Allen Ginsberg, 1991, on William Blake continues from here
So, A Blake Dictionary, Foster Damon, originally published by Brown University Press and published by our good, old Shambhala, republished, and out-of-print, but probably around Boulder you can get second-hand copies, and it’s in the library. Trident might have it. I didn’t see it … I was there yesterday and I didn’t see it. But you’ll find it. Go to Aion, or somewhere. But we got it in the library. You’ll find it, and I would grab a copy of that, if you get interested in Blake. Get a copy of A Blake Dictionary, S. Foster Damon, Shambhala Press, maybe 1978 or something. [Editorial note – Foster Damon’s book is now freely available from the University Press of New England and distributed by the University of Chicago Press – see here]
Then, another good book is by David Erdman, The Prophet of Empire, William Blake -Prophet of Empire, is that it? I think that’s it. Prophet Against Empire? Erdman, Prophet Against Empire. David Erdman of Stony Brook, who is nowadays the greatest Blake textual scholar, and what he’s done is taken … as you notice, Blake had this symbolic system which was relatively hermetic or – we were talking about “esoteric” yesterday – or “hermetic”, is that the word we’re using, “hermetic”? What was that lady that knew the hermetics? Gnostic, Gnostic. Blake had a lot of Gnostic symbolism, and so it’s relatively opaque, you know, it’s all up in the air. How does it apply to the war in Iraq (sic), or how does it apply in his time to George III, the French Revolution, the American Revolution? So, Prophet Against Empire traces the political equivalents of Blake’s symbols, because apparently Blake took a lot of his symbols from his newspapers and blew up a little bit but used them. For instance, George III was a crazy king who forced the American Revolution on us because of his tyrannical nuttiness and uncompromising ego. He’s depicted as a dragon, a winged dragon with a human head flying across the Atlantic with a strange name, but it’s George III. And newspaper cartoons of the day provide the basic image for some of Blake’s drawings and paintings of the satanic politician. A newspaper drawing of William Pitt provides the matrix for a drawing by Blake in which, I think in the “Visions of the Daughters of Albion” [Editorial note, actually it’s in Europe – A Prophecy] where there’s a satanic-looking guy hiding in a cave with a big long dagger ready to spring out and stab in the back a young pilgrim with his big hat going up the road on the Mountain of Life, and apparently Blake’s drawing, when you compare it to the newspaper cartoon, they’re the same – William Pitt is that figure in the cartoon, in Blake’s cartoon as well as the newspaper cartoon. So it traces Blake’s politics
. And, as you may know, Blake knew Tom Paine and went to an anarchist, utopian-socialist study circle with William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, I guess the first great literary feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Percy Shelley‘s wife, Mary Shelley, I think. Is that right?
Students: Yes.
AG: So he met Tom Paine there in that sort of secret society study circle, which would be considered illegal, an illegal communist cell under George III.
Student: He was (recognized as) one who would be supportive of the French Revolution.
AG: Oh yeah, yeah. So, his … he wrote a prophetic book called The French Revolution which he never illustrated and published because it would be too, it would be considered subversive. “If you talk about the French Revolution you have to talk about a … does that mean you want an English Revolution? Go to jail.” So it was a kind of McCarthyism, but worse at that day, because you’d get arrested and killed for that kind of treasonous talk. The king was nuts. So that’s two books. David Erdman, Prophet Against Empire, and then, because most of the prophetic books and the manuscript books are illustrated, there … well, there’s a hundred dollar complete illustrations to Blake, if you’ve got that much money, probably more now, but there’s a $7.95 paperback black-and-white Complete Blake Illuminated Books – Doubleday. Doubleday. So, if you use the Blake Dictionary and the Doubleday picture book you can sort of decipher Blake and then you can check out, you don’t have to read through The Prophet Against Empire but you can check out the different figures, ’cause it’s got an index and you can … as you’re reading through Blake you can check out in the index what they might signify.
to be continued