Today's Topics:
Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Transformation?
Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Transformation? -Reply
Re: Transformation?
Blake and Web Sites
Re: Blake and Web Sites
SONTAG ON BLAKE, IMAGINATION & TRUTH
Re: Blake and Web Sites
Adventures in Poetry
Blake and Klopstock once more
Blake sighting
Re: Blake and Klopstock once more
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:54:42 -0500
From: "J. Michael"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> They (romantics) were
>interested in demonstrating beliefs in the supernatural such as coleridge in
>the eve of st. agnes and kubla khan.
Keats, not Coleridge, wrote "The Eve of St. Agnes," and unless you equate
the imagination with the "supernatural," I don't think either poem is about
"demonstrating belief in the supernatural."
At the risk of starting another flame war, I don't know which I find more
annoying on this list: questions that could be answered by turning to any
encyclopedia, or the factually erroneous responses they receive.
Jennifer Michael
jmichael@sewanee.edu
"What's madness but nobility of soul / At odds with circumstance?" --Roethke
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:15:07 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Message-Id: <98102209150754@wc.stephens.edu>
Bravo, Jennifer.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 06:43:15 -0800
From: ndeeter
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Message-Id: <362F4482.35D5@concentric.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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J. Michael wrote:
>
> > They (romantics) were
> >interested in demonstrating beliefs in the supernatural such as coleridge in
> >the eve of st. agnes and kubla khan.
>
> Keats, not Coleridge, wrote "The Eve of St. Agnes," and unless you equate
> the imagination with the "supernatural," I don't think either poem is about
> "demonstrating belief in the supernatural."
>
> At the risk of starting another flame war, I don't know which I find more
> annoying on this list: questions that could be answered by turning to any
> encyclopedia, or the factually erroneous responses they receive.
>
> Jennifer Michael
>
> jmichael@sewanee.edu
> "What's madness but nobility of soul / At odds with circumstance?" --Roethke
Hear, hear.
Nathan Deeter
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:15:38 -0400
From: bert@kvvi.net (Bert Stern)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Transformation?
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Pam,
You didn't say anything in response to my answer to your question.
I'm curious how you yourself see lit. as transformative. In my answer I
avoided treating directly the possibility that lit can serve magically.
Blake's remarks about the transformation that occurs when we enter an image
opens that subject. So does the Jewish belief that when we say the Sh'ma
Yisroel we repair the siforeth, sending a kind of healing wave back up
against the ravages of the fall. I'm quite interested in this aspect. I
know that there was a period when Robert Bly wrote poems that seemed
designed to induce states. Wallace Stevens, too, sometimes even in such
small contraptions as "The Snow Man" or "Anecdote of the Jar." "His
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is actually a kind of casebook of
transformations implicit in an image. Poems of this kind work somewhat
like mandalas, I assume.
Of course, I'm skeptical of the larger transformations--though I am
open a narrow crack to the popular idea that a sense of imminent disaster
always accompanies millenial changes, and gets transfused into hope once
the new millenium begins. Hope so. Though I'll be seventy then, I don't
want to be an apres moi le deluge kind of guy.
Bert
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:20:32 -0500
From: John Hubanks
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Message-Id: <01J39NLOL9YA009UUF@UALR.EDU>
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Actually, I can think of no more appropriate fate for those who are simply
too lazy to find their campus library than to receive factually erroneous
responses. Should we found a Blakean Disinformation Service to respond to
such requests for information? Unethical? You bet. Immoral? Perhaps,
but it could be good for a couple of laughs. Just a thought.
John Hubanks
At 08:54 AM 10/22/98 -0500, you wrote:
>> They (romantics) were
>>interested in demonstrating beliefs in the supernatural such as
coleridge in
>>the eve of st. agnes and kubla khan.
>
>Keats, not Coleridge, wrote "The Eve of St. Agnes," and unless you equate
>the imagination with the "supernatural," I don't think either poem is about
>"demonstrating belief in the supernatural."
>
>At the risk of starting another flame war, I don't know which I find more
>annoying on this list: questions that could be answered by turning to any
>encyclopedia, or the factually erroneous responses they receive.
