AG: (My project in the) years since ’75, here at Naropa, is (has been) teaching William Blake, from beginning to end. And I began, I think, sometime in ’75. I read Blake (for myself) from beginning to end – from his earliest work to his last, in two weeks. I went and isolated myself in a hotel room with a young kid that was my muse at the moment who insisted on my reading Blake through, beginning to end. He had already read (Edgar Allan) Poe through, beginning to end, and he read (Percy Bysshe) Shelley and(Lord) Byron through and wanted to read Blake, and so did I. I had been thinking about Blake for years, but I’d never read him. All I’d read was “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” and a few of the prophetic books, and I read in and out (of other works). I’d read. “The French Revolution” which always was an inspiration to me as far as rhetoric for political poetry because there’s some kind of parallel between Blake’s “French Revolution”‘s long lines and my own long lines developed after ’57/’58, after writing “Howl”.
So, in my 50th year I went and read through Blake, and I found it was not too hard. Probably this generation is the first generation that can actually read Blake through beginning to end and understand it and have all of the equipment necessary to do it. For one thing, (until recently) all of his work was scattered around in little libraries, private libraries and big libraries all over the world. As you may know, he printed up his work by himself, painted his prophetic books, watercolored them, and sold them to whoever wished to buy. So many copies disappeared. There were maybe twenty-five or twenty-eight copies of “Songs of Innocence and Experience”. “The Book of Ahania”, which I was reading this afternoon (sic), was suppressed. I don’t believe it was sold to anyone
[Late arrivals to the class arrive]
AG: Need chairs? It was only with this new edition of the Erdman/Bloom which was published in ’65 that an accurate transcription was made of Blake’s own text with his own spelling and some variants in a large enough and popular edition that everybody could buy.
– What’ll we do for chairs? Maybe just settle down. [to Student] Could you get chairs from next door or another room?
Student: There’s an empty seat back here.
AG: There’s one there. Or else sit on the floor.
However, in (19)65, this book came out – The Poetry and Prose of William Blake. So that, for the first time, gives you in one volume all that he wrote. I think that (has) almost all of his letters. I think there are some missing from this edition, which you can find in the Keynes’s Oxford Edition paperback. But this is the only book up to its time where you have the complete text with Blake’s own punctuation and his own spelling. All the other books until that time, like the Oxford edition, the Keynes’s edition, and the Yeats-Ellis edition, always messed around with his punctuation, as they did with Emily Dickinson‘s punctuation as you may know. Emily Dickinson wrote with dashes, and the editors of her early books that were put out corrected her spelling and her punctuation all the time.
Well, the punctuation is part of the breathing, and punctuation is an indication of breath and an indication of thought, and an indication of gaps between thoughts and spaces between thoughts, so it’s really useful to have Blake’s own punctuation. And this was the first book that had that. Also, David Erdman, in 1974, brought out The Illuminated Blake which is, in black and white, all the pictures for his illuminated books. That is to say, the prophetic books that he printed himself, colored, and sold in five copies, ten copies, (or)one or two (copies). So it’s the first time you could look at his pictures with a commentary, as well as get the right text, as well as have a guidebook or a scorecard.
[to Student(s)] – Would you please leave the door open or some space at the door? Other people are coming in so as to not to make a problem. So leave space. Come in. Sit down. Maybe get out of the way of the door so that (they) don’t get discouraged from coming in if they want to.
So there’s also now A Blake Dictionary by S. Foster Damon, (published by Brown University Press). Damon being a great Blake scholar, maybe the first scholar who systematically cracked open Blake’s systematic system and got to understand all his symbols and even made a dictionary of them. The dictionary was originally published by Brown University in ’65, second printing ’67, then reprinted in paperback by Brown University and then went out of print, so that last year, this winter in fact, when I was teaching the Lambeth books, as they are called (books Blake wrote when he was living in London in the Lambeth area, in the Hercules buildings) the Damon dictionary was out-of-print, and it’s just been reprinted by Shambhala Books here in town (Boulder) [Editorial note – update 2025, Damon’s Dictionary is now available from The University of Chicago (Dartmouth College) Press].
So, with the Blake Dictionary, in which you have his cast of characters explained, with the accurate text and with all the pictures, actually, it’s the first time democratically anybody can get all the materials to check out Blake, see what he meant, read up on his work, explore his symbols, look at the pictures, compare pictures from book to book.
Then, if you got more energy, you can go up to the library at the University of Colorado to the Special Collections and see the facsimile reproductions of the illuminated works in color as they are done by the Trianon Press – very expensive editions. I think Trianon Press facsimile edition of Milton... [(Allen notes another late arrival) – Just stay out of the door so other people can come into it. You’re not the last, probably]…. costs about $1200. However, you can Jerusalem . Negotiations are going on to get a colored facsimile copy of Jerusalem out through Shambhala Press and Shambhala this year put out Book of Urizen and Milton – Milton by Blake
[Allen continues to address the late arrival]
I think you’ll either have to just get a chair or sit on the floor. Get a chair from the other room or settle on the floor. But not by the door.
to be continued