Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell continues from – here
AG (quoting Blake): “All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors (1) That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.” – (That is, two separate things – that body and soul are separate. Pointing out that most religious creeds do posit this (and) this is evil. The world is evil and the soul is good but they are totally separate and they are not identifiable together.) And, (2) That Energy, called Evil is alone from the Body.” – (from the body – Sex. That’s bad bad.) – “ & that Reason calld Good is alone from the Soul”. (and) (3.) That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies” – (In other words, if you give way to your sexual desires or your imaginative desires, that you’ll go to hell.) But, according to the Devil – “… (But) the following Contraries to these are True”
“(1.) Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, (which are) the chief inlets of Soul in this age”
So the senses are what in the relation to the (Soul)? The body is only a portion of the soul. The soul is the original body, so to speak, he’s saying, and then the senses are this aspect of the soul that we see. And from this statement rises the notion of the caverned man, like Plato’s cave. The caverned man. Plato’s cave, you all know? That image of Plato’s cave? Does anybody not know it at all? Well, let us say that most men in their reason and in their minds are living inside a cave and they see shadows pass along the walls of the cave and they guess what the realities of those shadows are, but actually those are the shadows of real people outside, passing (by the cave). So, looking from inside our body through the inlets of the senses, we are like people in Plato’s cave seeing shadows. If we think that these shadows outside us are the ultimate reality, we’re as foolish as the people inside the cave thinking shadows on the back wall of the cave (are real). And these are shadows because these are transitory phenomenon – sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and thought – they are transitory and they’re over, like a dream. When you get to be eighty years old, where did it all go? – Who said that?, “Where did it all go?”. Maybe a poem by (Charles) Reznikoff? or something my father told me before he died. It was some old, old, old lady on her deathbed (who) looked up and said, “Where did it all go?” So, if you consider “where did it all go?” when they are shadows.
But he’s saying in this age, the senses are the chief inlets of the soul. Right?
“(2.) Energy is the only life and is from the Body [and] Reason is the Bound or outward circumference of Energy.” – (That is kind of an interesting notion. Do you want to explain that one, Peter Orlovsky? What’s your idea of that? – “Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the Bound or outward circumference of Energy.” We were talking about that earlier today.
Peter Orlovsky: If you’ve fallen in the snow in cold weather you get a lot of energy from that, because it’s where the real raw elements of nature (are). There’s no getting around it. It’s always getting around. It’s always coming around every year. And it’s from the body; you feel it in the body and it’s… so the body responds to the natural elements of cold weather, snow, cold water. And once you delight in that, it gives you a lot of reason … you get a lot of insight from that, a lot of development of the body, of body energy. So you increase your body energy, so you live to be a hundred-and fifteen, a hundred- and -twenty-five , if you eat the right food and watch out.
AG: Um-hmm. Erdman has a comment on that. “Blake’s theory admits of a true or necessary Reason as “the bound or outward circumference of Energy” but leaves it no role in “life” except to be pushed about. Reason is the horizon kept constantly on the move by man’s infinite desire. The moment (reason) exerts a will of its own and attempts to restrain desire, it turns into that negative and unnecessary Reason which forces obedience with dungeons, armies, and priestcraft (and) which Blake refers to as “the restrainer” which usurps the place of desire and “governs the unwilling.” Tiriel was such a deity, and so is the dismal god of the Archbishop of Paris (from The French Revolution) who can no longer restrain the millions from bursting the bars of Chaos. Blake will soon invent for this sterile god a comic name, Nobodaddy (old daddy nobody), and an epic name, Urizen, signifying your reason(not mine) and the limiting horizon….” Urizen/horizon. The limited, the limiting, or outward circumference of the energy. “Horizon” means to bound in Greek. The Greek root of the word “horizon” is “bound”. “The poet’s hostility toward this “Governor or reason” is thoroughly republican or, to the modern mind, socialistic.” That’s a nice explanation.
to be continued