Blake List — Volume 1997 : Issue 5

Today's Topics:
	 Re: Blake as a romantic
	      Blake as Romantic
	 Re: Blake at MLA
	 Re: Blake as a romantic
	 Re: Blake as Romantic
	 Re: Blake as Romantic
	 Leaving Blake Online (was Re: Blake at MLA)
	 Responsible reading (Re: Blake as a romantic)
	 John Guillory & canonicity -- reply
	 Re: John Guillory & canonicity -- reply
	 Blake siting
	 Re: John Guillory & canonicity -- reply
	 Blake books
	 Re: Blake as Romantic
	 Re: Blake siting
	 Re: Blake as Romantic
	 Canon to the right of me
	 Austen a Romantic?!?!

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:02:42 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake as a romantic
Message-Id: <97012012024237@wc.stephens.edu>

I doubt that this thread has much of a future (or should have), but the
issues of minor/major writers, canonicity, periodization and inclusion
are not only perennial but current--witness the parallel discussions on
both the Romanticism and 18th Century lists on these very topics.  
On "minor" writers--few of us, except the most omnivorous of romanticists,
have probably read extensively in the poetry of Samuel Rogers, Robert
Southey, Leigh Hunt, or even Walter Scott, unless required to do so in
courses or in search of dissertation topics.  Even major canonical
figures (William Cowper comes to mind) are, I suspect, less read than
mentioned.  And this does not even bring to mind the many names now 
included, for example, in the new Mellor/Matlak anthology of British
Literature 1780-1830.  (Nor have I re-mentioned the emergent women
who appeared in my last post.)  I once heard a strong argument by
a scholar of John Clare, insisting that Clare was better off asa
"minor" figure, since those "minors" are less intimidating to new
readers/scholars, more likely to feel like "new discoveries" to the
aspiring poet or critic (I well remember my first discovery of 
Christopher Smart--precisely the kind of "minor" who could seem
to be my own personal discovery, even though it was in an anthology);
the point was that being minor was not only not a bad thing, but a
possible advantage.
In that connection, I wonder if anyone has yet undertaken a history of
Blake reception in the 20th century?  I do not mean simply a survey 
of the critical response--that has been done helpfully already; I mean
a Jaussian study of the shifting responses to Blake not only among
critics but within the large community of readers/artists who know and
value his work.  I think that would be even more valuable than efforts
to trace the ups and downs of his relationship to some version or other
of the canon.  Inclusion in courses or critical anthologies cannot
be the only measure of such issues.  (For example, I believe that the
"Tyger" has been cited as the most anthologized poem in the English
language in at least one survey--and so what?  Nice, indicative of
its appeal and its mystery, but in terms of Blake's canonicity, 
probably not a good measure.)  Of course there is a sense in which
a full reception study of Blake would imply very nearly a full cultural
history of the 20th century (not just the anglophone segments--Blake is
very "big" in Japan, for example), certainly a massive undertaking, and
fraught with practical and theoretical problems.
But finally, I do not think that Blake has ever been "minor" in the
sense that Samuel Rogers or even John Clare might have been (assuming
we can define that sense); excluded, yes, misunderstood, yes, partly
because difficult to categorize and daunting to teach.  I have found
Wordsworth finally the more mysterious and "difficult" poet, Blake
the more satisfying and congenial companion as well as sublime
challenger.  We tend to think we understand Wordsworth precisely
because of his "project" set forth in the Prefaces, and it is only
when we test our understanding that we find how deep and nearly
incomprehensible he is behind the facade of straightforard 
language; many tend to find Blake difficult and inaccessible becasue
he proceeds in such an intimidating manner, with language and imagery
apparently outside our experience as ordinary persons; but just as we
might forget or never notice the need to work hard for Wordsworth, so
we might back off from the initial challenge of Blake (no one on this
list, of course), only to be surprised once we plunge into the fire to
discover that it does not destroy us but only the illusion of the
impenetrability.
My apologies for such a long post. 
Tom Dillingham

------------------------------

Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 97 12:35:50 CST
From: Mark Trevor Smith 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject:      Blake as Romantic
Message-Id: <9701201840.AA12080@uu6.psi.com>

In all this discussion of Blake as Romantic, let us not forget that only
a few years ago, Wordsworth was left out.  I distinctly remember a
critical work from about 1905 that off-handedly, without any argument,
just as a simple throwaway fact, mentioned that no one thought of WW
as a Romantic.  I wish I remembered the work.  Has anyone seen something
similar?  Much depends on our definitions, but more depends upon our habits.
How many of us include Jane Austen?  Is she a Victorian instead?

