Blake List — Volume 1998 : Issue 87

Today's Topics:
	 Race -Reply
	 Race -Reply/  Song of Los
	 Any news? -Reply
	 Re: Countenance Divine
	 Re: Weird Poetry -Reply
	 Re: Race
	 Re: Race -Reply/  Song of Los
	 Re: Race
	 Re: Race -Reply/  Song of Los
	 Re: invoking spirits/  litereature as transformative -Reply
	 Re: Countenance Divine
	 Re: did Blake ever say this? -Reply
	 Re: Countenance Divine
	 Re: Race -Reply/  Song of Los
	 Re: Finding the Western Path
	 Re: Countenance Divine
	 Poetry is practice
	 Black Boy
	 Never Learn...
	 Re: Alternative Medicine
	 The Little Black Boy...

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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 09:49:06 +0200
From: P Van Schaik 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Race -Reply
Message-Id: 


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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 09:48:49 +0200
From: P Van Schaik 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Race -Reply/  Song of Los
Message-Id: 

Julian, I doubt that Blake's views on race are ambiguous. In the Song of
Los, Los is described as singing about  how Urizen brought about the
Fall of Albion and all of his children.  He sings in the fourfold world of
Eternity, where all beings are fourfold so the four harps are significant.
He does so , either prophetically before the Fall , or after being restored
to Eternity ... from the opening lines we can't be sure of the time, but it
doesn't matter that  much ... it is more important to grasp that  Blake is
dramatising  the Fall from Los's perspective.  He attributes the blackness
of the Africans to the darkening and contracting that Urizen causes by
rejecting Jerusalem and the divine vision of love ... in Eternity , in
Innocence, there are no physical bodies, so racism couldn't exist ... there
are Nations in which the people give expression to their desires in
differing, imaginative ways, all of which are acceptable to GOd. 
Because Urizen feared `the joys of Love', as exemplified by Jerusalem in
Eternity,  `the human race began to wither', this also resulting in different
skin colours and a world in which Nations despise each other for being
different and espousing different religious creeds, as evoked in Plate 3.

This idea  is also suggested in The Little Black Boy where the innocence
of the black child enables him to perceive how narrow the perception of
God of the white child is.  He  even pities the white child, despite the fact
that he has suffered from the perception of white children that  a black
skin is synonymous with what is dark of soul and heathen.  Ironically, the
black child's forgiving attitude is so striking that the poem imaginatively
proves the `whiteness' of the black boy's soul  and is a moving critique
of white society, which encourages  its children to scorn other races
and believe in its own superiority.  This moral arrogance is at the root of
Urizen's error and is what sets in motion the Fall.  
Hope this clarifies that Blake is no racist.  You are right in thinking that 
Urizen's limited vision is the source of racism ... and of all mankind's other
ills.
Pam    

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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 10:20:18 +0200
From: P Van Schaik 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Any news? -Reply
Message-Id: 

Dear Patricia
I hope the summary of the book I'm working on reached you this time. 
Please let me know if you find it suitable for BIQ.
Pam

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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 09:15:20 -0500
From: bert@kvvi.net (Bert Stern)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Countenance Divine
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Dear Stephen Faulkner,

        I've been interested in your remarks on Blake and alternative
medicine--interested as a Blakean, but also as a publisher.  After more
than forty years in the academy, I'm now vp in a small, new house, one of
whose  specialities is thoughtful texts on alternative medicine.  It sounds
to me that your therapeutic work, and your perspective on the new healing
in general, could easily form into such a book.  Are you interested?  If
so, let's talk.


Bert Stern

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Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 18:24:04 EST
From: Chatham1@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Weird Poetry -Reply
Message-Id: <991711fc.3648cb14@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

In a message dated 11/9/98 3:45:22 AM Eastern Standard Time,
VSCHAP@alpha.unisa.ac.za writes:

>  `karmaceuticals'  ... is this a pun on
>  pharmaceuticals  and if so, what meaning is intended?.  
tell me she didn't write this

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

Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 19:02:36 -0500
From: jonj@interlog.com (Jon James)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Race
Message-Id: <199811110001.TAA20979@smtp.interlog.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

In the context of their time, Kings killed because it was expected. Every
Century....this century, indeed this past year, have delivered countless
abominations, acceptable within a limited social sphere,  for which there is
no rational human explanation. Sometimes the work is Good;  sometimes, just
brilliant.  



 


>I was just reading the play "Cloud Nine" by Carol
>Churchill.  The first act takes place in colonial
>Africa and one of the characters is a black servant
>to one of the British colonial administrators.  But
>the former is suposed to be played by a white man. 
>In the introduction to the character, he says in
>soliloquy the Blake line, "I'm black but oh my soul
>is white."  I think contemporary thoughts about this
>Blake poem are similarly ironic.  That's sort of the
>biggest problem with Blake.  You think he's going to
>be better than that, so it disappoints me even more
>when he says stuff like that and "O Jew, leave
>counting gold, return to your oil and wine" in Song
>of Liberty".  
>
>
>
>===
>Joshua First
>jfirst@rocketmail.com
>Columbia Critical Mass Web Site: 
>www.deviant.org/~lamp/critmass.html
>next Mass: Nov. 16 4:00 Peace Park (as always)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_________________________________________________________
>DO YOU YAHOO!?
>Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
>
>
>




Jon James

jonj@interlog.com
OR jjames@ctv.ca

> "As lightning, or a taper's light,
>     Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd me;" 

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

Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 19:18:17 -0500
From: jonj@interlog.com (Jon James)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Race -Reply/  Song of Los
Message-Id: <199811110017.TAA24125@smtp.interlog.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Hope this clarifies that Blake is no racist.  You are right in thinking that 
>Urizen's limited vision is the source of racism ... and of all mankind's other
>ills.
>Pam    

Pam,
 
If you truely believe that Blake was no racist (and bless you if you are
right) he would have to have been the holiest, most connected, living soul
alive. 

I find it difficult to believe that ANY white human being living ANYWHERE in
the late 18th or early 19th centuries would have not had some, at least
patronizing, biases.
I can't find many in the 21st (almost) century.



 





Jon James

jonj@interlog.com
OR jjames@ctv.ca

> "As lightning, or a taper's light,
>     Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd me;" 

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

Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 16:16:39 -0800 (PST)
From: Josh First 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Race
Message-Id: <19981111001640.27949.rocketmail@web1.rocketmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

How conveniant to quote that.  
===
Joshua First
jfirst@rocketmail.com

---"Thomas A. Vogler"  wrote:
>
> I think if you look more closely you'll see that
it's not "Blake" who says
> "I'm black but oh my soul is white," [or to quote
it accurately: "... I am
> black, but O! my soul is white"] but rather the
persona of a "black boy" in
> the context of "Innocence." Note B's Annotations to
Swedenborg's _Heaven
> and Hell_ where Blake makes the same observation:
"Thus Fools quote
> Shakespeare The Above is Theseus's opinion Not
Shakespeares You might as
> well quote Satan's blasphemies from Milton & give
them as Miltons Opinions
> 
> 
> 
>