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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." <DOERRBEC@uni-trier.de>
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." <DOERRBEC@uni-trier.de>
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: <v01510108adff090b3d3f@[10.0.2.15]>
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 <MTS231F@vma.smsu.edu>
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 <rdumain@igc.apc.org>
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 <rdumain@igc.apc.org>
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 <davidr@marin.cc.ca.us>
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" <GASKINS@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU>
To: <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
Message-Id: <wvmail32.1996jul3.235629.gaskins@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
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 <rdumain@igc.apc.org>
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" <GASKINS@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU>
To: <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
Message-Id: <wvmail32.1996jul4.173857.gaskins@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
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" <GASKINS@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU>
To: <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Re: psychotic reaction, Nietzsche, &c.
Message-Id: <wvmail32.1996jul4.174446.gaskins@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
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 <c557506@showme.missouri.edu>
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake vs traditional Christianity
Message-Id: <Pine.A32.3.91.960704175132.122662C-100000@black.missouri.edu>
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
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End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #80
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