blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 85
Today's Topics:
testing
Re: BLKAKE CONTRA EMPIRICISM, OR 'THER IS NO NATURAL RELIGION'
RE: Blake and the Country versus City
DEREK WALCOTT REACHES FOR BLAKE (SIGHTINGS)
Blake Quarterly: Summer Issue
Re: testing
RE: Blake and the Country versus City
Blake sighting
Re: BLKAKE CONTRA EMPIRICISM, OR 'THER IS NO NATURAL RELIGION'
Scaffolds of the mind
Re: BLKAKE CONTRA EMPIRICISM, OR 'THER IS NO NATURAL RELIGION'
RE: Scaffolds of the mind
Re: Scaffolds of the mind
Re:Re: Scaffolds of the mind
Percy's Reliques in Ackroyd's book
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 20:41:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: "C. S. Beauvais"
To: Blake group
Subject: testing
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
just a quick message to see if this works.
Hi.
:-)
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.chip
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 10:55:32 EDT
From: joelmw@juno.com (Joel M Wasinger)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: BLKAKE CONTRA EMPIRICISM, OR 'THER IS NO NATURAL RELIGION'
Message-Id: <19960712.090134.7047.1.joelmw@juno.com>
On Thu, 11 Jul 1996 11:55:18 -0500 Mary Beth Jipping
writes:
> At 07:47 AM 7/8/96 -0700, you wrote:
> >Blake, of course, is not interested the relation of scientific
> >theories to empirical verification, but rather in the defense of
> >the faculty of poetic imagination, hence the other propositions
> >about desire and infinity. However, knowing no other discourse
> >besides antinomian Christianity and British empiricism, Blake
> >lacks the tooks to cast his ideas in the form of a logically
> >elaborated dialectical philosophy, so he formulates his
> >propositions in terms of the poetic genius and prophetic
> >imagination. Hence, first series, proposition VI: "Conclusion.
> >If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the
> >Philosophical & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all
> >things, & stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same
> >dull round over again."
>
> ----Thank you, Mr. Dumain, for a clear, understandable posting.
> This is
> why I subscribe.
> ----MBJ
I'm sorry (and truly, I am). Just started listening in and had meant to
just listen for a while, but not sure I can stand it any longer. Your
response is meant to be sarcastic, I hope, Ms. Jipping. Perhaps (and
this would be much better and I beg forgiveness if it it's true), Mr.
Dumain is writing the satire.
"Knowing no other discourse besides antinomian Christianity . . . Blake
lacks the tooks [sic, and sick, indeed; and maybe that should be "tukes"
or "tokes" or {pardon, Betty Boop} "toons"?]. Pulleaze.
To begin, Blake's Christianity isn't antinomian and to make a quick end,
Mr Dumain's pretentious analysis is precisely the kind of reductionism
and false dichotomy that Blake "consciously & professedly" (and not for
"lack of tools") rejects. I fear you are taken with that "general malady
& infection from the silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword."
Awake! Awake!
. . . cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour
. . . cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration
. . . cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albions covering
. . . take of [thy] filthy garments, & clothe [thyself] with
Imagination
Oh well.
Been fun.
seeya,
joel
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 11:34:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: "R.H. Albright"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Blake and the Country versus City
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Wed, 10 Jul 1996 RPYODER@ualr.edu wrote:
> Instead of Ackroyd, read Blake.>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, I agree. And where in Blake's art, particularly in the _Songs_, does
he have anything good to say about cities? Jennifer Michael points to the
golden Jerusalem... the plate is actually entitled, "To The Jews" and is
ambiguous as to whether he's talking about the city of his dreams or the
one in London currently being created.
-Randall Albright
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 08:54:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com, tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu
Subject: DEREK WALCOTT REACHES FOR BLAKE (SIGHTINGS)
Message-Id: <199607121554.IAA20213@igc4.igc.apc.org>
WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE CARIBBEAN
".... I refer to something that is the exact opposite of the idea
of historical thinking, and that is creative outbursts that have
nothing to do with historical consequences. Or if they are
thought of as historical consequences, or historical
inevitabilities, they limit the definitions of possibility and
cause that there are in the New World.
