Today's Topics:
Re: Opie/WB Society
Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc -Reply
Ackroyd Bio Query from Charlie -Reply
Peter Ackroyd's new novel
Re: Blake & Caribbean & Walcott & Texas
Re: Blake & Caribbean: Glissant? Harris?
Re: Visual and Verbal Blakes
Re: Peter Ackroyd's new novel
Re: Visual and Verbal Blakes
Re: Blake & Caribbean: Glissant? Harris?
Re: Blake & Caribbean: Glissant? Harris?
WILSON HARRIS ON BLAKE'S TYGER (reposting)
DEREK WALCOTT REACHES FOR BLAKE (SIGHTINGS) [reposting]
Visual and Verbal Blakes
Quote
removal
Quote
Visual and Verbal Blakes
Re: removal
Re: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc -Reply
Re: Visual and Verbal Blakes
MORE DEREK WALCOTT QUOTES ON BLAKE
Re: Quote
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 08:03:26 MET
From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER"
To: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly), blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Opie/WB Society
Message-Id:
March 29th, 1997
Two notes with respect to (not so) recent inquiries:
(1) JOHN OPIE's portrait of Basil Montagu[e]:
No, I too cannot provide a reference to the present whereabouts of
Opie's portrait of Basil Montagu[e], a painting which, as Susan
Reilly pointed out before, seems to have disappeared soon after the
publication of John Jope Rogers's *Opie and His Works* (London:
Colnaghi's, 1878). No sale of this portrait is recorded in the
extensive list of Opie transactions provided in Algernon Graves,
*Art Sales from Early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the
Twentieth Century* (1918-1921, rpt., Bath, Soms.: Kingsmead Reprints,
1973), 297-299. However, Rogers's information on the painting is
repeated on p. 294 of Ada Earland's *John Opie and His Circle*
(London: Hutchinson, 1911):
MONTAGUE, BASIL, Q.C. (1770-1851). Size 50 x 40 in. Exhibited
at the National Portrait Exhibition, 1868 (No. 183). Formerly
in possession of Mr. Bryan Waller Proctor.
Earland also refers to a visit Opie paid to Mary Wollstonecraft and
William Godwin on September 3rd, 1797, a few days before
Wollstonecraft's death. He was accompanied by no other than Basil
Montagu[e] on this occasion (see p. 123). The inclusion of the
painting in the 1868 NP exhibition as #183 is also listed (as "Basil
Montagu. 50 x 40") in Algernon Graves's *A Century of Loan
Exhibitions 1813- 1912*, vol. 1 (1913, rpt., Bath, Soms.: Kingsmead
Reprints, 1970), 880, where the name of the owner is (mis-?) spelt
"Bryan Waller Procter" (the index of owners in vol. 3, 1915, rpt.,
1970, 2563, has "Proctor" as in Earland). The portrait may have been
commissioned by (or given by the sitter as a present to) George
Procter (or Proctor). As has been mentioned in Keri Davies's note
on the subject, Henry Crabb Robinson (according to his diary)
reported to Blake in January 1826 that he had found him two new
subscribers for the *Job* engravings; their names: Basil Montagu and
George Procter ... .
In order to trace the provenance of Opie's painting beyond the entry
in Rogers's catalogue, it may be useful to consult *The Index of
Paintings Sold in the British Isles During the Nineteenth Century*
which is part of "The Provenance Index of the Getty Art History
Information Program" and can now be accessed on the Internet from the
Getty homepage.
