Allen Ginsberg on Blake’s The Book of Los continues from here
(8): “But no light, for the Deep fled away/On all sides, and left and unform’d/ Dark vacuity: here Urizen lay/ In fierce torments on his glowing bed”
(9): “Till his Brain in a rock, & his Heart/In a fleshy slough formed four rivers”
Four rivers. What’s that? Four senses, perhaps, somebody says. Or the four main blood vessels, (or) the four rivers of Eden, according to Damon. The four rivers of Eden. I think Alicia Ostriker says it’s the blood vessels of the heart and Bloom says it’s the four senses; these four rivers. – Yes?
Student: I think I agree with Bloom, because on the next page 96, in Milton... (he describes the) four senses…
AG: Four?
Student: Yes.
AG: What line?
Student: Page 96… The eyes.. (“From beneath his orbs of vision two ears…”)
AG: Well, that’s just the little eyes.
Student: Nose. (“Hanging upon the wind two nostrils...”)
AG: Does it say four there, though?
Student: He doesn’t say four. There are (probably more than four)
AG: Yeah. Could be.
Student: There’s no reason, to limit it to either one or the other interpretation (there’s surely) many, many allusions ..all going out at once, and if you don’t experience this simultaneously – the birth of the cosmos and the birth of the individual, then you’re missing the point – that what he’s saying, is that every single individual goes through the four senses, their four rivers of Eden. This is like everything was metaphor for everything else.
AG: The creation of the universe would be simultaneous with the creation of somebody to see it. Or the birth of a being, too.
But it’s really interesting here. If you’re figuring out how did Blake look on the mortal form: “& his Heart/In a fleshy slough.” Imagine looking at your own body as a “fleshy slough.” (How do you pronounce that?)
Student: Sl-OW-th.
AG: Sl-OW-th.
Student: Sl-OW.
AG: Sl-OW. A “fleshy slough.” Sl-OW? Sl-OW-th? Slug? Sleuth.
Student: Sl-OW.
AG: Sl-OW, is that the way it is?
Student: Slew.
Student (2): Slew.
AG: A fleshy slough. Yeah, actually, hidden in all….
Peter Orlovsky: Slough. A pig’s trough.
AG: … yeah, the material or substance that you’d find in a pigpen or in a marsh or in a slough.
Student: (Straw?)
Student (2): A bundle of wheat.
AG: Yeah. A bundle of wheat. When it’s harvested.
Student (2): When it’s harvested.
AG: You know that Peter?
Peter Orlovsky: What?
AG: A bundle of wheat when harvested is called a slough? I didn’t know that.
But what I dig about Blake, actually, is in all the obscurity here….
Peter Orlovsky: (Harvest is when you) shackle. That’s when you shackle the wheat.
AG: Yeah. You shackle the slough. You shackle the slough, perhaps. Here, it’s (a) closer.
What I like about Blake is that even though this is rather difficult to figure out totally and get exactly what he means in it, I think there probably is a one-to-one correspondence and a real perfected system that he’s got in the back of his mind and if we knew enough or studied enough of Blake it’d really make a lot of sense, perfectly line-to-line. Within that the poetry – the vision of the heart being formed in a “fleshy slough” I think is terrific. Just in the suggestiveness of the “fleshy slough” as a vision of the human form, or the embryonic human form, is a real teaching line then and there. And line by line throughout Blake there are these immense perceptions – archetypal perceptions – so that it’s worthwhile reading through the first time, second and third time any one of these books because you do pick up all these weird phrasings.
Well, the heart “In a fleshy slough formed four rivers/ Obscuring the immense Orb of fire/ Flowing down into night: till a Form/Was completed, a Human Illusion” – (An awful idea) -“In darkness and deep clouds involvd.”
“The End of the Book of Los”
Loss.
to be continued