blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 98
Today's Topics:
Re: Eternity and Blakean Evolution -Reply
RE: Thel
Re: Eternity and Pictures
RE: Thel
Thel -Reply
RE: Thel -Reply
Returned mail: Host unknown -Forwarded
Re: Thel -Reply
Re: Thel -Reply
Re: Thel -Reply
Re[2]: Thel -Reply
Re: Thel -Reply
Re: Thel -Reply -Reply
Re: Thel -Reply -Reply
Re: Thel -Reply -Reply
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 1996 08:50:37 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, GASKINS@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU
Subject: Re: Eternity and Blakean Evolution -Reply
Message-Id:
Avery, I agree with all you say here and would like to attempt a reply to
what happens to the `bounding line' in Eternity where time and space are
merely potential, not actual. Blake's ` Eternal Great Humanity Divine', the
humane God who presides over Eternity permits His Children infinite
freedom. Thus, they may expand fully into His/Her bosom (since male
and female are united totally in Eternity) or contract towrds the core of
Selfhood which is necessary for every one to have individuality. The
degree of expansion or contraction is the `wiry' bounding line.
Yet, as some discussing this question have intimated, there IS a sense in
which time-space is inherent in Eternity since a portion of the godhead
itself contracts whenever a portion of an Eternal (as represented by
Urizen) contracts. Thus, in a very real sense, each Eternal carries his/
her own Heaven and Hell within him/herself. The `radix malorum' is like
the funnel of a tornado in my own imagination - opening from Eternity
into the created universe. Although Blake sees Urizen as creating the
initial downward-sucking vortex and then falling through 27 (at least)
vortices (an idea which, I think, Yeats picks up in A Vision, although
BLake's seems more closely related to Kabbalah, and Yeats's to
Blavatsky).
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 02 Aug 1996 06:11:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: RPYODER@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Thel
Message-Id: <960802061124.20214787@ualr.edu>
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Jennifer,
I can't speak for Pam, but the reading she suggests is very similar to that
offered by Helen Bruder in *Historicizing Blake* (1994), edited by Steve Clark
and David Worrall. I think Bruder's reading is fairly persuasive as far as it
goes -- she raises an interesting alternative to the standard reading, an
alternative that many of my students seem to sense as well -- but the
strangest (??) thing about the essay is her characterization of Bob Gleckner's
critique of *Thel* as having "an almost rabid ferocity" (148). There is a
ferocity about Bruder's essay that makes it something of a self-consuming
artifact, and a certain hyperbolic wittiness to it. But anyone who has worked
with Gleckner (he directed my dissertation, 1992) must be surprised at such
a characterization. I like Bentley's remark on this entry in his bibliographic
summary in *BIQ* Spring 1995: "I have encountered no other rabid critics this
year" (144).
It's worth a read.
Paul Yoder
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 09:33:18 -0500 (CDT)
From: Darlene Sybert
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Eternity and Pictures
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, R.H. Albright wrote:
> >> To me, that's empowerment and justifies... terribly sorry the intervention
> >> was ill-timed, Darlene and Paul, but... feeling that you should tap the God
> >> within you, as well as recognizing that there's a God greater than you. If
> >> eternity is made up of the little seconds like when Blake lived and when we
> >> live...>
> >
> > If you are still talking about Blake's works and haven't dropped
> > back into this world, then where did the God stuff come from?
>
I know I'm not making my question clear here because you didn't
even come close to ansering it. So let me try just once more..
You were discussing the relationship between time and eternity in
Blake's prophetic works...and jumped to the idea the God in everyone
has something to do with it.
Let's suppose that Blake did talk about the God within
you in his works...beyond that one line; and maybe he linked that to
the concept of Eternity...but YOU didn't. You leap from one topic
to the other. So I'm just asking how do you justify that leap?
I'm not saying the connection between God and Eterenity isn't there,
but I'm just wondering what led you to that conclusion.
Are you suggesting that--according to Blake-God is always in
everyone? everyone is always in Eternity? God and Eternity are
connected? Is that in his works? Or are you projecting your
Judeo-Christian heritage into Blake's poetry and READING
something into it that isn't there?
You seem to be saying that eternity implies a God so intrinsically
that Blake doesn't have to mention it...but is that true? If you
except the idea of eternity, do you then have to believe in God's
existence?
If you still don't see what I'm getting at, just ignore me and
I'll go away...maybe... :)
Darlene Sybert
http://www.missouri.edu/~c557506/index.htl
University of Missouri at Columbia (English)
TuTh 12:30-2:00 Tate Hall, Room 16 (Knock)
******************************************************************************
They say that Hope is happiness;/ But genuine Love must prize the past
And Memory wakes thoughts that bless/ They rose the first--they set the last.
