blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 92
Today's Topics:
Locked Up
Re: Locked Up
Re: Locked Up
Re: Locked Up
Re: Locked Up
Re: Locked Up
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 12:29:01 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Locked Up
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Darlene:
I thought your response to my complaint about Blake's vagueness on
Bacon/Locke/Newton was adorable.
>Part of Blake's accomplishment, of course, is the way he
slides these critiques of mis-thinking into his works
in bits and pieces, which build up into a refutation
of An Erroneous Idea.>>>>>>
Yeah, they just kind of drop in, don't they? And what erroneous ideas does
he replace them with?
>The reader has to work at it
if he wants an explicit statement.....>>>>>>>>>
I've worked at it. I don't see anything explicit.
> oh, well, if you don't want to, you could read _Fearful
Symmetry_. Frye gathers up all those bits and pieces
in one place for the edification of he who runs,
especially Locke who gets the first chapter."The Case
Against Locke.">>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes. Ask the Experts. Forget your "personal relationship" between Blake and
you. I'll listen to Frye sometime on this. Light some candles at the altar,
while I'm at it. Wasn't this Luther's big complaint against the Catholic
Church, by the way? Ask the Experts..........................
> Blake's marginalia in his copy of Bacon's _Essays_
is somewhat explicit. You can find it in Keynes,_Complete
Writings of William Blake_>>>>>>>>>>>
Cool. In the meantime, the official poetry...? Pestilence for "America",
starvation and death for "Europe"... which happened after the Revolution as
well as afterwards. It's, perhaps, BORING to think in terms of boiling
water (which wasn't discovered, using the scientific method, until after
Blake's death) as a way to get rid of cholera. Desart religion's
myth-making says: "You did something wrong, and now you will be punished."
The Pilgrims had a great catch-all word for just about everything that
happens in life: "God's will." Maybe they were right. But it makes you feel
kind of... passive... like it's beyod your control. Don't we at least need
the ILLUSION of free will? Otherwise, why CHANGE?
Actually, it's quite fascinating to me, how he rejects these people that
were making enormous strides that we still live in the afterglow of... to
make his own. And what happened to his notes on Locke and Newton? Lost, I
heard. So it's a problem when you don't articulate yourself in the official
canon, and people don't read every letter you wrote and every book you
marked up that hasn't been preserved, or passively obey the conclusions of
the immortal Frye or Erdman or Bloom.
Frankly, I still don't get it. Voltaire wasn't an imaginary genius like
Blake, but he savaged the Church in one of the Philosophical Dictionary
quotes I typed for this group by pointing out what a radically different
view India/Hinduism had on life. And why? He was trying to trailblaze
FREEDOM. I hear Blake actually loved the Bhagavad-Gita. In the canon, no
mention of any merit... and of course the Greeks are Druid
people-sacrificers (?), unlike the Christians... or that's how the
Christians went wrong... Egypt is unmentionable, those slave-owning
geometry masters that both the Greeks and Romans admired so highly. The
invention of a ZERO... borrowed from the Arab world... merely another
element in Newton's sleep!
> In "There is No Natural Religion," the first series states
Locke's philosophy of the five senses until it becomes absurd
and Blake finishes it off with:
"If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character, the
Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, &
stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again."
(You remember that, don't you?)>>>>>
Oh yeah. I think I'd call it: flawed reasoning. And to say the scientific
(Locke is a social scientist) is the same as art, or that without the
"icing on the cake" that art provides, it would be a dull broken record...
it's garbage. Science progresses. There's a way to fight cholera. There's
progress in the AIDS fight. It doesn't just go round and round, dull. And
neither does art.
> The second series of that poem contradicts the aphorisms of the
first series and says "He who sees the Infinite in all things,
sees God. He who sees the Ratio only, sees himself only.
Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is."