(2) BLAKE-RELATED WEBSITES:
Information on the activities of the Blake Society of St. James's is
said to be available at the following URL:
http://www.efirstop.demon.co.uk/BlakeSociety/
--DW Doerrbecker
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 1997 09:23:11 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com, UTIL.SMTP1@ALPHA.UNISA.AC.ZA
Subject: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc -Reply
Message-Id:
I find it hard to equate the Rose with Satan, as suggested in your last
posting. This is because I believe there is consistency in Blake's vision
of the Garden of Love in Eternity which contained the healthy Rose. In
health, univaded by the Devourer, the prolific Rose would have had a
divinely human form (as can be seen in the illustration to the Sick Rose)
and like the Lily of the Valley (in The Book of Thel) she would have shed
her fragrance selflessly on others. She would also have opened her
beauty unashamedly and have had no need of thorns to protect her,
since in Eternity, all mingle incessantly in love in fiery ardour in odrer to
lose their sense of isolated self and participate in God's unity. The Sick
Rose falls ill because love in the fallen world is selfish and devouring ...
the lover desiring mainly to satisfy self. The contraries for me are
therefore Rose (good) and Worm (bad) and are not reversible. Pam van
Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 1997 10:16:29 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Ackroyd Bio Query from Charlie -Reply
Message-Id:
Ithink Blake would have loved what you say here in your last posting.
Pam
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 1997 08:57:34 -0800
From: Steve Perry
To: Blake List
Subject: Peter Ackroyd's new novel
Message-Id: <33413E7D.521@surf.com>
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Hurriedly ducked into Barnes=A0&=A0Nobel to get out of the rain this =
weekend
and saw a new novel by Peter Ackroyd entitled _Milton in America_.
The cover illustrates Blake's Milton being struck in the foot by the fall=
ing
star, from _Milton_(32). I was with wet an cold wife and child who
were in no mood to wait for me to read the dust jacket, so I=A0have no id=
ea
what one might expect from this work.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 11:30:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake & Caribbean & Walcott & Texas
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970401143019.3007c5ba@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Well, thanks to W. Franklin and J. Michael and the rest for attempting to be
helpful. I assumed of course that people whose meal ticket is lit crit
would be closer to the research than I am, e.g. that somebody else might
have already done the investigation of the history of teaching Blake in the
schools. I am prepared to do some things that nobody else has done, but not
something like this.
I do have some books to hand on the history of West Indian literature, even
on the impact of colonialism, but surprisingly nothing that mentions the
actual relationship of any writers to the various Romantics.
I've just persused some unpublished autobiographical manuscript material
that shows that C.L.R. James was thoroughly familiarized in school with
French Romantic literature. Still no new revelations on the English
romantics, and zero on Blake.
At 04:44 PM 3/31/97 -0600, William Neal Franklin wrote:
>Don't be so paranoid, Ralph. This is about the love of poetics and poets.
>Walcott is the genuine article. If you want to know more, write me and
>ask nicely and I'll tell you when he's speaking.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 11:30:44 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake & Caribbean: Glissant? Harris?
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970401143012.30af5004@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Thanks to Tom Dillingham for valuable information. The Walcott story is
indeed enigmatic. I think a while back on the Blake list I uploaded a quote
from Walcott in which he says he reaches for Blake in times of desperation.
More I don't know. I saw Brathwaite in person when he said iambic
pentameter was the enemy. As an American, I do not have the same
relationship to English cultural imperialism as the other colonized nations,
hece I can't honestly feel for Brathwaite's situation. The ethos of
englishness has snob value in the USA, which is why I boycott Masterpiece
Theater and all the stuffy crap on PBS, but I am not a victim of English
cultural imperialism, which I can easily laugh at from a safe distance. I
could only hope that West Indians be broad-minded enough to seaprate what
annoys them from what they can use. In my own case, I have never been
interested in anything English except the tradition of working-class
autodidacticism and William Blake. I could never believe Blake was even a
white man, let alone English. So I hope that West Indians would at least
recognize Blake as one of their own and not the enemy.
At 08:40 PM 3/31/97 -0600, TOM DILLINGHAM wrote:
>This is not a comprehensive answer to Ralph's query about West Indian
>responses to the Romantics ....
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 16:21:54 -0600 (CST)
From: Darlene Sybert
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Visual and Verbal Blakes
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
And what about the melodies he composed for
the _Poetical_Sketchses_? Are any of those
extant? Does anyone use any of those poems
when teaching Blake?
And about the Caribbean attitude towards Blake:
I didn't get to read all the posts yet and must
get back to reading Lacan, but I was reminded of
the recentness of Blake's addition to the Canon.
