughts and feelings can be expressed, communicated to and interpreted by other minds -- that distincition is vast and, I think, of immense importance. To try to see "behind" these forms and get at some sort of "first hand" perception of their source strikes me as a fruitless sort of chore -- and I think it struck Blake in the same way. I think it is precisely what he meant by "single vision & Newton's sleep" -- that is, it is reductive thinking. If I read Blake correctly (and I'm certain somebody out there is going to correct me,) we are all walking about in the manifold body of the Imagination, all a part of it, all drawing our sustenance from it, all somehow fallen or alienated from it as well -- and the madman, though he may appear to be closer to its source, seems in fact to be fleeing from it in terror, while the poet embraces it with a fervor that is -- dare I say it? -- downright sexual. There. I said it, and I'm glad. Pleasant dreams, all. Warnwood@aol.com (Bruce Woodside) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 23:09:58 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: This thesis that Blake's creativity and ability to shape his "madness" if that is what it is, somehow makes it different than the run of the mill kind is an interesting one. Is it madness or merely inspiration if this kind of shaping is a part of the process? The obvious parallel is in Van Gogh. He had the ability to structure his "madness" into works of art also. Was he only "inspired"? Not too many critics who address the question think so today. Some of the Van Gogh landscapes have a different kind of distortion, but are as distorted as some of the artwork of Blake. I hope you notice all the quotation marks since I am not at all comfortable with this terminology, and am only inquiring at this point. Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 14:08:42 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <96061614084253@womenscol.stephens.edu> With all due respect, I think there is no parallel at all between Van Gogh and Blake. The circumstances of their lives were radically different, their conceptions of their roles as artists were radically different, their notions of the sources of artistic inspiration (as we can gather Van Gogh's from his letters) were radically different. The only possible connection is the simplistic equation of madness and creativity (the *poete maudit*, the poet as outsider, the Rimbaudian rebel) that is not so much part of the relevant hypothesis as the source of the confusion the hypothesis is trying to correct. Blake was not able to "shape madness" because he wasn't mad (especially by comparison with Van Gogh)--that his reports of his visions strike us as odd, unconventional, even terminally eccentric (depending on how seriously we read them or, on the other hand, how much we credit them to an ironic, sometimes mocking, self-presentation in the company of people whom Blake found unreceptive, gullible, thickheaded, or hostile) suggests the limitations of our own notions of "normalcy" and our inability to compass his whole vision without a sense of disorientation. I suggest again that if *we* as readers feel disoriented or "muddled," that is not evidence that Blake was so. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 15:23:24 -0400 From: CaroleM250@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <960616152324_329935638@emout09.mail.aol.com> In a message dated 96-06-16 01:35:03 EDT, you write: >This thesis that Blake's creativity and ability to shape his "madness" if >that is what it is, somehow makes it different than the run of the mill kind is an >interesting one. Is it madness or merely inspiration if this kind of shaping >is a part of the process? The obvious parallel is in Van Gogh. He had the >ability to structure his "madness" into works of art also. Was he only "inspired"? >Not too many critics who address the question think so today. Some of the Van >Gogh landscapes have a different kind of distortion, but are as distorted as some >of the artwork of Blake. I hope you notice all the quotation marks since I am >not at all comfortable with this terminology, and am only inquiring at this >point. >Avery Gaskins > Avery: Some good points. I also have tended to link Blake & Van Gogh (and some others) in my mind, although, rationally speaking, they are nothing alike. There is, however, a certain similarity to their "obsession" (if I may be allowed the use of a clinical term) or devotion to their work/purpose/art. Carole Moran ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 15:22:52 -0400 From: CaroleM250@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <960616152250_329935590@emout07.mail.aol.com> Bruce Woodside: Your mediative message is marvelous. I particularly enjoyed the voice of reason used in the following: >>but the distinction I do feel should be made is between what the artist does with his >inspiration, and what the inspiration does with the madman<< You also have a "neat" sense of humor: >>Never having suffered from the disease (or have I? No, you haven't. Thanks. Dont' mention it.)<< You bring up an interesting point about madness, which also applies to some artists of historical repute, if you read their accounts: >>The sufferer is at the mercy of emotional tidal currents that are almost totally >out of his control<< You give a marvelous description of serial killers, without intending to, I think: >>Set this experience beside that of the artist, who receives inspiration and >then, by a consciously willed mental effort and through the application and >mastery of technique, transforms it into a shape "outside" himself through >which his perceptions, thoughts and feelings can be expressed, communicated >to and interpreted by other minds You proceed to deny those of us interested in puzzles any sort of joy in life(smile): >>To try to see "behind" these forms and get at some sort of "first hand" >perception of their source strikes me as a fruitless sort of chore<< Overall your message is marvelous, a thoughtful assessment, and an intelligent attempt to sort the issues into one "camp" or another. I know nothing about what Blake thought or whether he would be considered "mad." It just seems to me that life, as a series of personal and cultural perceptions and experiences, isn't as cut and dried as we try to make it sometimes. If I understand the spirit of your last sentence quoted above, it