Today's Topics:
Blake's religion
Re: In Mourning
Re: a source for an image in Night Thoughts
Re: a source for an image in Night Thoughts
Re: A Grave Question
Re: Allen Ginsberg
Re: A Grave Question
Quote
Re: In Mourning
Re: Quote
Re: In Mourning/ Holy Soul Jelly Roll
good and evil
Charlie qua inspiration
Re: Jim Morrison/Hendrix
Re: A Grave Question
Re: In Mourning
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 1997 05:47:28 PDT
From: "Jenny H."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake's religion
Message-Id: <199704071247.FAA19283@f38.hotmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
I think a message I sent a few days ago got lost...
Raine writes that Blake studied "Western Esoteric tradition both orthodox and
heterodox." Does anyone have any information on what secifically he studied?
I'm also interested in Jakob Boehme's influence on Blake.
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 08:27:35 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: In Mourning
Message-Id: <97040708273504@wc.stephens.edu>
Joz--I don't accept your distinction suggesting that Blake was not an
intentional poet--I think he makes it clear that he feels himself to be
a poet in a particular prophetic poetic tradition, as well as in a bardic
tradition, which is not quite the same thing. Ginsberg is decidedly
in the bardic tradition, with some excursions into a prophetic mode
but not exactly in Blake's manner.
As for tuning--Ginsberg often performed his musical settings of Blake's
poems, especially the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. MGM records
issued an album of Ginsberg singing those settings, with a group of
musicians backing him, (recorded in 1969) and there was supposed to
be a second volume of them, but that never appeared (to my knowledge) because
apparently the first album did not sell well. Many people have found his
performances hard to take at first because of the very "untutored" singing
styles that he and Peter Orlovsky used, but I have found that a couple of
hearings not only make the songs accessible, but his melodies stick with
me more persistently than any other musical settings of the poems, though
a couple of Greg Brown's have staying power. I think someone recently
posted a message that the album had been reissued on CD--I certainly hope
that is true, or will be true, but I have not yet seen evidence of it.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:01:38 MET
From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER"
To: jmillett , blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: a source for an image in Night Thoughts
Message-Id: <334E5A07FE@netwareserver.uni-trier.de>
April 7th, 1997
Quote (neither from Blake, nor from Charlie!):
"A Deluge painting that has, fortunately, survived is that of
Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (Victoria and Albert Museum),
exhibited at Macklin's Poets Gallery in 1790 and engraved by Thomas
Milton in 1797 (Pl. 7 [the engr. repr.]) for Macklin's great
illustrated Bible (published 1800). De Loutherbourg moves closer in
to his suffering subjects than any of his predecessors, and he limits
them to three figures. The despairing father's upraised arm forms the
apex of a [composition in the shape of a] pyramid that seems to look
forward to Ge'ricaults *Raft of the Medusa*; at the same time the
picture as a type is, as Ruediger Joppien comments, reminiscent of de
Loutherbourg's own shipwreck scenes -- a popular sub-genre in which
this amazingly versatile artist was also proficient. There is,
however, something beyond shipwreck in de Loutherbourg's picture.
The setting seems peculiarly amorphous: the water foams white but is
generally dark, as are the rocks, the clouded sky, and even the Ark
itself. The flesh tones of the human figures, especially of the pudgy
child, make them seem terribly vulnerable in contrast, as does the
delicate blue-and-white coloring of the mother's dress. These figures
convey, as Joppien puts it, an "almost hysterical overtone," while
the serpent at the right, which might almost have slithered out of
Poussin's *Deluge*, adds a suggestion of meaning beyond the natural.
*The Deluge* was a considerable success in de Loutherbourg's time.
The contemporary artist and critic Edward Dayes called it `the very
best [painting] that he produced.' An anonymous critic reviewing the
Academy exhibition of 1790 wrote:
The fancy displayed in the selection of this situation is highly
picturesque ... The grouping of the figures is admirable ... The
introduction of the serpent is highly appropriate ... he seems
to contemplate the destruction, of which allegorically he might
be considered as the cause. The Ark, dimly appearing through the
spray of the sea, is also of the happiest effect."
