AG: Um-hmm. Has anybody had any thoughts about this ever before? Is this the first time that anybody’s read this poem (“The Sick Rose”), or have people read it before? – It’s famous. Has anybody ever not read it before? [Class indicates most have read it] So everybody’s read it at one time or another, except you. [to Student] So, first time hearing it, what does it sound like? You’ve got a fresh view. Everybody else has worn the rose down already. Smelled it to death.
Student: I had a little bit of a sense of the.. you know, the sort of Kali image…
AG: Yeah.
Student: …of the dark forces…
AG: Yeah.
Student: …you know, the, it’s like the inside, everyone has this sort of the dark and light forces…
AG: Yeah.
Student: …and that’s sort of how I saw that from that…
So I was interpreting the dark forces being not evil but just awareness of ..
AG Right.
Student: … oncoming night, death. Yeah, that sort of senses, the sort of death awareness of it …
AG: Um-hmm.
Student: … too.
AG: Which would come from the body in a way. It would come from a realization of the body. Yeah?
Student: Yeah, mortality is an aspect of having a body.
AG: Yeah. So therefore the rose might be the mind and the worm might be the body. So “O Mind thou art sick” – the body, that you haven’t noticed. But that flies in the night and the howling storm”, that’s another thing. That flies in the subconscious?, in the night?
Student: Yeah. It’s also the dark image of the night there.
AG: Um-hmm.
Student: It also just seems a lot like desire is in there.
AG: Yes.
Student: Dark secret love.
AG: His dark secret love, yeah.
Student (2): “Flies in the night in the howling storms”. He is controlled by desires.
Student: Yeah, the “dark secret love” of the worm, which is body.
AG: Um-hmm.
Student: That probably would be desire.
AG: Um-hmm. Yeah.
Student: It says (in the Blake Dictionary) that ” The Rose is the traditional symbol of love…
AG: Um-hmm.
Student: When associated with the Lily of Innocence, it is ideal. But in the state of Experience…
AG: Yeah.
Student: “The modest (originally “lustful”) Rose puts forth a thorn.” It is sickened by the “dark secret love” of “The invisible worm” – (In) “My Pretty Rose Tree” (I guess, which is another poem)…
AG: Yeah.
Student: (It)..is the jealous wife.
AG: It’s the jealous what?
Student: Wife.
AG: Yeah. Um-hmm.
Student: Yeah, but, the rose puts forth a thorn and it’s sickened by the “dark secret love” of the “invisible worm”.