(Note the present tense.)>>>>>>>
I have no problem with contradictions, but the point to me remains largely
the same. And the last sentence.... not perfect language, in my opinion. I
like to think of it in a Buddhist, unfolding lotus fashion. Or in a Holy
Ghost, St. Paul "we are different parts of the body of Christ"... sorry, I
don't have the exact quote with me. But like Friedlander, who said he lives
in Bromion's quarter, we all do what we can do. Certainly, Blake did. And
so do I. But frankly, I don't judge men who are fools or knowledgeable on a
hierarchical scale of whom to love most, and that's another heresy from
what I know as Christian Doctrine. (Everlasting Gospel). Blake has an
arrogant side to him-- at least, as Friedlander points out in his WebSite,
in his public persona-- that is both necessary to instill confidence in his
words and undermines his message at the same time. He has no humility...
look up what The Immortal Damon says about humility, and again you'll see a
parallel to Nietzsche. Thank God he says he's been less than a great
Christian himself in the first plate of "Jerusalem"... as if I didn't know,
already, reading his earlier works.
> I think the only place there is a sustained comment on Newton,
it concerns his Unitarianism (Everlasting Gospel), but scattered
through Milton, Jerusalem and the Songs of Innocence are allusions
to Newton's omission of God, man and life from the Universe.
BUT, as ye old faithful Damon points out, when error is at its
height, it's end is near:
It is the "mighty Spirit from the land of Albion named Newton"
who has the power to blow 'the Trump of the last doom' (Europe)>>>>>>>>
Darlene, you're reinforcing a bad Blakean headache right now.
>In the poetry, look at Jerusalem, plate 93 where Enitharmon
has a few things to say about Bacon, Newton and Locke.
and Los says they were a necessary evil to "prepare the way"
for Truth (a rather obvious plagarism of the New Testament, but
we'll let it pass).>>>>>>>>>
A necessary evil... my my. Los was in error. Even Mary Baker Eddy couldn't
have set him straight. Locke, the weakenned Restoration, and many other
factors of what we now call the Modern World PAVED the way to protect
heretics like Blake from being persecuted. (Hey, I live near Salem,
Massachusetts. Blake wouldn't have stood chance there!) Jesus the
Revolutionary AGAINST God? Heresy. Jesus the mortal man BECOMING God after
death and mortal encumbrances-- bye, bye, Old Father? Heresy. God creating
Man like an S&M joke? Heresy. Blake=Los=Jesus? Only in the metaphor of Holy
Spirit. Humpty-Dumpty God's 10 Commandments having to get glued back
together again by Milton, as drawn by Blake? OK........ I could go on and
on, but instead I'll end with this: Blake is great when he challenges
assumptions. When he pronounces conclusions... hey, maybe it's like
horseradish and I'll grow into it, which happened one time when I
interspersed it with apple crushed stuff and Matzah at a Passover feast.
Still not but my favorite, but... now I even love occasional Virgin Marys!
-Randall Albright
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 14:03:16 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Locked Up
Message-Id: <9607211909.AA01888@uu6.psi.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>> Blake's marginalia in his copy of Bacon's _Essays_
> is somewhat explicit. You can find it in Keynes,_Complete
> Writings of William Blake_>>>>>>>>>>>
>
>Cool. In the meantime, the official poetry...?
Randall, I keep hearing you blame Blake for not putting his view of Bacon
into his "official canon," but we are the ones who make canons. His
marginalia to Reynolds (which, by the way, includes his rejection of
Locke's "tabula rasa" theory) has practically become canonical. I think
you said recently (I can't find the post) that Bacon/Newton/Locke were not
visionary artists, so it was unfair of Blake to apply his standards to
them. At the same time, Blake was not a scientist nor, primarily, a
philosopher (here I'll duck), so why should his poems be about Newtonian
physics? And yes, the Deists may have been more tolerant of Blake than
the Puritans would have been, but it's a limited world in which your
enemy's enemy automatically becomes your friend.
