Today's Topics:
John Axelson post.
Removal: Thanks
Re: note of sympathy
Re: Removal: Thanks
Re: Interesting parallels
opps
Blake was an Archdruid
Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Re: Blake was an Archdruid???
The "Orc Cycle" and MT
Druid your own conclusions
Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Call for papers, Place of conversation in Learning, SAMLA
Zamyatin
Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Blake was an Archdruid -Reply
Re: Blake was an Archdruid -Reply
re: blake and the Druids
Quote
Quote
Quote
druids to the right of me....follied and blundered
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 11:08:40 -0700
From: Steve Perry
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: John Axelson post.
Message-Id: <336244A8.17423995@surf.com>
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I definetly think you are right in pointing out that there is a
distinction between early Orc and later Los. Orc seems to embody the
impulse towards revolution and freedom, while Los makes a sustained
effort towards those same goals by manifesting eternal vision here on
earth. However, another distinction that may not be so obvious is how
Orc seems to spearhead or even champion an effort towards change in
itself in the external world, whihc reminds me of Samson in Samson
Agonistis. Whereas the labor of Los is a revolution in vision,
stripping away the veils through mainfesting glimpses of eternity
through the historical vehicle of Golgonooza. I believe the impulse
that is Orc doesn't change or go away, but springs eternal.
In that the early Blake was much more political, I think that one could
say that for Blake, Orc was the embodiment of his vision of liberation.
I think the latter Blake was disenchanted with political action, and
sought change from the spirit. Ultimately there is no difference in
the outcome (political and spiritual freedom for all), only in the
means. It is the gravity of the world through the agency of Urizen that
ultimately pulls down the external effort of Orc. Blake learned in his
own life that if he remained true to his vision despite the imprecation
of the world around him that nothing could pull it down, and that his
vision was his salvation. Orc's success depends on the world around him
following his lead.
> John William Axcelson >I break my long silence because this issue has been puzzling me
> >for a while and I would like to learn more about it. I have heard Frye's
> >model of Orc ageing into Urizen dismissed fairly often, so much so that it
> >seems to be an established fact of recent Blake studies. Yet I've never
> >seen the definitive argument(s). I may simply have missed the crucial
> >sources, and I would like very much to look them over. If there is a
> >single work or series of works that makes Frye's argument obsolete, please
> >send this information across the wire.
> >
> >My problem is this: The Orc cycle, as Frye represents it, suits so
> >well the narrative of the French Revolution and its unfortunate
> >consequences, that I'm reluctant to surrender it. One can remain a
> >a friend of liberty (as I'm sure Blake did) and yet deplore the
> >consequences of revolution (cf. the anti-Stalinist left in the US), and
> >even come to favor reform over revolution proper. I would not argue
> >that Blake that ever took this last step, but I need a bit more convincing
> >to relinquish the idea that Orc invariably lurches toward Urizen to
> >protect his victory, and that Los doesn't take Orc's place in the later
> >Blake as the source of positive social change, energy guided by vision.
> >
> >Well?
> >
> >John Axcelson
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 17:41:33 +0200
From: "Victoria Bruce"
To:
Subject: Removal: Thanks
Message-Id:
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Please remove my address from the mailing list. Thanks. Victoria
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 13:27:44 -0500 (CDT)
From: "DR. JOSIE MCQUAIL"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: note of sympathy
Message-Id: <01II79KW958M8WWB5Y@tntech.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
To Leonard and Lola Scott,
Condolences on the death of your father/husband. I'm glad he was active on
the list until pretty much the end. It is sad to hear of his passing. I
hope you both bear up in spite of the loss. That's one consolation Blake
offers: as close as he was to his brother Robert he seemed to always keep
him in his heart throughout his life despite Robert's early death.
Sincerely,
Josie McQuail
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 97 17:04:32 CDT
From: MTS231F@vma.smsu.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Removal: Thanks
Message-Id: <9704272206.AA07419@uu6.psi.com>
To leave Blake Online, send your message to blake-request@albion.com.