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 13:37:07 -0600
From: Ross Deforrest 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake at MLA
Message-Id: <32E3C963.20C7@prismnet.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Can someone Please Tell me how to unsubscribe to this list
Thanks
-- 
Ross E. Deforrest
Visit my page at http://www.prismnet.com/~ssor
You'll be glad you did

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 11:56:46 -0800
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake as a romantic
Message-Id: <199701201956.LAA20517@dfw-ix3.ix.netcom.com>

I won't get into a lengthy response to the issues you raise in your 
last, long post, except to say that your idea about a history of Blake 
reception is a very interesting one.

I still think the major/minor rubrics are more flexible and arbitrary 
than  you suggest--Keats, too,  as is well known,  was never completely 
accepted by the early critics or by other Romantics during his 
lifetime.  And we're only talking in any case about a relatively short 
time in the scheme of things that the whole concept of "Romanticism" 
and a "Romantic canon" have even been in existence.


Can you post the addresses of the other two lists you mention?  I  
interested in the kinds of discussions you describe as being current 
there.

S. Reilly

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 15:18:50 -0600
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake as Romantic
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>How many of us include Jane Austen?  Is she a Victorian instead?

When I first read Austen in high school, I remember being told that
although chronologically she was a Romantic, philosophically she belonged
right back in the 18th century!  Hardly the approach I'd take today . . . .

Jennifer Michael

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:00:48 -0800
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake as Romantic
Message-Id: <199701202200.OAA22291@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com>

Austen is another of those figures on the "border" who gets classed as 
both Victorian and Romantic.  She seems lately to be claimed quite alot 
by those on the  Romantic side of the border.  I've never understood 
her inclusion with the Victorians.  She died in 1817, before Victoria 
was even born, let alone before she ascended, in the 1830's, to the 
throne.

You wrote: 
>
>In all this discussion of Blake as Romantic, let us not forget that 
only
>a few years ago, Wordsworth was left out.  I distinctly remember a
>critical work from about 1905 that off-handedly, without any argument,
>just as a simple throwaway fact, mentioned that no one thought of WW
>as a Romantic.  I wish I remembered the work.  Has anyone seen 
something
>similar?  Much depends on our definitions, but more depends upon our 
habits.
>How many of us include Jane Austen?  Is she a Victorian instead?
>
>

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Jan 97 15:51:05 -0800
From: Seth T. Ross 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Leaving Blake Online (was Re: Blake at MLA)
Message-Id: <9701202351.AA00266@albion.com>
Content-Type: text/plain

> Can someone Please Tell me how to unsubscribe to this list
>

To leave Blake Online, send an email message to
blake-request@albion.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the
SUBJECT field, like so:
     TO: blake-request@albion.com
     SUBJECT: unsubscribe

Your address will be automatically unsubscribed.

Please use the address blake-request@albion.com for all
administrative queries.

Note that an archive of Blake postings can be found on the
World Wide Web at the URL:
http://www.albion.com/indexBlake.html

Virtually yours,
Seth
---
   A\  Seth Ross \ Publisher \ Albion Cybercasting
  A A\  "The network is the network" \ San Francisco
 A   A\   Visit us on the WWW at http://www.albion.com

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 22:41:34 -0500 (EST)
From: Nelson Hilton 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Responsible reading (Re: Blake as a romantic)
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE

On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, we read:
>                                                          ...All of=20
> which, I think, goes to show what a fickle thing canon-formation can=20
> be, (or at least the formation of literary period-boundaries)  and=20
> reinforces the responsibility resting on professors of English ...

