In the Book of Urizen, Chapter III, number 2, reads thus:
"Rage, fury, intense indignation
In cataracts of fire, blood & gall,
In whirlwinds of sulphurous smoke:
And enormous forms of energy;
All the seven deadly sins of the soul
In living creations appear'd,
In the flames of eternal fury."
Even though the "forms of energy" are enormous, they have nonetheless become mere forms, due to their existence now on earth as "living creations." By being created, they're immediately limited BY their forms. Could this be a source of the "rage, fury," and "intense indignation"? That no matter what we strive to create, we contain -- and therefore limit -- our creations in their transition from an IDEA to a THING? I think that would be enough to drive anyone into a fiery torment.
That all made sense right until I typed it. Hope it is conveyed.
Also, I'm intrigued by the lines "All the seven deadly sins of the soul/ In living creations appear'd." I started trying to assign specific deadly sins to specific living creations. The first one on my list is Man (and his desires) as Greed.
Then I just decided to have fun with it.
What living creations do you think represent the other deadly sins?
(You don't get to say that Sloths represent Sloth. This is a 380 class, consarn it.)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
BlakeBlog party!
Hey! There's gonna be a blogging party in the library today at five. If anyone wants to join in, you can meet us in the front of the library. If we aren't there we've probably just moved on to the place where we'll be blogging. Probably one of those cool rooms on the second floor. Just look around a bit and you should find us^_^
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
A Ramble
“Blake wrote convincingly about things that shouldn't exist.” What a naughty boy he was!
Perhaps I am just going to sound like an idiot. Perhaps this will become so confusing that I will forget to make my point at all (if I even have one), make it to the end, feel convinced that the point is there, only to have you all wondering why the hell I posted this in the first place. Which is actually quite likely. (I’m not nearly as capable as eloquently articulating my thoughts as most of you are in this class.) Regardless, when I read this definitive statement in Scott’s blog post (wherein he makes some interesting points), I immediately started questioning it. Blake writes convincingly. Yes, that is certain. But about things that shouldn’t exist? Maybe this is just me, but I see it maybe as more of Blake writes convincingly about things that we aren’t entirely comfortable with. Or that we are far too comfortable with. Maybe it’s sympathy discomfort, we feel uncomfortable for him to have existed with these things in his mind for so long that it necessitated him writing it. Perhaps we’re irritated because we aren’t quite capable of accessing that particular locale. I could go on—this is what Blake compels us to do. Immediately we want to shout ‘No!’ or nod our heads emphatically and point to a passage and say ‘Yes, yes! This is where it is. This is true. This is real. This is what he’s getting at!’ This, however, is where we are prone to folly, or at least I am.
I remember the first time I read some of Blake’s works, in Romantic Lit with Gina last year. I was terrified. All those big ideas! I wanted to take it too seriously, which was intimidating and frightening. I sat down with Gina and had an interesting conversation, though I can’t remember the specifics of what she said to put me at ease. After that meeting though, I didn’t take Blake so intensely seriously (Life or death?! Heaven or Hell?! Pass or fail?! Holy crap!), and thus my mind was open in a different way, and for the first time I was able to read a passage of Blake and actually not want to tear my hair out due to my frustration at my own idiocy. (Though there were still moments I wanted to tear my hair out due to my frustration with Blake.) I’m not saying I ‘got’ it. Hell no! You’ve got to be kidding me, of course I didn’t. Of course I don’t. However, it is helpful to be aware of different facets of perception as well as the facets of interpretation that we generally work within. So often we assume. Let the text deliver assumptions for once. Step way the hell back from the text and tackle it in a new way. I feel we limit so much of what we are capable of accessing depending on how and with what attitude we decide to approach a text.
Emily imagines Blake as someone hiding under her bed with a knife. How frightening! I imagine him as someone who, as intelligent, creative, and intense as he might have been (again just musings—he could have had a secret passion for knitting as well, for all I know), also had a pretty damn good sense of humor. I think you’d have to when taking on this kind of work, lest you kill yourself (Won’t I look silly if I find out he did!). Here we are trying to designate, delineate, label, all of these things, components of even just small sections. I feel like he’d say after seeing our frustrated countenances , ‘Hey, just take a step back for a minute folks, and let it just be, before you begin picking it apart.’ Either that or, ‘Hey, you look like you could use a drink,’ more eloquently, of course. (Isaac, I’m all for the William Blake party.)
