blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 90
Today's Topics:
Re: Blake and Zen -Reply -Reply
MCGANN, THE GHETTO, AND ME
Re: Nature vs Eternity -Reply
Talking Heads and now and Eternity
Re: Blake and the Country versus City -Reply -Reply
RE: Blake and the Country versus City -Reply
Re: MCGANN, THE GHETTO, AND ME
Joseph of Arimathea
Ghetto elitist
Re: MCGANN ON BLAKE
Re: MCGANN, THE GHETTO, AND ME
Re: MCGANN, THE GHETTO, AND ME
Re: Nature vs Eternity -Reply
Re: Talking Heads and now and Eternity
Sleepy Newton
RE: Blake and Archetype Cities
Re: Joseph of Arimathea
Re: O'Keefe on Blake
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 08:48:20 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu
Subject: Re: Blake and Zen -Reply -Reply
Message-Id:
Sorry, that typo re beds is sending me round the bend! Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 00:00:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com, marxism2@jefferson.village.virginia.edu,
tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu
Cc: rdumain@igc.org
Subject: MCGANN, THE GHETTO, AND ME
Message-Id: <199607190700.AAA11818@igc6.igc.apc.org>
This post is not about Blake, but I risk deflecting off the main
course in order to complete some thoughts I introduced into my
last post on Jerome McGann. I am still awaiting a response from
him, but I imagine he is a busy man.
In the previous post, I began by noting some passages from McGann
that could be helpful in relating and contrasting Blake to other
"intellectuals" of the 18th and 19th centuries. Then I veered off
my own topic somewhat by questioning McGann's deployment of Marx's
11th thesis on Feuerbach, which he used to end the article
concerned in his book SOCIAL VALUES AND POETIC ACTS: THE
HISTORICAL JUDGMENT OF LITERARY WORK. I expressed my
dissatisfaction with this ending in as technical and diplomatic
terms as I could. Deep down I thought it was pretentious and
vacuous, an all-too familiar manifestation of liberal guilt.
Originality, social relevance, and the like are _results_ of what
you are, what you do, and what you have to say; they cannot be
wished into existence from outside. The category of utility
cannot be abstracted out of the intrinsic, objective character of
an activity and then imposed on it externally. This way of
thinking is old and by now a dead end.
I also don't believe that academic intellectuals can boo-hoo about
their detachment from pressing social needs and then will
commitment into being as an alternative to their abstract
existence. What you can accomplish is completely dependent on
objective realities and not on abstract moralism, which is what
all this blowhard talk of social commitment is.
Anyway, I read the other major Blake essay on the book, which is
also a vital topic for discussion. Then I read the book's
concluding chapter, which is also heavily Blake-laden. Then I
read the preface. Then I started the introduction. Reading the
book in this manner, no wonder it took me so long to figure out
what McGann was up to. In the very preface he pits Blake against
Kant and states his project is based the dichotomy between
detached and committed literature.
I am so disappointed, because such a project is utterly bankrupt
as so formulated. By 1988 one would think a man as brilliant as
McGann would know better than to pursue such a worthless goal
based on a dichotomy that must be obliterated if any progress is
to be made.
Blake wrote somewhere that everyone's life is filled with miracles
and every one who lives must know the experience. Since Blake's
subject is human experience, regardless of the literal meaning of
'miracle' and what we think of it, we ought to check out what he
meant. So let me give you an example.
Today I had the most uncanny experience, of which the McGann book
forms one vector of a triple convergence. I brought the book with
me to my local, along with the local free paper I had just picked
up en route. A feature story in the paper was written by a black
poet who described his tour of duty teaching poetry in the most
horrendous of local ghetto schools. The article didn't have a
happy ending exactly, but by the end of his sojourn the situation
had progressed from a total nightmare to something fairly
positive. The author was describing the outcome of the sacrifice
he made to social commitment. I was highly dissatisfied with the
piece, because it left so many issues implied in this experience
untouched. I don't do settlement work, and martyrdom does not
solve the problem of how to develop people in a society which
distorts their development.