The response ability of anyone tempted to profess on this topic would
benefit from a consideration of John Guillory's remarkable book: _Cultural
Capital:  The Problem of Literary Canon Formation_ (UChicago, 1993).  An
excerpt from its Preface:=20

|   For the purposes of a sociologically informed history of canon
| formation, it is the category of "literature" which invites the
| closest scrutiny.  That category organizes the literary
| curriculum in such a way as to create the illusion of a fixed and
| exclusive "canon," an illusion which is belied by the real
| history of literary curricula in the schools.  For that very
| reason, calling the canon into question has failed to inaugurate
| a historico-critical inquiry into the category of literature,
| even while it has registered a crisis in the cultural capital so
| denominated.  The overarching project of the present study is an
| inquiry into just this crisis, one which attempts to explain why
| the category of literature has come to seem institutionally
| dysfunctional, a circumstance which I will relate to the
| emergence of a technically trained "New Class," or "professional-
| managerial class."  To put this thesis in its briefest form, the
| category of "literature" names the cultural capital of the old
| bourgeoisie, a form of capital increasingly marginal to the
| social function of the present educational system.  From this
| perspective the issue of "canonicity" will seem less important
| than the historical crisis of literature, since it is this
| crisis--the long-term decline in the cultural capital of
| literature--which give rise to the canon debate.  The category of
| literature remains the _impense=82_ of the debate, in spite of what
| passes on the left as a critique of that category's transcendent
| value, and on the right as a mythological "death of literature." (x)


   Nelson Hilton -=3D- English -=3D- University of Georgia -=3D- Athens
        Was ist Los? "Net of Urizen" or "Jerusalem the Web"?
                http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake          =20

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 00:06:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain 
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: rdumain@igc.org
Subject: John Guillory & canonicity -- reply
Message-Id: <199701210806.AAA21160@igc2.igc.apc.org>

>The response ability of anyone tempted to profess on this topic
>would benefit from a consideration of John Guillory's remarkable
>book: _Cultural Capital:  The Problem of Literary Canon
>Formation_ (UChicago, 1993).  An excerpt from its Preface:

This excerpt strikes me as remarkably stupid.

The issue of "canon" can hardly boil down to the definition of
"literature".  Expanding the category of "literature" to include
song lyrics, folk tales, or other verbal expressions does not
eliminate the questions of selectivity, which is necessary already
on the basis of the finite time any human being could have to
devote to reading and teaching.

Or perhaps Guillory does not mean the extensive definition of
"literature", but the very category as a realm of human activity.
Sorry, but literature is not quite the same as film, or music, or
basketweaving, or wood carving, or other forms of human expression
or craft.

Or perhaps what Guillory really is concerned about is the prestige
value of "literature" as a realm of "art" separated from other
human activities.  In which case he has some case, however
trivial, but one that applies more to people like himself than it
does to the general reader, who may be interested not in
"literature" as status symbol but as something, like any other
form of human expression, that responds to his/her needs.

It seems to me Raymond Williams already did the job of questioning
"literature" as a specialized activity separate from life.  Once
one demystifies this category as a fetish, one is still left with
the thing itself, i.e. its use value apart from "cultural
capital."  In ordinary language, there are people who read
literary works for what they get out of them and don't care
whether they are status symbols or objects of worship.  Remember?

>>.... one which attempts to explain why the category of
>>literature has come to seem institutionally dysfunctional, a
>>circumstance which I will relate to the emergence of a
>>technically trained "New Class," or "professional- managerial
>>class."

That class to which all postmodern charlatans belong, and this is
Guillory's class too.

>...category of "literature" names the cultural capital of the
>old bourgeoisie, a form of capital increasingly marginal to the
> social function of the present educational system....

Yes, this makes some sense of how literature functions as a
specialized status activity under capitalism, but questioning the
fetishism of this category does not answer any of the questions
above.  Problem is, reducing the problem of "canonicity" to that
of "literature" changes nothing at all.  And unless Guillory
himself decides to quit his job and flip burgers, all this
handwringing is the dullest of masturbatory activity.  For if one
is going to continue in the lit crit business, one still must make
choices as to what to present, the best way to do it, and from
what perspective.

I attended a lecture by Guillory once, in a hall full of moronic
grad students who had spent the rest of the day giving their own
unconsciously self-parodying postmodern gibberish-ridden papers.
Guillory was at least honest enough to tell them all that they
were unlikely to get jobs.  All that bootlicking for nothing!
However, I don't think Guillory was clever enough to imagine that
anyone from outside the lit crit profession would ever attend this
conference, for all his self-reflexive professional autocriticism.
His critique from inside the profession is too insiderish.  He
became what he beheld.  Too bad.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 12:12:02 +0000
From: timli@controls.eurotherm.co.uk (Tim Linnell)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: John Guillory & canonicity -- reply
Message-Id: <23195.199701211211@merlot.controls.eurotherm.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Am I alone in perceiving a great irony in this thread? One of Blake's main
problems was that his work was not accepted by the artistic and literary
establishment of his day, since it did not fit into an accepted
classification. This was not wholly a bad thing (except for Blake himself),
since it allowed him to follow a path that was wholly his own, out of reach
of critics operating with reference to the 'rules' laid out for their
classifications.