>
>Jennifer Michael
>
>jmichael@sewanee.edu
>"What's madness but nobility of soul / At odds with circumstance?" --Roethke
>
John J. Hubanks
Department of Philosophy & Liberal Studies
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 11:59:17 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Message-Id: <98102211591759@wc.stephens.edu>
The problem of students asking listmembers to do their homework for them
has been common on all the academic lists I am part of, and has been for
all the years I have been using the internet. It is undeniably annoying,
but I guess I would want to parcel some responsibility out to the
teachers, as well. I have encouraged some of my students to join
lists relevant to the subjects of my courses, but I have also given them
clear instructions in netiguette, including talking with them about the
difference between a legitimate question and something like the desperate
cry for help that suggests someone has done no work and is facing a
deadline. This is not really the place to discuss the problems of
teaching students who imagine that the WWW and discussion lists
will solve all their "research" problems, but I am sure that other
teachers have had the frustration of facing students who imagine that
finding a few websites or a friendly e-mailer will substitute for doing
serious research.
In that connection, while the suggestion that we create a disinformation
list may satisfy a certain communal schadenfreude, the fact that Jennifer
had to call attention to the gross errors and ignorance of an earlier
post reminds us that one of the real dangers of the internet is its
ability to magnify and disseminate error in ways that must remind os
of the great images of Errours Den in _The Faerie Queene_ ("most lothsome,
filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.")
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 13:17:34 -0500
From: John Hubanks
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: ROMANTICS?!!!!
Message-Id: <01J39TSCOJUA00AC95@UALR.EDU>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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So much for my attempt at sarcasm. Good points all, Tom, and all well taken.
John
At 11:59 AM 10/22/98 -0500, you wrote:
>The problem of students asking listmembers to do their homework for them
>has been common on all the academic lists I am part of, and has been for
>all the years I have been using the internet. It is undeniably annoying,
>but I guess I would want to parcel some responsibility out to the
>teachers, as well. I have encouraged some of my students to join
>lists relevant to the subjects of my courses, but I have also given them
>clear instructions in netiguette, including talking with them about the
>difference between a legitimate question and something like the desperate
>cry for help that suggests someone has done no work and is facing a
>deadline. This is not really the place to discuss the problems of
>teaching students who imagine that the WWW and discussion lists
>will solve all their "research" problems, but I am sure that other
>teachers have had the frustration of facing students who imagine that
>finding a few websites or a friendly e-mailer will substitute for doing
>serious research.
>In that connection, while the suggestion that we create a disinformation
>list may satisfy a certain communal schadenfreude, the fact that Jennifer
>had to call attention to the gross errors and ignorance of an earlier
>post reminds us that one of the real dangers of the internet is its
>ability to magnify and disseminate error in ways that must remind os
>of the great images of Errours Den in _The Faerie Queene_ ("most lothsome,
>filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine.")
>Tom Dillingham
>
John J. Hubanks
Department of Philosophy & Liberal Studies
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:34:31 +0200
From: P Van Schaik
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Transformation? -Reply
Message-Id:
Dear Bert
Sorry to be tardy about responding to your evocative ideas on literature
as tranformative. I was hoping others would offer to engage in the
debate since you sowed so many seeds which could have led to fruitful
discussion.
Swedenborg saw heavenly beings as engaging in `a perpetual flow of
delightful conversation, interspersed with ... mirth-provoking
pleasantries',( True Christian Religion, 765-87), and Blake seems to have
borrowed this idea and amplified it in inviting his readers to follow the
`goldens string' of his thoughts, wind them into a ball and, in this way, be
led to Heaven's gate ` built in Jerusalem's wall'.
I think much of Blake's imagery related to the Husbandman and
Shepherd has bearing on his perception of literature as transformative
and redemptive. Even as early as "Poetical Sketches", he contrasts the
peaceful pursuits of these in times of peace, with those they engage in
during war, as in :
The husbandman does leave his plow
To wade in fields of gore ....
and
The Shepherd leaves his mellow pipe
And sounds the trumpet shrill.
In later poems, such figures become symbolic archetypes representing
the growing of the `Harvest' of intellectual beauty in Innocence, as
opposed to the ways in which such intellectual sparring in Innocence
becomes the deadly warfare of mortal war on Earth.
