Fearful Symmetry

(N.B. Northrop Frye and George Steiner are my gold standard(s) for scholarly ability. Dynamic Duo.) Frye's Fearful Symmetry defies any sort of summary response. Just read it. Imma include a section below whenever I build up the energy to walk up the stairs and retrieve my copy.

Die Leiden Des Jungen Werthers & Blakeathon Wrap-up

Read Die Leiden Des Jungen Werthers. Better late than never. Writing drips with romantic pathos -- to the point where Werther can even say "Mein Gott, mein Gott, warum has dust mich verlassen?" and "o Schicksal! o Menschheit!" in a mostly non-ironic way. Interesting read just to see the changes in taste since the 1780s. Although it's actually rather modern come to think of it -- Werther's obsessive, unbalanced personality is very 20th century. Haven't decided how ironically I want to read it, yet. Goethe evidently despised the book later in life (and, predictably, it was his most popular work during his lifetime) becuase of it's romantic/sentimental nature, which suggests that Goethe would have it read unironically. The writing itself is as flawless as one would expect.

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Rounding off my Blakeathon by reading Frye's Fearful Symmetry. Has yet to disappoint. Frye's usual erudition and wit.

This guy.

This guy: night rpm.

New internet hero.

Hiatus: The Peregrine & Miscellany

Still plugging through Blake's poetical logorrhea on my off-time, although a storm-stricken AT&T network has slowed my progress (and prevented updates). Returned to ye olde printed paper to read J.A. Baker's The Peregrine. Unformulated thoughtsplosion:

The reverse cover describes it as "elegiac." Wrong. This is not "elegiac." The phonetics are wrong. The Peregrine is a DIRGE. It is also fantastic. Bizarre even "unpretty" words recreate nature in the reader's mind: a combination of quirky, Serling-esque metaphors, bent grammar, and lyrical, kaleidoscopic descriptions makes the book so "weird" (in a more etymological wyrd sense) that it brings nature to life in a more "real" sense than I've encountered on a written page. Closest thing I've encountered on a written page to the distorted, unreal, wonky, vertigo-inducing and tragically beautiful reality of nature itself. Impressionistic naturalism? Naturalistic impressionism? Either way, even more important for him b/c of eco-situation in the 60s in re Peregrines. Doubly awesome for us, since we get a). this b). not extinct peregrines. Acc. to Wikipedia died '86 probs too soon to see, sadsad. Full stop.

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Fun phrase for the day (ironisch): Wir haben es hier offenbar mit Genies zu tun.

Blakeathon Part IV: Jots

1.) Visions of the Daughters of Albion contains the ultimate Mad Men tag-line: "a solitary shadow wailing on the margin of non-entity."

For Children: The Gates of Paradise is the creepiest thing next to Edward Gorey, minus the whimsy.

America: A Prophecy ('93) is a significant visual improvement over all his previous work IMHO:

Blakeathon Part III: Early Engraved Works & Tiriel

Using the fantastic Blake Archive online so I can read Blake's engraved poetry in the format he produced it in. The Wm Blake Archive is a magnificent resource, although it suffers from the law that the site design of websites is always inversely preportional to the quality of its content.

Blake seems to've had a rather droll disposition. The first six plates of There is No Natural Religion (c. 1788) proceed in a neat, step-wise fashion with six statements of sense perception in the best tradition of Locke (e.g. "Man's desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perciev'd.") THEN, Blake restarts the Roman numbering and releases this bombshell: "Man's perceptions are not bound by organs of perception, he perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover." But this seems to refute everything he just said! Then the I recognize the different logical loop holes he placed in Series A: "None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions", and "Man cannot naturally Percieve but through his natural or bodily organs" (my italics). From there, Series B continues in a signature Blakean vein. Possible favorite line: "the bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels."

Songs of Innocence (('89) as distinct from Songs of Innocence *and Experience* ('94). Number of  poems depicting spiritual innocence. Seem pastoral, but in a much more earthy, solid way than your feathery, rococo kind of pastoralism - this is Edenic in the sense of complete & whole innocence, and not simply idyllic. Engravings show moderate improvement over There is No Natural Religion & All Religions Are One. (Perhaps due to the startlingly innovative move from 5.3x4.5 cm to 11x7 cm plates).

Book of Thel ('89). First engraved prophetic work (second actual prophetic work after Tiriel).

*n.b. Big Three of Blake studies: S. Foster Damon, Northrop Frye, David V. Erdman.

Blakeathon Part II: An Island in the Moon (1784)

Next up: Blake's 1784 An Island in the Moon. After the rather sophomoric Poetical Sketches ('83) I didn't know what to expect, but certainly not this: far-and-away the most Joycean thing I've ever read that's not also between the covers of Portrait, Ulysses, the Dubliners, or Finnegans Wake. Here is a man reveling in words (which, somehow, my intentional overuse of italics in same paragraph demonstrates) with a canine wantonness. At pts Blake even succumbs to the logoleptic urge to belch lists of names or items (cf. prev. ment. Joyce & Rabelais et. al.). This provides such gems as the complete Chapter 2:

Tilly Lally the Siptippidist Aradobo, the dean of Morocco, [Miss] Miss Gittipin [&] Mrs Nannicantipot, Mrs Sigtagatist Gibble Gabble the wife of Inflammable Gass—& Little Scopprell enterd the room

Or Chapter 10:

Thus these happy Islanders spent their time but felicity does not last long, for being met at the house of Inflammable Gass the windfinder, the following affairs happend.

Come Flammable said Gibble Gabble & lets enjoy ourselves bring the Puppets. Hay Hay, said he, you sho, why ya ya, how can you be so foolish.—Ha Ha Ha she calls the experiments puppets Then he went up stairs & loaded the maid, with glasses, & brass tubes, & magic pictures

Here ladies & gentlemen said he Ill shew you a louse [ climing] or a flea or a butterfly or a cock chafer the blade bone of a tittle back, no no heres a bottle of wind that I took up in the bog house. o dear o dear the waters got into the sliders. look here Gibble Gabble—lend me your handkerchief, Tilly Lally Tilly Lally took out his handkerchief which smeard the glass worse than ever. then he screwd it on then he took the sliders & then he set up the glasses for the Ladies to view the pictures thus he was employd & quite out of breath

While Tilly Laily & Scopprell were pumping at the air pump Smack went the glass—. Hang said Tilly Lally. Inflammable Gass turnd short round & threw down the table & Glasses & Pictures, & broke the bottles of wind & let out the Pestilence He saw the Pestilence fly out of the bottle & cried out while he ran out of the room. [Go] come out come out [you ar] we are putrified, we are corrupted. our lungs are destroyd with the Flogiston this will spread a plague all thro' the Island he was down stairs the very first on the back of him came all the others in a heap

So they need not bidding go

Not to everyone's taste, perhaps. But shows, thinks I, a nascent wordweaver romping around in his playground wordfiddling when he suddenly realizes to his delight that the words are the companion and not simply the toy. (Insert λόγος reference w/ added pun on legos. Oh gosh that works so well.)