Now, in attempting to fit Blake retrospectively into a classification (in
this case as a member of the romantic movement), the artistic and literary
establishment of our own times is working in precisely the same way as their
earlier counterparts, but simply applying different rules of exclusion, and
hence the irony. Blake is now the beneficiary, but the chances are that
other artists and writers of merit are being excluded from the new grouping.
In other words, although we see and decry the unfair treatment of Blake
during his life, we have learnt nothing by it.

This tendancy towards rules and groupings in the art world is amusing
(albeit very human) but seems to me to deny the essential uniqueness of
artistic self expression. I've often talked about this with an artist friend
who has recently graduated with a photography degree(*), and my impression
is that even now the rules about what one is 'allowed' to say or do without
straying outside what is generally felt to be acceptable as contemporary art
are very strict. 

Just a thought, anyway.

Tim


* Anyone interested in seeing some of her her work (as patronised by the
Linnell family),see my home page: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/7697/mag.htm

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 08:52:40 -0800
From: David Rollison 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake siting
Message-Id: <32E4F44F.4B8F@marin.cc.ca.us>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

>From a review in today's San Francisco Chronicle:
	
	"The children of a future age that William Blake envisioned can now
enjoy his gifts in ways not even the visionary artist and poet dated to
imagine.  '20/20 Blake,' the lates multimedia musical spectacle from the
mind of George Coates, may may not always do justice to Blake the
romantic poet.  But the wild images on display at George Coates
Performance Works have just the sort of dazzling, disarming clarity that
Blake the artist and philosopher might have embraced...
	Illusion is the key for Coates as it was for Blake.  '20/20 Blake'
begins and ends with a huge projection of Blake's 1795 painting 'Elohim
Creating Adam,' brought to life with alarming proximity both
by...digital image manipulation and by the nifty 3-D glasses that come
with every seat.  Soon the cast joins the paintings, appearing to move
in and out of Blake's mystic visions as if in a lunar landscape imagined
by another age."

	
This calls to my mind a production I saw if San Francisco a couple of
years ago:  "Outside Blake's Window," set and choreographed by Tandy
Beal.  It, too, employed some multi-media--especially memorable were the
words to some of the poems and proverbs projected on to the bodies of
the dancers, an effect very like a page from an illuminated book.  At
performance's end, Tandy Beal and some of the cast came out to answer
questions and discuss, and I was very touched by her statement that the
company would very much like to continue with the production but they
hadn't the funds.  Was there, she wondered, anyone who knew of possible
funding sources?

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 10:16:44 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: John Guillory & canonicity -- reply
Message-Id: <97012110164432@wc.stephens.edu>

Tim has a very good point except that it is somewhat beside the issue.
Inclusion in academic courses (in American universities, at least) has
been dependent on classifiability--that is the point of the many 
challenges to periodization, genre classifications, and other methods
of conveniently packaging the masses of literary works various teachers
(usually with both good intentions and real devotion to the works involved)
have depended on.  As the discussions on other lists have indicated,
the efforts to divide and classify have a way of reifying into 
associations, publications, and most dangerously, university or
college budget lines and program positions.  So the question of 
Blake's inclusion in the curriculum may be dependent somewhat on 
our ability to "integrate" him into one or another slot.  The 
"long 18th century" can easily incorporate him, and he can be
better understood as a participant in his time.  My objection to
calling him (or his contemporaries) a "Romantic" is that the term
is usually not based in history or context, since most people
cannot define a Romantic period (Romanticism is an entirely different
period on the continent) but have a general (sometimes specific) notion
of a romantic tendency or ideology or worldview which might seem to
have been concentrated in the period from the French Revolution (or
the early publications of Rousseau) through to the accession of
Victoria (or what-have-you on the continent) but that is so diffused
through literary history as to be impossible to locate in time.
(For example, David Wright's _Penguin Book of English Romantic Verse_
begins with Pope's "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" and
includes verses by James Thomson and Thomas Gray that don't even
really count as "pre-romantic", and it culminates with verses by
Tennyson, Browning, and Emily Bronte.  All are arguably "romantic"
in tendency (and for the most part, quite unlike Blake), but
not in period.  (By the way, Wright includes 26 pages of Blake's
poetry, mostly Songs and a few of the notebook poems, including
"Auguries of Innocence" and "Mental Traveler"--only Wordsworth
has more pages in this particular anthology.)
So it's true that Blake's life was devoted to distinguishing himself
from the pack of artists/poets of whose work he disapproved (though
he certainly linked himself with a few visual artists, and with
Milton, though few other poets--maybe Chatterton and Ossian), and 
the task of the historian or critic who needs to show his relationships
with his period and his peers (if he has any--many would doubt it of
our peerless poet) must inevitably seem to contradict that effort.
But we ought to differentiate the task of the historian/critic from that
of the maker of curricula and English major requirements.  It's nice
when the latter is informed by the former, but it doesn't always happen.
Tom Dillingham