Put nothing in the body of the message, but on the subject line, put
unsubscribe
On Sun, 27 Apr 1997 17:41:33 +0200 Victoria Bruce said:
>Please remove my address from the mailing list. Thanks. Victoria
>
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 22:31:48 -0700
From: Eva Collins
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Interesting parallels
Message-Id: <33643644.2248@atlantech.net>
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TomD3456@aol.com wrote:
>
> I want to apprise you of a marvellous book I have just read: "Of Water and
> the Spirit," by Malidoma Some', an African now living in California. Some',
> a member of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso, describes traditional tribal
> beliefs that parallel Blake's ideas in some very interesting ways.
>
> Here's what he quotes one of his elders as saying, at the beginning of the
> first night of his initiation ceremony:
>
> "Walking slowly around the circle, [the fifth elder] spoke incessantly and
> breathlessly as if he were in a hurry to get a job done. Somehow what he
> said did not sound strange to me or -- I found out later -- to anyone. It
> was as if he were putting into words something we all knew, something we had
> never questioned and could never verbalize.
>
> What he said was this: The place where he was standing was the center. Each
> one of us possessed a center that he had grown away from after birth. To be
> born was to lose contact with our center, and to grow from childhood to
> adulthood was to walk away from it.
>
> 'The center is both within and without. It is everywhere. But we must
> realize it exists, find it, and be with it, for without the center we cannot
> tell who we are, where we come from, and where we are going.'
>
> He explained that the purpose of [initiation] was to find our center....
>
> 'No one's center is like someone else's. Find your own center, not the
> center of your neighbor; not the center of your father or mother or family or
> ancestor but that center which is yours and yours alone.'...
>
> He said that each of us is a circle like the circle we had formed around the
> fire. We are both the circle and its center. Without a circle there is no
> center and vice versa.....
>
> 'When there is a center there are four live parts to the circle: the rising
> part in the east and its right side, the north, and the setting part in the
> west and its right side, the south. All human beings are circles. Our
> setting part represents the coolness of water. It provides the peace of the
> body and the soul, and bridges the gap between how we look on the outside and
> how we are on the inside. It brings us to our family, the village, the
> community. It makes us many. The god of the setting side is the god of the
> water, the water we drink, the water that quenches our thirst.
>
> 'Its opponent is the rising part, the fire, the god that makes us do, feel,
> see, love, and hate. The fire has power, a great power of motion both within
> us and without. Outside of us, it drives us toward one another, toward the
> execution of our respective duties, toward the planning of our lives. We act
> and react because this rising power is in us and with us. Inside of us, the
> fire pulls the spiritual forces beyond us toward us. The fire within is what
> causes our real family -- those we are always drawn to when we see them -- to
> identify us. From the realm where the ancestors dwell this fire can be seen
> in each and every one of us, shining like the stars that you see above your
> heads. Imagine what would happen if we did not have that fire. You would be
> a dead star, invisible, wild, and dangerous.'...
>
> I find some of the parallels to Blake very interesting (esp. the "four live
> parts" of the circle!), and thought you would as well.
>
> Some' is a member of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso. He was taken away
> from his village by French Jesuits when he was 4, and brought up in Jesuit
> schools till the age of 20. Then he escaped back to his village and,
> eventually, underwent initiation into their traditional beliefs. Later, he
> was sent back to the West by the village elders and earned Ph.D.'s from the
> Sorbonne and Brandeis University. The book, first published in 1994,
> describes his experiences up through his initiation. It's available now as
> a Penguin "Arkana" paperback. Good stocking-stuffer!
>
> --Tom Devine
Hello, your long ago message intrigues me.
I have been lurking around the blake list for a while.
I am interested in scared cicles and tribal gatherings.
I publish a 16 page magazine, Yoga Community Newsletter and would like
to include your book "review". are you willing to let this happen?
I will like it without the Blake connection.
Visit my website, and talk to me.
Eva
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 23:39:16 -0700
From: Eva Collins
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: opps
Message-Id: <33644614.5B72@atlantech.net>
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I am really Embarrassed.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 00:09:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: SylvanBear@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake was an Archdruid
Message-Id: <970428000947_1154952804@emout12.mail.aol.com>
I recently found that Blake was an Archdruid for 20 years. I thought it might
interest a few Blake lovers; especially the Druids, like myself.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 08:10:50 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Message-Id: <97042808105076@wc.stephens.edu>
I wonder if SylvanBear would be kind enough to cite the sources of
information related to Blake's Druidic score of years?