>So it's a problem when you don't articulate yourself in the official
>canon, and people don't read every letter you wrote and every book you
>marked up that hasn't been preserved,
It's all there in Erdman. People can read it or not, as they choose.
>Oh yeah. I think I'd call it: flawed reasoning. And to say the scientific
>(Locke is a social scientist) is the same as art, or that without the
>"icing on the cake" that art provides, it would be a dull broken record...
>it's garbage. Science progresses. There's a way to fight cholera. There's
>progress in the AIDS fight. It doesn't just go round and round, dull. And
>neither does art.
What do you make of this passage from _Milton_?
But in Eternity the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music,
And Architecture which is Science: are the Four Faces of Man.
Not so in Time & Space: there Three are shut out, and only
Science remains thro Mercy: & by means of Science, the Three
Become apparent in Time & Space, in the Three Professions
Poetry in Religion: Music, Law: Painting, in Physic & Surgery:
That Man may live upon Earth till the time of his awaking,
And from these Three, Science derives every Occupation of Men. (27.55-62,
E 125)
In the beautiful passage that follows, the Sons of Los build "houses," or
bodies, for souls. So it seems to me that Blake identifies architecture
with science, and through science the professions, because these
professions create structures that enable people to live on earth. But
would you really want science without art? Would science have any moral
direction, or would it devolve into the horrific experiments of the
Holocaust? ("Let's see what happens if . . . .") You're an artist,
Randall: what connection do *you* see between painting and medicine?
Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 15:55:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Avery F. Gaskins"
To:
Subject: Re: Locked Up
Message-Id:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Blake's comments on "seeing" and "doors of perceptions" were mainly reactions
to Newtonian physics, particularly his optics, which Blake knew very well;
"seeing" is vital to an artist.
Avery Gaskins.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 14:55:09 -0500 (CDT)
From: Darlene Sybert
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Locked Up
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Sun, 21 Jul 1996, R.H. Albright wrote:
> I thought your response to my complaint about Blake's vagueness on
> Bacon/Locke/Newton was adorable.
Hmmm...I think there is a slur in there, but I guess
I will just ignore it...
> of An Erroneous Idea.>>>>>>
>
> Yeah, they just kind of drop in, don't they? And what erroneous ideas does
> he replace them with?
>
Asi es la vida!
>
> Yes. Ask the Experts. Forget your "personal relationship" between Blake and
> you. I'll listen to Frye sometime on this. Light some candles at the altar,
Well, you WERE the person who asked for some specific
passages...sorry I don't have time to look them up this
week and, anyway, Frye has already invented that wheel
so why should I do it again...especially for someone who
is perfectly capable of doing it himself. (Well, I tried
to say it nicely, but you just kept on.)
>
> heard. So it's a problem when you don't articulate yourself in the official
> canon, and people don't read every letter you wrote and every book you
As I said, Blake did write it: it's there. But you have
to read and think to find it. Blake is one of those inter-
active texts where the reader has to be able to think, make
connections and understand a few literary techniques, like
irony, satire, metaphor, allusions, allegory, etc.
>
> Oh yeah. I think I'd call it: flawed reasoning. And to say the scientific
> (Locke is a social scientist) is the same as art, or that without the
> "icing on the cake" that art provides, it would be a dull broken record...
> it's garbage. Science progresses. There's a way to fight cholera. There's
I think Locke's particular kind of progresss was exactly what
Blake was concerned about... Have you read Locke himself?
I asked because you do not seem to realize that his writings
have literary value as well as communicating ideas...some people
might even say literature communicates ideas, but I don't want to
go over board here..
> Ghost, St. Paul "we are different parts of the body of Christ"... sorry, I
> don't have the exact quote with me. But like Friedlander, who said he lives
This bugs me for you to say, sorry, I don't have the right
quote...are you hoping someone will look it up for you?
That's what quote marks mean, you know: this is
what he said. And the kind of willy nill quotes and connections
you make is going to give Paul a bad rep
>
> Darlene, you're reinforcing a bad Blakean headache right now.