--quoted from Morton D. Paley, *The Apocalyptic Sublime* (New Haven,
Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 14; Paley's
references to Joppien are not to the latter's Ph. D. thesis on
Loutherbourg, but to #63 in Joppien's exhibition catalogue *Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg, R.A. 1740-1812* (London: Greater London
Council, for the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood House, 1973). Morton
devotes an entire chapter of his book to Loutherbourg with further
comments on the prints in the Macklin Bible on pages 55 et seq. An
earlier account of the same publishing project is contained in T. S.
R. Boase, "Macklin and Bowyer", *JWCI* 26 (1963): 148- 177.
Blake was certainly aware of Loutherbourg's output in the 1780s and
1790s, and his engraving for page 12 of the 1797 *Night Thoughts*
employs some of the same iconographic elements which can be found in
the older artist's painting and Thomas Milton's reproductive
engraving: a child, a woman, and a man, a hissing serpent and a piece
of solid rock figure prominently in both images. And yet, beyond the
*pars pro toto* use of the family group as a reference to all
humankind, the compositional arrangements (and hence the narrative
content) show vast differences. An asteriskus keys Blake's
illustration to the following of Young's lines:
Its [i.e. heaven's] favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care;
And should alarm us, full as much as woes;
[...].
Maybe Jack Grant and Marilyn Johnson would want to take this
comparison a bit further than I intend to do right now?
--DWD
Last Saturday, J. Millet wrote
> [...] I once came across an engraving of a Deluge painting by
> J.P. DeLoutherbourg (?) - Swiss/French(?) character who did
> avalanches and other Sublime manifestations of Apocalypse in
> Nature. It contained a foreground "family" scene of Father
> lying exhausted on the last piece of exposed rock, Mother
> clasping young child as it almost falls from her, and a snake,
> also (temporarily) escaped from the Flood. You know, the sort
> of thing that became compulsory in Deluge subjects after
> Michaelangelo set the standard on the Sistine ceiling. The
> point is, and I'll get there eventually, that Blake has an
> uncannily similar (yes I know, it comes with the 'visionary
> artist' territory) image in his illustrations to Young's Night
> Thoughts: a man swooning on a rock below a poised snake while
> a mother/woman restrains a child beside him as it lunges after
> a bird. Far fetched? But consider the post-lapsarian family
> unit re-enacting the aftermath of Eden on De Loutherbourg's
> rock as being surrounded by a Blakean Sea of Materiality.
> Unfortunately I don't have my Oxford complete edition of the
> Night Thoughts illustrations with me to check the textual
> relationship but regardless of who was best to steal from, I
> find the associations of serpent-family-flood fascinating and
> feel there is a key there to some strands of Blake's Night
> Thoughts. Anyway (again), I've never been able to find that
> De Loutherbourg picture since. Does anyone Know what I'm
> talking about? Do I know what I'm talking about?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:04:14 MET
From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: a source for an image in Night Thoughts
Message-Id: <33596A13A4@netwareserver.uni-trier.de>
April 7th, 1997
Quote (neither from Blake, nor from Charlie!):
"A Deluge painting that has, fortunately, survived is that of
Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (Victoria and Albert Museum),
exhibited at Macklin's Poets Gallery in 1790 and engraved by Thomas
Milton in 1797 (Pl. 7 [the engr. repr.]) for Macklin's great
illustrated Bible (published 1800). De Loutherbourg moves closer in
to his suffering subjects than any of his predecessors, and he limits
them to three figures. The despairing father's upraised arm forms the
apex of a [composition in the shape of a] pyramid that seems to look
forward to Ge'ricaults *Raft of the Medusa*; at the same time the
picture as a type is, as Ruediger Joppien comments, reminiscent of de
Loutherbourg's own shipwreck scenes -- a popular sub-genre in which
this amazingly versatile artist was also proficient. There is,
however, something beyond shipwreck in de Loutherbourg's picture.