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 08:31:25 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>I recently found that Blake was an Archdruid for 20 years. I thought it might
>interest a few Blake lovers; especially the Druids, like myself.
Where did you find this information? Blake has some very unfavorable
things to say about the Druids insofar as he associates them with human
sacrifice.
Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 08:04:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: William Neal Franklin
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake was an Archdruid???
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Mon, 28 Apr 1997 SylvanBear@aol.com wrote:
> I recently found that Blake was an Archdruid for 20 years. I thought it might
> interest a few Blake lovers; especially the Druids, like myself.
>
I'd sure like to know the source of this claim, as well as the name and
affiliation of the sender. This is nonsense to anyone who has looked at
Blake's use of the druidic.
Bill Franklin
North Central Texas College
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 16:50:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: The "Orc Cycle" and MT
Message-Id: <199704282050.QAA25524@host.ott.igs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
This posting is in partial response to John Axelson's
query about the validity of Frye's "Orc cycle."
Frye initiated the notion of the Orc cycle quite early
in "Fearful Symmetry" (p.210: "Urizen cannot be another
power but Orc himself, grown old" and p.229: "Orc, now
Urizen...")
In this posting, attention is given exclusively to
interpretations of the cycle in "The Mental Traveller."
There are on the whole two main critical traditions in
the interpretations of MT:
(1) In the earlier tradition the MT cycle is seen as
basically describing a prototype of historical
cycles:
W.M.Rossetti in Gilchrist "Life of William Blake"
1880: Vol 11 pp.112-13
Ellis and Yeats : "The Works of William Blake" 1893
Vol 11 pp.34-36
This tradition was developed further, indirectly,
by Yeats in "A Vision" 1937
and directly by Raine in "Blake and Tradition"
Vol 1 pp.302-25
[This view that the cycle of the MT is a type of historical
cycle, however, does not accord well with Blake's observation
that it describes "such dreadful things/ As cold Earth
wanderers never knew."]
(2) Frye introduced the notion of the "Orc cycle" in 1947
in "Fearful Symmetry." This interpretation was taken
up by a number of scholars:
Harold Bloom: p.225 in "Blake's Apocalypse."
John H. Sutherland: "Blake's 'Mental Traveller'"
ELH22 1955 pp.136-47
Morton D. Paley: "The Female Babe and 'The Mental
Traveller'" SiR 1 1962 pp.97-104
(incorporated, in somewhat altered form, into
Chapter 5 of "Energy and the Imagination" 1970 pp.122-41.)
Hazard Adams: "William Blake: A reading of the Shorter
Poems" 1963 pp.77-100.
By introducing the notion of Orc aging into Urizen in the
interpretation of MT, the action is in a sense complete
halfway through the poem, and the explanation of the presence
of "the female babe" then becomes problematical. Frye, already
in "Fearful Symmetry" (p.444 note 7) expressed dissatisfaction
with his own reading of the Female Babe as "Imaginative
achievements," a reading followed by Sutherland and Adams.
In "Anatomy of Criticism" 1957 pp.322-23 he identifies the
female figure with "the natural environment," and expresses
a view more akin to the earlier tradition. It is therefore
clear that Frye himself lost confidence in his reading of MT,
and it should be assumed that he may also have been losing
confidence in his "Orc cycle" interpretation as related to
the aged man in the middle of MT. The atmosphere of merriment
and munificence surrounding the mature spirit in the relevant
passages of the poem certainly does not indicate that there is
oppression or tyranny.
For a view different from the above interpretations of the
the mature male presence halfway through the poem, the
following article can be of use:
Bouwer and McNally: ""The Mental Traveller': Man's Eternal
Journey," Blake Illustrated Quarterly, Vol 12 #3 1978-79
pp.184-192. The authors see the cycle specifically as the
Biblical narrative closed into a circle. The male and female
of the poem are the manifestations of Spirit and Nature,
manifesting in a complementary way, like the light and dark
parts of the moon in its cycle of change, describing the
Fall of Man, the Incarnation, the Apocalypse and the state
of Eden. The article attempts to show that this last
interpretation of the poem conforms closely to Blake's
views, as documented by Crabb Robinson, for instance.