I began by quoting these lines as they just happen to be right in front of
me, on loose leaves, fallen from my text... but one can open Blake almost
anywhere and find proof that he desired to use his artistic gifts in
service of the Eternal HUmanity Divine, and to rescue people from
sorrow through reaffirming the existence of a God of love and mercy.
As you suggest in your second posting on this subject, there is a
quasi-magical aspect to such endeavour. To see the Truth, for Blake, is
to be immediately rescued from the Falsehoods which prevent us from
recovering inner joy ... it is akin to remembering who we really are:
Knowledge of Ideal Beauty in Not to be Acquired. It is Born with us.
Innate ideas are in Every Man, Born with him; they are truly Himself.
The Man who says we have No Innate ideas must be a Fool & Knave,
Having no Con-Science or Innate Science.
(Annotations to Reynolds, Keynes, 459)
Here, the word, 'Science' is interesting since so much has been
discussed online about Blake's perception of Science. Here, it would
seem to refer to re-recognising that which is forgotten when we are
exposed to Falsehoods and to false perceptions of our truly divine
nature and origins.
The lovely passage you quoted describing the return of all things to their
naked human, spiritual forms in Innocence is one of Blake's most lyrical
dramatisations of the yearning of all creatures to escape from the
restraints of the `husks' of matter which limit the expansiveness of the
soul and prevent easy communion between all earthly things and the
divine powers from which they all derive.
So, to Reynolds' claim that the `great ideals of perfection and beauty
are not to be sought in the heavens, but upon the earth', Blake
vehemently responds "A Lie!". It is out of the `maze of Folly' in which the
world of NAture seems to be the only true reality that Blake hopes to lead
us, and this is the context out of which he finds Wordsworth's poetry
limiting. This is also the context in which we do have to place all that
Blake says in order not to distort his transforming messages of faith .
Even if what he says is totally unpopular in this age , as in ages past,
everything Bake writes springs from his passionate conviction that he,
as artist, has a divine purpose :"The Man who never in his mind and
Thoughts travel'd to Heaven is No Artist".(Keynes, 458)
The `teshuva' in Kabbalah, or reversal of all the processes of the fall , is
the moment when man reaches the `Limit' of the Fall in Blake, and begins
the gathering of the scattered sparks of his own, and Earth's, divine
humanity. Los has little meaning in Blake's epic poems unless it is clearly
understood that he is constantly engaged in restoring Earth to her former
glory. This is an individual act of imaginative grasp , as much as it is
seen by Blake as also , ultimately, apocalyptic.
I'm about to give an informal talk on Blake, Swedenborg and Boehme, so
this is as far as I'll go for now.
Pam
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 15:11:07 EDT
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Transformation?
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
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Bert--
Although you asked for Pam's opinion, I hope mine may not be unwelcome also,
as your questions and Pam's responses got me going on this topic. Of course,
I am preaching to the converted here, so forgive me where I'm telling you what
you already know. I needed to write this to clarify my own ideas, so on the
chance it may stimulate something in you, I post it.
>I'm curious how you yourself see lit. as transformative. In my answer I
>avoided treating directly the possibility that lit can serve magically.
>Blake's remarks about the transformation that occurs when we enter an image
>opens that subject. So does the Jewish belief that when we say the Sh'ma
>Yisroel we repair the siforeth, sending a kind of healing wave back up
>against the ravages of the fall.
Although Blake definitely believed in "spirits," the nature of such things
(and of magic) is difficult and tricky to discuss. I prefer to think about it
this way: "If the Spectator could enter into these Images in his Imagination
approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought," he would
transform _himself_ BY THAT ACTIVITY -- as when we listen actively and
intently to a new work of music and grasp the artist's conception and thereby
have our own conceptions of what is possible blown away and reconstituted as a
new and larger vision.
And that active "entering-into" IS work: Using music as an example, you can't
just passively listen, or use a CD as background music, and expect to gain
anything -- you need to bring all your attention to it, and all your
knowledge, and you need to be in the right mood -- a state of grace? -- to be
able to listen in the way Blake describes. I'm not always capable of it.
