Allen Ginsberg on Blake – continuing from here
Student: (Is the figure on the right), wearing an orange turban?
AG: He’s got maybe a head-band
So the Devil’s seated “to his left”, “and behind him is seated a contrasted figure, alert and interested, with his own script nearly finished across his knees while he leans over to see how the stupid Angel is progressing” – (that’s Keynes‘ interpretation of the drama – “Erdman suggests that this is “an apprentice Devil”, perhaps Blake himself. A very noticeable detail is the spiky plant (not well defined in this copy) curling beside the stupid Angel..” – (a “spiky plant”? Well, that that’s big yellow thing?
Yes..this is.. yes.. Who said that? (to Student) (So) did you know about that? Does Erdman say something about that?
Student: No
AG: Oh, well it says here – “this was plainly taken, as noted by Erdman, from the plate facing page 15 in Erasmus Darwin’s Loves of the Plants (Part II of The Botanical Garden, 1789, illustrating the spiked leaves of the Catch-fly plant or sundew.. .which folds up to catch and destroy any insect attempting to reach the seed” – (because, you see, Blake, as a book illustrator, would have had familiarity with that. and he may have actually..maybe.. I don’t know..I’ll have to look that up, whether.. It may be that he actually did that illustration himself for the Darwin book.
“The Angel sitting between this predatory plant and the spiky wings of his instructors fairly caught” – (in other words, he’s got the “spiky wings” on one side and he’s got this.. what was it Catch-fly, fly-trap) – “By contrast the clever fellow on the other side is flanked by fine free growths resembling that of Gloriosa superba, a flower illustrated on the previous plate in Darwin’s book,… The design seems to imply that the stupid Angel must receive and understand the Devil’s Proverbs if he is to be saved.”
And “There are numerous interleaving.. other interlinear decorations on all the plates of this section”. And they’re doing all this on a tiny isle in the sea of time and space – Sun.. (I guess) both evening and morning suns are portrayed – “Enough” or “Too Much” – “Enough or Too Much” – (that could be one way of pronouncing it). There’s a little scroll of fallen leaves, flying figures, a little.. flying serpents in the sun.
continues here
Audio for the above can be read here, beginning at approximately seventy-three-and-a-half minutes in and concluding approximately seventy-six-and-a-half minutes in