For a recent serious discussion of various interpretations
of MT, see Chapter 6 of Mark Trevor Smith's "All Nature is but
Art" (Locust Hill Press, West Cornwall, CT 1993).
Izak Bouwer
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 19:06:42 -0700
From: Hugh Walthall
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Druid your own conclusions
Message-Id: <336557B2.3F9F@erols.com>
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Blake was a Druid? Pre- and Post- Posterous. I mean, yeah, Wallace
Stevens was a Rotarian and Fred Flintstone belonged to the Water
Buff-Hellos or some such, and every other dead writer who wasn't Female
of Jewish was a freemason for at least a little while....
Whence cometh such anonymous unsubstaniated blather?
Hugh Walthall hugwal@erols.com
ps: my own blather is not anonymous, and it is substantial.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 19:26:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: SylvanBear@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Message-Id: <970428192448_-566400390@emout13.mail.aol.com>
It is in a parcel I recieved from a Druid order called the British Order of
the Universal Bond. He was the Arch Druid from 1799-1827. (I think those were
the dates)
I've never read anything by him slamming Druids. He did a lot of stuff on
Druidic themes. His drawings depict many Druidic ritae. In fact, the only
stuff he wrote praising christianity was in his youth. He was a die-hard
christian when he was young (much like myself...). Of course, if you aren't
Druid, you wouldn't realize or recognize a lot of stuff. (That's not an
insult, by the way...)
Please Argue.
Kevin
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 20:08:09 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Message-Id: <97042820080960@wc.stephens.edu>
Please do not argue. Such nonsense is not worthy of discussion and
can only lead to pointless waste of energy and needless conflict.
(It would be analogous to arguing with Holocaust deniers and flat-earthers.
They believe what they choose to believe and form everything to fit their
preconceptions. As well debate the statehood of Texas.)
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 10:06:53 -0500 (CDT)
From: "DR. JOSIE MCQUAIL"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Call for papers, Place of conversation in Learning, SAMLA
Message-Id: <01II8H2AZ5JM8WWUCJ@tntech.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
From: TTU::HZW7598 "Heidemarie Z Weidner" 28-APR-1997 08:47:07.77
To: @DEPARTMENT.DIS
CC:
Subj: Repeat--Call for papers
The Humanities Session of SAMLA, Nov. 13-15, Atlanta, GA, calls for papers or
proposal on the topic, "The Place of Conversation in Learning." Send papers
(8-10 pages, unread, unpublished) or proposals (250 words) to
Heide Weidner, Dpt.of English, Box 5053, Tennessee Technological University,
Cookeville, TN 38506. Phone: 615-373-3768. Email: HZW7598@TNTECH.edu.
Deadline: May 15, 1997.
Note:
I friend asked me to clarify the topic. It occurred to me while reading
Kenneth A. Bruffee's (1984) "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of
Mankind'." In this piece, Bruffee refers to Michael Oakeshott (1962), Vygotsky
(1978), and Richard Rorty (1979), among others, to develop his ideas about
reflection as "internalized" and writing as "re-externalized" conversation.
Other connections between conversation and writing can be traced back to Cicero
whose "canon for conversation" can easily be translated into a canon for
writing (Shirley Brice Heath).
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 21:36:04 -0400
From: "Michael H. Weller"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Zamyatin
Message-Id: <33655084.4A19@bellsouth.net>
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I'm new and I wanted to start a new thread since I seem to have come in
the middle of the present one.
Has anyone else noticed a Blakean quality (more specifically, "Marriage
of Heaven and Hell") to Zamyatin's WE?
Does anyone know if Zamyatin had read Blake?
Thanks,
Julie
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 20:53:48 -0500 (CDT)
From: William Neal Franklin
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake was an Archdruid
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
I'd like to see anything you have substantiating your claim. More to the
point, I'd like to see something demonstrating the authority of the
British Order of the Universal Bond to promote such claims. Please
provide us with a bibliography sufficient to track this information down.