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 11:28:21 -0600
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake books
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Listmembers might be interested to know that the Scholar's Bookshelf
catalog has a number of books on Blake, many at reduced prices, including
Ackroyd's biography and Damon's Blake Dictionary.  I just got two reprints
of older books of which I was not previously aware:  Kerrison Preston's
_Blake and Rossetti_ and Edwin Ellis's 1906 biography _The Real Blake_ (for
historical interest).  The catalog I have doesn't give a phone number, but
they have an email address:  jgreen@ix.netcom.com

Jennifer Michael

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 09:47:35 -0800
From: lbloxham@whitworth.edu (Laura J. Bloxham)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake as Romantic
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Austen is a romantic.  To be sure, she works more with human nature, than
natural nature.  However, PERSUASION has some lovely counterpoint on
romantic nature notions.  I have taught Austen in a romanticism course.
While not the critic of romanticism that Mary Shelley is in FRANKENSTEIN,
Austen also stands in and apart from those poets most caught up in romantic
thought and feeling.  Laura Bloxham

>>How many of us include Jane Austen?  Is she a Victorian instead?
>
>When I first read Austen in high school, I remember being told that
>although chronologically she was a Romantic, philosophically she belonged
>right back in the 18th century!  Hardly the approach I'd take today . . . .
>
>Jennifer Michael

Laura J. Bloxham                        PHONE: (509) 466-1000 x4514
Professor of English and
 Acting Associate Dean for Faculty Development
M.S. 2901                               EMAIL: lbloxham@whitworth.edu
Whitworth College                       FAX: (509) 466-3753
West 300 Hawthorne Rd.
Spokane, WA 99218

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 11:54:01 -0800
From: mthorn@ix.netcom.com (MT)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake siting
Message-Id: <199701211954.LAA06864@dfw-ix10.ix.netcom.com>

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 08:52:40 -0800
davidr@marin.cc.ca.us (David Rollison) writes:
>
>>From a review in today's San Francisco Chronicle:
>	
>	"The children of a future age that William Blake envisioned can now
>enjoy his gifts in ways not even the visionary artist and poet dated to
>imagine.  '20/20 Blake,' the lates multimedia musical spectacle from the
>mind of George Coates, may may not always do justice to Blake the
>romantic poet.  But the wild images on display at George Coates
>Performance Works have just the sort of dazzling, disarming clarity that
>Blake the artist and philosopher might have embraced...
>	Illusion is the key for Coates as it was for Blake.  '20/20 Blake'
>begins and ends with a huge projection of Blake's 1795 painting 'Elohim
>Creating Adam,' brought to life with alarming proximity both
>by...digital image manipulation and by the nifty 3-D glasses that come
>with every seat.  Soon the cast joins the paintings, appearing to move
>in and out of Blake's mystic visions as if in a lunar landscape imagined
>by another age."
>
>	
    