The setting seems peculiarly amorphous: the water foams white but is
generally dark, as are the rocks, the clouded sky, and even the Ark
itself. The flesh tones of the human figures, especially of the pudgy
child, make them seem terribly vulnerable in contrast, as does the
delicate blue-and-white coloring of the mother's dress. These figures
convey, as Joppien puts it, an "almost hysterical overtone," while
the serpent at the right, which might almost have slithered out of
Poussin's *Deluge*, adds a suggestion of meaning beyond the natural.
*The Deluge* was a considerable success in de Loutherbourg's time.
The contemporary artist and critic Edward Dayes called it `the very
best [painting] that he produced.' An anonymous critic reviewing the
Academy exhibition of 1790 wrote:
The fancy displayed in the selection of this situation is highly
picturesque ... The grouping of the figures is admirable ... The
introduction of the serpent is highly appropriate ... he seems
to contemplate the destruction, of which allegorically he might
be considered as the cause. The Ark, dimly appearing through the
spray of the sea, is also of the happiest effect."
--quoted from Morton D. Paley, *The Apocalyptic Sublime* (New Haven,
Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 14; Paley's
references to Joppien are not to the latter's Ph. D. thesis on
Loutherbourg, but to #63 in Joppien's exhibition catalogue *Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg, R.A. 1740-1812* (London: Greater London
Council, for the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood House, 1973). Morton
devotes an entire chapter of his book to Loutherbourg with further
comments on the prints in the Macklin Bible on pages 55 et seq. An
earlier account of the same publishing project is contained in T. S.
R. Boase, "Macklin and Bowyer", *JWCI* 26 (1963): 148- 177.
Blake was certainly aware of Loutherbourg's output in the 1780s and
1790s, and his engraving for page 12 of the 1797 *Night Thoughts*
employs some of the same iconographic elements which can be found in
the older artist's painting and Thomas Milton's reproductive
engraving: a child, a woman, and a man, a hissing serpent and a piece
of solid rock figure prominently in both images. And yet, beyond the
*pars pro toto* use of the family group as a reference to all
humankind, the compositional arrangements (and hence the narrative
content) show vast differences. An asteriskus keys Blake's
illustration to the following of Young's lines:
Its [i.e. heaven's] favours here are trials, not rewards;
A call to duty, not discharge from care;
And should alarm us, full as much as woes;
[...].
Maybe Jack Grant and Marilyn Johnson would want to take this
comparison a bit further than I intend to do right now?
--DWD
Last Saturday, J. Millet wrote
> [...] I once came across an engraving of a Deluge painting by
> J.P. DeLoutherbourg (?) - Swiss/French(?) character who did
> avalanches and other Sublime manifestations of Apocalypse in
> Nature. It contained a foreground "family" scene of Father
> lying exhausted on the last piece of exposed rock, Mother
> clasping young child as it almost falls from her, and a snake,
> also (temporarily) escaped from the Flood. You know, the sort
> of thing that became compulsory in Deluge subjects after
> Michaelangelo set the standard on the Sistine ceiling. The
> point is, and I'll get there eventually, that Blake has an
> uncannily similar (yes I know, it comes with the 'visionary
> artist' territory) image in his illustrations to Young's Night
> Thoughts: a man swooning on a rock below a poised snake while
> a mother/woman restrains a child beside him as it lunges after
> a bird. Far fetched? But consider the post-lapsarian family
> unit re-enacting the aftermath of Eden on De Loutherbourg's
> rock as being surrounded by a Blakean Sea of Materiality.
> Unfortunately I don't have my Oxford complete edition of the
> Night Thoughts illustrations with me to check the textual
> relationship but regardless of who was best to steal from, I
> find the associations of serpent-family-flood fascinating and
> feel there is a key there to some strands of Blake's Night
> Thoughts. Anyway (again), I've never been able to find that
> De Loutherbourg picture since. Does anyone Know what I'm
> talking about? Do I know what I'm talking about?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:07:27 MET
From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: A Grave Question
Message-Id: <3366F37734@netwareserver.uni-trier.de>
April 4th, 1997 (returned and sent to the list again on April 7th)
Charlie K's question was
> So just why didn't they want Blake to engrave his own designs for
> Blair's 'Grave'?
