Ginsberg on Blake continues – 79

Allen at Naropa on William Blake’s The Four Zoas  continues from here

AG: Vala  Night the Fourth –  Now, (we’re) into it.  It gets pretty exciting in the fourth night. Basically, well, where are we now? –  (Allen reads) – “(But) Tharmas rode on the dark Abyss..” – (separated from Enion) – Next, the reappearance of Los and Enitharmon in this fallen world.  He longs for them –  “his bowels yearnd over them,” (and) “..said, “Why do I feel such love & pity,”  – (on page three-twenty-five,  at the top).  And then he has the worst line in Blake, maybe, where he’s totally trapped in his system – “Ah Enion Ah Enion Ah lovely lovely Enion” – (It’s like “onion, onion.”) –   It’s just that it’s a Urizenic line. Where Blake has fallen into his most Urizenic, mechanistic….

Student:  that’s Tharmas talking..
AG:  Pardon me?
Student:  Expressing Tharmas’s….
AG:  Oh, (yes), it might be an expression of Tharmas’s grossness, but …
Student:  Right.
AG:  … but it really is an awful.. funny line.  “Ah Enion Ah Enion Ah lovely lovely Enion.”  It’s sort of the pits. –  “How is (this) All my hope is gone for ever fled” –

Okay, now, so Tharmas’s fix is on line seventeen – “And cannot those who once have lovd. ever forget their Love?/Are love & rage the same passion? they are the same in me/Are those who love. like those who died. risen again from death/Immortal. in immortal torment. never to be deliverd/Is it not possible that one risen again from Death/ Can die! When dark despair comes over can I not/Flow down into the sea & slumber in oblivion. Ah Enion”

Then,  “Deformd I see these lineaments of ungratified Desire..” – ( (Harold) Bloom is pointing out that the situation now is complete sexual repression – and so “ungratified Desire” –  and so he sees deformed limbs and lineaments.  And that refers to the famous.. – for those who don’t know, for those who haven’t read a lot of Blake, –  that refers to the famous little rhymed motto – oh, it’s unrhymed, I guess – (on) page four six-five,  I guess –  it’s (from) the Rossetti Manuscript.

Student:  What is gratified Desire?
AG:  Yeah.
Student:  Gratified Desire
AG:   “In a wife I would desire/What in whores is always found… ” –  “In a wife I would desire/
What in whores is always found/ The lineaments of Gratified desire”
And then a variant of it is   – “What is it men in women do require/The lineaments of Gratified Desire” – “What is it women do in men require/The lineaments of Gratified Desire” –
So that’s a quite well-known little piece of Blake work.
“Deformd I see these lineaments of ungratified Desire….” – (to Students) -Which was written first, do you know?
..I guess the notebook.

Student:  This is interesting.  You don’t know whether the form modifies the subject.  That is, is it because he’s deformed that he sees these lineaments of ungratified desire, or does he see these lineaments.
AG:  Both.
Student:  Both.
AG:  Yeah, he’s deformed, obviously.
Student:  Right.

AG:  He’s fallen down into the … what is it?  I don’t know what his form is at this point:  “rode the dark Abyss … rolled/Over the heaving deluge … Deathless for ever now I wander seeking oblivion.”  Deathless, , well, a deathless body.  (It still has) some kind of body that is.  So that’s Tharmas’s fix.

Now, he commands Los, who reappeared a little while before, to start rebuilding the world according to Tharmas’s present situation – (his) present crazy situation.  Tharmas (is) separated from Enion, but he still wants Los to create a viable world on that basis.  (This is on) page forty-eight, line three):

“But thou My Son Glorious in brightness comforter of Tharmas/ Go forth Rebuild this Universe beneath my indignant power/A Universe of Death & Decay” – (Well, it’s a universe of mortal body made of sea-bubble plasm.  A universe of death and decay in which the sea-bubble plasm is so disgusting it even banishes the desire for physical generation).

“… Let Enitharmons hands/ Weave soft delusive forms of Man…” – (“soft delusive forms of Man..” -again, that human illusion) – “… above my watry world/ Renew these ruind souls of Men thro Earth Sea Air & Fire/To waste in endless corruption…” – (Bring on all these four billion people “to waste in endless corruption) – “…renew thou I will destroy”  – (He’s a nut at that point.  Who would ever want to do that?) – “Perhaps Enion may resume some little semblance/To ease my pangs of heart & to restore some peace to Tharmas..” – (It’s (a) hopeless situation, naturally).

“Los rejects that answer – “Los answerd in his furious pride sparks issuing from his hair” – (“No future for you.  No future for me. “The Sex Pistols.  With “sparks issuing from … hair” is (a) punk haircut.  The punk haircut that you can see on “Glad Day”  –  that figure of “Glad Day” rising with the electric hair, which is exactly the same as Johnny Rotten’s hair and it’s exactly the same message in exactly the same situation) – “Hitherto shalt thou come. no further. here thy proud waves cease…” – (What’s their line about the Queen?)

Student:  That’s one that’s from the Book of Job it’s about the Lord….
AG:  Yes, yes.  Let’s see.  The Book of Job –  Job 38:18, I guess.  We might as well get it.
Student:  Where God is giving a big “I am All-powerful speech” …
AG:  Yeah.
Student:  … and Job (needs that)
AG:  Shall we get that?  It’s very similar.  I think it’s in one of the (sets of notes to the poem).  Ostriker has it.  It’s, what?  Vala, Fourth Night.  I don’t want to waste time looking up the footnotes… You got it?
Student (2):  I got it, yeah.
AG:  Good.
Student (2):  It’s when the voice from the whirlwind …
AG:  Yeah.
Student (2):  … said, “Hitherto shalt thou come but no further and here shall lay proud waves be stayed.”
AG:  Talking to the ocean?
Student (2):  The context is …
AG:  Yeah.
Student:  … they say, are you the one that said this?
AG:  Yeah.  Yes.
Student:  And that the voice from the world is the waves.

AG: We just had Tharmas’s fix or situation or Tharmas in his natural trap, now Los in the natural trap of this moment – “We have drunk up the Eternal Man by our unbounded power/ Beware lest we also drink up thee rough demon of the waters/Our God is Urizen the King. King of the heavenly hosts/We have no other God but he thou father of worms & clay..” – (Talking to the body as the “father of worms & clay.”) – “And he..” – (Urizen) – “…is fallen into the Deep rough Demon of the waters/ And Los remains God over all”

So now Los has taken on the crown. – (“… weak father of worms & clay/I know I was Urthona keeper of the gates of heaven/But now I am all powerful Los & Urthona is but my shadow” – (So Los has now gone mad) – “Doubting stood Tharmas..” – (Doubting Thomas) – “Doubting stood Tharmas in the solemn darkness…” – (Doubting, why?  Because the whole problem there is that he’s in this flux of unbelief, according to Ostriker.  So it’s a pun on Doubting Thomas) – “Doubting stood Tharmas in the solemn darkness. his dim Eyes/Swam in red tears. he reared his waves..” – ((he weird his raves?) –  “…above the head of Los/In wrath. but pitying back (withdrew with many a sigh)/ Now he resolvd to destroy Los & now his tears flowd down/In scorn stood Los red sparks of blighting from his furious head..” – (Lighting?  “red sparks of blighting from his furious head”?  Is that a mistake?) – “Flew over the waves of Tharmas..”

Okay, we skip on.

Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately  forty-nine-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-eight-and-three-quarter minutes in