Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s Vala or The Four Zoas continues from here
Student (Helen Luster): Okay. The Zoas themselves come ultimately…
AG: From..
Student (HL): … ultimately …
AG: From Revelations.
Student (HL): (but from Ezekiel)
AG: From?
Student (HL): The prophet Ezekiel …
AG: Yeah.
Student (HL): … by way of the Sixth chapter of (The Book of Revelations).
AG: Could you expound on that?
Student (HL): Hmm?
Student (2): Vice-versa, you mean. Revelations were written after Ezekiel.
Student (HL) : I said they come from Ezekiel, ultimately by way of Revelations. And then I think through Richard of St. Victor, though I don’t know that Blake read him.
AG: Uh-huh.
Student (HL): And I haven’t read anything in Boehme about that.
AG: Okay.
Student (HL): Blake was studying Greek and he was really, like, thrilled. You know, he didn’t go to school, so when he went to Felpham, the place where he was taken on as a.. well, as a sort of a slavey …
AG: For William Hayley. William Hayley, his friend and patron, invited him to go move to the south of England and live in Felpham and he had a little cottage there.
Student (HL): But he was first exposed to Greek and he read the Bible in Greek, and apparently he was very fantastic with languages and claims to have picked it up in three weeks, or something like that.
AG: He first read it in Felpham?
Student (HL): Yeah, in Greek. And so therefore, I think he renamed….
AG: At the age of 40, or so.
Student (HL): Yeah. He renamed this text, which was first “Vala, A Dream in Nine Nights” “, he renamed it “The Four Zoas” because he realized… because he had read the Bible in Greek and he realized that the word “Zoa” meant “animals” and was later related to the Four Evangelists ..
to be continued..