Though the original is among Blake's scarcest prints, a reproduction
of Blake's own whiteline version of "Deaths Door" can easily be found
in Robert Essick's catalogue raisonne of *The Separate Plates of WB*
(Princeton, N.J.: PUP, 1983) or (in this case better still) in the
edition of the *Grave* designs co-edited by Essick and Morton D.
Paley for Scolar Press. If Blake's dark and awesome image is
compared with Schiavonetti's elegant reproductive engraving of the
same design, now "correctly" lettered "Death's Door", even
twentieth-century viewers won't find it all that difficult to re-
construct Cromek's calculations.
But I do have to search for a reproduction of that painting by
Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg ... (who, though born near
Strasbourg, was working in Britain in the late eighteenth century,
both as a well-known painter and as a practioneer of messmerism).
Morton D. Paley's research may help once again; did anybody bother
to look up his study of *The Apocalyptic Sublime*?
--DW Doerrbecker
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:18:51 -0400
From: pas@mnsi.net (Paul Stone)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg
Message-Id: <199704071518.LAA13930@backup.MNSi.Net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Allen Ginsberg passed away this Saturday with a heart attack.
And the heart attack will be sorely missed?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 08:37:35 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: A Grave Question
Message-Id: <199704071534.IAA03941@gost1.indirect.com>
April 4th, 1997
Charlie K's question was
> So just why didn't they want Blake to engrave his own designs for
> Blair's 'Grave'?
Though the original is among Blake's scarcest prints, a reproduction
of Blake's own whiteline version of "Deaths Door" can easily be found
in Robert Essick's catalogue raisonne of *The Separate Plates of WB*
(Princeton, N.J.: PUP, 1983) or (in this case better still) in the
edition of the *Grave* designs co-edited by Essick and Morton D.
Paley for Scolar Press. If Blake's dark and awesome image is
compared with Schiavonetti's elegant reproductive engraving of the
same design, now "correctly" lettered "Death's Door", even
twentieth-century viewers won't find it all that difficult to re-
construct Cromek's calculations.
But I do have to search for a reproduction of that painting by
Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg ... (who, though born near
Strasbourg, was working in Britain in the late eighteenth century,
both as a well-known painter and as a practioneer of messmerism).
Morton D. Paley's research may help once again; did anybody bother
to look up his study of *The Apocalyptic Sublime*?
--DW Doerrbecker
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 08:35:50 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704071533.IAA03680@gost1.indirect.com>
[I read in the newspaper (of all places) that Ginsberg once had a
Three-Dimensional hallucination of Blake reading the following
poem...]
AH! SUN-FLOWER
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
[Ginsberg & Blake, both of the same species, both worked to build up
Golgonooza. They are closer to us now than they were in the confines
of their physical bodies.]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:03:39 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: In Mourning
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
When I was an undergraduate, the student radio station played as one of its
public service announcements a "no smoking" song that I realized only much
later was written by Allen Ginsberg (both words and music).
don't smoke don't smoke don't smoke don't smoke
it's a nine billion dollar capitalist joke
Unfortunately my Collected Ginsberg is at home, or I'd type out all the
lyrics--they're hilarious in their own way.
Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:05:45 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Quote
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>[Ginsberg & Blake, both of the same species, both worked to build up
>Golgonooza. They are closer to us now than they were in the confines
>of their physical bodies.]
Or, as Blake put it, "I know that our deceased friends are more really with
us than when they were apparent to our mortal part." (Letter to William
Hayley, 6 May 1800, E 705).
Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:09:02 -0500 (CDT)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: In Mourning/ Holy Soul Jelly Roll
Message-Id: <199704071609.LAA29766@dfw-ix15.ix.netcom.com>
In 1994 Rhino/Word Beat (L.A.) issued "poems and songs" (1949-1993)
of Ginsberg on compact disc (4-disc set) under the title _Holy Soul
Jelly Roll_. The set includes "The Sick Rose", Nurse's Song",
"Little Boy Found", "The Lamb" and other works from S of I & E.
Susan Reilly
>As for tuning--Ginsberg often performed his musical settings of
Blake's
>poems, especially the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. MGM
records
>issued an album of Ginsberg singing those settings, with a group of
>musicians backing him, (recorded in 1969) and there was supposed to
>be a second volume of them, but that never appeared (to my knowledge)
I think someone recently
>posted a message that the album had been reissued on CD--I certainly
hope
>that is true, or will be true, but I have not yet seen evidence of it.
