Allen Ginsberg 1979 Naropa class on William Blake’s The Four Zoas continues from here
Student: Allen?
AG: Yeah?
Student: Are Luvah and Los both male?
AG: Yes.
Student: Sorry.
AG: Luvah representing emotion, or the heart, and Los representing …
Student: Imagination.
AG: … imaginative creation, poetic creation. Imagination which can be perverted or set to work by reason, but which ultimately breaks free. Simply by its nature being imagination, and therefore unbounded in any way, so it’s always, finally, the main saving grace. (A) deus ex machina, almost, that gets everybody out of trouble in the long run, or the agency through which the others come into (alignment). Imagination is the spirit that rearranges body, mind, and feeling when they come into disrelation. When they’re so stuck in disrelation that they’re all stuck together, locked, the only thing that can unlock that solidification or impasse….
Student: Little messenger.
AG: Yes. Little messenger that comes in as Los and Enitharmon are coming in with this little plot to conduct (or) plant divisions in the soul of Urizen and Ahania.
Now, why would they want to do a thing like that? Once Urizen has built this architectural triumph – imagination, (it’s) like some little spirit. (It’s) very much a fairy sprite as it’s described there, expanding and contracting at will – That’s why they can get in and out of all these fixes, because Los can expand and contract at will – “expanding their all flexible senses.” That’s a really pretty thing. We really didn’t get it right to give the character of Los and Enitharmon in this kind of activity.
“… 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/ Or standing on the Earth erect, or on the stormy waves/ Driving the storms before them or delighting in sunny beams/ While round their heads the Elemental Gods kept harmony..” – (That’s pretty, beautiful).
Student: It’s like her dancing in circles around reason.
AG: Yeah. The fairies are dancing. Fairies, genies, nymphs and gnomes.
Student: Also I guess in their characterization of space and time they had this flexibility.
AG: Yeah.
Student: Of getting in there.
AG: Yeah, they are space and (time) Los and Enitharmon are also space and time, that’s right. It’s a very Einstein-ian view.
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-two-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately forty-five-and-three-quarter minutes in