When I studied Romantic Poets for my bachelor's
degree in 1961 at San Diego SU, Blake was not
represented in the textbook at all (nor mentioned
in the class). I wonder if he was taught in
Britain's colonial schools...or only rightly
recognized by the Natives after independence
as a kindred spirit.
Darlene Sybert vsa
http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
....The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive the flesh.
Wordsworth, "The Dream"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 1997 15:10:36 -0800
From: David Rollison
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Peter Ackroyd's new novel
Message-Id: <334195E1.4C4E@marin.cc.ca.us>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Steve Perry wrote:
>
> Hurriedly ducked into Barnes & Nobel to get out of the rain this
> weekend and saw a new novel by Peter Ackroyd entitled _Milton in
> America_. The cover illustrates Blake's Milton being struck in the
> foot by the falling star, from _Milton_(32). I was with wet an cold
> wife and child who were in no mood to wait for me to read the dust
> jacket, so I have no idea what one might expect from this work.
The review in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle made Milton in America
sound very inviting, at least to me. It's narrated by a companion of
Milton's whose name--I hope I remember correctly--is Goosequill. He and
the blind old poet escape England after the Restoration threatens
Milton's freedom and they start a colony (or a t least a village) in
the New World. Milton falls prey to the corrupting forces that plague
tyrants, but, before the failure of his enterprise, regains his sight
and immerses himself in fleshly love with an Indian princess. He
renounces the thrill of the sensual, goes blind again, and stumbles,
Urizenically, away from his "paradise." I hope I got this right and
cannot wait to read the book itself.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 22:47:55 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Visual and Verbal Blakes
Message-Id: <97040122475592@wc.stephens.edu>
Several early biographers of Blake mention that he sang some of his
poems to tunes he devised himself, but that he had no knowledge of
musical notation and so did not preserve the melodies. Gilchrist
repeats this, but the other early writers are easily accessible in
Bentley's _Blake Records_. An anonymous essayist in 1830 comments
that "Blake in his single person united all the grand combination of
art and mind, poetry, music, and painting" and later says "This
grand combination of art succeeded in every particular, painting
being the flesh, poetry the bones, and music the nerves of Blake's
work." Bentley also provides excerpts from John Thomas Smith's
_Nollekens and His Times_: "Blake wrote many other songs, to which
he also composed tunes. These he would occasionally sing to his
friends, and though, according to his confession, he was entirely
unacquainted with the science of music, his ear was so good that his
tunes were sometimes most singularly beautiful, and were noted down
by musical professors." Unfortunately, if such professors made such
notations, they are not known or have not been found.
Allan Cunningham, in his 1830 essay, writes (with uncertain authority)
"As he drew the figure he meditated the song which was to accompany it,
and the music towhich the verse was to be sung, was the offspring too
of the same moment. Of his music there are no specimens--he wanted the
art of noting it down--if it equalled many of his drawings, and some
of his songs, we have lost melodies of real value."
It is generally agreed that the melodies, at least barring some surprising
discovery in a musical professor's attic, are lost.
This discussion of Blake's canonicity and the question of whether he
was taught in schools or not has been going on with some repetition and
confusion. It seems certain that Blake was not "forgotten" at any point
since his death, except insofar as remembrance is supposed to be equated
with inclusion in school curricula and textbook anthologies. Darlene's
memories of studying the Romantics in the late 50's early 60's parallel
my own--the course was called "Five Romantic Poets" and started with
Wordsworth--no Blake. Blake was included (some of the songs) in
R.P. Blackmur's lectures on the lyric poem, but his work was not
featured in any course I encountered during my undergraduate studies--
but by 1966, he was featured in a graduate course on Blake and Shelley
at Boston University and it was clear at that time that be waves of
Blake enthusiasm had begun to overwhelm even stodgy academic resistance.