>Tom Dillingham
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 97 11:06:48 CDT
From: MTS231F@vma.smsu.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: good and evil
Message-Id: <9704071624.AA07973@uu6.psi.com>
This quotation from Jerusalem plate 10 is the most important single
passage, I believe, for understanding Blake's method, especially
because it
introduces the frequently misused declaration about creating one's
own system. Abstracting good and evil from the ubiquitous, pervading
contraries, and then disqualifying half of existence from legitimacy
is precisely the strategy that creating one's own system fights
against. The danger, one that Blake is intensely aware of and one
that is implicated inextricably in questions of Blake's attitude
toward Urizen, is that in fighting against a system one can become
just as bad as the French aristocrats or capitalistic animal farmers
that one deposes. That danger is precisely the reason why Blake does
not attempt to "reconcile" (as, similarly, Shelley does not
reconcile oppressor and oppressed in Prometheus Unbound) the two
sides. My self-righteous imposition on you is probably not better
than yours on me and is certainly worse from the point of my soul's
pomposity. If the Prolific were to obliterate the Devourer, then
rotting food and excess filthy lucre would soon bury us all.
Therefore, when we Blakeans attempt to imitate our hero by
excoriating each other's viewpoints and apparently urging their
disappearance, we are forgetting Blake's own delight in and
embrace of elements that were foreign and even dangerous to him.
Your wiry bounding line is just as important as mine, but
"striving with systems" means striving "by means of" systems as
well as striving "against" systems. Los learns this insight even
more deeply in plate 43 when he finds the futility of descending
to the sources of trouble and rooting out the perpetrators.
Similarly, Blake's Urizenic impulses are not simply faults to be
melted away but are also important parts of himself to be
properly understood and harnessed. See Christine Gallant's
Blake and the Assimilation of Chaos for the Jungian way to
explain this doubleness, and see Hazard Adams's Philosophy of
the Literary Symbolic for the complexities of Prolific and
Devourer. Although Adams has received some very harsh
judgements from members of this list, I value his insights
highly.
On Sun, 6 Apr 1997 10:22:36 -0700 you said:
>[Blake's definition of the Spectre; from Jerusalem, plate 10]
>
>And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength
>They take the Two Contraries which are calld Qualities, with which
>Every Substance is clothed, they name them Good & Evil
>>From them they make an Abstract. which is a Negation
>Not only of the Substance from which it is derived
>A murderer of its own Body: but also a murderer
>Of every Divine Member: it is the Reasoning Power
>An Abstract objecting power, that Negatives every thing
>This is the Spectre of Man; the Holy Reasoning Power
>And in its Holiness is closed the Abomination of Desolation
>
>Therefore Los stands in London building Golgonooza --
>Compelling his Spectre to labours mighty; trembling in fear
>The Spectre weeps. but Los unmovd by tears or threats remains
>
>
>[so Los is able to overcome and control his own Spectre or Negative
>Reasoning Power, despite the uncomfort that doing so inevitably
>creates in This World... even though the Spectre does pop in from
>time to time and has his say... but of course this say helps direct
>Los as it makes him aware of the other, more common, way of looking
>at things, which is indeed what he is working to overcome to build up
>Golgonooza. thus the way things are in this age, it takes much
>prophetic and poetic power to put the Spectre in his place so that
>This World may be all that much improved -ck]
>
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:50:40 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jack W Jacobs
To: "Charlie K."
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Charlie qua inspiration
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Charlie (et.al.),
It's refreshing to hear someone unashamed to take Blake to heart, or
should I say take life to heart. So often in the academic environment we
must "murder to dissect" (spell?).
Perhaps I try to take Blake too far, but what I was trying to get at last
week was the idea that selfhood for Blake is not identity. Identity is
created and enforced by the logic of Ulro/Urizen. It is the subject in
Foucault's sense--the notion of a self that will be punished for
disobedience. It is this belief in identity rather than selfhood proper
(or improper) that must be annihilated for the senses to expand.
