Allen Ginsberg 1979 Naropa class on William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience continues from here
AG: (Blake’s) “London” – that’s the most visionary, in a way, because you actually, in “London””, have a direct glimpse of people’s faces suffering the wrinkles and frowns and wear and tear under the eyelids of samsara.
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,/Near where the charter’d Thames does flow./And mark in every face I meet/ Marks of weakness, marks of woe./ In every cry of every Man,/In every Infants cry of fear,/In every voice: in every ban,/The mind-forg’d manacles I hear/ How the Chimney-sweepers cry/Every blackning Church appalls,/And the hapless Soldiers sigh,/ Runs in blood down Palace walls/ But most thro’ midnight streets I hear/ How the youthful Harlots curse/Blasts the new-born Infants tear/ And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.”
“But most thro’ midnight streets I hear/How the youthful Harlots curse/Blasts the new-born Infants tear/And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse” –
“Marriage hearse”, again, is like that Myrtle tree poem, as seen from the point of view of Mary Wollstonecraft and the marriage laws of that day, the marriage as a hearse or a death-place for love. In those days, marriage was a prison or a marriage compact, particularly for the woman, was so repulsive a situation, as was given in Visions of the Daughters of Albion , where the girl had to make love to an older, palsied husband. Thus, the guys went out, finally, and made it with the whores on the streets of London and bought love. And “love is sold for money and beauty for a bit of bread.” Another line of Blake’s – “Love sold for money and beauty for a bit of bread.” I don’t know what the first line was.
So the curse of the harlot, both the disease and the emotion, blights or plagues the marriage bed or Marriage hearse.
And here’s a psychological human abstract, in which Blake is all of the liberal virtues. Remember, we’ll have Palamabron later on in Europe, where we’re in the middle of Palamabron in Europe, as pity, and pity substituting for honest emotion, or “Pity would be no more,/If we did not make somebody Poor”. So like a socio-economic analysis of liberal emotions or self-satisfying emotions, or emotions which are cons or cop-outs or apologies for cheating hypocritical activity. So an analysis of the projection of competition and deceit that creates false love, or false relationships, false marriage, false international relationships, false personal relationships, false intellect. False mind, actually. False consciousness, finally. I’ve been doing this in just one chord.
“Pity would be no more,/If we did not make somebody Poor:/And Mercy no more could be,/If all were as happy as we;/ And mutual fear brings peace;/Till the selfish loves increase./ Then Cruelty knits a snare,/And spreads his baits with care./ He sits down with holy fears,/And waters the ground with tears:/ Then Humility takes its root/ Underneath his foot./Soon spreads the dismal shade/ Of mystery of his head;/And the Catterpillar and Fly/Feed on the Mystery/ And it bears the fruit of Deceit,/Ruddy and sweet to eat;/And the Raven his nest has made/In its thickest shade./ The Gods of the earth and sea,/ Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree/ But their search was all in vain;/ There grows one in the Human Brain.”
I like that nasal “brain” at the end, because actually if you sing it right you get “There grows one in the Human Brainnnnn.” It brings (us) back physiologically to the consciousness of the brain, like the meat brain caterpillar fly body.
to be continued