But keep in mind that the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in Americna
academic study of literature are quite different from those of British
universities (which have always, I believe, been less dependent on
anthologies, for one thing, at least until recently), and both are
probably different from the imposed curricula in the British colonies
(at least if Michelle Cliff's portrayal of her heroine's schooling can
be trusted); as for Walcott's relationship to Blake, Ralph has offered a
more explicit version of the thought I was testing--that the poets
Walcott incorporates into _Another Life_ and many of his other poems
that explore the struggle with the effects of the colonial imposition
may well be those with whom he has a love/hate relationship--and Blake
may be left out because his unique character may seem to transcend the
baleful influence of Britishism, leaving him outside Walcott's
resentment, though still a powerful (unspoken) presence. But that is
speculation. It will be interesting to pursue it further--perhaps with
specific questions to Walcott.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 1997 12:21:11 +0000
From: timli@controls.eurotherm.co.uk (Tim Linnell)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake & Caribbean: Glissant? Harris?
Message-Id: <4897.199704021120@merlot.controls.eurotherm.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>autodidacticism and William Blake. I could never believe Blake was even a
>white man, let alone English. So I hope that West Indians would at least
>recognize Blake as one of their own and not the enemy.
It must be difficult for someone as evidently closed minded and bigoted as
this statement (and the rest of your message) shows you to be to have your
prejudices challenged in this way, but I would urge you to try. Blake was
indeed white and English, and still managed to produce work of universal
relevance, as have many others with the same disability. Claiming race or
nationality as the basis for merit or absence thereof is genuinely fascist
(not to mention your implication that West Indians are in some way the
'enemy' of the English), and wholly contrary to Blake's beliefs. Obviously
you haven't understood them.
Congratulations on your brave stand against Masterpiece Theatre though, I
myself boycott American situation comedy in protest against your record on
civil rights and the Indian massacres (there is also the question of the new
Immigration Laws, which might just cause me to stop watching Tom and Jerry,
but this would be something of a wrench). Which, of course, since you are an
inheritor of the American colonial tradition, I hold you personally
responsible for.
Tim
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 08:32:28 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake & Caribbean: Glissant? Harris?
Message-Id: <199704021632.IAA03523@igc2.igc.apc.org>
Sorry to violate your sensibilities, Tim. You don;t appreciate my humor,
do you? Another way to take my remarks would be thsat the very existence
of Blake ought to give pause to hasty generalizations about cultures, or at
least the notion that indiviudals can never in some measure trasncend
their social conditioning. I am no western civ basher, and Blake is
always my best counterexample to all the whining about the dead white males.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 08:45:03 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: WILSON HARRIS ON BLAKE'S TYGER (reposting)
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970402114424.2def5a2c@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 23:24:48 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Ralph Dumain
>To: blake@albion.com
>Subject: WILSON HARRIS ON BLAKE'S TYGER
>
>WILSON HARRIS ON WILLIAM BLAKE
>
>Harris, Wilson. "Guyana Prize Address", KYK-OVER-AL [Georgetown,
>Guyana], no. 38, June 1988, pp. 24-34.
>
>This is the expanded text of an address Harris gave on the
>occasion of receiving the 1987 Guyana Prize for Best Book of
>Fiction. Harris refers to Blake's "The Tyger" (p. 29) and the
>cross-cultural imagination. Harris was employed as a surveyor
>decades before he became a writer and led expeditions into
>Guyana's jungle. One of his crewmen came across this poem and
>couldn't understand it. Harris relates how he helped the crewman
>to find meaning in the lines "Tyger tyger burning bright / In the
>forests of the night". I do not have time now to type out
>Harris's text in full. Another time perhaps. You should know,
>however, that Harris is a brilliant man and one of the foremost
>writers of our time. C.L.R. James viewed Harris's work as an
>independent New World development with striking similarities to
>(but going beyond) European existentialism, specifically
>Heidegger. I met Harris and discussed James with him, but alas,
>not Blake.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 08:45:09 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: DEREK WALCOTT REACHES FOR BLAKE (SIGHTINGS) [reposting]
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970402114429.2def6d94@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>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)
>
>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: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 11:16:03 -0600 (CST)
From: Darlene Sybert
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Visual and Verbal Blakes
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Thanks, Tom, for answering my questions--both those I took time to send
and the other unanswered ones that I had to forego to get to my
lecture on time. I enjoyed reading your message with breakfast this
morning, particularly, the quotation from Smith's _Nollekens_ because it
was a few words from it (in quotation marks, but without a parenthetical
reference) in Perkins second edition of _English_Romantic_Poets_ that
revealed Blake's (alleged) musical talent to me recently. (Yes, I did
replace that 1961 edition, finally, but only because I'd run out of
margins for notes in the old one.)