The clearest example in my mind of this is when during class the other day there was so much frustration in the “Argument” of “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” over the delineation of time and the inconsistencies of paths etc., etc., and the question of whether there was one man or different men and what happened first. Would it not also be beneficial, considering this argument is a bit like a prologue or ‘In this episode of “The Adventures of William Blake,”’ to try to think of these things and this passage without trying to separate it out right from the get go? These things seem to exist outside of time, perhaps outside of space. Try allowing dichotomies, and convolutions. Could not the “just” man also be the “villain”? Could not the “perilous path” also be the “path of ease”? Could not it be these things and also not these things? Why the hell not? Could we not consider how these things relate to the rest of the work? We have contraries, contradictions in "Marriage". But how seriously, how literally, are we going to take these? These standard approaches seem so, I don’t know, almost violent to me. I’m left wanting to apologize to the page after glaring at it so long in search of some hint. The proverbs could send you spinning around for days, just on a single one. “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.” Because this is one of the “Proverbs of Hell” perhaps we are initially prone to think this is false, but then we think, no there is some truth to this, I could see how that is so, (Melodramatic version: Oh! My delicate sensibilities! How morose and pessimistic Blake is here! I am so severely offended!*faints*) But then, should we not also question this? It could be taken further. These first two minimalist reactions are both just initial. More and more I feel Blake would encourage us to challenge ourselves and challenge those initial reactions, look at why we thought these things, and recognize that as readers we are bringing certain things to the table (perceptions, fallacies, inaccuracies, biases) and then how to work around and with those.
Basically, why not have it both ways. Let there be contradictions. That’s the fun of it, don’t let it kill you. Especially on a day like today when the weather is so nice!
Where did I start? Right. Shouldn’t. Comfortable and uncomfortable. (Do you see how easy it is to form tangents and run away with them? And why not?) If we were either entirely comfortable, or entirely uncomfortable with Blake I would see no reason for this class. I think there is something to be said for challenging our perceptions of what should and shouldn’t be in Blake. Maybe Blake broke the rules. Maybe to Blake there were no rules. Or maybe he felt there shouldn’t be. Maybe it isn't anything like this at all.
Forgive my humorous tone. I feel that one becomes utterly ridiculous when one takes Blake too, too seriously. And I am only comfortable with being mostly ridiculous. I mean no one any offense.
On another note: Procrastination prone student that I am, I decided to Google "William Blake - comics" hoping to encounter something like Kate Beaton's comic about Shelly and in so doing stumbled upon this: William Blake, Taxi Driver, a series of comic strips by John Riordan where William Blake drives a taxi around present day London encountering famous personalities past and present. Enjoy!
Perhaps I am just going to sound like an idiot. Perhaps this will become so confusing that I will forget to make my point at all (if I even have one), make it to the end, feel convinced that the point is there, only to have you all wondering why the hell I posted this in the first place. Which is actually quite likely. (I’m not nearly as capable as eloquently articulating my thoughts as most of you are in this class.) Regardless, when I read this definitive statement in Scott’s blog post (wherein he makes some interesting points), I immediately started questioning it. Blake writes convincingly. Yes, that is certain. But about things that shouldn’t exist? Maybe this is just me, but I see it maybe as more of Blake writes convincingly about things that we aren’t entirely comfortable with. Or that we are far too comfortable with. Maybe it’s sympathy discomfort, we feel uncomfortable for him to have existed with these things in his mind for so long that it necessitated him writing it. Perhaps we’re irritated because we aren’t quite capable of accessing that particular locale. I could go on—this is what Blake compels us to do. Immediately we want to shout ‘No!’ or nod our heads emphatically and point to a passage and say ‘Yes, yes! This is where it is. This is true. This is real. This is what he’s getting at!’ This, however, is where we are prone to folly, or at least I am.
I remember the first time I read some of Blake’s works, in Romantic Lit with Gina last year. I was terrified. All those big ideas! I wanted to take it too seriously, which was intimidating and frightening. I sat down with Gina and had an interesting conversation, though I can’t remember the specifics of what she said to put me at ease. After that meeting though, I didn’t take Blake so intensely seriously (Life or death?! Heaven or Hell?! Pass or fail?! Holy crap!), and thus my mind was open in a different way, and for the first time I was able to read a passage of Blake and actually not want to tear my hair out due to my frustration at my own idiocy. (Though there were still moments I wanted to tear my hair out due to my frustration with Blake.) I’m not saying I ‘got’ it. Hell no! You’ve got to be kidding me, of course I didn’t. Of course I don’t. However, it is helpful to be aware of different facets of perception as well as the facets of interpretation that we generally work within. So often we assume. Let the text deliver assumptions for once. Step way the hell back from the text and tackle it in a new way. I feel we limit so much of what we are capable of accessing depending on how and with what attitude we decide to approach a text.
