------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 80 Today's Topics: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Re: Blake and Bloch Re: Experiment Pictures Experiment Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Re: Blake and Bloch Re: Experiment Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Blake's Visual and Verbal Art Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Re: Blake vs traditional Christianity "Systems of Thought" Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1996 17:07:15 MET From: "DOERRBECKER D.W." To: blake@albion.com Subject: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: <6735B124F0@netwareserver.uni-trier.de> PSYCHOTIC REACTION, NIETZSCHE, AND THE REST For the benefit of the few who've asked for these details I'd like to submit the following list of references which were lacking from my note of June 12th, 1996; clear evidence for a former bibliographer's raging madness, nothing else: Birenbaum, Harvey. *Between Blake and Nietzsche: The Reality of Culture*. London: Associated University Presses, for Bucknell University Press, 1992 (CHCKL26#57; Bentley 1995: 374). Clark, David L. "`The Innocence of Becoming Restored': Blake, Nietzsche, and the Disclosure of Difference", *Studies in Romanticism* 29 (1990): 91-113 (CHCKL25#71; Bentley 1995: 437). Cooper, Andrew M. "Blake and Madness: The World Turned Inside Out", *ELH* 57 (1990): 585-642 (CHCKL25#74; Bentley 1995: 442). Donnellan, Brendan. "Blake and Nietzsche", *Nietzsche-Studien* 14 (1985): 269-280 (CHCKL21#41; Bentley 1995). Pollard, David. "Self-Annihilation and Self-Overcoming: Blake and Nietzsche", in *Exceedingly Nietzsche: Aspects of Contemporary Nietzsche Interpretation*, ed. David Farrell Krell and David Wood, ["Warwick Studies in Philiosophy and Literature"], London and New York, N.Y. 1988, 63-79 (Bentley 1995: 607). Slawek, Tadeusz. *The Outlined Shadow: Phenomenology, Grammatology, Blake*. ["Rpace naukowe Uniwersytetu Slaskiego w Katowicach"; 727]. Katowice, Pol.: Uniwersytet Slaski, 1985 (CHCKL20#100; Bentley 1995: 641). Taft, Richard Tomlinson. "The Relationship between Art and Philosophy: An Examination of Hegel, Blake, Nietzsche and Heidegger", *Dissertation Abstracts International* 45 (1985): 3367A (CHCKL20#179; Bentley 1995: 653). Woodman, Ross G. "Nietzsche, Blake, Keats and Shelley: The Making of a Metaphorical Body", *Studies in Romanticism* 29 (1990): 115-149 (CHCKL25#200; Bentley 1995: 684 [ignore typo in pp.ref.]). Youngquist, Paul. *Madness and Blake's Myth*. University Park, Penn. and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989 (CHCKL25#204; Bentley 1995: 694). --Youngquist 1989 reviewed by Frederick Burwick, *European Romantic Review* 1 (1990-1991): 91-94; by B. E. McCarthy, *Choice* 28 (1990-1991): 313; by D. V. E[rdman], *Romantic Movement Bibliography for 1989* (1990): 106-107; by Jon Mee, *Notes and Queries* 236 ns 38 (1991): 396-397; by Brian Wilkie, *Yearbook of English Studies* 22 (1992): 316-317; by DAvid Worrall, *British Journal for Eighteenth- Century Studies* 15 (1992): 232-233 (CHCKL25#525; CHCKL26#609; CHCKL28p31). To these studies may be added: Byrd, Max. "Cowper and Blake", in *Visits to Bedlam: Madness and Literature in the Eighteenth Century*. Columbia, S.C.: South Carolina University Press, 1974, 145- 175; Eaves, Morris. "Postscript: Blake's Abnormal Psychology", *Blake Newsletter* 9 (1975-1976): 121-122; Matsuo, Rikio. "A Study on William Blake: Insane or Not?" *Hannan Ronshu: Hannan Daigaku* 10.2 (1975): 81-94 (Bentley 1995: 561); Mitchell, W. J. T. "Dangerous Blake", *Studies in Romanticism* 31 (1982): 410-416; Ostriker, Alicia. "Blake, Ginsberg, Madness, and the Prophet as Shaman", in *William Blake and the Moderns*, ed. Robert J. Bertholf and Annette S. Levitt, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1982, 111-131. Note: CHCKL refers to entries in "Blake and His Circle: An Annotated Checklist of Recent Publications" as published annually in *Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly* by volume and item (or page) number; Bentley 1995 refers to entries in G. E. Bentley, Jr.'s *Blake Books Supplement* (Oxford, Oxon.: Clarendon Press, 1995) by page number. Hope this information proves useful at least to those subscribers who like to read before they write--DW Doerrbecker ***"If his words be madness, then there is no hope left for us" (Greville MacDonald in *The Sanity of William Blake*, 1908)*** ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1996 17:33:57 MET From: "DOERRBECKER D.W." To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake and Bloch Message-Id: <67A7B301F2@netwareserver.uni-trier.de> On June 27th, 1996, Ralph Dumain wrote > [...] I