 20/20 Blake

 ...The Traveler lands on an inside-back,
 spacetime coordinate and awaits the Intraphase.
 The supplicants, as supplicants will do, slowly manuever a calm.
 Eerie, tonal waveforms envelope the space, aligning the scattered
 brain waves for the coming journey.
 Donning the magick goggles, the assembly is ready: configured
 "light" will be one facet of the Working. A bipolar resonance in
 the optic nerve signals the brain to simulate the Intraphase
 coordinates for maximum internal external X, Y, Zs.  The voice of
 deities announce a parallel waveform, while the Hidden Magician
 bids other deities and demons to take up clever instruments and
 weird devices for Weaving the Timespell.
 Another passage is rendered, a timeless moment of another
 timeline is energized and a Magus of a former aeon is invoked.
 Cleansing Inferno, loops separate in time and is revivified. The
 Players embark: too late now to turn back. The Flow is Flowed.
 Briefly the timeworn essence of the former Magus must meld
 with the living blood of the Player.  The Flow is Flowing, yet a
 temporal conflict occurs between the two Timelines. The Player's
 incantation, for a blink, manifests in the parallel, sequencing
 a moment of nonprojecting override, swiftly, all is restored and
 the supplicants relax without a hitch, into the next phase.
 The Four Quadrants are evident...
 Sublime. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: synchronizes with
 the life of the former Magus, his times and workings; as it
 does the Hidden Magician in retrospect and real time.
 A gift of vision for all visionaries by a master of vision with 
 a caveat: to follow the heart and feed the blood, the Commerce
 Magisters must collect their due.
 The Intraphase gains momentum.
 The Great Geometer is called.
 The Players: Priests and Priestesses, Sorcerers and
 Sorceresses evoke the Elements of Sentience while
 paying tribute to the Magus, the Hidden Magician
 (now visible center-cavern) and to themselves as
 Grand Creators in their own right. The waveforms
 blend seamlessly with the sequencing...
 The Work of the Magus is revealed in word, thought
 and image: a pale phase rendered across the enormous
 barriers. Brought to bear upon the catalyst, a Current
 Mindspace, perchance, omits the significance and jaded
 by 'sleep' performs a retrograde comparison. Happily,
 the Traveler scans good tidings among the avenue
 supplicants.
 The Seers know and do what Seers do: They
 See the entire Working and rejoice in the Vision.
 The Traveler, feeling fulfilled, returns to his own
 cave to beckon good will and heightened dreams
 to the Hidden Magician and his Inspired Cohorts.
 
 Blake rejoins the Great Mystery for a spell.
 
 ... The talent, voices, music, storyline, treatment 
 of Blake, his Marriage/Heaven/Hell, and his paintings in 3D,
 especially the final framed slide show of his work. The opening 
 animated Blake meteorite, dove, Caine/Able transition zone...
 and the Players, Players, Players...
 Yeah, it's still with me.
  Love's Labor Won!
 
  Must See Again...
 
 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 20:06:38 -0700 (MST)
From: fawman@compusmart.ab.ca (Steven Mandziuk)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake as Romantic
Message-Id: <199701220306.UAA22999@bernie.compusmart.ab.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>>How many of us include Jane Austen?  Is she a Victorian instead?
>
>When I first read Austen in high school, I remember being told that
>although chronologically she was a Romantic, philosophically she belonged
>right back in the 18th century!  Hardly the approach I'd take today . . . .
>
>Jennifer Michael
>

I have always been led to seen Austen in a Romantic context, a prefiguration
(though less prone to the macabre) of the Emily Bronte.  I don't buy it!

Steve Mandziuk>
>
>
>
>

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 00:42:09 -0800
From: Hugh Walthall 
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Canon to the right of me
Message-Id: <32E5D2E1.4AC6@erols.com>
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Canons are similar to Zoos.  Pity the poor artists held captive within 
them.  When one does infrequently escape and devour some children, it is 
shot, usually dead, because it happens after hours and whoever had the 
key to the case where the tranquilizer darts are kept is attending a 
conference in Cleveland.  The corpse is then the province of the 
pathologist and the taxidermist (skin for hire?).  A charity auction is 
held by the friends of the zoo to buy another white Rhino.  The deceased 
Rhino was named "Buster", but this time an Afro-centric name is chosen. 
 AND-- improved security measures are implemented.  The gift shop at the 
Zoo is renamed in honor of the martyrd children.

Art is dangerous, but it is not a danger that cannot be got round with 
intelligent planning, and creative funding.  And, as I said, improved 
security measures.

Hugh Walthall    hugwal@erols.com

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 18:41:34 -0800
From: rene 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Austen a Romantic?!?!
Message-Id: <32E6CFDE.1046@pacific.net.sg>
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Austen goes against, no, has completely nothing to do with anything 
even touching what the Romantics or Romanticism was about.
Imagination? Jane Austen?!

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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #5
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