is enough just to HAVE the thing (whatever it is) without needing to catalog it. Some times that works and some times it doesn't. Carole Moran ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 17:01:44 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: Tom, I'm sorry, but I think you are putting the emphasis on the wrong part of the thesis. It doesn't put the emphasis on what the artists thought they were doing, but rather on the resultant artwork itself. Art as therapy (whether in drawing or script) is (or at least was) a mainstay of psychoanalysis, not only of "mad" people, but "normal" yet agitated people. The thesis says tha the mere ablility to organize and create is enough to prove "inspiration" not "madness" and I don't buy that. Too many insane people have been able to organize right down to the last detail, and too many of them have been able to create distort- ed artworks. But, the distortions I speak of can easily be the result of strong emotional tensions. The other half of the thesis as presented earlier is the question of "inspiration". Can it exist without a belief in transcendence? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 18:06:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Jon Winsor To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sat, 15 Jun 1996, Avery F. Gaskins wrote: > ...Some of the Van Gogh > landscapes have a different kind of distortion, but are as distorted as some of > the artwork of Blake. An interesting question here might be to what extent Blake's artwork is _sui generis_-- Blake's art might appear surreal or "distorted" to modern eyes, but might seem less excessively so if it is put in the context of art contemporary to him and similar to him in sensibility. On a museum excursion a few months ago I came across an engraving done in the 1780's by a Philadelphia engraver. (Sorry, I didn't get the name.) The museum was the H. W. Longfellow House (Longfellow was a not very distinguished poet who was an American contemporary of Blake's) and the engraving was part of Longfellow's art collection. The engraving depicts Washington sitting on a chair which is sitting on something like a lilly pad or lotus being brought down to the ground out of the clouds by cherubs and angels. I immediately thought of Blake's "America". (I also thought the engraving was pretty garish, especially displayed over the living room mantlepiece. I don't know if this was the way Longfellow actually displayed it or if this was a choice of the museum curators.) At any rate, Erdman in his "Republican Art" chapter of _Prophet Against Empire_ places Blake in a certain artistic and intellectual context, and says that the republican artists around late eighteenth century London "encouraged visionaries". Again, it might be interesting to see where Blake's artistic style and sensibility were similar to the republican artists' who were his contemporaries, and try to see to what extent and where he diverges from them and possibly "distorts" their conventions or goes in idiosyncratic directions. And it seems like the explicitly politically dedicated art around at the time can't be ignored, even where it might seem rough and political-cartoon-like. (A few examples of this kind of artwork are in Mee's _Dangerous Enthusiasm_.) I don't think this line of enquiry would by any means satisfy all questions about Blake's eccentricities, but might satisfy a couple at least where his visual art is concerned. Does anyone know of any pieces of scholarship that explores Blake specifically in terms of his visual artistic influences, especially the influence of his contemporaries? --Jon Winsor. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 19:16:54 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <96061619165416@womenscol.stephens.edu> I am no longer sure what "thesis" Avery Gaskins and I are talking about, but I feel sure we are referring to theses. I was offering a truncated and unfairly reduced argument based on Clement Hawes's new book. That thesis does *not* suggest that the presence of "organization" or "creativity" must be evidence of sanity. (I might mention that Patricia Meyer Spacks, years ago in her _Poetry of Vision_, used case studies of schizophrenics to demonstrate that the obsessive organizing and cataloging of Christopher Smart's great poems were both characteristic of certain kinds of schizophrenic language games--while her evidence is persuasive of the existence of *similarities* between the two, I do not accept the conclusion that Smart was therefore schizophrenic.) The argument in Hawes's study demonstrates the existence of a "manic rhetoric" characteristic of those labelled (with contempty or obloquy) "enthusiasts." (Remember that Samuel Johnson defined, with contempt, "enthusiasm" as "a vain belief in private revelation.") Hawes shows that political and religious *resistance* to the established order (specifically among Ranters, Levellers, Diggers, Muggletonians, and other antinomian groups) found expression in recognizable rhetorical strategies (not "hyperbole" which is only one kind of rhetorical gesture, but whole complexes of rhetoric); these strategies, in turn, were stigmatized and mocked by representatives of the established church and of the privileged orders who were threatened by the ideas and words of the dissenters; not atypically, one of the easiest ways to stigmatize was to accuse them of sexual misbehavior; the other was to label the rhetoric "mad" and portry its use as evidence of insanity. By the time Smart used it, this stigma was well attached. My earlier suggestion was that Blake would have been seen as consistent with this tradition and,f or reasons easily identifiable given his anti-establishment and antinomian views, not to mention the complexity of his works as seen by reluctant small minds, labelled as "mad" especially given his mocking behavior. So--agreed--the ability to organize complex materials is not evidence of sanity (nor only of insanity, I would hope); the ability to create great works of art is not evidence of sanity (nor of insanity, I would hope); but the self-conscius adoption of antinomian and anti-establishment views is often taken, by the complacent, the privileged, and the threatened, as evidence of "insanity" (that is, as a convenient pretext for dismissing the case made against the existing structures). Those who are familiar with Paul Fussell's better work (especially _Great War and Modern Memory_) will recognize the similarities between Hawes's argument and Fussell's exploration of the ways in which literary language develops and changes. I believe there has been mention in this discussion of Ockham's Razor. Let me borrow it. Is it not just as simple to argue that Blake has adopted and adapted an established expressive language, probably with full awareness of its role as a stigmatized mode of expression associated with "mania" as it is to argue (on the basis of flimsy anecdotal evidence *consistently* taken out of context and quoted inaccurately in many cases) that Blake's life and works showed some hypothetical similarities to a mental disorder (or chemical imbalance) described many decades after his death and still (as freely admitted by the practitioners themselves) not adequately defined. We know from his own descriptions that Blake was well aware of the artistic conventions and the poetic conventions of his time; he could, when he wished, practice them with considerable skill. He chose, instead, to explore alternative modes of expression, both visual and verbal, that would more adequately convey the particular "vision" he had developed. Those modes of expression included claims of special inspiration, illumination, even special communication (even dictation!); those claims were part of the conventions of that style. (Almost no one suggests that when Milton calls upon Urania to descend and continue the divine inspiration she had previously given, and says "Up led by thee/Into the Heav'n of Heav'ns I have presumed/An Earthlie Guest, and drawn Empyreal Aire/Thy tempring; with like safetie guided down/Return me to my Native Element" or when he refers to "my Celestial Patroness, who deignes/Her nightly visitation unimplored,/And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires/EAsie my unpremeditated Verse" that Milton was therefore certifiably insane or even slightly eccentric. Yet the claims are not significantly different from Blake's, though Blake's language may be more circumstantial.) I have here extended Hawes's argument beyond Smart to Blake, with a nod to E.P. Thompson. Frankly, it would not matter much to me whether Blake was or was not "insane" according to the standards of his own or of our time were it not so obvious that the application of the term has more ideological than clinical interest and continues to have next to nothing to say of use in understanding the undoubted power and complexity of Blake's work. The imputation of schizophrenia or other mental illness to Blake may serve some purposes dear to the hearts of those doing the imputing; the trivial comparisons of one "inspired" writer or artist to another based on personal associations may be comforting to the person doing the comparing; once again, let's not project onto Blake or into his writings the confusions of our own souls--and in particular, let's not assume that because our own confusions are so fascinting to ourselves that they must, therefore, be a source of endless fascination to many others--not unless we can create from them transcendent works of art. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 19:53:06 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" Message-Id: <96061619530672@womenscol.stephens.edu> In response to Jon Winsor's question, several titles come to mind-- Ronald Paulson's _Emblem and Expression: Meaning in English ARt of the Eighteenth Century_; Robert Rosenblum's _Transformations in the ARt of the Eighteenth Century_; Herbert Atherton's _Political Prints in the Age of Hogarth_; Jean Hagstrum's _Sister Arts_; David Bindman's _Blake as an Artist_, and Ruthven Todd's _Tracks in the Snow_, which includes discussion of Blake's friend and mentor, Henry Fuseli, often a far more grotesque and "distorted" artist than Blake. These are only some of the books; there are many specific studies of Blake's art in essay form and in publications devoted to particular works, such as the illustrations for Dante, Milton, Young, Bunyan, Gray, etc. It is possibly dangerous to say this in too general a way, but grotesquerie and gothicism (i.e., in the sense of a fascination with the horrific and frightful, sometimes supernatural) were extremely "popular" characteristics in the art of the latter half of the 18th century, as witness the vogue for gothic fiction. AS for historical and political representations, I seriously doubt that any living editorical cartoonist would dare to try (and certainly few editors would agree to publish) the kinds of scabrous caricature typical of the political "cartooning" of Blake's day. (The Atherton book and back issues of the ESTC newsletter provide excellent examples of this.) Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 23:24:36 -0400 From: RobertsonG@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: "Harmonious madness!" and Wordsworth and Grant Message-Id: <960616232435_330313519@emout09.mail.aol.com> Two thoughts come to mind. One is that unlike almost any other intuitive genius type, Blake is constantly attacked so as to explain why he wasnt such a great force, that he was mad, or was simply a Muggletonian, or he was simply a 18th C revolutinary, or - etc. I cant think of no poet who enjoys such attention to bring him down to earth. Methinks it says alot of the basic fear or loathing over something or other these critics have over how Blake soared, just as his art did. it is either something deep, which I cant fathom or it is something about autodidatics that drive academics nuts, even long dead poet types. Well it brings to mind two thoughts. First, Wordsworth, when looking at Blake's work in the company of some famous fellow poet, remarked when his companion said; "Blake is mad!", Wordsworth remarked; "Ah, if we were only tenth as mad." Now i figure that is pretty good criticism from a peer. The second is what Lincoln said when some generals ratted pon Grant and told Lincoln Grant was drunk on whisky during the campaign of the West, to which Lincoln responded; " Find out what brand of whisky Grant drinks and send it to all my other generals." I guess Blake being mad or not doesnt matter, is what I am saying. But it does sorta beg a Foucault type of archeology or deconstruction approach of those critics who think it is so important to figure it out. Hmmmm. -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #70 *************************************