"This is utter nonsense. But it is better to have nonsense than
to have a series of consequences that go in the chronological
sequence by which we are taught the inevitabilities of certain
ways of thinking about history. And it may be the ultimate thing
that Blake talks about. When you're desperate you always reach
out for Blake, and I am desperate. In Blake, the _is_ is history,
not the _was_, or the _to be_. That is the strongest reality of
the Caribbean aesthetic, the _is_, the contradictions in the
chronological sequences, the irregularity, the confusion; the
apparent chaos to people outside of what the Caribbean is exactly
is the symmetry that the Caribbean has. The symmetry lies in the
apparent contradictions...."
from: Walcott, Derek. "A Tribute to C.L.R. James", in C.L.R.
JAMES: HIS INTELLECTUAL LEGACIES, edited by Selwyn R. Cudjoe and
William E. Cain, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995
(pp. 34-48), p. 43.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 13:00:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Patricia Neill
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake Quarterly: Summer Issue
Message-Id: <199607121700.NAA21290@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
The summer issue of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly is about to go to press.
Contents for this issue are:
Article:
A "Green House" for Butts? New Information on Thomas Butts, His Residences,
and Family by Joseph Viscomi
Minute Particular:
Apollonian Elephant by Denise Vultee
Poetry:
Blake in Boca Raton by David Caplan
Reviews
David Simpson, Romanticism, Nationalism, and the Revolt against Theory,
reviewed by Michael Gamer, Paul Wayne Rodney, and Nanola Sweet
Donald Fitch, Blake Set to Music: A Bibliography of Musical Settings of the
Poems and Prose of William Blake, reviewed by G. E. Bentley, Jr.
We didn't have space for a newsletter section in this issue, but news items
for the fall issue are welcomed! Send them in!
Also, if any readers on this list would like to receive a sample copy,
please email me and let me know, along with your address, and I'll send one
along.
Thanks,
Patricia Neill
Managing Editor
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
pnpj@dbv.cc.rochester.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 03:22:20 +1000 (EST)
From: Barrington Vincent Sherman
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: testing
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
yea verily
On Thu, 11 Jul 1996, C. S. Beauvais wrote:
> just a quick message to see if this works.
>
>
>
>
> Hi.
> :-)
>
>
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> ---|-----p---|---------|---------|---------|-----p---|----------|---------|-o-
> .chip
>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 13:57:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: RPYODER@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Blake and the Country versus City
Message-Id: <960712135711.60218a23@ualr.edu>
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Don't confuse pastoral as a form with any real interest in the countryside.
Pastoral is about a lot of things, but it is *not* about tending sheep. Blake'spastoral is, like most pastorals before his, about the fragility of a certain
kind of mindset. More to the point, it is just absurd to think that everyone
that ever wrote a pastoral had some kind of hankering for the country.
Paul Yoder
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 14:10:42 -0500 (CDT)
From: Greg Sturgeon
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake sighting
Message-Id:
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A few years ago, Nike sold a T-shirt that had a picture of Michael Jordan
with his arms extended to the sides (wing-fashion), and underneath the
picture was the Proverb of Hell "No bird soars too high if he soars with
his own wings." It may have been more appropriate to use "Enough! or
too much" . . .
Greg Sturgeon
c647679@showme.missouri.edu
http://www.missouri.edu/~c647679
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 18:15:43 -0500
From: Mary Beth Jipping
To: blake@albion.com, joelmw@juno.com (Joel M Wasinger)
Subject: Re: BLKAKE CONTRA EMPIRICISM, OR 'THER IS NO NATURAL RELIGION'
Message-Id: <199607122315.SAA00760@biochem4.iupui.edu>
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Mr. Wasinger,
Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt and for responding to Mr.
Dumain with civility. Unfortunately, I'm not as intelligent as you give me
credit for. You might be right about Mr. Dumain, but, have you read his
other postings? This _seems_ to be in line with his other writing but
without the scatatalogical references. I appreciate the tone more than
anything.
I was told not to read the "prophetic" works alone and this on-line service
is my answer to that right now. (I'm a biochemist with an _interest_ in
Blake) Thanks for setting me straight.