>
I'm not "reinforcing" anything. I'm just trying to direct
you to the parts of Blake where you can find his explicit responses
to Bacon, Newton and Locke instead of just put downs...which is what
you wanted to find you said. Obviously, that wasn't what you
wanted...you just wanted to SAY, I wish Blake would be explicit about
the issues instead of just critical...
Another quote for you, "Ask and you shall receive..."
(so be careful what you ask for.)
Darlene Sybert
http://www.missouri.edu/~c557506/index.htl
University of Missouri at Columbia (English)
******************************************************************************
Once we have left the waters of the womb, we have to construct a space for
ourselves in the air for the rest of our time on earth--air in which we can
breathe and sing freely, in which we can perform and move at will. -Irigaray
******************************************************************************
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 20:17:50 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Locked Up
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
First a quote from Bryan Magee (Ask the Experts!) in this house where I'm
temporarily lodged.....
"....part of Locke's message always was: 'Don't blindly follow convention
or authority. Look at the facts and think for yourself.' In politics this
was revolutionary in an lmost literal sense. In France it had a dominating
influence on Voltaire and the Encyclopeadists, and thus on the intellectual
ferment that preceded the French Revolution. In American, the Founding
Fther had Locke consciously in min, and made repeated references to him,
when they were drawing up the American Constitution."
-from _The Great Philosophers_, Oxford, 1987
Doesn't this sound like a FRIEND of Blake's, not an enemy?
OK....
Jennifer Michael wrote:
>I think
>you said recently (I can't find the post) that Bacon/Newton/Locke were not
>visionary artists, so it was unfair of Blake to apply his standards to
>them. At the same time, Blake was not a scientist nor, primarily, a
>philosopher (here I'll duck), so why should his poems be about Newtonian
>physics?>>>
His poems vaguely deride. To me, that's a problem. Why do I need to go
outside _The Illuminated Blake_ to find the marginalia to Reynolds... and
I'll find it, believe me, now that you've pointed me there.... when it
should be in the poems themselves? Or did Blake append notes to his
illuminated works for his customers?
>And yes, the Deists may have been more tolerant of Blake than
>the Puritans would have been, but it's a limited world in which your
>enemy's enemy automatically becomes your friend.
What? I thought this was a friend of Thomas Paine's, of Mary
Wollstonecraft's. Not enemies of enemies, by any sense of the word. I
thought Jerusalem's name was LIBERTY or FREEDOM, not IGNORANCE and
SUPERSTITION.
>What do you make of this passage from _Milton_?
Oh, Jennifer! You've chosen my FAVORITE Blake poem!
>But in Eternity the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music,
>And Architecture which is Science: are the Four Faces of Man.
>Not so in Time & Space: there Three are shut out, and only
>Science remains thro Mercy: & by means of Science, the Three
>Become apparent in Time & Space, in the Three Professions
>
>Poetry in Religion: Music, Law: Painting, in Physic & Surgery:
>That Man may live upon Earth till the time of his awaking,
>And from these Three, Science derives every Occupation of Men. (27.55-62,
>E 125)
Actually, I lied. This is one of my least favorite Blake poems. Too bad,
because on his earlier stuff I can wax ecstatic at times......
As far as the quote, I disagree with his constructs. First, time and space
is all that we have. (Blake had to correct Milton. I have to correct
Blake.) They make up eternity. When the Milky Way STOPS spinning, implodes,
that's no eternity. That's THE END. And even then, another big bang may
come out of the implosion. I relate more to cycles of reincarnation than a
mere Time and Space versus Eternity could explain. "Mental Traveller" would
have been MUCH easier for me to agree with his construct. And unlike
Gloudina and Ivan, I don't think you EVER get out of the cycle... although
there's always the possibility of Nirvana!
