Allen Ginsberg on William Blake continues from here
Student: So he (Blake)’s linking Hermes with …
AG: Abstract philosophy.
Student: … with Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Augustine, straight through into the logical …
AG: Yeah.
Student: … and dogmatic….
AG: As attempting to perform some kind of magic on phenomena that will reduce them to … or imposing a will on them, I think it was.
Student: Imposing the will on what’s happening? On the phenomena?
AG: Yeah. Imposing will on phenomena by means of abstract reasoning. I guess what would be, in Buddhist terms, aggression …
Student: Hmm. Or….
AG: … against phenomena, manipulative rationalization …
Student: Yeah.
AG: … attempting to make phenomena conform to your ideas, or solidifying phenomena. It’s a basic Urizenic pattern. So he’s seeing even Plato (in this way).
Student: Yeah.
AG: It’s not the common view of Plato or Plotinus.
Student: But Plato can be found in his dialogues to be very manipulative of the discussion and what’s happening in the outcome of the…
AG: Yeah. well, usually Plato is taken to be more Blakean. Blake is putting down Plato as being too abstracted, rationalistic and abstracted, not poetic enough. I don’t know quite (what) his qualm with Plato, Pythogoras, (and) Socrates was. It’s something we could look up.
Student: But it’s interesting that he would make that kind of like intellectual underground
…that connection.
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately sixty-two-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately sixty-three-and-three-quarters minutes in