Allen Ginsberg’s Naropa lecture on William Blake’s Book of Ahania continues from here
AG: So,
To awake my king in the morn!/ To embrace Ahanias joy/ On the bredth of his open bosom:/ From my soft cloud of dew to fall/In showers of life on his harvests.
When he gave my happy soul/ To the sons of eternal joy:/When he took the daughters of life./ Into my chambers of love:
When I found my babes of bliss on my beds./ And bosoms of milk in my chambers/Fill’d with eternal seed/ O! eternal births sung round Ahania,/In interchange sweet of their joys.
Swell’d with ripeness & fat with fatness/Bursting on winds my odors/,My ripe figs and rich pomegranates/In infant joy at thy feet/O Urizen, sported and sang;
Then thou with thy lap full of seed/With thy hand full of generous fire/Walked forth from the clouds of morning/On the virgins of springing joy,/On the human soul to cast/The seed of eternal science.
That’s really great, because he’s not renouncing science. Blake is actually defining science. Later on he’ll say “sweet science.” Here, “eternal science.”
The science here referred to is actually the science of agronomy, if you’ll notice, “the lap full of seed,” the “hand … of generous fire,” “On the human soul to cast” a “seed of eternal science.” And it does so happen that Urizen‘s main symbol is the plow. So there may be, in Blake, some hint of the One Straw Revolution, or of some kind of agronomic energy source as being the social pattern or the social-Utopian blueprint for a balanced human existence.
Student: Isn’t he using the word “science” in its original meaning, as knowledge?
AG: Yes.
Student: And larger than our …
AG: Right.
Student: … concept of science.
AG: Right. Right. Rather than mechanical science.
Student: In the pattern (of the Latin and Greek)
AG: Scientia. Wisdom.
Student: (The outsides and) insides.
AG: Yeah.
Student: So it’s….
AG: Right.
Student: Sort of an organic sense.
AG: Yeah. Well, it’ll come up … I’ve forgotten what the end is. If we look at … let’s see … Milton? Let me just check it out a second. The last line of Milton, what does that say?
Student: Sweet science will reign. (Sweet science reigns)
AG: Yeah, so let’s do that. Is that the last line of Milton ? No.
Student: That’s The Four Zoas
AG: Let’s look at Four Zoas then. It must be that..let’s see. Ninth. ninth or tenth. I lost this.
Student: Page one-four-three
AG: What book have you got there?
Student: In the (Selected Blake) it’s one-four-three
AG: Yeah. No, I’m looking for … there’s one of the longer books that ends with the word “science”; so it’s either that or the Four Zoas, or Jerusalem, but let me see which.
Student: It’s Jerusalem
AG: Well, okay, let’s try Jerusalem then. No. I should have got that together before, but what page is the end of Jerusalem?
Student: Two-fifty-six.
AG: No, it’s not here either. Who knows that? Remember? Sweet science.
Student: Yeah.
Peter Orlovsky: Sweet science, sweet science, sweet science.
AG: Where is that?
Peter Orlovsky: That’s in Daughters of the Revolution (sic) ain’t it? [Editorial note – no such title – perhaps Orlovsky is referring to Visions of the Daughters of Albion here]
AG: No.
Peter Orlovsky: No?
Student: It’s a later book.
Peter Orlovsky: Something you did last winter, Allen.
AG: Oh, I forgot.
Peter Orlovsky: Last winter, in February, in January.
AG: Well, I’ll look it up and find out where he gets that phrase “sweet science,” because that’s real nice.
[Editorial note – The lines Allen is searching for are the concluding lines of The Four Zoas -“For intellectual War, the war of swords is departed now,/the dark Religions are departed and sweet Science reigns.”]
So Ahania is lamenting for that sweet science.