Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s Europe- A Prophecy continues from here
AG : So – “Thus was the howl thro Europe!/ For Orc“- (Revolution) – “… rejoic’d to hear the howling shadows/ But Palamabron shot his lightnings trenching down his wide back..”
Palamabron – What’s that? It was false pity, representing here the Parliament actually and, according to some commentators, Edmund Burke, the reactionary speechmaker who was constantly making great oratorical praises for the nostalgia (of) the French Court and the beauty of the queen and the beauty of the monarchial system and the ancient charms of the old empire.
So: “… Palamabron shot his lightnings trenching down his wide back/ And Rintrah hung with all his legions in the nether deep” – (Rintrah would be wrath. Erdman thinks it’s Pitt, actually) –
“Palamabron, on the ethical level, represents Pity, usually of the restrictive sort. Politically Palamabron is ‘Parliament’s Bromion‘ or bluster.” Bromion, incidentally, is a bluster or roarer in a cave. “Bromion (Greek – roarer) is a blusterer in a cave…. Burke, having notoriously shed the tears of pity for the plumage of French royalty, in 1792 wields a dagger in the cave of Parliament….”
Actually, Burke did give a speech in which he pulled from his clothes a dagger and threw it down on the Parliament floor and said, “If you make a deal with France, that’s what you’ll get.” That was parodied in the newspapers by a guy named Gillray who drew comic political cartoons, and there’s a weird-looking Burke with a kind of nasty face and a shiny dagger. Blake picked up on (that cartoon) and that strange-looking guy in the cave in Europe (Plate 1), on page one-five-nine of The Illuminated Blake, actually is Blake’s version of the original Gillray caricature of Burke in the cave of the heavy skull there with a guy in it. It’s both the cave of Parliament, it’s Burke with his literal political dagger – the dagger of the Meanie, the dagger of the Blue Meanie (sic), the dagger of restriction (and) repression – and the Pilgrim’s Progress-figure is like the searcher, the political searcher, actually, in that time of confusion. That funny look on Burke’s face, that strange hooked nose and wild eyeball and a very odd cocksucker’s mouth or something – some weird face on him, some weird maniacal intensity – is actually copied from the original (James) Gillray political cartoon, which, if you want to see the original, is actually an amazingly accurate reproduction of the original of the Gillray cartoon (which) is (reprinted) in the Erdman Prophet Against Empire . Let’s see if I can find it here.. Has anybody ever seen that, I wonder? Yeah. The look on it. This is the original cartoon. [Allen displays the illustrations] Check the correlation so you get an idea of what Blake’s original sources were for his drawings. Just to show you that Blake was really tied down one-to-one with his political universe. Have a look at that. Have a look at that evil face. There’s the guy. There’s the man. There’s the demon.
So what’s the point of doing this all this? – just to bring Blake down, bring Blake down to where we are, somewhat, in our own world, but also, how does he get his mad phrasing?
and how does he get his imaginative imaginary visions? Naturally, they come from our own world, and he was very shrewd about it, actually. He found some form where it became something beside his own nutty anger, and, it’s not that it just became a work of art but he took that little element of genius gleam from what he read in the newspaper and laid that out as part of his internal work. Just sort of picked out the one fragmentary perception that would work and fit it into place with others, and then left behind the rest of the newspaper. Like “Groveling along Great George Street thro’ the Park gate”, which, at that time point, could be, for Thurlow, could be like any disgraced politician. I mean, Nixon is a recognizable image, a recognizable joke – groveling down Great George Street. The recognizable political joke – “Groveling along Great George Street thro’ the Park gate …” dragging “his torments to the wilderness.”
to be continued….
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seven-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding approximately fifteen minutes in