also want to thank all [...] respondents to my > query on Blake and the Frankfurt School. I'll respond > specifically as time permits. I followed up on some earlier > leads, and I did find some passing references to Blake in the > writings of Lukacs, Bloch, etc. It would not have occured to me that from a US-American perspective Ernst Bloch might possibly be considered a `member' or a close associate of the so-called Frankfort School. However, if one temporarily ignores the late expressionist heritage in Bloch's thought and (for heuristic reasons) agrees to think of his writings as a contribution to the same sociological, philosophical, and aesthical debates usually connected with the names of Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Mitscherlich, et al., then one will also find that Bloch was positively aware of Blake's writings, that he is the `Frankfurter' who explicitly referred to Blake in his publications, and that these publications (in a sense at least) anticipate Altitzer's study of Blake's Christian atheism (cf. the recent contribution by Mark Trevor Smith to the list). In particular, I am thinking of the short section 26, entitled "Milde und `Licht seiner Wut' (William Blake)", in Bloch's *Atheismus im Christentum: Zur Religion des Exodus und des Reichs* (["Rowohlts deutsche Enzyklopaedie"; vol. 347], 2nd impr., Reinbek nr. Hamburg, W. Ger.: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1972), 119-121. Fortunately, I've never had to bother about a translation of this book into English, but I assume you will find one in any good university library. --DW Doerrbecker (July 2nd, 1996) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1996 13:57:01 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Experiment Pictures Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >July 1st, 1996 > >On Friday, June 28th, Tom Devine stated (in part), > >> I don't know what Blake's opposition to "Experiment" rested >> on -- which is to say, I don't know exactly what he was replying to. >> Certainly, the main thrust of his thought is to believe one's own >> experiences, which is what the "Experimental method" is about. > >Yes, and as an artist he would explicitly allow for "experiments", >too. In the *Descriptive Catalogue* of 1809 WB described some of the >works on show as "experiment pictures" that had been "bruised and >knocked about" (quoted from memory only). > >--DW Doerrbecker "To teach Doubt & Experiment Certainly was not Christ meant." -line 49-50 from (d) The Everlasting Gospel You two seem nobly to defy the truth: Blake hated science and technology. The difference between him experimenting with his copper plates or displaying "experiment pictures" and Joseph Priestley experimenting with gases is vast. Blake lambasts Priestly, Bacon, and Newton in line 40 of this same poem, so it's easy to see who he's attacking. It was a theme that he started at least as early as "There is No Natural Religion", with the plate for "Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more." The drawing is of someone lying down with their eyes closed. And is there something wrong with Blake's logic that defines reason merely as "all we have ALREADY known"? I'll take Blake's side here for a moment. I'll say that no matter how many Newtons, Sciences of Chaos, breakdowns in Iron Curtains, and breakthroughs in treatments for various diseases that medicine finds, reason alone is not how we spiritually stay alive. But now I'll get on the other side. He's writing an Everlasting Gospel. He's saying that Priestley , Bacon, and Newton are bad. But without the thought that they all helped pioneer, where would we be? Where would Blake WANT us to be? In a green England, I suppose. Nuts and bolts as to how the world really works... that's not his domain. His is imagination. That's fine, but let's admit that he's a mystic, and not a particular friend of science. In fact, one could say he's skeptical of science to a very high degree. -Randall Albright ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jul 96 09:04:36 CDT From: Mark Trevor Smith To: blake@albion.com Subject: Experiment Message-Id: <9607031410.AA25076@uu6.psi.com> When Blake fulminates against doubt and experiment, he excoriates the entire English system of empiricism, not because he's against science, but because he does not accept the imperialism of the tyranny of the senses. John Locke's faith in the senses makes no more sense, has no more basis in empiricism, than does Blake's faith in the imagination. This epistemological choice is probably the central point of Blake's art. He sees more vividly with the imagination than he does with the physical senses, and he invites us to do likewise. Everything depends from this choice. But remember that imagination includes the senses, while the senses can never include imagination. Empiricism is notoriously bankrupt in its attempts to explain how humans develop and demonstrate higher qualities such as love and artistic sensibility. Blake rejects experiment not because it is useless, though, but because it is so limited. It tells not even half the story, while Vision can tell the whole story. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1996 17:57:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: <199607040057.RAA13821@igc6.igc.apc.org> As a person who finds the Blake-Nietzsche nexus a most distasteful subject, I appreciate your bibliography. I can just look up the references you provide and need not waste any more time than necessary to research this topic on my own. >Hope this information proves useful at least to those >subscribers who like to read before they write I can only imagine to whom you might be alluding with this remark. Very well. I have not read a scrap of Nietzsche-Blake scholarship, but I have read both authors. I dispensed with Nietzsche 15 years ago because what he has to say is rather limited for my purposes. You know, from what I have seen from outside the literary profession, it doesn't seem to require much of an intellect to get into the lit crit racket. Any idiot can construct point for point comparisons between two authors and demonstrate affinities on discrete matters. (Albright would do well in the lit crit industry.) This is a most unconvincing intellectual method. It would be far more productive to compare the _systems_ of thought of two different authors and their attitudes towards their role in society rather than isolated similarities. It should be obvious to anyone but a postmodern snob how utterly unlike Nietzsche and Blake are. Was Blake a puffed up petty bourgeois who thought himself superior to the common herd and disdained their travails and sufferings? Did Blake propound a Roman aristocratic morality and a system of selfish patriarchal values? If one needs to compare Blake to a 19th-century German philosopher, a comparison with Feuerbach would be more apt. Feuerbach recognized long before the self-regarding Nietzsche that traditional "philosophy" was an expression of alienated consciousness, from a much sounder human perspective. When time permits, I will read some of this literature, and see if there is anything but naive rubbish in it. Every time I come across someone who adores Nietzsche, I smell a load of shit in his pants. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1996 17:58:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake and Bloch Message-Id: <199607040058.RAA13863@igc6.igc.apc.org> >It would not have occurred to me that from a US-American >perspective Ernst Bloch might possibly be considered a `member' >or a close associate of the so-called Frankfort School. My intention was not to associate Bloch with the Frankfurt School. After I formulated my initial query, others reminded me that I might be interested in German thought more generally, particularly the Hegelian/Western Marxist tradition, and hence I broadened my search to include Bloch, Lukacs, and others outside the Frankfurt School. I regret having created any confusion. >"Milde und `Licht seiner Wut' (William Blake)", in Bloch's >*Atheismus im Christentum: Zur Religion des Exodus und des >Reichs* (["Rowohlts deutsche Enzyklopaedie"; vol. 347], 2nd >impr., Reinbek nr. Hamburg, W. Ger.: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, >1972), 119-121. You did not mention this Bloch reference before, so I appreciate this new reference. I will seek out an english translation of same. Thanks again for the many useful references. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jul 1996 19:30:20 -0800 From: David Rollison To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Experiment Message-Id: <31DB3ACC.2D3A@marin.cc.ca.us> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Trevor Smith wrote: > > When Blake fulminates against doubt and experiment, he excoriates > the entire English system of empiricism, not because he's against > science, but because he does not accept the imperialism of the tyranny > of the senses. John Locke's faith in the senses makes no more sense, > has no more basis in empiricism, than does Blake's faith in the > imagination. This epistemological choice is probably the central > point of Blake's art. He sees more vividly with the imagination than > he does with the physical senses, and he invites us to do likewise. > Everything depends from this choice. But remember that imagination > includes the senses, while the senses can never include imagination. > Empiricism is notoriously bankrupt in its attempts to explain how humans > develop and demonstrate higher qualities such as love and artistic > sensibility. Blake rejects experiment not because it is useless, > though, but because it is so limited. It tells not even half the > story, while Vision can tell the whole story. Mark: Blake says, "My corporeal eye--I do not see with it, I see through it." But I wonder if Lawrence would agree that "the senses can never include imagination?" