Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s “America – A Prophecy” continues from here
AG: Then there’s a really interesting revolutionary speech here. Revolution against reason, revolution against Urizen, revolution against the King, revolution against all religions, which could be parallel to a Whitmanic statement as well. That is, “I find no fat sweeter than that which sticks to my own bones,” Whitman would say, or “I wear my hat indoors as well as out.” “Who goes there? Hankering, mystical, nude.” [Editorial note – Allen is , of course, quoting from Whitman’s “Song of Myself”] There’s a declaration of personal independence and unloading of the monkey off the back or taking off (the monkey), unloading the monkey of (a) Supreme Being.
((to Student) Why don’t you bring up a chair? It’d be easier. Or here. Here’s a chair. There’s a seat here).
So his speech:
“He cried: Why trembles honesty and like a murderer,/Why seeks he refuge from the frowns of his immortal station!/Must the generous tremble & leave his joy, to the idle: to the pestilence!/That mock him? who commanded this? what God? what Angel!/To keep the gen’rous from experience till the ungenerous/ Are unrestraind performers of the energies of nature;/Till pity is become a trade, and generosity a science..”
And there’s another little poem he’s got: “Pity would be no more if we did not make somebody poor.” You remember that in Songs of Innocence and of Experience ?
“Pity would be no more,/If we did not make somebody Poor:/And Mercy no more could be,/If all were as happy as we;/And mutual fear brings peace;/Till the selfish loves increase./Then jealousy….
Well, we’ll get to that later on. [Editorial note – Allen is,of course, quoting from Blake’s poem “The Human Abstract” ]
“…(Till pity is become a trade and generosity a science..” – (The) Rockefeller Foundation, incidentally, will be funding this summer’s Naropa Program, I think) (I hope!) –
“.. generosity a science,/That men get rich by, & the sandy desart is giv’n to the strong/What God is he, writes laws of peace, & clothes him in a tempest/What pitying Angel lusts for tears, and fans himself with sighs/What crawling villain preaches abstinence & wraps himself/ In fat of lambs? no more I follow, no more obedience pay.”
That’s like right out of Milton–Shakespeare.
[Audio for the above can be heard here , starting at approximately sixteen-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately nineteen-and-a-quarter minutes in].