Once I see it, I will be more than happy to argue.
Bill Franklin
NCTC
On Mon, 28 Apr 1997 SylvanBear@aol.com wrote:
> It is in a parcel I recieved from a Druid order called the British Order of
> the Universal Bond. He was the Arch Druid from 1799-1827. (I think those were
> the dates)
>
> I've never read anything by him slamming Druids. He did a lot of stuff on
> Druidic themes. His drawings depict many Druidic ritae. In fact, the only
> stuff he wrote praising christianity was in his youth. He was a die-hard
> christian when he was young (much like myself...). Of course, if you aren't
> Druid, you wouldn't realize or recognize a lot of stuff. (That's not an
> insult, by the way...)
>
> Please Argue.
> Kevin
>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 10:13:56 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake was an Archdruid -Reply
Message-Id:
Please could you give details of where you found this info re Blake being
a Druid? When I was last in London, I met someone in a bookshop who
was very interested in this subject... and was investigating the
underground currents near old taverns in relation to Druidism. Pam
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 11:07:58 +0100
From: timli@controls.eurotherm.co.uk (Tim Linnell)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake was an Archdruid -Reply
Message-Id: <24385.199704291007@merlot.controls.eurotherm.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Please could you give details of where you found this info re Blake being
>a Druid? When I was last in London, I met someone in a bookshop who
>was very interested in this subject... and was investigating the
>underground currents near old taverns in relation to Druidism. Pam
Let's not forget that the revival of Druidism is essentially a fairly recent
phenomenon, based originally on romantic notions of what might best be
described as 'noble savagery', but being now little more than a cult founded
on bog standard new age mysticism. The rituals are an amalgam of ideas taken
from Egyptian, Native American, Celtic and other 'pagan' sources. It
certainly has nothing to do with true Druidism, which I believe has been
quite extensively researched now. I have to say that I have difficulty
imagining any connection between druids, ancient underground currents and
old taverns (perhaps a few warm ales might change this though). Although it
would probably make a good book.
Druidism is very much the territory of Palmer and the Ancients, particularly
Calvert, rather than of Blake, who was far more worldly. I seem to recall
reading a reference to the Druids in one of Blake's works, and I don't doubt
that he found some resonances in the ideas behind the Druid revival, but it
is hard to see how someone of Blake's intelligence and strength of character
would be influenced to such a point where he would have signed up with them.
On the other hand, I can see how a cult would be interested in using Blake's
name and mythology to add a degree of credence to their activities.
File under snake oil, I think.
Tim Linnell
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 16:50:13 MET
From: "Ib Johansen"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: re: blake and the Druids
Message-Id: <70BC27A3C@hum.aau.dk>
Concerning Blake and Druidism, may I remind you of Blake's (highly
unorthodox) views on this subject put forward in his Descriptive
Catalogue (1809), i.e. in his comment on a painting no longer extant,
"The Ancient Britons". Here he declares: "Adam was a Druid, and Noah;
also Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical age, which began to
turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal command,
whereby human sacrifice would have depopulated the earth. All these
things are written in Eden..." (The Poetry and Prose of William
Blake, ed. Erdman, Fourth Printing, with Revisions, 1970, p. 533). Of
course, this idea of a "corporeal command", referred to in "The
Ancient Britons", is what dominates in the (largely negative)
representation of the Druidical Age that we come across in Jerusalem
(Chapter 3), where "the mountains / Of Wales & Scotland beheld the
descending War: the routed flying: / Red run the streams of Albion:
Thames is drunk with blood: / As Gwendolen cast the shuttle of
war..." (Plate 66, E 217). But in "The Ancient Britons" druidism is
rather associated with a kind of prisca theologia and the myth of the
Golden Age, where England is envisaged as "the source of learning and
inspiration" (E 533) and "Druid monuments, or temples" (E 533) are to
be found everywhere. Of course, Stonehenge is the primary (or
archetypal) example of the architecture of this primordial age, and
according to Blake, "Distant among the mountains, are Druid Temples,
similar to Stone Henge. The Sun sets behind the mountains, bloody
with the day of battle..." (E 536). What is envisaged here looks like
a kind of Goetterdaemmerung or Untergang des Abendlandes, but at the
same time Blake presents the scene as a s u b l i m e moment in
British history!