Sometimes I have to play a piece myself, on the piano, for weeks, and get
frustrated enough that I begin to pay attention to the minutest details,
before I really begin to "get" it. And then, "if I have both will and grace,"
as Martin Buber says, I may be able to enter into the piece in a REAL way, and
hear it as a unity -- hear the IDEA behind it, the conception that organizes
all its parts and makes it NEW, the true shape of the piece. And that
experience transforms all the other parts of my life, especially (but not
exclusively) the hearing or playing of music -- at least until I get lazy and
"fall asleep" again.
Blake could not be clearer on this subject. In VLJ, immediately following the
passage you cite, he writes: "General Knowledge is Remote Knowledge it is in
Particulars that Wisdom consists & Happiness too.... Every man has Eyes Nose
& Mouth this every Idiot knows but he who enters into & discriminates most
minutely the Manners & Intentions the [Expression] Characters in all their
branches is the alone Wise or Sensible Man & on this discrimination All Art
is founded."
The active contemplation Blake recommends seems the very opposite of magical
healing, although it leads to a genuine miracle, a transformation of
consciousness. The "magical" approach seems, in contrast, a passive reliance
on activities done without full consciousness, as in the repetition of rote-
learned prayers -- a reliance on "external" spiritual help. And Blake is
surely not speaking of that in VLJ, or in the other passages where he talks
about the need for every man and woman to be an artist. "Rouse up, young men
of the New Age!" "Awake! Awake!" are his characteristic calls. Not that
prayer is useless or spiritual help an illusion, necessarily, but "Prayer is
the practise of Art," whether creating it ourselves or entering into it
imaginatively.
As we are transformed by that practice, we heal ourselves, our own part of the
Divine, and our interactions with everyone and everything in the world are
transformed by that inner transformation. What other kind of healing could we
be talking about?
-2-
Let me not indict magic out of hand, or the inducing of moods, or the
repeating of prayers. If a prayer is repeated with genuine attention and
sincerity, I imagine it can be transformative as well. Saying a rote prayer,
I think, is actually an invitation to meditate on the meaning or feeling
behind that prayer, not a passive activity that brings an automatic reward
just for enduring the boredom of repeating it. But somehow, it was only the
latter approach that seemed to be taught in my religious upbringing, and I
find myself falling into it when I try to use rote prayers, which I
(therefore) rarely do. Not being a Jew, I don't know the experience of saying
the Sh'ma Yisroel, but I think I have heard it sung or intoned, and I imagine
it can be a very moving experience -- an intense artistic experience, if that
is not a blasphemous description -- to sing it with full attention of heart
and mind.
Even creating your own prayers, or your own art, can be done in a state of
relative "sleep," and then it is of little use, as far as I can tell.
Above all, Blake recommends working in earnest, as if your life depended on
it. I remember the story of the young artist who came to Blake and whom Blake
asked, "Do you approach your work in fear and trembling?" "I'm afraid I do,"
said the young man. "Then," said Blake, "you'll do."
As far as I can tell, this is how Blake sees art as transformative. It's
never easy. I don't think it's millennial, any more than the Last Judgment is
-- or any less; both are personal, and through that, they are world-
transforming in the modest way we can hope for. As for spirits, Blake surely
saw them; but I don't think he'd ask anyone to take them on faith. If I work
hard enough, perhaps I'll see them myself, and until then, I'll try to remain
open on the topic.
-3-
For literature to be truly transformative, I think we have to try creating it
as well as understanding others' creations. Blake certainly seems to
recommend that, as we all know. But except for Jim Watt and some other
honorable exceptions on this list, few teachers of Blake in my experience ask
students seriously to engage in the activity of creating their own poems. The
great pianist Artur Schnabel taught that musicians should not only interpret
others' music, but should also write their own, and he did just that. Though
little of his music is played nowadays, his experience of being on the other
side of the composition process no doubt transformed his interpretations of
Mozart, Beethoven, etc., and no doubt made him a happier person.