I regret that Blake's music wasn't preserved. When the technology
for time travel is perfected, I'll start a campaign to send a musician
back for it. In the meantime, I wonder if any one else's muse has
inspired her/him to write music for Blake's _Sketches_: Jim Hendrix,
maybe, who studied and admired Blake. Can't you imagine him singing the
song in my signature tag line?
Walcott is a poet I enjoy, also. We taught his _Midsummer_
in our World Literature of the Twentieth Century class for awhile. It's
been a couple years, so I may have forgotten something, but I
can not recall any direct allusions to Blake. Walcott does take
a few swipes at Transcendentalism in Boston--which was a philosophical
relative if not direct heir of Swedenborg, quotes Milton and mentions a
poet or two in his back-in-time trip that parallels his drive through the
British countryside on a speaking tour. But, I digress...
Thanks again for such a comprehensive answer. I appreciated it.
Darlene Sybert vsa
http://www.missouri.edu/~engds/index.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
My silks and fine array,
My smiles and languish'd air,
By love are driv'n away;
And mournful lean Despair
Brings me yew to deck my grave:
Such end true lovers have.
His face is as fair as heav'n
When springing buds unfold;
O why to him was it giv'n
Whose heart is wintry cold?
His breast is love's all worship'd tomb,
Where all love's pilgrims come.
Bring me an axe and spade,
Bring me a winding sheet;
When I my grave have made,
Let winds and tempests beat:
Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay.
True love doth pass away!
-Blake, "Song" (1769) from _Poetical_Sketches_,1783
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 11:11:23 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704021808.LAA22909@gost1.indirect.com>
A common sense which denies the superiority of uncommon sense is
systematic superficiality.
-- Northrop Frye
(from 'Fearful Symmetry', pg. 162)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 97 01:11:20 UT
From: "tHOMAS aLTIZER"
To: "Blake Group"
Subject: removal
Message-Id:
You still have not removed my name from your distribution list although I did
request and intend this.
Tom Altizer jonathanjackson@msn.com
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 16:41:47 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704022338.QAA14390@gost1.indirect.com>
The Man who respects Woman shall be despised by Woman
And deadly cunning & mean abjectness only, shall enjoy them
For I will make their places of joy & love, excrementitious
Continually building, continually destroying in Family feuds
While you are under the dominion of a jealous Female
Unpermanent for ever because of love & jealousy.
You shall want all the Minute Particulars of Life
[from Jerusalem, plate 88]
------------------------------
Date: 02 Apr 97 21:29:17 EST
From: vultee <76507.222@CompuServe.COM>
To: "INTERNET:blake@albion.com"
Subject: Visual and Verbal Blakes
Message-Id: <970403022917_76507.222_FHU15-1@CompuServe.COM>
Darlene Sybert wrote:
" I wonder if any one else's muse has
inspired her/him to write music for Blake's _Sketches_"
This isn't an area of Blake studies I'm very familiar with, but I do happen to
recall that there's a musical setting of "How Sweet I Roamed from Field to
Field" on _The Fugs First Album_. (Other cuts of potential interest on the same
album: "Ah, Sunflower Weary of Time" and "Swinburne Stomp.")
Peace,
Denise Vultee
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 22:53:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Nelson Hilton
To: Blake Group
Subject: Re: removal
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, tHOMAS aLTIZER wrote:
> You still have not removed my name from your distribution list although I did
> request and intend this.