I think that the selfhood you envision is Poetic Genius in terms of All
Religions Are One, that is, what a human is apart from the artificial
physical, psychological, and social constraints we force upon ourselves
and each other. And even beyond this is the possibility of true
participation in life, a life where (dare we dream it) perception shapes
reason to the point where three-dimensional space and linear time are
choices not chains.
In light of this, I have a hard time accepting that Blake thinks of
innocence in the way that Wordsworth, Coleridge, or other promeninet poets
of the era conceive it. I think that Blake uses innocence in a somewhat
derogatory mannor--"innocence" is the state of Beulah, a state in which
people are convinced that truth is fantasy and dogmatic chains are real.
Does this make sense?
Jack
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:54:27 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jack W Jacobs
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Jim Morrison/Hendrix
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Break on through to the other side!
Mojo Rison
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:14:21 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: A Grave Question
Message-Id: <97040711142110@wc.stephens.edu>
In Bentley's _Blake Records_, the account of the events surrounding the
Cromek commission to Blake and its subsequent transfer to Schiavonetti
suggests that Cromek may have been dissatisfied with the *engraving*
style (rough and "old fashioned") of Blake's versions; Schiavonetti's
style is certainly smooth and (to my eyes) sentimental--rather more
suited to illustrating Goldsmith than Blair/Blake--but that is the taste
of a later age. Blake seems not to have been aware of the switch until
after he had actually done the work and even written to people telling
them of his plans for the work. Under the circumstances, it is no
wonder that he reacted with rage and subsequent dissociation from the
men involved. But Cromek's business sense may have been accurate, even
if his business ethics left much to be desired.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:46:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com, blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: In Mourning
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970407134512.2b4f680c@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 11:30 AM 4/6/97 -0500, joz@cove.com wrote:
>But on the
>difference between them - Blake I think was a poet but his intent was not
>poetical as that might be commonly understood. Ginsberg intent was to be a
>poet as it is commonly understood, and the world reviled him, loved him and
>so honoured him as a poet. Like Byron. He had a role. To me Blake is
>involved in something different. Shakespeare was a poet too, but like
>Blake his adgenda was different.
I don't understand these assertions at all. If Ginsberg had a role, was
that a role solely poetic, as you asserted, or some other role, e.g.
non-poetic roles a la Byron of carouser or revolutionary? Are you saying
that Ginsberg was interested in poetry for its own sake while Blake was not?
Sure, Ginsberg was a master at self-promotion, but for the rest, I don't
think you have a leg to stand on.
Here's my take. Because of the backward and repressive culture in which
Blake lived, he dreamed about freedom but couldn't live it. He could only
function as role of prophet and visionary. That is not a criticism, by the
way, just an acknowledgment of the objective circumstances. (Anais Nin's
baloney about D.H. Lawrence being more inclined to practice what he preached
is a load of crap. Lawrence is not even in the game.) Ginsberg, however,
is in a totally different historical situation, even in the drab 1940s.
Circa 1950 CLR James wrote that Americans live what Europeans could only
theorize about, that America, being the most capitalist of cultures, was the
focal point of the crisis of the modern world, in which the individual was
always at bay as to how to construct community, and that Americans were not
interested in "culture" but in integrating all aspects of their existence.
Ginsberg may have started out at Columbia doing "culture" but clearly he was
interested in more than that. Ginsberg represents the desire to unify art
and life, from the vantage point of Bohemia, at first, and then later to
inject art into life as the counterculture began to make societally real
what the beatniks could only do as social outcasts. Ginsberg as a
world-historical individual, for all his many faults, represents a leap in
the evolving historical project of democracy and self-realization. What he
lived, his Eastern European Jewish forbears could never have imagined.
Because Ginsberg came from the world of working class immigrants, he could
create culture. Vital culture is always democratic and never aristocratic,
regardless of the conditions of its popularity or accessibility. That
Ginsberg could have been inspired by Blake to seek to integrate the
visionary imagination into the everyday hell of urban existence is the
essence of democratic modernism, and I thank my lucky stars that I could
live in this age to see it happen. Can I get a witness? Now who will be a
witness?
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #42
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