Blake

Daniel Fusch · 19 May 2000, 19:17 · from urth-v0029.mbox · original

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From: "Daniel Fusch" <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Subject: (urth) Blake
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 12:17:46 PDT
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That's interesting; I hadn't thought about connections between Wolfe and=20
Blake.

The most obvious link, I think, would be Blake's "desire of raising other=20
men into perception of the infinite" (from his Marriage of Heaven and Hell)=
.=20
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man a=
s=20
it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things=20
thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." Also, from "Auguries of Innocence":

To see a World in a grain of Sand
Or a Heav'n in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand
And Eternity in an Hour.

Also, again from Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "For every thing that lives i=
s=20
holy."

This perspective is what Severian achieves as he walks along the beach of=20
the ocean in The Citadel of the Autarch. He sees through the material into=20
the infinite, "the doors of perception are cleansed," he sees that the=20
entire beach is holy and has been dropped from the hand of the Infinite, an=
d=20
he tosses away his boots that he might not walk shod on holy ground.

The other tenets of William Blake's vision are:

1) The Standard of Energy (see Northrop Frye's book "Fearful Symmetry" and=20
Martin Price's essay "Blake's Standard of Energy") -- "Energy is Eternal=20
Delight" / "Exuberance is Beauty"; the energetic, passionate, unrestrained=20
are good, while the passive, limited, and confined is harmful. "The cistern=20
contains / The fountain overflows." Also: "Sooner murder an infant in its=20
cradle than nurse unacted desires."

2) Wisdom can not be defined or expressed by one mode, one art form, one=20
law, or one perspective. (This later becomes a tenet of modernism.) Thus,=20
"One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression" and "Everything possible to be=20
believed is an image of truth."

3) The observation of truth is achieved through a constant dialectic.=20
"Without Contraries is no Progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and=20
Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence."

4) "All deities reside in the human breast"; divinity consists of the=20
"Poetic Genius," or the transcendent, divine inspiration and=20
prophetic/poetic vision of humanity. The Poetic Genius cleanses the doors o=
f=20
perception and sees eternity; the Poetic Genius alone can frame the "fearfu=
l=20
symmetry" of the Tyger in Blake's "Tyger, Tyger" by framing it within a=20
poem. (By writing a poem--especially a poem that begins and ends with the=20
same stanza--the Poetic Genius frames the suffering of the world and allows=20
us to see it, draw meaning from it, etc.)

Daniel
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