Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion continues from – here
AG (quoting Blake) : “Father of Jealousy, be thou accursed from the earth!/ Why hast thou taught my Theotormon this accursed thing?” – (Theotormon, the great masturbator, is what it is! “Visions of the Great Masturbator and the Daughters of Albion”.! So that’s Theotormon’s secret there when he’s hiding (bent over) like this. He can’t break out of his solitary pillows, and he’s also scared of competition with Bromion, the wrathful slave-holder. He doesn’t want to get into a tangle, to fight the father figure for the possession of the divine joy.
Peter Orlovsky: Really.
AG: So if you want to see a picture of Theotormon masturbating, look on page one-three- four of the Illuminated Blake – Plate VI the sixth plate of the Visions.. which correlates with this, what is this, “But Oothoon is a virgin filled with virgin fancies.” – I guess, the plate before.
According to Erdman’s description there, “Theotormon, pressing his forehead with his right hand, looks unhappily (at) his raised left arm which wields a three-thonged “cat” over himself” – (a little whip – I think… I was reading.. probably a “cock-whip”, as it’s called these days in the Village Voice [ the Village Voice classified ads – sic] in reporting on the latest charms of S & M – He’s got a little “cock whip” there, three-pronged).
“This is his “sick mans dream” to match Oothoon’s trying the torture of his ideas (in Plate III).” And it also says, “The knots on his whip look uncannily like the heads of the Marygold flowers in the earlier plates – [Plates III and I]. He ignores Oothoon, who is self-absorbed, striding by with her face buried in her hair and hands, in a sort of desperate variant of her stand in an earlier plate [Plate II]” – (That’s kind of interesting, that self-absorbed, masturbatory-nudnik-look on his face. He has a kind of weird, big-nosed self-hood. It’s like total self-absorption face.
But that is an interesting image of masturbation. Or self-torment. Self-torment interchangeable (with masturbation), that is, an unwillingness to get out of the self and give it to someone else, but hiding it.
Student: You know, the position of the Theotormon’s (is a lot like) the position of Adam in Michelangelo’s …
AG: Yeah.
Student: … Sistine Chapel painting.
AG: He’s aroused a little here, though.
Student: What’s that?
AG: He’s aroused up a little, lifted up a little, but it’s close, isn’t it?
Student: Yeah.
AG: Yeah, well, he’s masturbating to old Nobodaddy, probably.
Student: Yeah, in Michelangelo’s picture it shows him stretching his hand over (and he) stretches his hand in this picture, he stretches his hand to Oothoon …
AG: Um-hmm.
Student: (but then) refuses to do that. He’s got his hand curved back over himself.
AG: Yeah, he’s got his hand on his own head, stretching his hand on his own head. Pressing his forehead with his right hand, looking unhappily under the genital whip, the three-stars, three-flowered (whip).
Yes, there were some… Let’s take a look at those… Yeah. Remember on page one twenty eight of the Illuminated Blake, third plate – (Erdman points out (that)) – “Elaine Kauvar (sic) notes that this Marygold … called the May-flower, was used to protect fertility in May Day festivals. It opens only to rays of the sun – (rays of the sun) – innocent love in daylight..” – (So it’s the same three-pronged whip, notice? Very subtle how that marigold, orgasmic marigold, becomes a whip.)
And you can see then some of the significance of the bat-winged creature in the second plate on page 127 of Erdman. who’s wrapping himself in his own arms, scratching his left shoulder. The masturbatory self-scratcher dreaming. You see the sort of Bromion or Theotormon flying on the bat’s wings?, over Oothoon striding in liberty through the troughs of the waves? You don’t have a copy of the pictures?
Student: I didn’t bring it.
[Audio for the above can be heard – here, beginning at approximately sixty-seven-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately seventy-four-and-a-quarterminutes in}