Allen Ginsberg’s July 20 1979 Naropa Institute William Blake class continues from here
AG: He wrote a lot of short poems, and then he got into little biblical-like prophetic books. When was Blake born?
Student: 1757.
AG: Pardon me?
Student: 1757
AG: 1757. Then, around the time of the American Revolution – 1776 – up to the French Revolution,1789, he got increasingly involved in politics. He was a friend of Tom Paine and William Godwin and socialist Gnostic circles. He was into hermetic lore, Swedenborg for a while, some sorts of mysticisms of his day. He wrote very beautiful poems when he was fourteen – lyrics. He wrote a Tarantula Dylan-esque double-talk satire called “An Island in the Moon” very early. His published works include little marginalia on other people’s writings, little exclamations and comments he wrote on Swedenborg in his books of Swedenborg. Then he began making little prophetic biblical books – one called “There is No Natural Religion” . He was apprenticed as an engraver and so began illustrating and putting those books together with pictures. Then he engraved (and) wrote the poems, sang the songs, and engraved pictures for “Song of Innocence and of Experience” Then he made a little tiny, three-page prophetic book called “The Book of Thel” , all about a little girl who’s not sure whether she wants to give up her virginity and enter life and be born. Sort of like a little shadow-sprite female who goes to the edge of the grave and looks in and says, “I don’t like that,” and so she decides not to get born – The Book of Thel. Then he wrote, but didn’t engrave and didn’t print up, a book called “The French Revolution”, which was a burlesque exaggerated inflamed pretty symbolic paraphrase of the historical events of the French Revolution, written in long lines with big demonic images. Hyperbole would be the word, rather than burlesque. “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” was like a little bible, turning good and evil upside down, and declaring his independence from the notion of a god. That’s 1790. So if he was born in 1757, what’s that? – he’d be then, 33. Then a lot of very beautiful short poems. Then “Visions of the Daughters of Albion”, which is a prophetic book about Women’s Lib, basically. About slavery, the slave situation of his day, and Women’s Lib – a sexual liberation and the role of women, and masculine/feminine principles, and rape and hardheartedness, machismo, taking up political angles of it, taking up spiritual psychological angles of it, taking up revolutionary themes, all done in symbolic form, because at that time in England it was dangerous to publish political commentary straight-forward. You could get put in prison. And he was accused of blaspheming the King, I believe, and had a trial which he won. But he got very scared so he began writing in symbolic hyperbole. In other words, taking public figures and making archetypal, exaggerated, mental cartoons of them, and then using them as symbolic figures (and) a cast of characters in his books.
So the “Visions of the Daughters of Albion” gets into the feminine tenderness of nature raped by the masculine, phallic, Industrial Revolution slaveholder. Then America – A Prophecy, which is about revolution, about getting it together for revolution, and an analysis of the madness of the tyrant king, George III. Then, 1794, the First Book of Urizen Your reason. U-R-I-Z-E-N. Your mental reason. Your rationalism. Your over-rationalism. Your heavy-handed rationalism. Mind turned into a demonic mill. Mind as a mill. Mind as a Satanic factory. Mind as churning out conceptualizations and hardening and solidifying those conceptualizations into social forms, like giant World Trade Centers. In his day, Satanic mill. Urizen.
Then “Europe”, another prophetic book. “Europe”is a very odd book. It’s a very short one. Having done “America” as a prophecy or revolution or of the stirrings of revolution, there was a howl through Europe – so that was the French Revolution coming up, the continuing revolution. Then little short prophetic books – “The Song of Los”,(“Asia”) and then the “First Book of Urizen””
“The Song of Los“ is, to make a long story short, just to give a little capsulated version, the song of Loss – the loss of innocence and the encroachment of reason and heavy-handed civilization on nature and on man. A little brief book called “Asia” dealing with the further constriction of the imagination and of nature into the human form, into clay, into cities, into bank wealth and allegoric riches.
Then, 1794, in Lambeth, the “..Book of Urizen”, (which is like a full-scale analysis of the birth of reason and the birth of ego and the birth of mind-consciousness. Very similar for the (Buddhists) – How many here are practicing Buddhists? Or somewhat familiar with Buddhist theory? “The Book of Urizen” actually parallels the development of the Skandha-principle, if any of you have read Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and seen (Chogyam) Trungpa, Rinpoche’s analysis of the development of form, feeling, sensation, reaction, fixation, consciousness. What? The first cause, the first movement in the void, reactions to that movement, continuing reactions, good-good, bad-bad, indifferent. Habitual good-good-good-good, bad-bad-bad-bad, I don’t care. Finally yes-yes, no-no-no. And finally, “Ah!” – everything out there. An entire universe, just from the first wink of consciousness. So “..Urizen” begins that way, and it shows the development of actually the eyeballs, ears, nose, senses, from the first wakening in the void. And the monster that grew is this consciousness that we are. So we are Urizen, basically, limited to our senses. The entire infinite universe limited to our senses.
to be continued