Ib Johansen,
engij@hum.aau.dk
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 14:35:49 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704292132.OAA00175@gost1.indirect.com>
[from 'The First Book of Urizen', plate 18 (20)]
9. But Los encircled Enitharmon
With fires of Prophecy
From the sight of Urizen & Orc.
10. And she bore an enormous race
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 14:50:14 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704292147.OAA01173@gost1.indirect.com>
[from 'Jerusalem', plate 27]
To the Jews
"All things Begin & End in Albions Ancient Druid Rocky Shore."
Your Ancestors derived their origin from Abraham, Heber, Shem, and
Noah. who were Druids: as the Druid Temples (which are the
Patriarchal Pillars & Oak Groves) over the whole Earth witness to
this day.
You have a tradition, that Man anciently containd in his mighty limbs
all things in Heaven & Earth: this you recieved from the Druids.
"But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion"
Albion was the Parent of the Druids; & in his Chaotic State of Sleep
Satan & Adam & the whole World was Created by the Elohim.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 15:52:35 -0700
From: "Charlie K."
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Quote
Message-Id: <199704292249.PAA05860@gost1.indirect.com>
[from 'The First Book of Urizen', plate 4a (4)]
4. From the depths of dark solitude,
From
The eternal abode in my holiness,
Hidden, set apart in my stern counsels
Reserv'd for the days of futurity,
I have sought for a joy without pain,
For a solid without fluctuation
Why will you die O Eternals?
Why live in unquenchable burnings?
5 First I fought with the fire; consum'd
Inwards, into a deep world within:
A void immense, wild dark & deep
Where nothing was; Natures wide womb
And self balanc'd stretch'd o'er the void
I alone, even I! the winds merciless
Bound; but condensing in torrents
They fall & fall; strong, I repell'd
The vast waves, & arose on the waters
A wide world of solid obstruction
6. Here alone I in books formd of me-
-tals
Have written the secrets of wisdom
The secrets of dark contemplation
By fightings and conflicts dire.
With terrible monsters Sin-bred:
Which the bosoms of all inhabit;
Seven deadly Sins of the soul.
7. Lo! I unfold my darkness: and on
This rock, place with strong hand the Book
Of eternal brass, written in my solitude.
8. Laws of peace, of love, of unity;
Of pity, compassion, forgiveness,
Let each chuse one habitation;
His ancient infinite mansion;
One command, one joy, one desire,
One curse, one weight, one measure
One King. one God. one Law.
[To me this passage seems highly autobiographical for Blake
(reflective of his contemplative & book-making activities), which may
be the reason why he left the plate out of five of the seven copies
of 'Urizen'. Interestingly, it is the only passage in the book
where supposedly Urizen is doing the speaking.]
[Harold Bloom writes: "Urizen, as his name's possible origin in the
Greek ourizein would indicate, is the power in the fallen psyche
that marks boundaries, defines the horizon, separates and divides,
and in general limits and reduces. Yet, in Eternity, Urizen was the
entire intellect of Man. The poem's central irony is its constant
implicit contrast between what Urizen is and what he was."]
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Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 19:02:49 -0700
From: Hugh Walthall
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: druids to the right of me....follied and blundered
Message-Id: <3366A849.B68@erols.com>
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Keynes text is in front of me: Jerusalem plate 92 lines 23-25 or so:
Where the Druids rear'd their Rocky Circles to make permanent
Remembrance
Of Sin, & the Tree of Good & Evil sprang from the Rocky Circle & Snake
Of the Druid....
There are 15 or so references to Druid in Frye. None very flattering.
Blake applies the term to any dinky Primitive Warrior/Priest culture.
Equally to Noah or Montezuma or the Conquistadors (can't remember if
this last was a 50's Doo-wop group or Ventures wannabes).
An interpretation quite similar to Marx or Vico, methinks.
Hugh Walthall hugwal@erols.com
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #51
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