Allen Ginsberg on William Blake continues from here
AG: Yeah?
Student: To go back a little bit, to number 1 … (“Man has no body distinct from his soul”…)
AG: Yes.
Student: … he says.. (the) “chief inlets of the Soul in this age.”
AG: Um-hmm
Student: What is he saying in that?
AG: Well, God knows. One thing he’s saying, kind of apocalyptically, (is) that we’re in some sort of degenerate cycle of history or some degenerate eon. One of the lower eons, or one of the worser eons, or one of the more grosser vegetable eons. One of the Hindu terms that would probably be in there would be the Kali Yuga, where things are getting thicker and thicker and more and more materialistic. And that, probably, in an earlier yuga – (yuga or cycle or eon or age), people’s imaginations were less limited. In fact, he is saying a new heaven has begun. In The French Revolution he said “after six thousand years” — remember? The birth of freedom after six thousand years. So that would be the six thousand years of the imposition of reason and boundary and circumference by Jehovah — the law. The father figure, law, avenger, terrorist. The CIA in heaven. The influencer. The bounderer, the reasoner. So in this age I would say, then, he probably felt that the soul was more liberated back before the Jehovaic law.
Student: Is he perhaps saying that back in the days of Plato and Plotinus that the soul was more accepted (or) acceptable?
AG: Well, he may be speaking about 19th century versus 2nd century A.D. or whatever. When is Plotinus? Second century.
Student: He was a student of Plato’s.
AG: Okay, then, what would that be?
Student: (Contemporaneous to Plato)
AG: Yeah. Well, Plato was what? Two hundred B.C. or something? Does anybody know? Student: Further back. [Editorial note- Plato was born c.429 B.C.]
AG: So Plotinus would be 350 [Editorial note – Plotinus was born c.204/5 C.E] . Maybe, but I think he’s talking about six thousand years. I think Blake here, when he says, “the chief inlets of the Soul in this age” (means) in six thousand years. The next stage after the explosion, say, of the nuclear apocalypse, or the “Nova Express”, as Burroughs calls it. Maybe there will be a totally different apprehension of the spaciousness of human imagination…..
to be continued