After reading the paper, I picked up the McGann book and continued
to read the various chapters in non-sequential fashion. Though I
found much to stimulate my thought, I was still perturbed by the
"professionalism" of the book, i.e. how it reflects the concerns
of literary criticism as a professional discipline. Not that I'm
protesting this in a moralistic manner -- it's a field of study --
but I don't live in that world, so I care about it only insofar as
it meets my own human needs. If I lived my life in the rarified
superstructures of society, I would be more concerned, perhaps.
The introduction starting off with De Man did not hit me where I
live, so I thought, well, isn't this just like academic life in
America?
First vector, article on teaching poetry in the ghetto. Second
vector, reading McGann. Third vector smacked into the other two
while I was busy. A couple of young black kids suddenly announced
they were doing a poetry reading, interrupting my table reading.
Had I known this would happen at this particular moment, I would
have been gone, because I have zero patience for ignorant
ghettocentric ranting, which is what I always have to suffer at
all events of this kind. Something about bigmouth young kids
getting up in their elders' faces and spouting tired old nonsense
doesn't set with me.
This experience was as unpleasant as previous ones, but I gained
new insight into why their poetry was so bad, aside from general
youth and inexperience. It's really part of the underdevelopment
of people and not just of poetry and what happens when the human
mind does not properly engage its environment to produce
imaginative insight. (I could also talk about the class
differences between these two kids and its impact on their
expression, but that's another issue.) So as I summed up the
problem I saw in my own mind, I realized I was facing directly, in
daily life, the very problem that McGann pontificates about in the
groves of academe, except that McGann had nothing at all to offer
regarding the analysis of the problem, let alone the solution.
Developing a human being as a human being first is the only thing
that can lead to that person being able to either write or
appreciate a poem, and a poem is not just a glittering ornament
for consumption by the professional middle class (as it is for
white, official Washington); it really can tell you and others who
you are and what you are, and, if you dare to write one, it can
only be a product of who and what you have become. And lack of
skills and education does not seal the book for you if you have
some aspiration and inkling of what it means to actually develop
your outlook on life and the means to express it, for you know
what you are working toward. But if you are utterly clueless as
to what it means to develop your own mind as an individual,
responsible mind and not just to hide behind cliches, worst of
all, ethnic and turf cliches, you will never develop but just
bullshit your way through the rest of your life. I am not about
to encourage any such thing.
So I put myself to thinking amidst my frustration, anguish, and
rage, thinking about the things a poem could be and do, thinking
about the ways I could fight the mentality I'm faced with, and I
mean faced with all day every day, not just on this one occasion.
Suddenly lightning flashed in my brain, and it all came together.
Without hesitation or deliberation, I wrote out a short poem in a
flash of inspiration, describing what it is I am fighting and
showing in contrast by its own example what a poem can really do
to shock the mind into consciousness of itself and the world it
lives in. One cannot force people to open up their minds, but one
can confront them with the problem itself, not just your problem
but theirs too, and if the problem is correctly formulated, one is
then fulfilling the very function one is supposed to be fulfilling
and is doing the one thing that is to be done.
This is not academic speculation; it really is about life on this
bitter earth.
Can I get a witness?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 09:44:34 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, albright@world.std.com
Subject: Re: Nature vs Eternity -Reply
Message-Id:
Randall, I certainly do not - and don't see Blake - as scorning reality or
thinking that Innocnece belongs in in Eternity alone. However, the fullest
definition of what Innocence is has to be understood if all of Blake's
work is to be placed against the cosmic backdrop of
Timelessness/transience/flux/ unfettered love/ harmony etc which
pre-exist the variety of deformities of this which are found in
time/nature/and all its concomitant disharmonies. Blake does not take up
the position of the Accuser who turns up his nose at mortal Sin. By
casting off the `mental chains' of orthodox religions (all of which create
boxes for the mind of different shapes and sizes) Blake saw we can
aspire( like the Sunflower) back to our pristine divine fullness. Innocence
is not impossible in this world - just hard to achieve in all its fullness,
weighed down with matter. Nevertheless, we are all `Mental Travellers'.
Blake is in the tradition of Gnostic and Kabbalistic thinkers who tried to
answer how a good GOd could have created a fallen world .
