Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s Book of Los continues from here
So Eno is the one who gives this mysterious description of the Golden Age and then an account of how the four primary sins – covet, envy, wrath and wantonness – were treated imaginatively in the Golden Age
“…Covet was poured full:/ Envy fed with fat of lambs:/Wrath (fed) with lions gore:/Wantonness lulld to sleep/ With the virgins lute,/Or sated with her love./Till the imagination released the mind from such sins:/Till Covet broke his locks & bars,/And slept with open doors..”
Each reversed. Each of the psychological constrictions or starvations or tendencies of fear or repression opened out by a sort of tantric fulfillment in a way – a tantric transformation. “Covet broke his locks & bars” or opened up, “slept with open doors,” rather than clung to his treasure. By being fed to excess with what was desired, each of the elements of sin opened up and became a positive energy. It’s a typical tantric trick or typical alchemical trick, but the method that Blake prescribed, or the method that Los would make use of – poetic imagination would make use of – to deal with covet, wrath, envy, wantonness – is by fulfilling each – by stuffing the craw of each with what it desired most. “I know although what looks meet/ I tremble to the bone,/ the more I leave the door unlatched,/ the sooner love is gone.” (William Butler Yeats). Or “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Same principle. “The Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom.” – (to Student) What were you saying?
Student: I was just going to point out that there was … the way the thesis is constructed here, she is remembering a time when there was no sin.
AG: Right.
Student: And then (earlier) at the mention of sin, all those “Eyeless Covet”s, “Thin-lip’d Envy”, (Blake) makes her remark on the process of getting out of sin, even if she’s nostalgic of the time when there was an integration of all these.
AG: It’s hard to tell, because she says, “Covet was poured full:/Envy fed with (the) fat of lambs.” Or somebody mentioned sin and that was how it was dealt with in the Golden Age, once it rose?
Student: (Sin was) not impure ..(Covet and Envy).. They weren’t deemed impure.
AG: No, it wasn’t deemed impure..”covet” (which means wanting and thieving, the tendency toward wanton grabbing, was not seen as impure but simply “poured full”.
A tendecy to envy was not seen as sin but given what it wanted.
Student: Right.
AG: So that might have been going on all along in the Golden Age. Then finally it was deemed impure.
Student: Then Bloom seems to mention that. It’s the denial which makes it a sin.
AG: Yeah.
Student: It was a time when it was more acceptable.
AG: Yeah. (Harold) Bloom’s phrase there is interesting – The four primary sins “enter the world through a failure of imagination.” In other words, rather than feeding envy with the fat of lambs, saying, “Oh, no, that’s envy! Don’t give it anything!” So that would apply to some ravenous student that talks too much. You might as well just tell him to take over and talk.
But then it does get interesting. If Blake is making a formula for dealing with things like covet, wrath, wantonness, how would he deal with it if he were given his way? Or how would his imagination deal with it? So he says, “Well, pour it full, feed envy with the fat of lambs, feed wrath with lion’s gore.”
What is “lion’s gore”, anyway? The blood of lions. You cut open a lion and give it to wrath. Feed the lion to wrath? Lull wantonness …(“Wantonness lull’d to sleep/With the virgin’s lute”) – erotic insistency, to sleep with virgin’s lute, or sate wantonness with love of a virgin.
And what will be the result? Covet will break down his locks and bars and he’ll sleep with open doors. You know (Hieronymus) Bosch’s painting of the miser?
to be continued tomorrow