AG: So, “(G)enius finds thought without seek(ing).” Blake is on that edge of mind, also. “(G)enius finds thought without seek(ing) & thought thus produced finds sense.” “Oh, I did it! Is that what I meant?” or, “I did it – how much sense it makes!.” Like “I got married and, boy, forty years later, that was a good idea.” – Thought does produce fine sense. Action thus produced finds sense.
AG: “O that men would seek immortal moments” – that’s on number five-oh- seven, on page five-eight-four. His (Blake’s) comment on “He only who has enjoyed immortal moments can reproduce them,” says Lavater: “O that men would seek immortal moments”. O that men would converse with God. He’s real eager.
Then, (on) page five-eight-five, there’s one little interesting sentence in paragraph five-three-three, talking about God and Holy Law- “Man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth & of the water” (that’s a kind of interesting image – “Man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth & of the water” – It’s a kind of a thrilling phrase to think of man as a phantom of earth and water. It’s very literal, too. Dust and water).
And what else is of interest? Let’s see. There are some annotations to Swedenborg, also. Page five-nine-three (considering “Poetic Genius”) Number thirteen – “The Negation of God constitutes Hell, and in the Christian World the Negation of the Lord’s Divinity.” (“Hell”, then, in the Christian World, is “the Negation of the Lord’s Divinity”, says (Swedenborg)). And then Blake’s note is, (Hell is) “the Negation of the Poetic Genius.” So he substitutes the words “Hell” and “Lord’s Divinity,” and he says, “Poetic Genius.” I had a friend I was reading this with who said, when we hit on this one, “(Ah,) this (is the) trick in the book – Substitute ‘Poetic Genius’ for ‘God’.” That’s a sort of Burroughs–ian comment on that. “(Ah,) this (is the) trick in the book – Substitute ‘Poetic Genius’ for ‘God’.” Because what Blake has done is substituted the authority of Poetic Genius for the notion of God as the supreme authority.