Emily imagines Blake as someone hiding under her bed with a knife. How frightening! I imagine him as someone who, as intelligent, creative, and intense as he might have been (again just musings—he could have had a secret passion for knitting as well, for all I know), also had a pretty damn good sense of humor. I think you’d have to when taking on this kind of work, lest you kill yourself (Won’t I look silly if I find out he did!). Here we are trying to designate, delineate, label, all of these things, components of even just small sections. I feel like he’d say after seeing our frustrated countenances , ‘Hey, just take a step back for a minute folks, and let it just be, before you begin picking it apart.’ Either that or, ‘Hey, you look like you could use a drink,’ more eloquently, of course. (Isaac, I’m all for the William Blake party.)
The clearest example in my mind of this is when during class the other day there was so much frustration in the “Argument” of “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” over the delineation of time and the inconsistencies of paths etc., etc., and the question of whether there was one man or different men and what happened first. Would it not also be beneficial, considering this argument is a bit like a prologue or ‘In this episode of “The Adventures of William Blake,”’ to try to think of these things and this passage without trying to separate it out right from the get go? These things seem to exist outside of time, perhaps outside of space. Try allowing dichotomies, and convolutions. Could not the “just” man also be the “villain”? Could not the “perilous path” also be the “path of ease”? Could not it be these things and also not these things? Why the hell not? Could we not consider how these things relate to the rest of the work? We have contraries, contradictions in "Marriage". But how seriously, how literally, are we going to take these? These standard approaches seem so, I don’t know, almost violent to me. I’m left wanting to apologize to the page after glaring at it so long in search of some hint. The proverbs could send you spinning around for days, just on a single one. “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.” Because this is one of the “Proverbs of Hell” perhaps we are initially prone to think this is false, but then we think, no there is some truth to this, I could see how that is so, (Melodramatic version: Oh! My delicate sensibilities! How morose and pessimistic Blake is here! I am so severely offended!*faints*) But then, should we not also question this? It could be taken further. These first two minimalist reactions are both just initial. More and more I feel Blake would encourage us to challenge ourselves and challenge those initial reactions, look at why we thought these things, and recognize that as readers we are bringing certain things to the table (perceptions, fallacies, inaccuracies, biases) and then how to work around and with those.
Basically, why not have it both ways. Let there be contradictions. That’s the fun of it, don’t let it kill you. Especially on a day like today when the weather is so nice!
Where did I start? Right. Shouldn’t. Comfortable and uncomfortable. (Do you see how easy it is to form tangents and run away with them? And why not?) If we were either entirely comfortable, or entirely uncomfortable with Blake I would see no reason for this class. I think there is something to be said for challenging our perceptions of what should and shouldn’t be in Blake. Maybe Blake broke the rules. Maybe to Blake there were no rules. Or maybe he felt there shouldn’t be. Maybe it isn't anything like this at all.
Forgive my humorous tone. I feel that one becomes utterly ridiculous when one takes Blake too, too seriously. And I am only comfortable with being mostly ridiculous. I mean no one any offense.
On another note: Procrastination prone student that I am, I decided to Google "William Blake - comics" hoping to encounter something like Kate Beaton's comic about Shelly and in so doing stumbled upon this: William Blake, Taxi Driver, a series of comic strips by John Riordan where William Blake drives a taxi around present day London encountering famous personalities past and present. Enjoy!
Monday, April 13, 2009
This is like a survey...
Post your favorite proverbs from Marriage here. I'll start. I promise. Tomorrow. Because I am tired.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Revelatory nausea.
He was in an unlikely business. I am not talking about the printmaking, but the wordmaking. The thoughtmaking. He saw things that people don't usually see, and he presented them in a way that made them visible. Example: the connections between times and places, between fiction and the things we tell ourselves aren't fiction, the omnipresence of subjectivities in all things. His poetry prefers question marks to exclamation points--maybe he didn't personally, but there's no evidence of that in what he wrote. Maybe he wrote with the intention of sending a very specific message that just happens to be completely over the heads of everyone who isn't him. Blake wrote convincingly about things that shouldn't exist. His work is an inscrutable puzzle. It is a maze, or rather, a very accurate relief of a maze. That maze--and now the headache sets in--is everything.
