Allen Ginsberg’s Naropa lectures on William Blake’s Book of Ahania continues from here
Student: Now, just in terms of the Israel metaphor (sic) and everything, it seems that there’s a comment on Christian morality in this whole thing.
AG: Oh, sure.
Student: Yeah, I mean, first of all that Fuzon, the Christ figure, this time is pretty ironic… Because he’s not the sort of compassionate, sensitive male which Christ (is normally presented as, but rather) an angry, you know, God (who)…
AG: He’s the anti-nuclear protestors, throwing their ball of fire at the big ball of fire, in a way. So that’s one element. The fiery wrath of that.
Student: So then the clouds, you know, are sort of….
AG: And the parallel now would be the judge giving …
Student: A thousand dollars.
AG: … thousand dollar fines to the anti-nuclear protestors, and thus thwarting their …
Student: Wrath.
AG: … their social program, wrath, sharpness and subtlety, so they can no longer go to jail and suffer for their sins. They’re being hit in the pocketbook so there’s a stasis at the moment and a little bit of effluvia coming out, not knowing quite (what) the next move is for subtler attack on Urizen. Because you could take Rocky Flats as the solidification (or) as the petrific solidification of Urizen. You could take Fuzon as, say, vulgar form of protest. As, at best, in vulgar form. Unsubtle protest. Actually, Fuzon in Blake is the first protestor – the first trial protestor. Later on Blake develops it through the rest of the books until finally he’s got the ultimate protestor (in) the risen Jesus, who then regulates Urizen later on, and puts Urizen back on the farm, conducting the horses the draw that plows of sweet science.
But actually this Fuzon character is Blake’s first take on the radical, parallelling historically the misfortunes of the post-revolutionary period in France and the development of Robespierre and Napoleon, usurping the freedom of the Revolution and making either madness or tyranny out of it. [to Student] Go on.
Student: Oh, I was just going to ask, you know, so the “noxious clouds” (chapter 4)... (In those Christian images you always have these angelic clouds..)
Student: … just the Christian morality (and) that this is the eternal prophet.
AG: Yes. Moral law. What we’ve said before.
Student: (So “the accursed/Tree of Mystery” (in chapter 3)
AG: The Tree of Mystery is Moral Law.
Student: Right.
AG: Christian moral law, actually. “The Vision of Christ that thou dost see/Is my Visions Greatest Enemy,” comes on later in a late poem by Blake, denouncing the official recognized church version of Christ and proposing his own interpretation of Christ as the one who forgives sins, rather than the one who imposes moral law.)
Student: I think that Christ is radical, but his (suggestion is..) like, some place, he (the Devil) says… he indicates that (perhaps he brought it on himself), (that perhaps he wasn’t crucified by the Jews, perhaps get himself crucified).
AG: Yeah, actually he did. That’s in The Marriage of..
Student: …Heaven and Hell
AG:Heaven and Hell
Student: And he goes on from there and he says….
AG: Yeah. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, he actually does say how can Christ… is it in there? Yeah, page forty-two.. [Allen turns to the text]- “The Devil answer’d – “If Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now/ hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten /commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbath’s God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn/ away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of /others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making/ a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray’d for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them?…”
No, there was another (part). You were right. There was another thing where didn’t he take the violence and moral law in driving the money changers out of the temple, too. I don’t know where that is, though.
But “The Everlasting Gospel”, by Blake, is his final take on Christ. But we’ll get to that later. Does anybody know where that is in the book here? Is anybody that familiar with Blake?
Student: Page five-ten
AG: Five-ten? Yeah, the little couplets. Well, there’s a long, long reinterpretation of Christ there. So you check it out when you want. It ends:
“The Vision of Christ that thou dost see/ Is my Visions Greatest Enemy/Thine has a great hook nose like thine/ Mine has a snub nose like to mine/ Thine is the Friend of all Mankind/ Mine speaks in parables to the Blind/ Thine loves the same world that mine hates/Thy heaven doors are my Hell-Gates…”
“..thou reads black where I read white” is the last line. We’ll get to it.
Peter Orlovsky: Blake had a snub nose, right?
AG: Huh?
Peter Orlovsky: Blake had a snub nose?
AG: Yeah, he had a snub nose.
to be continued