Allen Ginsberg’s close reading of William Blake’s Book of Los continues from here
“The Eternal Prophet bound in a chain..”
AG: The chain is interesting. Because this is part of the creation of the world and the chain comes in here as the chain comes in (in) the famous “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright” – remember? “What the hammer, what the chain/In what furnace was thy brain.” So if you know the chain here you may be able to interpret Blake’s “Tyger” better. (to Students) Does everybody here know Blake’s “Tyger”? How many have read it? (show of hands) Yeah. And how many have never read Blake’s “Tyger”? Well, okay, (I’ll) sing it, I guess, once. There’s three (who have never heard it). You’ve never heard that? Well. (to Steven Taylor) – Do you have your guitar?
Student: No.
Student (2): Can you use his?
AG: Can he use that?
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (sitting in): Yeah.
AG: We’ll do “The Tyger”. Oh, that’s right, you haven’t met. (introduces them) Jack Elliott, Steven Taylor. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott …
Steven Taylor: Hi.
AG: … Steven Taylor.
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Nice to meet you.
Steven Taylor: How are you?
AG (to Ramblin’Jack Elliott): So Steven and I have been playing together a lot.
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Oh.
AG: We just came back from a tour of Europe, as Peter (Orlovsky) said. Maybe use that..All we need is a….
The chain anyway is interesting. 1796 is (when) “The Tyger” (was) printed, Songs of Experience..
Student: No, 1794.
AG: 1794
Student: (After Songs of Innocence)
AG: Ah-huh. You got any idea when?
Student: 1793.
AG: And this would be written around the same time and printed 1795, or maybe made in 1795. So the use of the chain would be pretty much the same from Blake’s “Tyger” to the Book of Los.
AG (to Steve Taylor): You got a pick?
Steven Taylor: No
AG: What do you need?
Steven Taylor: A pick.
AG: Anybody got a pick?
Student: Here’s one.
AG: Oh, good. You need a seat? You need something to sit on (or) stand on?
Steven Taylor: No.
AG: Put your foot on.
Steven Taylor: Yeah.
AG: Right. C. Is it in tune? Peter? “Tyger”. Want to come over here?
[Allen performs William Blake’s “Tyger”, accompanied by Steven Taylor on guitar, with vocal accompaniment by Peter Orlovsky]
“Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,/In the forests of the night;/What immortal hand or eye,/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?/ In what distant deeps of skies/Burnt the fire of thine eyes!/On what wings dare he aspire?/What the hand, dare sieze the fire?/ And what shoulder, & what art,/Could twist the sinews of thy heart?/And when thy heart began to beat,/What dread hand? & what dread feet?/ What the hammer? what the chain,/In what furnace was thy brain?/ What the anvil? what dread grasp,/ Dare its deadly terrors clasp?/When the stars threw down their spears/And water’d heaven with their tears:/Did he smile his work to see?/Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”
“Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,/In the forests of the night:/What immortal hand or eye,/Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”
So we have “chain”. But “What the hammer? what the chain,” are associated with Los, with his anvil, creating forms, because the imagination has to create forms and manifest them. Even forms for error, so you can understand what’s going on. Even your paranoia, finally. When you lay it out in front of you and tell it to somebody so you know if it’s true or not, by giving it a form, by putting it outside of the vagueness of your mind. Or to create a baby. You actually create a form. Or a poem.
So creating forms, therefore, Los’s symbols or accoutrements are the forge, the anvil, the hammer, and a chain’s involved: “What the hammer? what the chain.” However, here, Los
“The Eternal Prophet bound in a chain/Compell’d to watch Urizens shadow..”
I just like to notice that word “chain” used there, because Blake was thinking about chains and obviously the chains in the mind – mental chains, chains binding down the mind – ropes and chains. At the end of one of the books, Urizen probably, there’s a picture of a bearded wise idiot Urizen in a net of chains or rope of his own thoughts, bound down.
(to Student) Yeah?
Student: Well, in the last chapter of the poem he describes Urizen as (drowning, tortured)
AG: Yeah. Whirling. The spine whirling like a chain in the deep. (“A vast Spine writh’d in torment/Upon the winds; shooting pain’d/Ribs..”) Yeah.
So “the Eternal Prophet..”
But the chain is, oddly enough, a chain that Los himself makes. The imagination. Los imagined it, so to speak. In some respect you could say Los imagined Urizen, too. Or there’s that element – the element of nature or the element of the freed Quixotic quicksilver multi-form plasmic imagination, which is also reason, which self-limits the imagination. I don’t know how to express that. It’s consciousness – chitta, or consciousness – also in the totality of consciousness and in the great glob of consciousness there’d also be reason, too. Sticking its neck out all of a sudden, like grabbing the plasm and moving it in one direction. Is that idiotic-sounding? If some thing suddenly stuck its neck out of the void and got born, and thought it was born, and was consciousness itself, it would also include, “Well, I can think. I think I’ll limit myself. Wait a minute, how did I get here? I better get back.” Disappear back under, perhaps. Or say, “I think I’ll have to take over all of space. I’m here, I’m going to take over everything.”
to be continued