And all that Memory loves the most/ Was once our only Hope to be,
And all that Hope adored and lost/ Hath melted into Memory.
Alas! it is delusion all;/ The future cheats us from afar/
Nor can we be what we recall,/ Nor dare we think on what we are. -Byron
******************************************************************************
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 18:43:42 -0400
From: hmora@dcc.uchile.cl (MORA RIQUELME HUGO ANDRES)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Thel
Message-Id: <199608022243.SAA04662@sunsite.dcc.uchile.cl>
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 05 Aug 1996 09:25:23 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu
Subject: Thel -Reply
Message-Id:
Yes, Jennifer, I am saying , as you suggest, that the Fall should be
avoided if possible and that I find the concept of `higher Innocence' to be
gained because of the Fall misleading. In Blake's longer poems, Africa,
like Albion, could have fallen, but his dear friends in Eternity came to his
rescue in time - before he fell too deeply into the `Sleep' which
overwhelms the soul and causes it to forget the principles of
Selflessness in Eternity. Friends, and even Jesus, also try to rescue
ALbion, but the downward tug of contraction is already too strong and
so he succumbs to his delusions. When LYca strays away from home,
she too begins to desire `Sleep' and becomes incarnated, much to her
parents' dismay. Thel is luckier because she flees in horror from her
foreseen lot on earth, after being kindly and eloquently reminded of the
divine vision of selfless love and the need to be mutually useful -even to
the point of self-annihilation - in the perpetual flux and transience of the
eternal worlds.
This is the view I presented of Thel in my doctoral thesis, and, in the
book I am writing on BLake and Kabbalah, I try to show how consistent
BLake's views are with those of the Kabbalah in this regard. As in Infant
Sorrow, where the child resists the restraints which are imposed on it
by mortal garments, swaddling bands and society, so in Kabbalah (in the
Zohar) the infant descending into flesh is resentful. Of course,
Wordsworth's "Intimations on Immortality" also come to mind here.
I would have responded sooner, but my computer keeps going into sullen
spasms. It too seems to want to remain unpolluted in cyperspace. Hope
it allows me to answer other letters today. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 05 Aug 1996 12:14:26 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, RPYODER@ualr.edu
Subject: RE: Thel -Reply
Message-Id:
Dear Paul, I was interested to hear of Helen Bruder. My own views
haven't been published but are fully recorded in my doctoral thesis on
BLake as long ago as 1973. I'll try to scan in some of the detailed writing
I've done on Thel when I get a chance to do so, ... right now, my car is
performing and getting stuck on the highway, my home telephone is out
of order, and this comouter gets `hung' and won't work! Pam
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 05 Aug 1996 13:06:53 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Returned mail: Host unknown -Forwarded
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Date: Mon, 05 Aug 1996 09:52:47 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, albright@world.std.com
Subject: Re: Eternity and Pictures -Reply
Dear Randall, I think God , for Blake , IS in all and that heaven and hell
are, in a sense, mental constructs. Urizen's becoming oblvious to the
divine vision of love causes the `hell' of this mortal life (which seems so
real and is so real to those embodied), .... but freed from the `cloud'
which obscures the heat of God's love (as in The Little Black Boy),
heaven may be perceived again by mortals.
In his `Proverbs of Hell' , Blake purports to have been a tourist in `hell',
where he says he gathered his Proverbs. However, what he means is
that he recalls wandering through imaginative visions in the holy fires of
God's spritiual realms where everything is the reverse morally of what
the church practises on earth. Thus, it is in Innocence that `Energy is
eternal delight' - certainly not on earth where the church becomes the
Restrainer of Energy and advocates `good' Passivity and parents follow
suit and teach children `to be seen , not heard' and all the other `thou
shalt nots' which Blake abhors.
Blake frequently takes this stand - of the one who has seen the
beginnings of the soul's journey in Eden and who is horrified by what he
sees, by contrast, on earth. This is his stance in "London", and in The
Book of Thel and many other of his `Songs'. Again, however, this view
of mine is not one which I have seen critics adopt - yet, without
understanding that Blake often poses as the Traveller from afar who has
seen Jerusalem in all her spledour, as opposed to Babylon in all her
Whoredom, much of Blake's meaning remains obscure and critics find it
necessary to posit several contradictory Blakes.
Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 08:35:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Avery F. Gaskins"
To:
Subject: Re: Thel -Reply
Message-Id:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
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Dear Pam,
I can see that you reject Hazard Adams's thesis that remaining in innocence
stifles the growth of the soul into "Higher Innocence" and I'll be very eager
to read your book and see how you argue your stance more fully. Is it already
in your dissertation? If so, does your university have a circulating copy that
I could request? In the meantime, I would just like to say that there is one
little detail in "The Book of Thel" that seems to underscore the idea that it
is a shame that Thel rejects Experience. She returns to "The Vales of Har"
which is populated by other eternals in a state of innocence (the family of
Tiriel) who act like spoiled brats. Selfishness is one of the aspects of a
child in innocence. Have you ever read "The Toddler's Creed"? It's amusing and
right on the mark. As Adams see the progression, we carry our selfishness into
Experience (cynicism) then move to Higher Innocence when we learn to reject it.
Yearning to return to a more innocent state (Beaulah) is proof that we still
are wallowing in selfishness. I'm sure you have answers to all this, and I'll
be eager to read them with an open mind, but I have to admit, I have found
Adams very useful for a long time and it will be hard to give him up.
Avery Gaskins
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:43:00 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Thel -Reply
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> When LYca strays away from home,
>she too begins to desire `Sleep' and becomes incarnated, much to her
>parents' dismay.
As I read "The Little Girl Lost" and "Found," when Lyca's parents
eventually find her in the "desart wild," they see that she isn't "lost" at
all, but safe in a Peaceable Kingdom of tygers, lions, and wolves, which
they apparently join also:
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell
Nor fear the wolvish howl,
Nor the lions growl.
This isn't to say that a fall is necessary, but that what looks like a fall
sometimes isn't. In this case, it seems that the "desart wild / Become[s]
a garden mild" through a change in human perception.
But back to Thel:
>Thel is luckier because she flees in horror from her
>foreseen lot on earth, after being kindly and eloquently reminded of the
>divine vision of selfless love and the need to be mutually useful -even to
>the point of self-annihilation - in the perpetual flux and transience of the
>eternal worlds.
But the examples of "mutual usefulness" are all profoundly embodied and
reek of mortality, e.g. becoming food for worms. It seems to me that the
Clod, the Lily, the Cloud, etc. are trying to reconcile Thel to her
mortality, and she can accept it in theory, but when she comes to the mouth
of the grave (which is also the gate of birth) she loses her nerve. The
questions that emanate from the pit all lament the opening of the senses to
danger and destruction, but the alternative is that they be closed, and
everywhere else Blake censures those who "close themselves up."
I'm by no means settled in my reading of the poem, however; I found out
recently when teaching it for the first time just how little I understand
it!
Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 13:46:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alexander Gourlay
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Thel -Reply
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Jennifer Michael is right that the Hazard-ous reading by Adams (and
countless others who don't know the natural world from a hole in the
ground) is completely unjustified by the text of the poem. The
vales of Har in the Book of Thel, whatever they are in Tiriel, are a place
where beings live and die, and love if they're smart. It is a version of
Arcadia, not heaven or preexistence. If it is an extraordinary world that
is so because it seems to have no male humans in it, except for Luvah, who
is the universal lover (and whose existence Thel cannot grasp). Thel is
like most Arcadians in that she doesn't get it-- though the beings she
meets assure her over and over that death (which is in most cases the
sacrifice of one's virgin self) is nothing important, she is convinced
that the real answer is in the grave. When she finally goes there she
hears only the echoes of her own silly questions from an empty pit; her
shriek is presumably a sign that she finally realizes that she has been
barking down the wrong hole. There are still plenty of questions about
this poem, but there is no question that Thel is heading in the right
direction at the end.
Sandy Gourlay
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 96 17:25 CST
From: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu
To: blake@albion.com, Alexander Gourlay
Subject: Re[2]: Thel -Reply
Message-Id: <199608052228.RAA21402@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Although I see Thel's final shriek as more ambiguous than Sandy
Gourlay does -- is she deeply enough shocked to break out of her
self-centeredness? -- I thoroughly agree with him that in this poem
the Vales of Har are not the same as in *Tiriel*: they do allow for
growth and change, living and dying, and the mother Earth who entices
Thel to explore the grave says that she's not only being given the
change to enter, but also to "return." Ages ago (1970), I tried in an
article in JEGP to get past the then-standard view that Har was a
pre-existent state and/or Lower Innocence and that Thel's dilemma was
whether or not to be born, and/or whether or not to give up her
virginity. It still seems to me that readers should NOT assume that
Thel's sole purpose in life is to find a lover and have babies, and
she's resisting her destiny. Her coming-of-age, meaning-of-life
questions are much broader and might be asked by young men as well:
Why does everything alive eventually have to die? When I die, of what
value will my life have been? Why are other (non-human) creatures able
to die without these complaints and regrets? How can I be happy in the
natural world when I have no real place or purpose in it, when my only
participation in nature is after death to feed the worms?
