Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell continues (and concludes) from here
AG: And then the next important one I like is “One thought. fills immensity.“ And then you have this giant seascape, this little immensity, right in between the lines in the picture. Anybody got the pictures to see? Look around at a picture book. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss the movies! Move your fucking face and look into somebody else’s book. Come on. Don’t miss the movie. This is one of the wittier ones: “One thought. fills immensity.” You see it? Then there’s a ship and birds flying up, which generally represents winged thoughts. Birds generally represent winged thoughts.
“The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.” You’ll notice in the tree, beside the tree in the cliff, there’s a waterfall. The fountain or the waterfall here.
“Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.” And there’s a serpent there, speaking his mind. Or reaction or something. I don’t know what it says about it.
So there’s a lot of little funny, squiggley illustrations and underlinings or commentaries on his thoughts, or expansions of his thoughts. In this particular seascape, the most immense, for “one thought fills immensity”. And “The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.” That fountain may be that waterfall. I think Erdman says something about that. Can you look at the text? It’s right there, for the seascape.
Student(reading from Erdman): The “landscape-seascape illustrates the cistern-fountain idea (and the proverb “One thought, fills immensity”). Down a rocky cliff a tall force of water falls into the ocean,” filling immensity.. which carries a boat and ships, near and distant (one going over the horizon). Ocean and cliff repeat the shape of valley and rock in Plate VII. The stream of thought fills the valley … carries the vessels, nourishes a green palm tree (with coconut) on the cliff edge, and innumerable birds (eagle or paradise bird grape-colored at left), which flow out to fill the air – and overflow into text and illumination conveying … ‘an image of truth.'”
AG: That’s pretty good. Erdman is really smart when it comes to interpreting the pictures. It’s worth reading his commentaries as you go through the prophetic books.
“Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.” – ( That’s kind of interesting. It’s really not so much an exhortation to honesty as psychology strategy moment-to-moment. If you’re perplexed in a situation and don’t know what to say and feel torn and trapped, caged in the situation, all you have to do is ask your question openly, especially if it’s a paranoic question, and that will burst the bubble of fear. And also drive away a base man who might be trying to put you down and fuck you up. I’ve been using that lately. Since I’ve had so much repression or temerity in the relation to the (W.S.) Merwin situation and the Buddhist situation, I’ve been more open to speak my mind in order to burst the bubble of my own paranoia and I’ve found this particular slogan very useful. “Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.” Good deal.
Nine o’clock. So we’ll continue with this. Start on ahead. I’m going to read on ahead in … (are) there any announcements we’ve got?
Student: Yeah.
Class and tape end here.