Allen Ginsberg on William Blake continues from here
“So Antamon call’d up Leutha from her valleys of delight:And to Mahomet a loose Bible gave..”
AG: Well, that’s quite true. That’s a real interesting description of the Koran – “a loose bible”. especially in the name of Allah, the merciful, compassionate, they shot six fairies in Arabia today (Editorial note – Allen is speaking in March, 1979), or in …
Peter Orlovsky: In Tehran.
AG: … in Tehran. in Iran today. In Persia. Six fairies in Persia shot by the compassionate guns of the Mullah!
So – “And to Mahomet a loose Bible gave./But in the North, to Odin, Sotha gave a Code of War” – (Masculine war, remember) – “Because of Diralad..” – (The erotic dream – Diralada (is) Thiralatha. She appeared as Thiralatha in the last book. “Diralada” it’s spelled now) – “Sotha gave a Code of War./Because of..(erotic dream)..”thinking to reclaim his joy”.
I think Sotha‘s Emanation was the erotic dream. War’s Emanation is the erotic dream, or they’re (a) couple. So Sotha gave a Code of War to Odin because of his erotic dream, thinking he might get laid that way. That might boil down to that, that he might satisfy his erotic ambition if he had enough power and strength.
“These were the Churches: Hospitals: Castles: Palaces:/ Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity/And all the rest a desart;/Till like a dream Eternity was obliterated and erased” – (So that’s sort of his summary of the history of the mind).
“Since that dread day when Har and Heva fled./Because their brethren & sisters live’d in War & Lust;/And as they fled..” – (So Har and Heva as we remember them from Tiriel were kind of weak-minded and afraid of getting out into the world of experience and they didn’t want to experience war and mortality. There’s a phrase in (William S.) Burroughs, “Tithonian Longevity Serum,” in Burroughs’s “Interzone” (in Naked Lunch) -“Tithonian Longevity Serum.” Tithonus was a creature in Greek mythology and mentioned by (Alfred, Lord) Tennyson in his poem “Tithonus”. (When Tithonus), in return for a favor to Zeus or someone, (was asked) what he wished, and he said, “Immortality.” But he forgot to mention perpetual youth. So he got very old- undying, but like dust. Just this package of dust that wouldn’t die).
So Burroughs has this notion of Tithonian Longevity Serum (that) the black marketeers in Interzone are peddling, like old Sluck and Rerun Wars (as well as) used antibiotics whose dates have run out. Tithonian Longevity Serum. So these are Tithonian characters.
“Since that dread day when Har and Heva fled./Because their brethren & sisters live’d in War & Lust;/And as they fled they shrunk/Into two narrow doleful forms:/ Creeping in reptile flesh upon/ The bosom on the ground:/And all the vast of Nature shrunk/Before their shrunken eyes.”
This must have been written sometime around the same period as “The Mental Traveller” where he has a vast desert all around. Remember? The sun, moon, stars all shrank into a ball, [Editorial note – “And the flat earth becomes a ball, The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away— A desert vast without a bound..”] , and, “the Eye altering alters all.” So the imagery is very similar to “The Mental Traveller” poem, right here. They probably intersect in time, these two texts of Blake.
“Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave/Laws & Religions to the sons of Har binding them more/And more to Earth: closing and restraining:/Till a Philosophy of Five Senses was complete/Urizen wept & gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke/Clouds roll heavy upon the Alps round Rousseau & Voltaire:/And on the mountains of Lebanon round the deceased Gods/ Of Asia; & on the desarts of Africa round the Fallen Angels/The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent.”
That’s the first line of “America”. So “America” will continue this story with revolution.
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately sixty-eight-and-a-half minutes in and continuing until approximately seventy-two minutes in