Re where exactly this view of Blake's Innocnece in Eternity can be found
- it has to be gleaned from many places. It is reflected in the wise
eloquence of the speakers in The Book of Thel, and in Oothoon's
nostalgia for the Free Loves of Eternity and all of Jerusalem dramatises
the tragedy of the fall into separation from God and how Los succeeds
in setting a `Limit' to the Fall by gathering up the scattered divine sparks.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 09:55:51 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, albright@world.std.com
Subject: Talking Heads and now and Eternity
Message-Id:
Randall, Oddly enough (kabbalsitically enough?) I gathered some old
metal car parts from the local garage in case my daughter wanted to
solder them together into some form of sculpture on the subkect of
music. One part was round with a centre which could be made to act
as a clapper. I immediately thought of the `Talking Heads' as a theme.
Their idea of Eternity is awfully dull beside Blake's....in his Eternity, all
things fulfil the `lineaments of gratified desire', commingling essences
and mingling their visions of reality - sometimes envying each other the
beauty of their visions and coveting what others create for themselves.
But this is seen as merely a little `error', and is cured by God by feeding
Envy and Covetousness with whatever is envied and coveted. Sated,
they cease to exist. No Accuser here and certainly no boredom. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 10:24:53 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, albright@world.std.com
Subject: Re: Blake and the Country versus City -Reply -Reply
Message-Id:
Surely to`be here now' as Randall quotes from Dass, is to begin to
awaken from `Sleep', yet not to confuse Waking with the State of Sleep?
Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 05:57:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: RPYODER@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Blake and the Country versus City -Reply
Message-Id: <960719055711.6030993f@ualr.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
Good points, Hugh, and as a matter of fact Blake does do an engraving
(modeled on Michelangelo) of Joseph of Arimethea among the Rocks of Albion
around 1773. I believe it has also been suggested that the preaching figure
on the "On Homer" sheet is also Joseph preaching to the ancient Britons.
Paul Yoder
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 11:03:03 EDT
From: joelmw@juno.com (Joel M Wasinger)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: MCGANN, THE GHETTO, AND ME
Message-Id: <19960719.090052.2887.0.joelmw@juno.com>
> One cannot force people to open up their minds, but one
> can confront them with the problem itself, not just your problem
> but theirs too, and if the problem is correctly formulated, one is
> then fulfilling the very function one is supposed to be fulfilling
> and is doing the one thing that is to be done.
>
> This is not academic speculation; it really is about life on this
> bitter earth.
>
> Can I get a witness?
>
>
Amen.
At the risk of once again sounding like a jerk (or narrow-minded
evangelical apologist [both of which I might, but hope not to, be]), I
send this email and will sit quietly for a while.
It does annoy a bit to hear folks dismiss or reduce the Judaeo-Christian
prophetic/apocalyptic/poetic tradition that Blake so brilliantly upholds,
but perhaps Mr. Dumain is "of the Devil's party" after all and I should
cut him some slack . . . at least until I have the time to formulate a
more complete and meaningful response.
The history of the church and of the wandering Jews before is
predominantly of folks who don't get it (thus, the ponderous preaching of
the apostles in the epistles and the tirades of the prophets, both waging
war with their own community). To vilify the "original derivation of the
Poetic Genius" because "mechanical men" have derived systems of
oppression, injustice, intolerance and other idiocy from its vast glory
is a bit like blaming St. Blake for the errors of his multitudes of
misinterprets . . . or Los for the frigid, satanic, stultiications of
Urizen (but, maybe, yes, we could do that. Oh, never mind).
Though I feel there is more to the poetic impulse than Mr. Dumain has
stated, his posting moves me and I smell the bittersweet fragrance of
truth in it. Indeed, to paraphrase God's instruction to Ezekiel : "If
you passionately articulate the condition of unenlightenment to the
unenlightend , you're doing what's to do." Poetry IS a life thing, not
merely a matter of abstract speculation. Damned serious business, it
seems to me, meant for everywoman/man and not to be closeted in the
classroom.
But I'll stop now; it's time to head back to the mill.
