Returning today to William Blake today. We take up where we left off here, Allen’s 1979 Naropa class on The Four Zoas. The August 13 class begins here
Allen begins the class with an invocation – the Padmasambhava mantra – Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum –
AG: We left off with the solidification of the universe under Urizen‘s construction on page three-sixteen (of The Poetry and Prose of William Blake) at the end of Blake’s page thirty-four. “… Trapeziums Rhombs Rhomboids/ Paralallograms, triple & quadruple, polygonic/ In their amazing hard subdued course in the vast deep” – That’s page three-sixteen. Everybody got it?
Then, having totally solidified and created his universe, Urizen has a little vision of Los and Enitharmon – Imagination and Spiritual Beauty – in their present form, drawn down by their desires to that place – “Descending sweet upon the wind among soft harps & voices/To plant divisions in the Soul of Urizen & Ahania/ To conduct the Voice of Enion to Ahania’s midnight pillow” – (That is to say, to bring some echo of Tharmas‘s generative instinct, the body’s generative instinct – to Urizen’s Emanation, to the “pillow” of Urizen’s Emanation -Ahania. Urizen’s Emanation being some kind of idealistic Spiritual Pleasure or a complement of reason. In this case, if it’s out-of-phase, (it) would be some sense of sin rather than pleasure).
At which point Urizen saw them and envied them and begins to repent and doubt his entire creation. So – “ Urizen saw & envied & his imagination was filled/ Repining he contemplated the past in his bright sphere/Terrified with his heart & spirit at the visions of futurity/That his dread fancy formd before him in the unformed void”
So, having created a universe, Reason is now beginning to have second thoughts – (a) trembling heart – and getting a glimpse of imaginative possibility, because – “For Los and Enitharmon walkd forth on the dewy Earth”
Then, not entirely fallen, actually, like the others: – Like Luvah, Tharmas and Urizen. They “… walkd forth on the dewy Earth/ Contracting or expanding their all flexible senses/ At will to murmur in the flowers small as the honey bee/ At will to stretch across the heavens & step from star to star”
Sort of (a) ‘Sixties L.S.D. fancy, actually.
The contrast there would be a world solidified, fixed, material, rationalized, as against some completely other imaginative possibility with the realization of the world as only our own creation and “the eye altering alters all“. So Urizen has a little vision of poetic creation possible, as distinct from his own solidified world.
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at the beginning of the tape and continuing until approximately three-and-a-quarter minutes in