Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s The Four Zoas continues from here
AG: But I keep wondering about this giant structure that he’s building to bring people’s minds to that openness. The opposite would be, what Urizen does here when he comes down – “Indignant muttering low thunders; Urizen descended/ Gloomy sounding, Now I am God from Eternity to Eternity’ – and totally solidifying everything into his one selfhood. So, the imagination, therefore, is stuck sitting there, looking at that, plotting revenge, resentful – “Sullen sat Los plotting Revenge. Silent he eye’d the Prince/Of Light. Silent the prince of Light viewd Los.”
So the two of them are looking at each other now: Who is going to win?
‘… at length a brooded/ Smile broke from Urizen for Enitharmon brightend more & more/Sullen//”
But he rejects her – (that’s the prince of Light, Urizen, rejecting Spiritual Beauty who’s trying to make up to him, and trying to flirt) – ” Sullen he lowerd on Enitharmon but he smild on Los” – (There’s some kind of funny homosexual rivalry between them there) – “Saying Thou art the Lord of Luvah..” – (So he’s going to give emotion now into Los’s hands) – ” Saying Thou art the Lord of Luvah into thin hands I give/ The prince of Love the murderer his soul is in thine hands”
(Harold) Bloom (in his notes to The Poetry and Prose of William Blake) suggests that that’s the rule of repression over the sinful emotions of the heart.
“The prince of Love the murderer..” – Does anybody know an interpretation for that? How come Urizen can call Luvah a murderer? What’s the….
Student: Luvah is not only the figure for love but the figure for hate
AG: Emotion.
Student: Emotion.
AG: Yeah.
Student: Yeah, so it’s (natural)
AG: Okay.
Student: (It’s one of) his natural qualities
AG: Yeah. When thwarted, actually, Luvah turns to war. That’s it. I seem to remember Luvah (or) the emotion of love becomes the emotion of war when separated.
Student: Patriotism.
AG: Yeah. Or Patriotism or Nationalism or more selfhood. But warring selfhood. So “prince of Love the murderer.”
[Allen continues]. “… his soul is in thine hands/ Pity not Vala for she pitied not the Eternal Man/ Nor pity thou the cries of Luvah.”
Now – “Pity not Vala” – pity not the illusion of nature for she didn’t pity Albion, the whole Edenic man. But, seduced attention to.. what? to illusory..nature? to cruel Mother Nature? See, it doesn’t really fully logically get itself together because you could say Vala is fine, she’s perishing nature. Well, what else do you want? You were saying, yes? [to Student] work with perishing nature. Nature perishes. So, “kiss the joy as it flies”. But here Vala is that aspect of a perishing mortal vegetable nature, illusion of nature?
Student: But she’s seduced the Eternal Man to believing….
AG: Into believing in her.
Student: ….(as such), as a separate …
AG: .. as a permanent….
Student: …(thing) yeah
AG: Yeah, as a permanent (thing). Yeah.
Student: ..as in nature…
AG: Okay. As in what?
Student: As in nature worship.
AG: Yeah. But who are they supposed to worship?
Student: They’re supposed to have a continual consciousness of Higher Man or (of a Full Man)..
AG: Yeah.
Student: I guess.
AG: Yeah, but he’s just working it out now, so it doesn’t have to make sense, I guess.
to be continued
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately nineteen-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately twenty-three-and-three-quarter minutes in]