In the interest of my more complete education in the teachings of Brother
Ralph, Sister Pam, Brother Randall et al. (and to perhaps avert more
knee-jerk reactions), would someone tell me where or how I might find
blake-mail between the time of the archives (ending about in April) and
my joining the list (about a week ago)? Pretty please?
humbly,
just a geek and blake-freak,
joel
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 10:52:17 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Joseph of Arimathea
Message-Id: <9607191558.AA12412@uu6.psi.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>There is Church of England legend that Joseph of Arimethea was first to
>preach on Albion's shore. But I don't know if this twaddle is a very late
>emendation formed as a reaction by Victorian Divines against the Oxford
>Anglo-Catholics. In other words, if it was an old legend, why doesn't Blake
>use/abuse it.
My understanding of the legend is that Jesus came to England with Joseph of
Arimathea, who was his uncle and a tin merchant. (Mind you, the only
authority I have for this at the moment is a reference in Iris Murdoch's
novel _The Philosopher's Pupil_.) In that case, Blake implicitly *does*
make use of the legend in the Preface to _Milton_: "And did those feet,"
etc. Oddly enough, though, when I read the lyric on Plate 27 of
_Jerusalem_, in which "She walks upon our meadows green: / The Lamb of God
walks by her side," it seems to me that "those feet" in the _Milton_ lyric
are equally those of Jerusalem and of the Lamb.
Thanks for the support on the city/country question.
Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 11:15:34 -0600
From: pdecote@siue.edu (pamela and jack decoteau)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Ghetto elitist
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Mr. Dumain, when will you stop shooting yourself in the foot? Isn't it a
bit elitest to say who can and can't write poetry for whatever reason? They
should know more than they do or be able to see their problem more properly
before writing? Who's to say? From my experience anyone can write, in
whatever walk of life and education level, like anything else you don't
have to read or listen, but a basic freedom of life, think and do.
Yes I enjoyed your post and your enlightenment explained was good
to here whenever it happens it is great "Satori". But please remember the
most educated can be the most boring as well as the least. Leave room for
others. Jack
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 11:09:29 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: MCGANN ON BLAKE
Message-Id: <9607191615.AA15472@uu6.psi.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
For anyone interested: An article by Vincent O'Keefe, "Debunking the
Romantic Ideology: A Re-View of Blake's _Jerusalem_," in the new issue of
_European Romantic Review_ (7:1), touches on issues raised by both Randall
and Ralph lately. O'Keefe uses _J_ as an example that disproves McGann's
theory that the Romantics all believed poetry could transcend material
reality. On the contrary, O'Keefe sees Blake's attack on Bacon, Newton,
and Locke (there you go, Randall!) as an attack on transcendence, because
their rationalist ideology attempts to transcend the minute particulars of
actual human experience through generalization. One might argue that
O'Keefe is using "transcendence" in a very different sense, but it's an
interesting article, both as a critique of McGann and as an explanation of
Blake's view of Bacon et al.
Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 13:28:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Avery F. Gaskins"
To:
Subject: Re: MCGANN, THE GHETTO, AND ME
Message-Id:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Ralph, this is the best post you have ever done. I'll be rereading and thinking
about it for some time to come. You have more liberal impulses than you think.
Avery Gaskins (late of the Groves)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 11:42:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: MCGANN, THE GHETTO, AND ME
Message-Id: <199607191842.LAA03327@igc2.igc.apc.org>
Joel, I appreciate the spirit of your response. Iam trying to get
across something of deadly importance, becuase the same
mind-forged manacles that were rattling 200 years ago are
deafening now. This is about the real thing, not about
playacting. Thanks for your understanding.
"Some folks are gonna get the notion / I know / They'll say I'm
preaching hate // But if I had to swim the ocean / I would / just
to communicate // it aint as simple as talking jive / the daily
strugggle just to stay alive ..."
-- Nina Simone, "Revolution" (with no apology to the Beatles)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 15:14:44 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Nature vs Eternity -Reply
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Interesting point of view, Pam. Can you give me some poem/plate references
so I come to some of my own conclusions........?
