Allen Ginsberg on William Blake continues from here
AG: Other outrageous putdowns by Blake (would include his) put-down (of) Rembrandt. He couldn’t stand Rembrandt.
Reed Bye: I’m not sure….
Peter Orlovsky: Why? Why doesn’t he….
Reed Bye: I’m not sure this is a put-down, really. (It’s an account of) where it is..
AG: Well, it’s an account of history. It’s an account of history.
Reed Bye: Yeah. It’s an aspect of things. And Palamabron …
AG: Yeah.
Reed Bye: ..(comes) and does this. and, in a way, it’s with sincere pity that he’s giving….
AG: Well, wait until you get to the next passage. – “Times rolled on o’er all the sons of Har..” – (Remember Har? The perpetual Eden of the delusion of immortality, but no real experience. So “in the Crystal Cabinet” (is) another way of saying that, actually.
“Times rolled on o’er all the sons of Har, time after time/Orc on Mount Atlas howld, chain’d down with the Chain of Jealousy’ – (Mount Atlas upholding the world. Orc, the spirit of revolution, chained down with a chain of jealous) – “Then Oothoon hoverd over Judah & Jerusalem/Judah, the ancestor of Jesus/.And Jesus heard her voice (a man of sorrow) he recievd/A Gospel from wretched Theotormon.”
Jesus received his gospel from the “wretched Theotormon” is what is being said here. So I think his account is really a total put-down of all history (or) of Western history. Of course, it’s all balanced, like he’s always seeing things in terms of contraries. Of (the need for) contraries, of dialectic, and so seeing different phases. All these energies finally, like in Tantric practice, merge in some useful form.
Reed Bye: Yeah.
AG: But I think he intends here to make a history of the enslavement of the mind and that … well, who knows?
Reed Bye: Well, it just doesn’t seem that these people like Rintrah and Palamabron have absolute values….
AG: No, they shift around.
Reed Bye: … (which are) attached to them.
AG: They shift around. Here, I think he’s using them in this particular book (in the way that) it’s pity did this and wrath did that.
Reed Bye: It’s like they follow each other.
AG: Yeah.
Reed Bye: In a way, like…destruction and creation… Shiva.…
AG: Well, I think you’re taking a too liberal a notion. I think this is just a straight … well, either way. You can have it either way. Interpret it as you want. But the next line is “The human race began to wither,” so I don’t think he’s really digging them.
Reed Bye: I’m not saying that it all turns out right …
AG: Yeah.
Reed Bye: … but these … they just aren’t absolute, they sort of come together in different ways… and different things come out of it.
AG: I think that’s what he does in the Four Zoas . He begins transforming them. The rest of the books are the transformations of all these elements into a harmonious pattern, to show their purpose. Anyway, here this is history.
“The human race began to wither for the healthy built/Secluded places.” – (Hermitages, actually. Like Gary Snyder in Kitkitdizze – they helped me build secluded places.) – “… fearing the joys of Love/And the diseas’d only propagated:/So Antamon call’d up Leutha from her valleys of delight..” (So now that we know who Leutha and Antamon is, it’s kind of interesting to read this through).
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately sixty-three-and-three-quarter minutes in and concludes at approximately sixty-eight-and-a-half minutes in