Second, his poetry=religion, etc. doesn't make sense to my modern mind,
although I sympathize if he's trying to say these are "debased". But this
is the Blake I really don't like. A kind of teacher, not a
dilemma-presenter. And even though the Lamb poem in _Songs_ may sound like
a teacher, it's the questions he poses in something like that or many of
the shorter works that I like. Or the fireworks in "MHH". They opens doors
of perception, rather than pushing me into a world of constructs with which
I disagree. Emanation, specter, Satan, Satan everywhere with not a drop to
drink...
>In the beautiful passage that follows, the Sons of Los build "houses," or
>bodies, for souls. So it seems to me that Blake identifies architecture
>with science, and through science the professions, because these
>professions create structures that enable people to live on earth.>>>>>
Oh God... I'll read it again sometime....... really, I will. My stained
eyes, I'll put them in clear water and give it a 10,000th chance. My soul
is in my body, an ORGANIC architecture that no mere "son of Los" could
create. And if Sons of Los are then jump-shifting from building bodies for
souls to creating professions... this "behind the surface" works for me
with "Mental Traveller", but this? As they say in Boston, LAY-TUH. I
withhold judgement.
>But would you really want science without art?>>>>
Of course not! One of my favorite public sculptures is of Art FACING
Science. They interact. They need each other.
>Would science have any moral
>direction, or would it devolve into the horrific experiments of the
>Holocaust? ("Let's see what happens if . . . .")>>>>>>
And does art give moral direction? Sometimes. To a critical mind, who
filters, you can find it in a number of ways. Is Locke rightly served by
Hitler and the Holocaust? This is exactly my point. What's Blake's
alternative? Jesus, yes, scientific method, no. (Everlasting Gospel)
>You're an artist,
>Randall: what connection do *you* see between painting and medicine?>>>>>>>
Lots. One of my brothers is a doctor and another is a dentist. And one
thing that they and I do is practice our "art" every day. Unfortunately,
artists don't get alot of respect or money. As I said in an earlier post,
Blake was living at a time when this patronage problem was becoming
difficult. Michelangelo had the Pope. Van Gogh... the marketplace. I have
starving artist friends that are disturbingly close to eating out of a dog
can for dinner, yet I think their art should be in museums. So I have
chosen to work with... guess what? Science for $$$. Computers, to be
precise, which is why it may seem like I'm always on the Internet. Then one
of my best friends is a doctor who collaborated on 3 of the 10 calendars I
sold at the Hirshhorn. (In other words, he's also an artist.) Checkov (sp?)
was a doctor, too.
And, yes, I see divergences between my doctor and dentist brothers and me.
But I relate more to them than my artist brother who's now an art director
for a catalog. So it doesn't add up. I should relate to the artist,
shouldn't I? But I don't. Maybe I'm seeking balance, maybe we're
competitive, maybe the vibes are just WRONG. But I thank God for Bacon,
because one of my brothers is very sick, and if it weren't for the
scientific method, alot of us would now be DEAD. It isn't art, but ethics,
that determines when you're crossing the line in the name of science, I
believe. And it's still evolving. Cruelty to animals for shampoo products?
Wouldn't have heard of it in the 1950s.
Of course the universe isn't a machine! But isn't it great that they know
Halley's Comet comes back precisely at the 75 (is that right?) year button?
I am not a clock. But I like to wear a watch.
Regards-
Randall Albright
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 23:51:27 -0400
From: WaHu@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Locked Up
Message-Id: <960721235126_581798033@emout15.mail.aol.com>
Bravo Darlene!
All I can add is He who mocks Northrop Frye, shall be mocked in age and
death.
I disagree profoundly with much of Frye now, but I know he is a great hero
of light and learning. He always wrote honestly of what he saw and read. It
seems silly to have to say this.
Mr. Allbright often sounds like a drunk in a sports bar claiming he could
have knocked out Muhammad Ali, or hit more home runs than Babe Ruth.
"I could have been a contender...." Where is that quote from?
Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com
--------------------------------
End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #92
*************************************