-Randall Albright
>Randall, I certainly do not - and don't see Blake - as scorning reality or
>thinking that Innocnece belongs in in Eternity alone. However, the fullest
>definition of what Innocence is has to be understood if all of Blake's
>work is to be placed against the cosmic backdrop of
>Timelessness/transience/flux/ unfettered love/ harmony etc which
>pre-exist the variety of deformities of this which are found in
>time/nature/and all its concomitant disharmonies. Blake does not take up
>the position of the Accuser who turns up his nose at mortal Sin. By
>casting off the `mental chains' of orthodox religions (all of which create
>boxes for the mind of different shapes and sizes) Blake saw we can
>aspire( like the Sunflower) back to our pristine divine fullness. Innocence
> is not impossible in this world - just hard to achieve in all its fullness,
>weighed down with matter. Nevertheless, we are all `Mental Travellers'.
>Blake is in the tradition of Gnostic and Kabbalistic thinkers who tried to
>answer how a good GOd could have created a fallen world .
>
>
>Re where exactly this view of Blake's Innocnece in Eternity can be found
>- it has to be gleaned from many places. It is reflected in the wise
>eloquence of the speakers in The Book of Thel, and in Oothoon's
>nostalgia for the Free Loves of Eternity and all of Jerusalem dramatises
>the tragedy of the fall into separation from God and how Los succeeds
>in setting a `Limit' to the Fall by gathering up the scattered divine sparks.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 15:16:04 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Talking Heads and now and Eternity
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
The point of the Talking Heads song is that "Heaven" is like death. I had
such fun reading THE INFERNO, but by the time I got to PARADISO by
Dante...what's going on there? It's boring. Everyone's enraptured.
Everything's reconciled. It's like a permanent ether or something. No
wonder Milton got seduced by the Devil. Hell is much more fun. Ask Blake,
too, in his masterpiece, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", which no one
here seems to want to talk about. "Jerusalem" Nirvana, perhaps?
As far as Blake's vision... well, which are your source texts? Can you
refer me to specific plates of... "Jerusalem"? "Milton"? Please give me
some quotes to see if it's a heaven where I'd like to join-- or leave-- Mr.
Blake. Mine certainly won't be either in Albion or Jerusalem. Mine would be
to have the entire planet to roam. I think I'd hang out in southern
Thailand alot, having banana pancakes (oops! except I'll be DEAD!) for
breakfast, massage on the beach, and...... then a flight back to
Amsterdam... Bangkok of the North...
-Randall Albright
>Randall, Oddly enough (kabbalsitically enough?) I gathered some old
>metal car parts from the local garage in case my daughter wanted to
>solder them together into some form of sculpture on the subkect of
>music. One part was round with a centre which could be made to act
>as a clapper. I immediately thought of the `Talking Heads' as a theme.
>Their idea of Eternity is awfully dull beside Blake's....in his Eternity, all
>things fulfil the `lineaments of gratified desire', commingling essences
>and mingling their visions of reality - sometimes envying each other the
>beauty of their visions and coveting what others create for themselves.
>But this is seen as merely a little `error', and is cured by God by feeding
>Envy and Covetousness with whatever is envied and coveted. Sated,
>they cease to exist. No Accuser here and certainly no boredom. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 15:16:57 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Sleepy Newton
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sure. But was Newton really asleep? Wasn't he there, then, too? I guess
not. And why? Because he didn't recognize the beauty all around him, while
drawing on that rock? Whoever Newton's wife was... at least in the dream of
that Blakean watercolour/print...hey, she was one lucky emanation! And
wasn't it rather Urizenic of Blake to insist on strong line delineations in
art?
-Randall Albright
>Surely to`be here now' as Randall quotes from Dass, is to begin to
>awaken from `Sleep', yet not to confuse Waking with the State of Sleep?
>Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 14:50:44 -0500 (CDT)
From: RPYODER@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Blake and Archetype Cities
Message-Id: <960719145044.603428ea@ualr.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
What does it mean for Blake to be "ecology-minded"? I've been thinking about
building Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land -- what is the status
of the land here? Well, it's here to build a city on. However green and
pleasant the land may be, the last thing anybody really wanted was *unimproved" nature. Broadly speaking, in the 18th century there is a spectrum running
from nature to art to artifice. Artifice is bad because it makes you look
insincere; nature is not quite bad, but it wants the human touch -- where man
is not, existence is not. England may be green and pleasant, but it needs a
good city.