-----MBJ
At 10:55 AM 7/12/96 EDT, you wrote:
>
>On Thu, 11 Jul 1996 11:55:18 -0500 Mary Beth Jipping
> writes:
>> At 07:47 AM 7/8/96 -0700, you wrote:
>> >Blake, of course, is not interested the relation of scientific
>> >theories to empirical verification, but rather in the defense of
>> >the faculty of poetic imagination, hence the other propositions
>> >about desire and infinity. However, knowing no other discourse
>> >besides antinomian Christianity and British empiricism, Blake
>> >lacks the tooks to cast his ideas in the form of a logically
>> >elaborated dialectical philosophy, so he formulates his
>> >propositions in terms of the poetic genius and prophetic
>> >imagination. Hence, first series, proposition VI: "Conclusion.
>> >If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the
>> >Philosophical & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all
>> >things, & stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same
>> >dull round over again."
>>
>> ----Thank you, Mr. Dumain, for a clear, understandable posting.
>> This is
>> why I subscribe.
>> ----MBJ
>
>I'm sorry (and truly, I am). Just started listening in and had meant to
>just listen for a while, but not sure I can stand it any longer. Your
>response is meant to be sarcastic, I hope, Ms. Jipping. Perhaps (and
>this would be much better and I beg forgiveness if it it's true), Mr.
>Dumain is writing the satire.
>
>"Knowing no other discourse besides antinomian Christianity . . . Blake
>lacks the tooks [sic, and sick, indeed; and maybe that should be "tukes"
>or "tokes" or {pardon, Betty Boop} "toons"?]. Pulleaze.
>
>To begin, Blake's Christianity isn't antinomian and to make a quick end,
>Mr Dumain's pretentious analysis is precisely the kind of reductionism
>and false dichotomy that Blake "consciously & professedly" (and not for
>"lack of tools") rejects. I fear you are taken with that "general malady
>& infection from the silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword."
>
> Awake! Awake!
>
> . . . cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour
> . . . cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration
> . . . cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albions covering
> . . . take of [thy] filthy garments, & clothe [thyself] with
>Imagination
>
>Oh well.
>
>Been fun.
>
>seeya,
>joel
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 21:58:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: izak@igs.net (Izak Bouwer)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Scaffolds of the mind
Message-Id: <199607130158.VAA01660@host.igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Just when Ralph Dumain begins a serious attempt
to formulate his thoughts (rather than vituperate), he
gets hit out of left field. Maybe he deserves as good
as he got, but I for one am interested in what he has to
say, so let us be patient and give him a chance. I have
started a file for him, and I am waiting for what he has
to say next.
That said, I do hope, Ralph, that very soon you come
to a point where you will explain what in your thinking
is new. A lot of what you have said so far has been like
preaching to the converted. Forget your contempt for the
"professional intellectual." There is no such animal. It
is a creature of your imagination. There are only genuine
spirits and fakes. And they are easily told apart.
I sense that you have Marxist sympathies. However, if
your only agenda is to persuade me of how similar Marxist
thought is to what Blake was saying, Jackie Di Salvo and
others have already convinced me.
What I need explained to me, is why so many people
can find their pet systems so clearly delineated in the work
of Blake. Why the writings and pictorial art of Blake is like
this big Rohrshach of the mind, used increasinly by more
and more people as a scaffolding for their thinking about a
wide variety of subjects. So far, Northrop Frye's idea of the
Great Code seems to be the best line of thinking. I am how-
ever, waiting for somebody with no Christian leanings to
explain the Blake-phenomenon to me. This is where Ralph
Dumain comes in.
Gloudina Bouwer
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 03:29:53 -0400
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: BLKAKE CONTRA EMPIRICISM, OR 'THER IS NO NATURAL RELIGION'
Message-Id: <960713032953_236791316@emout07.mail.aol.com>
Mary Beth,
I hope this doesn't confuse you further (and I hope I didn't miss some irony
in your post), but I don't think Joel Wasinger has "set you straight" about
Ralph Dumain's post. I think Ralph gave a very good reading of "There is No
Natural Religion," and I found his explanation of why Blake argued as he did
both clarifying and convincing.
