Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s Europe – A Prophecy continues from here
AG: So what happened there (in “The Crystal Cabinet”)? Threefold would mean three of the Zoas, not four. Something is lacking. Probably imagination, I would guess. One Zoa must be lacking in that. One element. Threefold would probably be he strove with body, strove with his heart – emotions – strove with his reason, perhaps, but lacked imagination. Or perhaps it was reason, imagination, and heart, and no body. Some chaste love. Some completely chaste love.
But anyway, the whole point is that, because it is a moony illusion, a captivity and delusion of love, when you strive to seize the ultimate essence of it, when you try to put your hand on it, it will vanish, naturally. And so “The Crystal Cabinet”. And so this person in the Crystal Cabinet has probably lived in the delusion of love with his wife or lover for maybe decades and decades but then, when finally he tries to figure out what it actually is and tries to come to terms with it, it turns out it was only his soft delusion, and he wakes up and finds himself an old man next to an old weeping woman. Or weeping babe was it? I think it was. Turned into an idiot babe.
Well, so, Enitharmon (in Europe) waking:
… calld her sons & daughters/To the sports of night,/With her crystal house;/And thus her song proceeds
So this is a song of amorous hang-up within the mind with a roof of illusion and walls of illusion.
According to Damon, the following children are called the progressive frustration of sex under the dominance of the female. So remember that diagram or that progression that we spoke of last time (that) was in the Damon (book)? We went through it once, kind of a Reichian cycle of sex under Enitharmon, I think. I might go over it again, because it’s followed somewhat. I don’t want to get too complicated but it is followed (in this poem). If anybody has Damon, it’s on page one twenty-four
Ethinthus is the body, Manathu-Vorcyon is sexual desire. However when in the body the feminine guilt rises, then Antamon, the male seed, has to relate to guilt. That becomes Theotormon, frustrated desire (and) relating to Oothoon, frustrated desire, that becomes masculine Sotha, war, relating to Thiralatha, or Thiralata, neurotic daydream. So instead of a balance between body and sexual desire, the body becomes war and sexual desire becomes masturbation or daydream. So some of that cycle is outlined in what comes up when Enitharmon calls forth her children of illusion.
“Arise Ethinthus!..” – (Ethinthus is fleshly nature. Arise Cock! Arise Cunt!) – “… tho’ the earth-worm call;/Let him call in vain;/Till the night of holy shadows/And human solitude is past!
So the body and mortal flesh is called forth.
“Ethinthus queen of waters, how thou shinest in the sky:/My daughter how I do rejoice! for thy children flock around/Like the gay fishes on the wave, when the cold moon drinks the dew..” – (The body is giving birth with its seed and semen to many, many little fishes that are flocking into birth. All illusory) – ” Like the gay fishes on the wave, when the cold moon drinks the dew,/Ethinthus! thou art sweet as comforts to my fainting soul:/For now thy waters warble round the feet of Enitharmon./ Manathu-Vorcyon! – (Manathu-Vorcyon, sexual desire) – “… I behold thee flaming in my halls,/ Light of thy mothers soul! I see thy lovely eagles round..” – (I suppose they’re the rising hard-ons of genius) – “I see thy lovely eagles round;/Thy golden wings are my delight, & thy flames of soft delusion”.
“Where is my lureing bird of Eden!”- (What would lure this eagle, this golden hard-on? What luring bird would that be? We found her before. Leutha. Remember? In the vales of Leutha. Sexual desire. The orgasm, actually. Guilty sexual orgasm, I think that was. Sin. But the vales of Leutha was sin in the vagina. That is, fear located there and sin. Leutha appeared where? At the beginning of Europe- A Prophecy or America – A Prophecy? Does anybody remember?)
Student: Visions..
Student (2): Visions of the Daughters of Albion
AG: Visions of the Daughters of Albion, yes. Right.
“Where is my lureing bird of Eden! Leutha silent love!/. Leutha, the many colourd bow delights upon thy wings..” – (That’s nice. The many colored cock delights in thy cavity -“Soft soul of flowers” -This is actually (a) little sweet Blakean hymn to cunt, albeit guilty). Nonetheless..
“… the many colourd bow delights upon thy wings:/Soft soul of flowers Leutha!/Sweet smiling pestilence!..” – (Sensory love. That would be equivalent to materialistic sensory love. That is, a sensory love excluding relationship, excluding imagination, reason, and a Bromionic rape, let us say) or…- Anyway…
“Sweet smiling pestilence! I see thy blushing light:/Thy daughters many changing,/Revolve like sweet perfumes ascending O Leutha silken queen!” – (That’s really pretty for that, if you understand what it is) – “…O Leutha silken queen!/Where is the youthful Antamon. prince of the pearly dew” ( the seed, semen – so this all fits together, once you understand what he’s talking about. The silken queen and the prince of pearly dew getting together).
So, “Where is the youthful Antamon. prince of the pearly dew,/O Antamon, why wilt thou leave thy mother Enitharmon?/Alone I see thee crystal form,/Floating upon the bosomd air..” – (Remember Antamon, the cloud, that’s semen, “Floating on the bosomd air”, in the Book of Thel, when Thel, afraid to be born asked the cloud how it feels about the whole scene of transitoriness and mutability?) – “With lineaments of gratified desire”/ My Antamon the seven churches of Leutha seek thy love” – (The seven churches would be the seven churches of Christianity, established over the world, under the dominance of the Virgin Mary, or under the dominance of chastity and repression of desire, repression of revolution) – “I hear the soft Oothoon in Enitharmons tents.” – (frustrated desire) – “Why wilt thou give up womans secrecy my melancholy child?”
“Between two moments Bliss is rip..” – I don’t understand that, actually.
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-eight-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-seven minutes in