>
> Tom Altizer jonathanjackson@msn.com
"... cannot be removed but by a Last judgment while we are in the world of
Mortality we Must Suffer" --WB
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 21:40:23 -0700 (MST)
From: fawman@compusmart.ab.ca (Steven Mandziuk)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Urizenic Roses and Worms of Orc -Reply
Message-Id: <199704030440.VAA22777@bernie.compusmart.ab.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Interesting Pam - would Blake have read "The Romance of the Rose"? Does
anyone have any concrete information about Blake's exposure to that work?
Steve
**********************************************************************
>I find it hard to equate the Rose with Satan, as suggested in your last
>posting. This is because I believe there is consistency in Blake's vision
>of the Garden of Love in Eternity which contained the healthy Rose. In
>health, univaded by the Devourer, the prolific Rose would have had a
>divinely human form (as can be seen in the illustration to the Sick Rose)
>and like the Lily of the Valley (in The Book of Thel) she would have shed
>her fragrance selflessly on others. She would also have opened her
>beauty unashamedly and have had no need of thorns to protect her,
>since in Eternity, all mingle incessantly in love in fiery ardour in odrer to
>lose their sense of isolated self and participate in God's unity. The Sick
>Rose falls ill because love in the fallen world is selfish and devouring ...
>the lover desiring mainly to satisfy self. The contraries for me are
>therefore Rose (good) and Worm (bad) and are not reversible. Pam van
>Schaik
>
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 23:20:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Visual and Verbal Blakes
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970403021946.301ffce0@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 11:16 AM 4/2/97 -0600, Darlene Sybert wrote:
>In the meantime, I wonder if any one else's muse has
>inspired her/him to write music for Blake's _Sketches_: Jim Hendrix,
>maybe, who studied and admired Blake.
You wouldn't be referring to Jimi Hendrix, would you? Please explain yourself.
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Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 23:20:39 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: MORE DEREK WALCOTT QUOTES ON BLAKE
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Derek Walcott sez:
"I think a lot of great poets at some point move into that kind of high
flatulence in which they may be believing at the time that they are
absolutely necessary, that their voice, that particular pitch of the voice
is necessary for the time. It exists in all great poets, but it's just that
part of the great poet that you turn from and say sometimes: Oh, give me a
break, knock it off, cool it down, you know -- whether it's the 'prophetic'
vision of a bitter prophecy or whatever it is. Unless it has that _total_
devastating light or blight that exists in Blake, for instance, who is
talking the truth."
"And I think there are periods in the epochs of English poetry in which
again one comes back, as Wordsworth did, at a certain point, to something
that is -- not illiterate and not dumb -- but _clear_, a simplicity that may
contain a lot of knowledge in it, like Blake's has. The simplicity of Blake
is a profound simplicity that has all the cosmology and myth that is in his
head. But when he gets to putting down his monosyllables, that's the
clarity one is talking about, something that is an elemental, unmeasured,
unscannable kind of clearness. And one is talking, I think, about memory,
really. How direct is the word to human memory? The word put on the paper
should not be _read_ but remembered when it is read. The moment of reading
is a moment of remembering, not a moment of learning.
"[interviewer]: Distillation, in a way, and expansion at the same time?
"[Walcott:] Yes, it's Blake's grain of sand."
from: "An Interview with Derek Walcott", David Montenegro, 1987; reprinted
in: CONVERSATIONS WITH DEREK WALCOTT, edited by William Baer (Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1996, pp. 135-150), p. 144, 146.
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Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 23:20:30 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: chaz@take3soft.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote
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Why not attach some commentary to all your bare quotes as a starting point
for discussion? What do you think the following lines mean? I find them an
intriguing in light of all of the complaints of Blake's alleged sexism.
What experiences led Blake to believe that he who respects woman shall be
despised by woman?
At 04:41 PM 4/2/97 -0700, Charlie K. wrote:
>The Man who respects Woman shall be despised by Woman
>And deadly cunning & mean abjectness only, shall enjoy them
>...................
>[from Jerusalem, plate 88]
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #38
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