Allen Ginsberg is pretty confident that he has the man figured out. Blake reflects the world, the world reflects Blake. In observing the reflection, we come to a series of uncomfortable realizations, like the above bit about the connections between things, or--if we aren't too hardheaded--the knowledge that we created the ideas of the supernatural and the unreal. Of course, Blake doesn't just open our minds up to preexisting curiosities. He also asks us Dangerous Questions. These lie in his presentation of causes and effects ("Visions..."), neither of which seem to be too closely attached to their counterparts. But then--getting a bit woozy here, I'm approaching a summit--when did we decide that we had a right to say what cause/effect relationships did and didn't make sense? I am sure that Blake understood why things happened the way they did in his poems. I also know that he wrote those poems, and that, like Mr. Ginsberg says, they reflect life. No way around it, then: we can't assume that events happen as they do for reasons beyond our analytical abilities in Blake. We have to keep asking questions.
Another dangerous question: what isn't sacred, and to a lesser extent, what isn't moral--in Blake's work or otherwise (Songs, "There Is No Natural Religion," "All Religions Are One")? I feel compelled to dispute the sound condemnations I've been getting for building my analysis of his poetry on questions rather than answers. How can we make judgments about Blake when he sought to address the problems of a world which he presents as clearly lacking in solid footing? Further, how can we regard his work as affirmative, rather than inquisitive? I am interested in determining the resolutions Blake reached in the act of questioning itself. The religious considerations, the symbolism, the heart and passion of his labor: these are all interesting, but not especially challenging. I am interested in what Blake accomplishes as a poet (nothing special), and what his accomplishment means for art as a medium that both reveals and creates in the same moment. At present, I am convinced that the biggest, coolest, most impossibly amazing thing that he has to offer is the discovery--and with this, I will have to take a break or surely suffer some kind of collapse--that art is proof that everything is "supernatural." Like, everything.
Yeah.
Hope I haven't offended everyone,
Scott
Allen Ginsberg is pretty confident that he has the man figured out. Blake reflects the world, the world reflects Blake. In observing the reflection, we come to a series of uncomfortable realizations, like the above bit about the connections between things, or--if we aren't too hardheaded--the knowledge that we created the ideas of the supernatural and the unreal. Of course, Blake doesn't just open our minds up to preexisting curiosities. He also asks us Dangerous Questions. These lie in his presentation of causes and effects ("Visions..."), neither of which seem to be too closely attached to their counterparts. But then--getting a bit woozy here, I'm approaching a summit--when did we decide that we had a right to say what cause/effect relationships did and didn't make sense? I am sure that Blake understood why things happened the way they did in his poems. I also know that he wrote those poems, and that, like Mr. Ginsberg says, they reflect life. No way around it, then: we can't assume that events happen as they do for reasons beyond our analytical abilities in Blake. We have to keep asking questions.
Another dangerous question: what isn't sacred, and to a lesser extent, what isn't moral--in Blake's work or otherwise (Songs, "There Is No Natural Religion," "All Religions Are One")? I feel compelled to dispute the sound condemnations I've been getting for building my analysis of his poetry on questions rather than answers. How can we make judgments about Blake when he sought to address the problems of a world which he presents as clearly lacking in solid footing? Further, how can we regard his work as affirmative, rather than inquisitive? I am interested in determining the resolutions Blake reached in the act of questioning itself. The religious considerations, the symbolism, the heart and passion of his labor: these are all interesting, but not especially challenging. I am interested in what Blake accomplishes as a poet (nothing special), and what his accomplishment means for art as a medium that both reveals and creates in the same moment. At present, I am convinced that the biggest, coolest, most impossibly amazing thing that he has to offer is the discovery--and with this, I will have to take a break or surely suffer some kind of collapse--that art is proof that everything is "supernatural." Like, everything.
Yeah.
Hope I haven't offended everyone,
Scott
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Blake party
Yo anyone want to have a Blake party at some point this term. Dress up as engraving and shit? maybe invent some sort of Blake drinking game? i don't know what we'd do for music, any ideas? maybe make it an end of the term kind of thing?
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
The Daughterz of Albion present a video discussion
The following is an attempt by Sam, Lauren, and Chris to create a video blog, wherein we don common aliases as the Daughterz of Albion, a close-knit study group dedicated to unraveling the mysterious mysteries of Blake's innocent, experienced world.
Though the product is largely ridiculous, the process was informative, enlightening, and fun! Roughly 2 minutes into the video, the conversation gets serious. srsly.
- Sam, Chris, and Lauren
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