Whether Blake's Christianity was "antinomian" or not can depend on how
various writers define "antinomian," but I have heard Blake classified as
such several times.
Postings like that particular one by Ralph Dumain are part of the reason why
I subscribe, too.
--Tom Devine
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 06:19:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: RPYODER@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Scaffolds of the mind
Message-Id: <960713061937.6032fce2@ualr.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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Hi Gloudina,
I think you ask the right question about why Blake is so appropriatable for
everyone's personal pet project, but I rather doubt that Dumain can or will
provide any direct answers. However, his own appropriation of Blake has been,
I think, quite revealing, about a variety of things, including Blake.
I think one answer to the question you ask may lie in what I think of as teh
the "case of the disappearing context." Years ago Stuart Curran commented
about *Jerusalem* that while the reader usually feels fairly confident of his or
position or ground at any given moment, the path before or after is swept with
mists. This seems to me to be the most important and baffling and
unexplored element of Blake's rhetoric -- how does he create a situation in
which the reader's ability to remember what was just read, or to imagine what
will happen next -- how does Blake create a situation in which this ability
is short-circuited. We have lots of explanations of why Blake disrupts the
surface continuity of his works; we also have lots of discussions of
"problems" with poems like *Jerusalem* (shifting, unstable verb tenses,
supposedly flat, "mouthpiece characters, etc.). My sense is that these
"problems" are related to Blake's deliberate efforts to erase the immediate
context of almost any given moment in the prophetic works. The challenge of
reading Blake's longer works is like the challenge of life which also often
seems like a string of disconnected elements -- the challenge is to find the
connections. I think it is the "obscured" connections among the moments of
Blake's texts that make his work so appropriatable by right, left, up, down,
religious, or non-religious. But, of course, this matter of appropriatability
is not unique to Blake -- even the devil can quote scripture.
Paul Yoder
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 08:28:36 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: marxism2@jefferson.village.virgininia.edu,
marxism2@jefferson.village.virigina.edu,
tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu
Subject: Re: Scaffolds of the mind
Message-Id: <199607131528.IAA23026@igc6.igc.apc.org>
Gloudina Bouwer wants to know many things, starting with:
>you will explain what in your thinking is new. A lot of what you
>have said so far has been like preaching to the converted.
Not being a Blake scholar, I cannot answer this question. It is
possible that I am reinventing the wheel as autodidacts often do.
I'll leave it up to others to answer this question. However, if I
clarify what I am attempting to do, perhaps that can at least
clear up misconceptions and make things a little easier.
>I sense that you have Marxist sympathies. However, if your only
>agenda is to persuade me of how similar Marxist thought is to
>what Blake was saying, Jackie Di Salvo and others have already
>convinced me.
To try to prove at this late date that Blake has affinities with
Marx is almost as banal a project as the usual approach to
comparative studies altogether. A more interesting question is,
given the similarities of any two thinkers, why did they turn out
differently? My ad hoc intervention on "There is no Natural
Religion" is meant to contribute a small part of the answer to
that question.
So what am I aiming at? Most generally, there are two points, one
of which I brought up a couple of months ago. First, I am
interested in locating Blake in the universe of knowledge, trying
to position Blake as a way of knowing amongst others. Since I'm
not Blake, and since I'm more of a scientific rationalist type
than he is, I cannot stop with Blake's self-conception, but have
to locate him somewhere to explain how other people and myself
respond to him. And criticism in general must be "secular", in
that it provides an explanatory framework for what it studies, and
thus must translate even prophetic language into more or less
rational terms so that it can be analyzed. To understand where
Blake fits into the scheme of things is to unravel the problems
posed for example by Albright, who pops question after question in
diarrhea-like fashion but can't sit still two seconds for an
answer.
I believe there are a number of aspects of people's response to
Blake which must and can be answered. People react very
differently to Blake than to many other writers, including other
so-called Romantics. Blake speaks directly to many people of the
human condition. He doesn't read like the usual mystic or
dogmatic systems of reasoning -- by which I mean theology not
science. Just compare Blake with Swedenborg and you will see what
I mean. Blake isn't trying to prove anything to you that
contradicts your autonomous sense of what's real and what is not.
