William Blake 1979 Naropa Lectures continues – 9

Allen Ginsberg’s 1979 Naropa Blake notes continue from here

AG: So. Into Europe, which I’d like to try and finish, but it’s a very complicated one this time around.  We went through the opening fairy-tale  – the “Preludium”  – unawakened nature complaining about giving birth after birth after birth to suffering and revolution and counter-revolution and revolution within revolution and the Darwinian world of competition.  Now we come to the prophecy itself.

So let’s get started on Plate III, the prophecy.  I think we’ve seen the figure of the pilgrim and Edmund Burke, the questioner who sits so sly, who never knows how to reply.  The one who, if the sun and moon should doubt, they’d immediately go out.  You’ll see him with a knife in the cave, which is, as Erdman points out in this cave on page one five nine, if you look at it a little carefully and remember Bromion’s cave-skull, we’re back in the cave-skull, looking out of the eye.  Erdman says, “the boughs over the cave are probably oak, they suggest hair on the cave-skull, with Burke sitting in the eye cavity (compare Visions (of the Daughters of Albion)“. There is some suggestion of that.

So,

“The deep of winter came;/What time the secret child,/Descended thro’ the orient gates of the eternal day:/War ceas’d, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes.” – (The “secret child” is Orc.  The “orient gates” would be Luvah‘s gates, the eastern gates.  So the secret child Orc descending through the gates of emotion.  But there’s a funny echo here of another poem –

“It was the winter wild,/While the heaven-born child/All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies;/Nature, in awe to him,/Had doffed her gaudy trim,/With her great Master so to sympathize..”

That’s the beginning of “Hymn” (which concludes) “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity“ – (- Orc – Christ) – by Milton.  And so Blake was parodying this little Miltonic opening rhyme – “It was the winter wild,/While the heaven-born child/ All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies” – “The deep of winter came;/What time the secret child,/Descended thro’ the orient gates of the eternal day.”

Then, female will. “… saw her sons & daughters rise around” – (Enitharmon) – “Like pearly clouds they meet together in the crystal house” – (“Crystal” here is generally associated with the illusion of love. With the false illusions of false love that are threaded throughout The Songs of Experience   and analyzed there, and we find that in “The Crystal Cabinet” also.  So the “Crystal Cabinet” generally, or that crystal inside a mirror-world –  a mirror-world of illusions,  in this case often the illusion of love that Enitharmon, female will, is imposing on history –  a false love, Tirzah‘s love. Love that is afraid of revolution, to some extent.  That is, afraid of the fury of revolution, though she gives birth to Orc.  She’s given birth to Orc but Orc is still dependent on her.  Orc is still asleep.  He hasn’t yet gotten through puberty and risen out to be the French Revolution.

“And Los, possessor of the moon…” – (Enitharmon, possessor of the Goddess of the Moon.  Los is the Sun.  His emanation, Enitharmon, is moon.  And Los in this case is not depicted as the fiery rising sun, but the husband of the moon, the love-mate of the moon, dallier of the moon, joying in her peaceful night) – “And Los, possessor of the moon, joy’d in the peaceful night..” – (Los, the imagination.  dallying with little love languors) – “Thus speaking while his num’rous sons shook their bright fiery wings’

” Again the night has come/ That strong..” – (That’s Los talking) – “That strong Urthona..” – (Imagination) – “… takes his rest” – (So the imagination sleeps and while imagination sleeps and while Los, the poetic imagination, is dallying in the languors of crystal worlds of love, Urizen rises, takes power) – “unloos’d from chains/Glows like a meteor in the distant north” – (So then that’s the end of his speech). And then Blake talking to himself, I think. “Stretch forth your hands and strike the elemental strings!/Awake the thunders of the deep./  The shrill winds awake!/ Till all the sons of Urizen look out and envy Los.” – (He’s having fun in bed) – “Seize all the spirits of life and bind/Their warbling joys to our loud strings/Bind all the nourishing sweets of earth/To give us bliss, that we may drink the sparkling wine of         (Los)”- (Poetry) – “And let us laugh at war,/ Despising toil and care” – (And be hippies!) – “Because the days and nights of joy, in lucky hours renew” – (So they all want to have a good time.  They don’t know this French Revolution that’s coming on.  Orc is getting born, Urthona is asleep, Urizen somewhat tinges the thoughts of the children, and basically, the sparkling wine of Los is poetry.  So they don’t want to face the wrath to come).

However,

“Arise O Orc from thy deep den,/First born of Enitharmon rise!/And we will crown thy head with garlands of the ruddy vine,/For now thou art bound;/  Like Christ with a garland around his head./And I may see thee in the hour of bliss, my eldest born.” – (So this is the stupid mother talking to her newborn radical child, saying, “Come on” – a sort of delusive speech to what will be this raging tigerish revolutionary kid).

So, what does he do?

“The horrent Demon rose, surrounded with red stars of fire,/Whirling about in furious circles round the immortal fiend./  Then Enitharmon down descended into his red light,/ And thus her voice rose to her children, the distant heavens reply:/ Now comes the night of Enitharmon’s joy!”

(This will be, according to Damon, women in the world, (and the) false religion of chastity and vengeance.  The Christian world.)

to be continued