Robert Bly, whom you mention, makes a point of having everyone at his
workshops write their own poems, and/or perform poems they have memorized, so
that everyone gets to practice art actively in some form. Bly also recounts
William Stafford's use of the "golden string" that Pam mentions. First thing
every morning, Stafford would try to notice whatever was a new thought or
experience or feeling as he awoke, and he would use that as the end of a
golden string, and write a poem by trying to follow it where it led. Not all
the poems turned out to be good, but that was his morning practice for many
years. Bly asked Stafford if everything thread was golden -- aren't some
threads just duds? No, Stafford replied, they can all be golden -- but you
can't hold them too tight, or they break, or too loosely, or they get all
tangled up. If you keep at it, though, you can learn how to follow them.
There's a practice that might be transformative.
--Tom Devine
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 15:02:13 -0500
From: Keith Geekie
To: "'blake@albion.com'"
Subject: Blake and Web Sites
Message-Id: <41791EFD4E88D111A79C00805FE62D0C4596CE@po.jccc.net>
Content-Type: text/plain
Dear List,
The next assignment for my intro to lit students is to go to a Blake web
site and read the Songs of Innocence and Experience and look at the plates.
I'll be interested to find out how this will go. I've never had students
read all the poems but since the poems are on the net, I thought I would.
I'll keep you posted on how it goes. These are mostly students who have very
practical majors or have no major at all and who have very little interest
in poetry. But in the past I've found most students really warm to Blake.
See you. Have a good weekend. Keith
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 13:37:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Josh First
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake and Web Sites
Message-Id: <19981023203745.23486.rocketmail@web4.rocketmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
"Dear List,
"The next assignment for my intro to lit students is
to go to a Blake web site and read the Songs of
Innocence and Experience and look at the plates.
I'll be interested to find out how this will go. I've
never had students read all the poems but since the
poems are on the net, I thought I would.
I'll keep you posted on how it goes. These are mostly
students who have very practical majors or have no
major at all and who have very little interest in
poetry. But in the past I've found most students
really warm to Blake. See you. Have a good weekend.
Keith"
I wouldn't say they warm to Blake per se, rather they
warm to Songs of Innocence and of Experience. I'm in
an english class right now on only Blake and
virtually all the students in the class got totally
freaked out after the Songs. It's really frustrating
because I'm really interested in it all and no one
except like three out of a class of 35 ever say
anything about the poetry or, for that matter, his
prose (right now we're reading "Vision of the Last
Judgement."). I guess it's difficult to get students
interested in such seemingly obscure and difficult
stuff. Maybe it should only be taught at graduate
level. I don't know. Does anybody, who have perhaps
taught such a class, have any thoughts on the matter?
===
Joshua First
jfirst@rocketmail.com
c698167@showme.missouri.edu
Columbia Critical Mass Web Site:
www.deviant.org/~lamp/critmass.html
next Mass: Oct. 30 4:30pm Peace Park (costumes
optional)
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 13:52:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: SONTAG ON BLAKE, IMAGINATION & TRUTH
Message-Id: <2.2.16.19981023164839.4e779ee8@pop.igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I just stumbled across this cite in a book catalog just received:
Truth and Imagination : The Universes Within
by Frederick Sontag
Price: $27.50
Hardcover (November 1997)
University Press of America; ISBN: 076180921X
According to the blurb, the author explores the possibilities Blake shows
how the imagination can offer insights into truth. Interesting. Anybody
familiar with this work?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 13:10:46 -0800
From: ndeeter
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake and Web Sites
Message-Id: <3630F0D6.2061@concentric.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Josh First wrote:
> I wouldn't say they warm to Blake per se, rather they
> warm to Songs of Innocence and of Experience. I'm in
> an english class right now on only Blake and
> virtually all the students in the class got totally
> freaked out after the Songs. It's really frustrating
> because I'm really interested in it all and no one
> except like three out of a class of 35 ever say
> anything about the poetry or, for that matter, his
> prose (right now we're reading "Vision of the Last
> Judgement."). I guess it's difficult to get students
> interested in such seemingly obscure and difficult
> stuff. Maybe it should only be taught at graduate
> level. I don't know. Does anybody, who have perhaps
> taught such a class, have any thoughts on the matter?