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 00:01:50 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: Ralph, you say that postmodern critics do not examine the different "systems" of thought of different authors, but that is exactly what they do. I have been enjoying your posts of late because you are beginning to get into a mode of serious philosophical examinations of literature without the usual vulgar and arrogant impulse to reject when you have only half knowledge. Unfortunately, this last post has relapsed.Forget Albright. Look at the mote in your own eye. Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 14:56:35 AEST-10 From: hbri1@MFS06.CC.MONASH.EDU.AU To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: <1C965C4FCB@mfs06.cc.monash.edu.au> Dear Albright, Doerrbecker, Dumain, Rollinson et. al., I'm listening in with great interest to your discussions, but have nothing to say of any intelligence at this stage. I'm at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, considering the interface between author and audience : publication, and Blake's relationship to and with this royal trinity. Also the effect of isolation on the _language_ of a writer. Keep talking! I'm listening! Hassanah Briedis ========================================================= HBRI1@MFS06.cc.monash.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 02:11:12 -0400 From: WaHu@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: <960704021108_569792892@emout14.mail.aol.com> Nietzsche is hated and loathed and feared by left-wingers. And his works will always be banned under pain of death by any left-wing apparatus which holds state power. This is because he is that rarest of fowl, the right-wing Atheist. i.e., there is no God, but there is a hierarchy. Blake stood always at the mouth of this Volcano, terrified it might be true; he belittled it, isolated it, named it Ulro-Urizen-Udan-Adan; his Spectre with him night and day. Blake's terror of it was why he couldn't ultimately forego the Jesus baloney, and why he failed. Another Childe Roland dead upon the plain before the Dark Tower. The Captain of the Guard of the Tower through his binoculars watches Blake die and turns to remark to the Lord of the Tower, Aes theticus, "My Lord, this one was brave and came nearer us than most." "A little nearer, but just as dead. Send a patrol to strip the armor from the corpse, and display it in the great hall with the rest....I go to dine with Wordsworth." (I could have simply said that I think what Blake feared most was a Spencerian Landscape, but the above was more fun. How did Wordsworth get in? Honey, his landscape is soooo Spencerian. Strange pits of fashion have I known. Is Nietzsche also inside the Dark Tower? That Question will be answered in Chapter MCCCV, the Right-Wing Atheists' Annual 10k Charity Run. [Order T-shirt NOW]) Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 02:20:18 -0400 From: kitch@sentex.net (Tim Kitchen) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake's Visual and Verbal Art Message-Id: <199607040620.CAA17526@granite.sentex.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I enjoyed the play by play commentary on America and Europe in Randall Albright's June 29 post. I've been thumbing through them and came to the conclusion that the poems are there simply to string the pictures together! That is to say that the text fails to match the pictures not the other way around. Blake's training was as an artist and engraver after all. It isn't obvious from looking at the plates that are usualy reproduced in facsimile editions of his work - the more "finished" ones that have been hand painted after printing, but Blake often combined etching and engraving in a single plate. The pictures in one process and the text in another. This takes a lot of planning and also necessitates a good deal of improvisation as we can see in some of the plates which are mostly text with decorations in the margins. Blake like many artits had a repitoire of poses he used over and over again. Given the choice between using a favorite image and following the story, I think the natural choice is to use the favorite image...these aren't "Mighty Thor" comic