Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s “America- A Prophecy” continues from here
AG: Then.. The illustrations (to “America- A Prophecy”) will have a bit of.. odd stuff. For Plate one, plate one on page one-three-eight (of Erdman’s ...Illuminated Blake) – Does anybody not have something to look at? A picture to look at? Get with it, if you haven’t.
(In) Plate one, on page one-three-eight, you have “she clothed and confident that her kiss will wake him” (illustrated) on the bottom. So that’s.. I guess that would be “the shadowy daughter” trying to wake up Orc, who has a kind of adolescent face there.
And then above, the title “America: a Prophecy”, which Erdman points out is “In the mental realm of the prophetic cloud” – “the mental realm of a prophetic cloud” – (It is a cloud and so it’s sort of the thoughts above – the thoughts rising. Like the balloon in a..on a comic strip. And you can read all that you want, but there’s a little, there’s one little figure pointing up to the “R” of America, pointing out to the title, another little figure going up. pointing out to enter into the book, flying up under the “A”, there’s, “a female and male philosopher are assisted by a page-turning child and three naked youths toward the reading of this prophecy.”
So, ok, then, on the facing page, one-three-nine, the first actual plate, an interesting cycle. Under the ground, unborn yet, there’s the worm. “The worm of sixty winters” with six loops”. (You see the six loops of the worm on the bottom?)
Students: Uh-huh.
AG: The “worm of sixty winters”, according to Erdman. Then, to the left, that probably is.. I think it is Orc chained up on the ground, and maybe Orc’s spirit waiting for birth on the bottom, or… Then there seems to be the roots copulating, semi-human, above. From the worm at the bottom to the roots copulating, giving birth underground, to the birth of Orc on the ground but chained to the ground still, “the shadowy daughter”, looking at him (and weeping somewhat, or trying to wake him up, or reacting to him), “in the guise of an American Indian”, it says. (Erdman is pointing out that, for this particular purpose, “the shadowy daughter” is dressed like an American Indian girl, an Indian maid, somewhat.)
Los, the guy with his hands upraised, looking at the horror to come, this fiery revolution that’s going to get born out of the earth, coming from the worm, that’s Los, or the poetic imagination when poetic imagination is needed because the earth has fallen and is separated and is sundered. So Urthona, the complete imagination, has to have a sort of active representative in the fallen world, in the lost world, and so that’s Los – L-O-S. Poetic imagination struggling to get through samsara and to get to unify the entire being. Yes?
Student: What does the six and the sixty symbol (mean)?
AG: “A worm of sixty winters”. Remember “Four score years…”? A man.
Student: Oh.
AG: Blake has a phrase, “a worm of sixty winters,” describing man.
Student: Hmm.
AG: “What is man but a worm of sixty winters.” [ Editorial note – “Why men bound beneath the heavens in a reptile form./A worm of sixty winters creeping on the dusky ground” (from “Tiriel” – and – “That an Eternal Life awaits the worms of sixty winters” (from “Europe – A Prophecy”)
Student: Like the lifespan at that time?
AG: Yes. Sixty years. Sixty years. So here’s six (coils).
Then (Erdman) says, “If we hurry from the headless “worm of sixty winters” (six coils) to the human form underground, sitting up but self-clutching” – (dig!) – and then move on up, “we see “human bodies or torsos twining and rising but becoming less animal than vegetable, to emerge from the ground as a willow tree that must remain rooted to exist. Yet on the grassy surface lies a lusty young man who can look and speak up….” – (He is kind of good-looking and muscular. That’s the young revolutionary Orc). But “he is chained in crucifixion to the rock” still, “like the black rebel in Blake’s engraving of “The Execution of “Breaking on the Rack” That would be interesting to see that. That would probably be in the book by Lawrence Binyon. “The Execution of “Breaking on the Rack” Who has the Binyon book? Yeah. Check that up. It’s probably an engraving (or) illustration he did for a slave book.
AG: (reading from David Erdman’s Illuminated Blake) – “That humans can stand up we see next in the Eve and Adam under the tree of paradise…” (So, Los and the shadowy daughter are Adam and Eve.
However, they “hear the youth’s cry and turn back and look”….”This ironic sequence may seem to trap hope, risen from the worm, and send it back to the worm.” – (A cycle, which we’ll get into later on, when.. after Orc gets up and fucks the shadowy female, (and) she says, “This is Eternal Death, and this the torment, long foretold!” (because being fucked she’s going to give birth, giving birth she’s going to give birth to death. In other. words, whatever (is) born is going to die. Just like Thel was afraid to get born for fear of going into the grave, so (is) the shadowy female, (who was really Thel, then she gets into Oothoon and does get born and does get raped, and now here she’s being.. In order to go through to maturity, she’s being screwed by the wrath of revolution. In order to break through the chains of cold reason, or the chains of heavy law, in order to attain liberation she’s got to be screwed by revolution. To be screwed by revolution means she’s got to experience death, (birth and death). And so this is the eternal death. This is the serpent “long foretold”.
And so on this cycle, on this page, you begin with the worm and you go all the way around, from man to worm, and man to worm back again. So it’s just different phases of the same cycle, as it’s shown in this circular motion of the picture. As the willow tree will weep, as the tree leans its boughs down back to the earth. So it’s, like, a whole cycle that he’s giving out. And you find, in the last line, “In vain!” Being born, “in vain”. The revolution, “in vain”.
And right at Orc’s foot – Orc the guy lying down, chained down – is a little three-coil miniature of the larger worm,(if you were interested in tiny detail), below Orc’s right foot. Well, we’ll get into it now.
to be continued
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately nine-and-three-quarter minutes in, and continuing until approximately eighteen-and-three-quarter minutes in]