In high school, I took a British Lit class that focused on poetry and
the one thing that pleased me was how ACCESSIBLE, yet INTELLIGENT--and
EMOTIONALLY ENGAGED for that matter--Blake's Songs were. I was with many
other students in America, not schooled in how to read poetry. I was not
familiar with a lot of techniques employed in poetry, having practiced
only with reading prose.
Blake seemed remarkably different and I thought if Blake could do it,
why can't contemporary America? Why couldn't I do it?
Blake's Songs are probably single-handedly responsible for my turning to
poetry, studying it and taking it up.
Part of learning poetry is practice. Part of learning poetry is having a
teacher that knows how difficult it can be to people used to reading
prose. Part of it is having a good, inspiring teacher that is moved by
the poetry. If it's easy, how can you possibly learn anything from it?
But if it isn't accessible, how can you possibly begin to learn anything
from it? Blake is not easy, but he is accessible. Keep working with it,
keep practicing with it. Don't be afraid to dwell in the struggle and
face the darkness. For at the heart of that darkness (no alusion to
Conrad intended) is illumination.
Nathan Deeter
ndeeter@concentric.net
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 98 23:19:45 +0100 ( + )
From: Paul Tarry
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Adventures in Poetry
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; X-MAPIextension=".TXT"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Just spotted this radio listing for Sunday:
Adventures in Poetry
Sun, 25 Oct, BBC Radio 4, 16.30-17.00
Three programmes exploring the language and lasting impact of
poetry. This programme looks at William Blake's "The Tyger".
What the hand, dare seize the tuner ?
Paul
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 21:07:14 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake and Klopstock once more
Message-Id: <98102321071456@wc.stephens.edu>
Thanks to Izak Bouwer for reminding us of Blake's head of Klopstock,
painted for William Hayley's collection of "poets' heads" at Turret
House. That sent me back to the fascinating booklet about the "heads
of the poets" published by the Manchester Museum, which houses them
(or did when the booklet was published). The note on the Klopstock
head indicates that a friend of Hayley's sent him an engraving of
the bust (presumably the one Coleridge alludes to) and that Blake
probably used it as his model. The chronology of Blake's attitudes
toward Klopstock is interesting--I had wondered if his hostility
might have been connected to his dislike of Hayley and his rejection
of all things Hayleyan, but apparently not. A note in the Manchester
booklet indicates: "It is evident from some ribald lines written by
Blake in the Rossetti manuscript about 1793 beginning "When Klopstock
England defied/Uprose William Blake in his pride . . ." that Blake
felt hostile to Klopstock even before he went to Felpham, where
Hayley's admiration for him doubtless intensified his dislike,
but
as throughout the series, Blake's Head remains a model of objectivity.
. . . Klopstock died in March, 1803, and it is possible tht his head
was not added until then." There is also some discussion of the
image of a woman playing a harp that flanks Klopstock's head in the
portrait--indicating it might reflect Blake's familiarity with a
passage from Klopstock, as do the decorative sidepieces of the other
heads, showing motifs from the poems of those poets.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 23:27:53 EDT
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake sighting
Message-Id: <7169aedc.36314939@aol.com>
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In the program for a Kronos Quartet concert, I found the following in a
biographical notice about vocalist David Barron:
"His performances include... the title role in the premiere of _William Blake
in Hell_ by Huib Emmer with Theatergroep Hollandia...."
Has anyone encountered this piece?
--Tom Devine
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Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 11:15:37
From: Izak Bouwer
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake and Klopstock once more
Message-Id: <3.0.1.16.19981024111537.2fc77fea@igs.net>
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One might perhaps add that even though Blake felt
hostile to Klopstock himself, he showed a more positive
reaction to Mrs Klopstock. In his letter to Hayley
of 16 July 1804, he wrote:
"I omitted to get Richardson [_The Correspondence of
Samuel Richardson Selected by Anne Laetitia Barbauld_
London 6 vols 1804] till last Friday . . . but cannot
restrain myself from speaking of Mrs Klopstock's
letters Vol. 3, which to my feelings are the purest
image of Conjugal affection honesty & Innocence I
ever saw on paper. . . ."
Izak Bouwer
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End of blake-d Digest V1998 Issue #80
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