books after all. A real peculiarity in Blake's work is the love and attention he bestowed on works depicting characters and concepts that he professed to despise. The picture of Urizen on the frontispiece of Europe, or the similar picture of Newton. This tendecy is very obvious when you look at his illustrations of Dante...he loved painting hell but wasn't that interested in paradise. Tim Kitchen kitch@sentex.net ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 02:18:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: <199607040918.CAA27602@igc6.igc.apc.org> Avery Gaskins so generously observes: >Ralph, you say that postmodern critics do not examine the >different "systems" of thought of different authors, but that is >exactly what they do. I have been enjoying your posts of late >because you are beginning to get into a mode of serious >philosophical examinations of literature without the usual >vulgar and arrogant impulse to reject when you have only half >knowledge. Unfortunately, this last post has relapsed.Forget >Albright. Look at the mote in your own eye. OK, let me quote a typical specimen of brilliant postmodern academic thinking for your delectation. This comes from an abstract of a dissertation by Diana Louis Stow entitled "Metaphysics and Pornography." I shall quote only one paragraph to give you the flavor: "The philosophy of Nietzsche avoids the 'masculine' bias of Western metaphysics. It does not exhibit the structural emphasis on dualities which is so central to traditional philosophical thought. This is the case both with Nietzsche's general philosophy and his aesthetics. Consequently Nietzsche's philosophy does not reproduce the gender conflict so necessarily entailed in traditional philosophy. Nietzsche's philosophical discourse is non-violent and non-pornographic in its treatment both of alterity in general and the feminine 'other' in particular." Do you deny that this horseshit is a commonplace of postmodern thought? In a just society, do you think anyone who could write such piffle be allowed to stay in a university, let alone be granted a PhD for it? It's bad enough that one would make such idiotic generalizations about "western" thought; what's worse is to identify Nietzsche as "non-violent" -- hah! -- and non-masculinist -- to say this of one of the greatest misogynists of all time! And when did Nietzsche ever recognize alterity? He recognized only intellectuals like himself. For him the German workers were too well-off: how dare they whine about their condition and clamor for socialism? Nietzsche represents a particular social type, a type Blake was not. Nietzsche's postmodern advocates also represent a particular social type that casts the uiverse in their own narrow image. I am not an English professor -- that is the lowest type of academic life. I know many people in the field, and it appears to require very little talent, even less any minimal sort of intellectual integrity. Rather than fret over the mote in my eye, you go ahead and worry about people in _your_ profession, because they need help, badly. Hugh Walthall seems to have caught on, in his own peculiar, whimiscal fashion. For the record, there was a left-wing version of Nietscheanism in existence around the turn of the century. I know nothing of it. One can extract what is of value from Nietzsche as from anyone else. However, his overall view of the world was contemptible, and his philosophy of history was jejune. Petty bourgeois individualists are the most gullible people of all. Poeple who think they're too sophisticated to be fooled are always the first to be taken in, like the right-wing libertarian simians banging away on their computer keyboards all over the Washington area. Now some think that postmodernists are on the left, but I don't agree. At best they are liberals, fetishists of their own alienation. They bore me. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 17:39:41 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: Hugh, are you trying to say that King George III and the Tories were left-wing. Whoa. Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 17:47:44 -0400 (EDT) From: "Avery F. Gaskins" To: Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: Ralph, just what is your profession? At times, your posts have had an e-mail address that is used by a number of the "academics" in the English Dept. of UVA. That the item you quote is horseshit as you call it, does not make some of yours any the less. Avery Gaskins ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 18:14:53 -0500 (CDT) From: Darlene Sybert To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake vs traditional Christianity Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 30 Jun 1996, Avery F. Gaskins wrote: > Randall, > In your reply to Jennifer, you have revealed that you subscribe to one of the > basic criteria of fundamentalistic Christianity. That is, one must accept Jesus > Christ as one's personal saviour. It's a criterion that the "Establishment" > Church (i.e. CofE) would not have subscribed to. For them, the message was to > follow the rituals, trust the priests to do the interpreting and interceding > with God. It's easy to see Blake rejecting all this, but I don't know how he > would interpret "accepting Jesus as a personal savior". In some small sense, it > might apply to Blake in a way that he could accept, but not in the usual sense > of fundamentalists who include in its definition "surrendering one's will to > God." In my opinion, Blake's best description of Jesus is in "A Vision of the Last Judgment," "All things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the Divine Body of the Savior, the True Vine of Eternity, the Human Imagination." However, a close second because it is so resonant with meaning is found in _Jerusalem_ (I think; I may be wrong about that): "Jesus is the giver of every Mental Gift, which always appears to the ignorance loving Hypocrite as Sins, but that which is a Sin in the sight of Man is not so in the sight of our kind God." And, as Blake assures us in MHH, "Jesus was all virtue and acted from impulse, not from rules," referring, I suppose, to the fact that Jesus either broke or sanctioned the breaking of all ten commandments during his short public career, Darlene Sybert http://www.missouri.edu/~c557506/index.htl University of Missouri at Columbia (English) ************************************************************************* "...[in philosophy] there occur determinations quite different from those of ordinary consciousness and so-called common-sense,--which is not exactly sound understanding, but understanding educated up to abstractions and the faith, or rather superstition, of abstractions." -Hegel, _Science of Logic_ ****************************************************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 23:49:06 -0400 (EDT) From: izak@igs.net (Izak Bouwer) To: blake@albion.com Subject: "Systems of Thought" Message-Id: <199607050349.XAA21215@host.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Because a lot of my recent interlibrary-loan requests descended on me at the same time, I read in quick succession a book that showed me that the ideas of Blake and Hegel were virtually the same; then another book totally convinced me that Blake anticipated Marx. Other books talked about Blake and Freud, and Jung, and the Existentialists etc.etc. So when I picked up a Blake text again I feared that all the mystery would be gone, that I had allowed them to explain Blake away for me. But no, nothing had changed. Everything was as fresh, as exiting, as convincing as if I had read it for the first time.(Those enumerations of the counties of England still sent shivers down my spine!) So I started wondering why this was so. I thought: it is a bit like an old Columbo movie. One watches it sometimes just for a few minutes. You know what is going to happen.Still you watch it, with antici- pation. It gives you a certain kind of energy. Why is this so? And then it dawned on me: it is because I am familiar with how all the stories are structured. I am familiar with the system. Then I said to myself, to paraphrase a great Canadian: "Aha, the system is the message." It is the structure, the architecture of the system, that is significant. It is listening to the story and wanting to hear the story (and believing in the story?) that is redemptive. Whether I follow this story in an Agatha Christie detective story, or in The Four Zoas or Jerusalem, I know the story line: first there is paradise with its balance and goodness and joy. Then comes evil, a fall, death. But I know that eventually everything will be known, be resolved. We want to be assured that everything is going to be O.K., that there is such a thing as redemption. Blake just tells this story so much more intelligently and convincingly than a lot of others. Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 17:47:28 AEST-10 From: hbri1@MFS06.CC.MONASH.EDU.AU To: blake@albion.com Cc: WaHu@aol.com Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c. Message-Id: <376EAA0810@mfs06.cc.monash.edu.au> To Hugh, Re: Blake and the Tower, July 4 Love ya baby!! (very enjoyable!) Hassanah Briedis, Melbourne, Australia. ========================================================= HBRI1@MFS06.cc.monash.edu.au -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #80 *************************************