Allen Ginsberg’s August 6 1979 Naropa class on William Blake’s “The Four Zoas” (“Summer Discourse, 1979 on Blake’s Prophetic Books) continues from here and concludes this weekend. We’ll continue with transcription of further Blake classes in the coming weeks
Student: She doesn’t want … she doesn’t want Los, she certainly doesn’t want to protect Jerusalem. That is being done despite her in the space that she herself has (protected)
AG: Enitharmon here is a bright female terror refusing to open the gates.
Student: Yeah.
AG: Well, she wanted that feminine… It would mean the death of both of them. in the long run in the sense that they would have to die back into …
Student: Albion.
AG: … Albion. Jerusalem, the feminine Jerusalem would have to die back into Albion and would no longer be separated. And Enitharmon would have to die back into Urthona or Los and give up her separate selfhood.
Thus, conclusion, the last four lines:
” Terrific ragd the Eternal Wheels of intellect terrific ragd/The living creatures of the wheels in the Wars of Eternal life/ But perverse rolld the wheels of Urizen & Luvah back reversd/ Downwards & outwards consuming in the wars of Eternal Death” – (“Downwards and outwards” would be into Newtonian time and space. So we’re in the “downwards and outwards”. At least to the extent that we see it as non-Edenic and we’re the creatures of the wheels).
Student: Later on Blake says (that) above is within…well…inside itself. and so downward and outward reverses that inner..
AG: Yeah.
Student: …amalgamation or integration.
Student (2) : So(that is) kept (up in) the next line. Albion, in that sense “Turning his Eyes outward to Self. losing the Divine Vision” – [“Rising upon his Couch of Death Albion beheld his Sons/ Turning his Eyes outward to Self. losing the Divine Vision/ Albion calld Urizen & said…’]
AG: His son’s turning his eyes outward to self? Is that it? How does that read? I’m sorry. His son’s “turning”? Albion “turning his eyes outward”? – Is Albion turning his eyes outward to self?
Student: Yeah.
AG: Yeah.
Student: (As a repudiation) of science?… By turning his eyes outwards to self, so that … It’s sort of inside-out (to) the way we’re used (to)…
AG: Yeah.
Student: I mean, you’d think that your self would be an inside..
AG: Yeah.
Student: …and the divine vision outside. But…yeah, he’s turned it inside out.
Student: Later on I think he says that the self… that the circumference is the self of center and that… and the….
AG: The circumference is?
Student: Is the self as centered.
AG: Yeah.
Student: What we experience as the self is centered.
AG: In other words, the external circumference of phenomena is a selfish center.
Student: Right.
AG: Yeah, so the conclusion of all this, set up so far in the first book, seems to be that the Eden or eternity is not outside, as seen by us, but is inside. That the extrusion of the senses is some kind of serpent-mistake, and that the entire created universe is chaos and eternal death. But we’ve also, at another point, had the presentation that being willing to die that eternal death and work within this phenomenal world, or accept the phenomenal world as Edenic, is also a way out, or is also going through the proper gate. So that is, I guess, to be resolved in the rest of the book.
to be continued tomorrow
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately ninety-five-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately ninety-nine minutes in