Allen Ginsberg Naropa class on William Blake’s Vala or The Four Zoas continues from here
Student: (Projections, Emanations)
AG: Yeah. It seems like an interesting (point)
Student: Isn’t that happening all the time with Albion having the projection of Jerusalem and Tharmas having a projection of Enion? I mean, just that the fact that they’re all … the projections themselves are the imaginations of some sort of better state of consciousness.
AG: Well, what it is is when they get separated from themselves … it’s a schizophrenic state when you’ve got a projection. I don’t understand it but later on it seems that Blake is saying that the separation of the sexes into masculine and feminine is part of the Fall, and that the original … in order to make Albion whole, Jerusalem has to die. Is that correct?
Student: Seemingly, yes.
AG: There has to be a temporary death. The woman has to die in order for the man to become born. Or I don’t fully understand Blake’s (plan).
Student: He also develops the whole concept of hermaphroditism …
AG: Yes.
Student: … later on.
AG: But the original Edenic state is before the separation into sexes. The sexes sprung from shame and pride.
“Whate’er is Born of Mortal Birth,/ Must be consumed with the Earth/ To rise from Generation free;/ Then what have I to do with thee?/ The Sexes sprung from Shame & Pride/ Blow’d in the morn: in evening died/ But Mercy changed Death into Sleep;/ The Sexes rose to work & weep./ Thou Mother of my Mortal part/With cruelty didst mould my Heart,/
And with false self-decieving tears,/Didst bind my Nostrils Eyes & Ears/. Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay/ And me to Mortal Life betray:/ The Death of Jesus set me free,/
Then what have I to do with thee?”
It has raised a spiritual body.
That’s “To Tirzah”, which is a late work, probably some time around the same time (as The Four Zoas) or just prior to The Four Zoas. So he’s saying the sexes sprung up from shame and from pride. “Blow’d in the morn,” but died in the evening. So there seems to be some set-up that we were guessing at which’ll bring out further that the original Albionic being or the Edenic being doesn’t have a separate sex. They’re not two. Does that make sense?
Student: Yeah, he says that eternity is beyond sexual organizations.
AG: Yeah.
Student: It’s a state where that is not significant.
AG: So the separation between man and woman is schizophrenic organization. And oddly enough that’s very similar to the myth of sex in Plato’s “Symposium” …
Student: Right.
AG: … where he says that originally it was one, but then the Gods got jealous and split it in two so from then on everybody’s going around looking for his other half. Because before there was this creature that had four legs and four arms and could roll around. A four-armed creature that could do everything and, rolling up to Mount Olympus, was going to get the Gods. They were threatening the Gods or something like that and the Gods got upset. The unified human who was not distracted looking for his mate any longer. There was no split so there was no longer any distraction. People didn’t have to be looking around trying to get laid or married. So having no distractions at all they began to threaten the pride of the Gods. It’s an old idea, and part of it is they discovered that everybody has both masculine and feminine in them and that one or another is suppressed, in modern psychological terms, but part of it is also the feeling that both masculine and feminine are distracting tricks. That’s (William) Burroughs‘s view. Burroughs’s attack on women all along has been very similar to Blake’s estimation. At one point, ten years ago, Burroughs thought all the females should disappear. That the separation to begin with was some kind of …
Student: Plot.
AG: … plot to … well, it was an invasion of a virus from Venus, he thought, to distract everybody, and keep everybody chasing their own tail, so to speak. But I was shocked when I first read about it but then Blake had a scheme that is not very dissimilar in the long run.
Student: Feminists have….
AG: Because the … pardon me?
Student: Feminists think he’s very anti-feminine.
AG: Yeah, has there been a feminist analysis? A real serious feminist analysis of Blake?
Student: Not of the entire work, but of pieces.
AG: Yeah. You really have to abandon being a feminist and study Blake for years before you can go back and be a feminist and analyze it from a feminist viewpoint.
But is it an attack on Man? See, it’s also saying that Man isn’t man. Man is woman, also. Or saying that there’s a one-thing and then it got split up into men and women. And there was something really weird about it. Of course, that’s not different from the Bible. How is that different from the story of Adam and Eve?
Same plot. Same plot. So there must be something to this notion.
Student: That idea is (noticeably evident in) most every mythology.
AG: Yeah.
Student: (Fall of Man) (Original sin)
to be continued