He is not trying to put over a doctrine in the manner of
Catholicism. Blake is unique and we should analyze why that is.
Also, Blake appeals to many rationalist and atheist types in a way
that other authors don't. Either we are all fooling ourselves in
order to justify Blake's appeal or there really is an objective
reason for this. I have stated, though have not yet fully
explained, that Blake's anti-scientific attitude operates on an
entirely different plane that other forms of irrationalism which
plague us nowadays. Blake's attitude toward science does not
offend me in the way that anti-science generally does (e.g. in the
form of postmodernism). Am I fooling myself or is there a reason
for this? The irony in these discussions is that I am ordinarily
a militant defender of scientific rationality, but in this forum I
find myself defending Blake against the likes of .... Albright(!),
who is crazy as a loon yet bellyaches over Blake's hostility to
science and the Enlightenment. There must be some explanation for
this oddity.
The point of comparing Blake to Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, or anyone
else is not to make Blake more respectable by associating him with
the philosophical canon or by putting him next to Marx. Precisely
because Blake was not a product of mainstream education or the
philosophical canon, because his trajectory was so different, it
is instructive to compare what he accomplished with his resources
with what everyone else accomplished with theirs. Now in some
ways Blake was handicapped by his background and proclivities. He
was not a technical philosopher. He was not interested in
investigating ideas in the literal fashion of philosophers who
elaborate logical systems. This is why he could not differentiate
the scientific content of the physical sciences from the
philosophical, ideological, and contemporary social content. But
others who do the same thing today have far less excuse, and are
not visionaries. As time permits, I shall elaborate on the
notions I introduced in my posts on "There is no Natural
Religion", since there are some out there too obtuse to get it.
Now the other side of the coin is, what did Blake positively
accomplish? Though handicapped on the logical side (by
proclivity, not ability -- Blake is a very logical and rational
thinker -- another time for this), Blake is ideologically far in
advance of the entire western philosophical tradition. I spit on
philosophers in comparison with Blake except for Marx, Spinoza,
and a few others. Blake could not elaborate the type of logical
system that Hegel did, but he was far in advance of Hegel
ideologically, as he was of the rest. However, since he expresses
himself in the language of prophetic Christianity, not to mention
his own private mythology, it is not obvious to some how this is.
I have only hinted at the solution of this puzzle so far. My
method in the thread on "There is No Natural Religion" is to
translate Blake's prophetic language into mundane philosophical
language, so a logical comparison of Blake with "philosophy" can
be more easily made, _not_ because I intend to reduce him to the
terms of philosophy of science. I believe that "translations" of
a number of his texts into secular language will illuminate how
his ideas are structured and function and the social and
ideological tensions to which they responded.
Let me give one more brief example. Hugh Walthall states that
Blake was so frightened by the world of Ulro he could not give up
his Jesus crap. Nobody hates Christianity and Christians more
than I do, but I urge people to take a closer look at the role of
Jesus in Blake's system. (I hate them because I have the spirit
and they don't, and because I practice benevolence and
righteousness and get murdered time after time, by them.) Jesus
annuls all the moral virtues of the heathen, great and small,
enumerated by the silly Greek and Roman slaves of the sword --
i.e. the metaphysical basis of all ruling class morality. The
forgiveness of sins is a load of crap which Blake himself never
practiced, but to set that up in opposition to aristocratic
morality is a revolutionary act. Sure, the ancient Hebrews were a
bunch of useless, smelly genocidal savages. The scientific and
cultural achievements of the Greeks were far superior. However,
in the war between Hellenism and Hebraism, there is more to be
said. For Hellenism represents the ethos of the "natural man" and
the ruling class, and Blake's form of Hebraism -- revolutionary
Christianity -- is a radical negation of the world as it is, and
hence is critical and revolutionary, however backward and insipid
the Judaeo-Christian heritage is as a whole.
To recapitulate, the first order of business is to locate Blake in
the universe of knowledge overall. I am not the first to deal
with Blake's critique of empiricism, for example, and I can claim
no originality (at least not without checking the scholarly
literature) for any specific points I make. Time will tell
whether my overall project is something original. I originated it
without plagiarizing it from others, and that's good enough for
me.
