Today's Topic:
Hello!
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Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:02:07 -0500 (EST)
From: johnmartinevansiii
To: blake
Subject: Hello!
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Hi all!
I have just joined from enthusiasm over reading the archived messages on
albion.com. Of course, I'm only in mid-1996 still, and have no access to
1998, so I will happily try to understand any current conversations.
My main interest in Blake is academic; I'm an English major at Yale. What
drew me to him were the engravings, actually, and their strange
psychological power and vitality. Immersing myself in the later
mythologies sealed my fate as a Blakean.
I will most likely be doing my senior thesis on Blake, and am thinking of
some of the ideas offered here as possible launching points. To run down
some passing interests (again, apologies if these have been covered), I am
fascinated by Blake's theological ideas, and their implications for his
views of society and history. I would love to explore the mysticisms of
Blake and Coleridge. Also, a few connections: I'd like to see what work
has been done relating Blake to Freud and Jung (the emanations etc. of the
myths seem particularly Jungian), and also relating Blake to Jewish
cabalism. On the latter: this list in 1995 discussed the ideas of
kenosis, or self-emptying, of the godhead for some time, but no one
connected that to the Jewish cabala creation myths of the sefirot. In
particular, the Urizenic creation story, where eternity withdraws from
around Urizen, leaving him and his barren world behind, is a direct
parallel to the sefirotic notion of the divine inhaling to create a vacuum
where the world exists.
Anyway, now that I've publicly mused, I'll shut up and listen for a while.
With the utmost giddiness,
John
John M. Evans III
(203)764-7217
Yale University
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End of blake-d Digest V1998 Issue #94
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