In her first two conversations, with the Lilly and the Cloud, Thel,
looking for obvious parallels with her own situation, draws back,
believing that their experience doesn't apply to her; she doesn't hear
the common theme that they are happy because they are in loving,
self-giving relationships, participating in the larger life of the
whole; she can't understand the secret of their affirmation of life:
"every thing that lives, / Lives not alone, nor for itself." But just
before she speaks with the Clod of Clay, she has something of a
breakthrough in being able, to her astonishment, to see the worm from
a new perspective: as an infant deserving of care and attention. I
believe that's why she seems more receptive to mother Earth's "I
ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love" and doesn't have to
be referred to yet another expert tutor. After hearing the Clod, Thel
quits crying, re-states what she's learned, and summons the courage to
enter ("and to return" from) the realm of death and, specifically to
linger beside "her own grave plot," where earth has stored up all her
sighs and moans (and complaints and fears). In my article I called
what Thel hears in the grave the "voice of her buried self."
I don't think she was ever supposed to stay down in that grave, which
she has entered prematurely, at the Clod of Clay's invitation, solely
in order to learn something. Finally, instead of asking others, she is
confronting her deeper identity and seeking her own answers -- which
turn out to be questions about sensuality and the senses and why there
should be restraints on the fulfillment of desire. This opportunity to
explore her fears was "given" especially to her by the Clod of Clay
and, presumably, by him "who smiles on all" and who "loves the lowly."
I see no reason to believe that IN THIS POEM Blake is presenting the
grave as the gateway to a richer, fuller life (that's just a
carry-over from neoplatonic interpretions or an over-schematic fixed
fourfold compartmentalized diagram: Eden, Beulah, Generation, Ulro,
from later poems superimposed backward on this one). But the grave IS
there to teach her, now that she's ready, something about life AND
death: Thel needs to die to herself in order to live more abundantly;
she needs to overcome her fear of death and (by implication) of sexual
experience. (Sandy is right that there aren't any male counterparts in
Thel's world, but maybe even if they had been there she wouldn't have
been able to see them.) At any rate, the poem ends with a piercing
moment of self-recognition, self-understanding -- but doesn't tell us
what Thel does with her new knowledge.
What are the possibilities? Her older sisters are shepherdesses (not,
apparently, wives and mothers). Thel has been too sickly and secretly
self-absorbed even to do this job. At the beginning of the poem she
has slipped away from everyone else, half in love with easeful death
as Keats might say, wishing to "fade away like morning beauty from her
mortal day" and "gentle sleep the sleep of death," yet questioning why
everything has to die. At the end she rejects death and flees back
into the sunlight of her own world, where we may hope she will at
least take up her neglected sheep-herding duties and go on learning
from those around her. She's no longer in her shell, no longer so
passive and weepy; maybe she'll open herself to a more demanding and
fulfilling way of life.
Didn't mean to go on so long. -- Mary Lynn Johnson
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 23:17:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Avery F. Gaskins"
To:
Subject: Re: Thel -Reply
Message-Id:
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Please show me Mr. Gourlay where anyone dies in "Tiriel."
Avery Gaskins
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 1996 09:17:18 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, GASKINS@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU
Subject: Re: Thel -Reply -Reply
Message-Id:
Dear Avery, both my MA and PhD theses are available . The first,
written under my maiden name of Dembo and for the University of North
Carolina at CHapel Hill was entitled "The Contrary Images of Light and
Darkness in the Prophetic Works ofWilliam Blake", 1973. The PhD is
entitled "Blake's Vision of the Fall and Redemption of Man", under my
married name, Van Schaik, University of South Africa, 1983. The Library
of Congress certainly has a copy of the first and I assume also of the
second. Re Thel and my understanding of Blake's vision of Innocence -
this, is , of course, fully developed in the doctorial thesis in which I
explore all the contrary images as they relate to Innocence and
Experience (whereas in the Ma I only focused on light and darkness,
constantly aware of how these spill over into all the others).