Perhaps we can use this idea to reconcile the city/country business. Regardlessof what I or others think, we are not going to settle the question of what
Blake *really* liked. Indeed, in those terms, who really cares? We can say,
though, that he begins with pastoral lyric and ends with urban epic (roughly
speaking). There are, of course, some great pastoral episodes in the later
poems (the song of larthe song of the lark and other birds in *Milton*), and several city scenes in the earlier works, but generally I think these contours
work. The movement from pastoral to urban would seem to put pressure on the
Urizen books which are set . . . .where?
Paul Yoder
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 16:19:23 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Joseph of Arimathea
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Did he and Jesus get to Somerset? And isn't the Holy Grail supposed to be
buried near Glastonbury? Some people in Glastonbury believe that, at least.
While we watch "Independence Day" in this country, some in Somerset,
England are waiting for the REAL white light to come back again.
-Randall Albright
>>There is Church of England legend that Joseph of Arimethea was first to
>>preach on Albion's shore. But I don't know if this twaddle is a very late
>>emendation formed as a reaction by Victorian Divines against the Oxford
>>Anglo-Catholics. In other words, if it was an old legend, why doesn't Blake
>>use/abuse it.
>
>My understanding of the legend is that Jesus came to England with Joseph of
>Arimathea, who was his uncle and a tin merchant. (Mind you, the only
>authority I have for this at the moment is a reference in Iris Murdoch's
>novel _The Philosopher's Pupil_.) In that case, Blake implicitly *does*
>make use of the legend in the Preface to _Milton_: "And did those feet,"
>etc. Oddly enough, though, when I read the lyric on Plate 27 of
>_Jerusalem_, in which "She walks upon our meadows green: / The Lamb of God
>walks by her side," it seems to me that "those feet" in the _Milton_ lyric
>are equally those of Jerusalem and of the Lamb.
>
>Thanks for the support on the city/country question.
>
>Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 16:18:38 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: O'Keefe on Blake
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Jennifer:
Thanks for the stuff on O'Keefe's view of Blake on the evil Triad of
Bacon/Newton/Locke. It still leaves me with some questions:
1) Many was enamored with these men's philosophies, so Blake took it upon
himself to criticize their shortcomings. But where does he, in the official
poetry, REALLY criticize them beyond generalizing, himself? Where does he
talk about their "rationalist ideology attempts to transcend the minute
particulars of actual human experience through generalization"? All I seem
to get from Blake is the mechanistic wheels imagery, while he himself
merely generalizes three very complex men instead of attacking the specific
portions of their thought that he abhors? Same with when he attacks
Rousseau and Voltaire, or connects the Deists with Druids. This brings me
to Number Two.
2) Blake/Locke/Newton aren't myth makers. They aren't imaginative artists,
and that's part of their claim to immortal fame. Could his lack of
explanation about what pisses him off about them be part of what P.H.
Butter calls his lack of concern for the reader at times? Like... oh of
course! Those were the streets where you lived, Mr. Blake! And... if I find
your notes on Bacon's essays, I may get clued in to what specifically
angered you (which wasn't O'Keefe's point at all: it was about
exploitation).
3) Aren't achetypes like lamb/tiger/Urizen/Orc/Los a kind of
generalization, too? Sounds like a double-bind for Blake, if O'Keefe is
right, and I'm not sure he is.
-Randall Albright
>For anyone interested: An article by Vincent O'Keefe, "Debunking the
>Romantic Ideology: A Re-View of Blake's _Jerusalem_," in the new issue of
>_European Romantic Review_ (7:1), touches on issues raised by both Randall
>and Ralph lately. O'Keefe uses _J_ as an example that disproves McGann's
>theory that the Romantics all believed poetry could transcend material
>reality. On the contrary, O'Keefe sees Blake's attack on Bacon, Newton,
>and Locke (there you go, Randall!) as an attack on transcendence, because
>their rationalist ideology attempts to transcend the minute particulars of
>actual human experience through generalization. One might argue that
>O'Keefe is using "transcendence" in a very different sense, but it's an
>interesting article, both as a critique of McGann and as an explanation of
>Blake's view of Bacon et al.
>
>Jennifer Michael
--------------------------------
End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #90
*************************************