Now, the second major point of my agenda is to explain what kind
of "intellectual" Blake was, how his thought and self-conception
relate to the social totality. My working hypothesis is, Blake
did not seek to set himself up in a separate realm called
"Culture", as did Coleridge and Wordsworth, for example, or
fascists like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound later on, to proclaim the
superiority of Culture over the brute everyday world. Nor do I
believe that Blake was interested in bragging about his
superiority to the dumb ignorant herd. To be sure, anyone whose
thinking is light years beyond his neighbors is likely to bang his
head against the wall day and night in exasperation at the
backwardness and ignorance of everyone around him. Ask me how I
know this. But this is not elitism. Reactionaries are interested
in setting off Culture from the rest of life. Revolutionaries
defend the values of culture as a moment in the revolutionization
of society as a whole. So culture and intellect in relationship
to the social totality is the topic. I aim to show how Blake
differs from other Romantics, and from pretentious egomaniac
philosophers from Bruno Bauer to Nietzsche.
>What I need explained to me, is why so many people can find
>their pet systems so clearly delineated in the work of Blake.
>Why the writings and pictorial art of Blake is like this big
>Rohrshach of the mind, used increasingly by more and more
>people as a scaffolding for their thinking about a wide variety
>of subjects.
Yes, this reminds me of a recent post of yours, in which you
called out for an explanation of why Blake stands on his own even
after the myriad comparisons with Hegel, Marx, etc. I meant to
respond to this post, but I can't remember my intended response.
My point was never to make Blake out to be the English Hegel or
Marx. I'm not sure how to answer your question, for is it not the
case that all great writers, not just Blake, are rich enough to
support whatever interpretations are read into them? What makes
Blake different in this respect? Blake tests you as other writers
do, perhaps more so since he has more to say. How you deal with
someone like Blake reflects what level of consciousness you happen
to be on. No matter how many PhDs you have, you can only rise as
far as your own level of consciousness will take you. You can't
see beyond the type of person you are and the resources you have
to perceive reality. That's why so much criticism is such crap.
You cannot fully appreciate any thinker unless your genius is
equal to his. Hero worship is useless. You've got to have what
it takes yourself or you will never be able to fully appreciate
the object of your study. You've got to be able to look someone
in the eye as an equal; otherwise, you are useless. Life, not
academic credentials, has taught me that. Mark well my words.
>So far, Northrop Frye's idea of the Great Code seems to be the
>best line of thinking.
Surely you can do better than the likes of him. Really.
>I am how-ever, waiting for somebody with no Christian leanings
>to explain the Blake-phenomenon to me.
How can you learn anything by conversing only with angels and not
the devils who do all the work and suffering? How can one fully
understand Blake without understanding what enables him to appeal
to people who hate Christianity and religion in general? That is
precisely what most demands explanation. And that is part of my
project. I give you the end of a golden string ...
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 12:50:33 -0400
From: WaHu@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re:Re: Scaffolds of the mind
Message-Id: <960713125032_575923665@emout17.mail.aol.com>
Excellent points, Mr. Yoder! High Art is like a machine-gun. It doesn't
care who it kills. And a rhetoric with a high aphoristic level (your
aphoristic level is a little high, Mr. Blake, I'm going to take you off
antibiotics) like Blake, or the philosopher with the initials FN, or the
bible INVITES all interpretations. It is part of its strategy, methinks.
Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 12:05:26 -0500 (EST)
From: WATT
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Percy's Reliques in Ackroyd's book
Message-Id: <6826051213071996/A73013/OVID/11A76B051500*@MHS>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
On p. 58 of Ackroyd's biography, he writes that "Blake was ... an avid reader
of PERCY'S RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY; his own copy survives,
and it shows intense study of the first seventy-four pages." Does anyone out
there know where Ackroyd saw this surviving copy? And what, exactly, is
the evidence of 'intense study' he mentions? He supplies no footnote to this
nugget and I am too far from the nearest copy of Bentley's BLAKE BOOKS to
see if he has anything on it. Ackroyd also talks confidently about Blake's
family bible (back on p.27) --has he got access to the Back to the Future
DeLorean time machine? Anyone else gone with him? Thanks in advance.
Jim Watt
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End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #85
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