In answer to the specific problems you raise, to see selfishness as
carried into the fallen world of Nature from the realms of Innocnece is to
invalidate all that Innocence stands for - and not to have grasped at all
the central significance of Jesus and Jerusalem as the prototypes of
divine love in Eternity. All that exists in Innocence aspires to expand into
the light of Jerusalem and through unity with her, become one with
Jesus. This expansion away from the core of selfishness is what
sustains all beings in Innocence. To assume that there never was a
complete state of expansion into the bosom of God on the part of all his
Children is simply to discard one entire half of the equation since
Experience is seen as a Negation of the necessary contraries in Eden
and Beulah. Not only is Eden (being the fieriest realm in the `bosom. of
God) the contrary of Beulah (where the light of God is less fierce, so
allowing for forms to be visible because there is some contrat between
light and dark), but in these two realms of Innocence, all the contraries,
created by the various degrees of expansion and contraction of the
Eternals, are represented.
When any spiritual being in these realms of Innocent contraries
contracts too far into the SElfhood, only then does Adams' image of
selfishness appear. Those who do so contract, however, immediately
begin to wish to lie down and `Sleep' becuase their eternal expansive
senses become sluggish when they cease to behold the divine vision of
love which sustains them in Innocence. This is why Thel wants to lie
down and fade from her eternal day. Being the youngest of the
Seraphim who burn with ardour in praise of God, she has not fully
understood the principles which sustain all in Innocence. The Liliy and
CLoud try to remind her of the selfless loves exemplified by Jesus and
Jerusalem.
My problem with practically ALL the critics on BLake is that they do not
seem to grasp the central symbols of the poet on which they have built
successful careers. There is `higher innocence' only in the sense that
all the Eternals learn what happens when one of their number contracts
too far, and too fast for remedy, into the Selfhood. From Albion's
example, all the female emanations of heaven learn to take particular
care to remain `one' in intellect and will with their `masculine'
counterparts as, only in this way, can error be averted in a system
which depends on the systole and diastole of expansion/contraction.
Blake's placing of THel in the Vales of Har which are associated with
the walrussy Har and Heva is , I think, the cause of much
misinterpretation. But to build a case re Thel's selfishness in fleeing back
to Beulah on the fact that she is like the characters in Thiriel, is to base
one's assumptions on very narrow data. Place this assumption against
all that one gleans of the Fall in the Prophetic Books and the case
appears very weak.
Hope this helps ... will have to get over my addiction to replying here if I
am to get on with putting everything up on a Website... but after years of
silence, this group provides a wonderfully spontaneous democracy of
interpreters. Thanks Seth and all who are participating for a liberating
experience. Pam van Schaik.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 1996 09:31:46 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, agourlay@risd.edu
Subject: Re: Thel -Reply -Reply
Message-Id:
Dear Sandy, I think you are right in suggesting that Blake;s vision in The
Book of THel is Arcadian, but this does not mean that it is not his view of
Beulah in heaven in Innocence. (The anti -Hazard Adams view,
incidentally, is mine, not Jennifer' s ... my mail got sent to her in some
way and she re-routed it to the line.) Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 1996 10:01:14 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu
Subject: Re: Thel -Reply -Reply
Message-Id:
Dear Jennifer, I don't think that the advice given by the Cloud and Lily
can be seen as primarily reconciling Thel to her mortality, given the fact
that she is the youngest of Mne Seraphim and so clearly a spiritual being
- yet one who lacks , on account of her youth, the depth of
understanding of other Eternals re Innocence. As a type of sublime
allegory, however, the poem has the effect of reconciling us to our
mortality since it intimates a world in which divine love restores every
particle of earthly life to eternal life. Implied, surely, is the notion that we
should not assume that our mortal bodies are our only, or true, identities.
Constant Self-annihilation is seen as the mystical paradox of eternal
life: all the beings in the eternal realms who appear and dissolve like
rainbows, or reflections in a mirror, or a baby's smiles (to paraphrase
Thel herself) know that the perpetual flux of life in God's light is what
sustains them in unity with the divine source of light and love.
Mortal life is the `grave' of all that Innocence is. I always find it hard to
understand in what sense critics can find the sexual and selfish loves of
those enclosed in flesh superior to the commingling of one's entire
essence with that of others in the fiery loves of Eden. Of course, like
every other mortal, I am in no hurry to discard my mortal covering, but I
love Blake for presenting a view of a wonderfully loving God in a
wonderfully intellectually stimulating and erotic heaven (i.e. the Eternal
Great Humanity Divine as opposed to little Urizen).
I do not see the CLoud and Lily as `profoundly embodied' and `reeking of
mortality' because, as Blake's illustrations suggest, he is depicting the
divine human forms of the Cloud, Lily and Clay - the faces they have
when infused with the humanity of God in the spiritual realms of
Innocence. In Kabbalah, too, there is a concept of the Large and Small
faces of God which can easily be related to Blake.
I'll try to reply re Lyca on a separate letter ...after going to tea. Pam
--------------------------------
End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #98
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