Allen Ginsberg’s notes on William Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion continues from here
“Are not the joys of morning sweeter/Than the joys of night?”
That’s (page) four sixty three in the Erdman. A whole series of poems on this subject – on the subject of lust and desire and open joy. We’ll take a little time now, just to look at these little lyrics.
“Are not the joys of morning sweeter/Than the joys of night?/And are the vigorous joys of youth/Ashamed of the light?/ Let age & sickness silent rob/The vineyards in the night/But those who burn with vigorous youth/Pluck fruits before the light.” – (“Pluck fruits before”, meaning “in front of” the light, openly, nakedly. That’s how I interpret it. Not pluck fruits before the dawn comes up, but pluck fruits “in front of the light”, or before the light).
Now, he may have never published this poem because “Pluck fruits before the light” was just not quite comprehensible. The “before” was just right if you understand it, but if you don’t understand it, it’ll baffle (you). This baffled me for twenty years. I couldn’t figure out “before the light.” I thought, “before fire? before the dawn? In the darkness before the dawn?”, rather than, pluck fruits, confronting, nakedly, in the light.)
There’s “The Wild Flower’s Song” is.. Well, it’s a little tiny repetition, a little tiny model of the entire relationship between Oothoon and Theotormon, and Bromion.
[Allen begins singing] – “As I wander’d the forest,/The green leaves among,/I heard a wild flower/Singing a song./ “I slept in the Earth/ (I was formed in the dark)//I murmured my fears/And I felt delight./ In the morning I went/As rosy as morn,/To seek for new joy/But I met with scorn”” – So the same (or a) similar thing – There’s “I slept in the Earth/In the silent night,” and then there’s an alternative version, to look up in your notes, “I slept in the Earth/I was formed in the dark/ I murmured my fears/And I felt delight/”In the morning I went/As rosy as morn/To seek for new joy/ But I was met with scorn”
& then “To [Urizen], Nobodaddy, on page four six two – We get old Nobodaddy again – Nobody, Nobody’s daddy. – “Why art thou silent & invisible/Father of Jealousy?/Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds/From every searching eye?/ Why darkness & obscurity/In all thy words & laws,/That none dare eat the fruit but from/The wily Serpent’s jaws/Or is it because secrecy/gains females’ loud applause?” – (What did he mean by that? – There’s something archetypal about that. That was never published either. That was just in his little tiny notebook)
Well, we’ll get back to these. Except for page four-sixty. That is appropriate. Back on the marriage-demon. The “myrtle” is generally symbolic of sex.
Student: (You mean)) the tree?
AG: Yeah, myrtle tree. Above that, “In a Myrtle Shade.” But then above that, the little one, “To my Myrtle” – “To a lovely Myrtle bound/ Blossoms show’ring all around/ O how sick & weary I/Underneath my myrtle lie!/Why should I be bound to thee/ O my lovely (Myrtle tree?)
Marriage tree. Myrtle tree. Sex tree. It’s actually sort of a meat-sex marriage: “a lovely Myrtle bound/Blossoms showring all around” – (orgasms showering all around – “O how sick & weary I/ Underneath my Myrtle lie! /Why should I be bound to thee/O my lovely Myrtle tree?) – It’s that same marriage compact that Mary Wollstonecraft was attacking. He’s got it above (in “In a Myrtle Shade”) – “Oft my father saw us sigh/ And laugh’d at our simplicity” – (So the woman there struggles (or the man and woman there struggle, whoever it is – a person) – realizing that, “Love, free love, cannot be bound/ To any tree that grows on the ground”) – And so they kill old Nobodaddy – (“So I smote him, and his gore/Stain’d the roots my Myrtle bore/But the time of youth is fled,/And grey hairs are on my head”) – So the struggle’s all… hero and heroine of that struggled all their lives and wasted all their lives fighting old Nobodaddy, (their) conscience tormenting them, fighting their marriage compact, fighting the State, and by the time they were liberated, they were old. Too late to enjoy p”luck(ing) fruits before the light” – That’s kind of interesting – (“But the time of youth is fled/ And grey hairs are on my head”)
“But the time of youth is fled/ And grey hairs are on my head” – I think that’s one of the great couplets in all of Blake. I remember it from when I was twenty, realizing how prophetic (it was) – that some day I would go and say – “But the time of youth is fled/ And grey hairs are on my head” – Some day there’d be grey hairs upon my head. “Now that youth has fled my cheek/ Horns and willows me bespeak” was my imitation of it in 1948 – “Now that youth has fled my cheek/ Horns and willows me bespeak”. In my brain, this was archetypal rhyme – [Allen quotes here from his poem “A Dream” published in the volume Gates of Wrath – Rhymed Poems 1948-1952]
“So I smote him, and his gore/Stain’d the roots my Myrtle bore/But the time of youth is fled,/And grey hairs are on my head” – (So this is after experience. Like, a whole lifetime’s passed).
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty-six-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately sixty-two-and-a-half minutes in