Your Reason and Blake's System

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 17 Jun 2023 08:29
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    • In this tiny volume, Ginseberg analyzes Blake's Urizen, an avatar of certain qualities of mind.
    • Blake's prophetic books are reflections of Blake's personal conflicts and the political conflicts he was part of. These conflicts were over similar issues that we face in our time – the aftermath of turmoil and revolution.
    • In Jerusalem, there is a theme which is useful now: the argument between political anger — say, over the nuclear bomb — and a sense of compassion and mercy; and a realization that the World doesn't matter, or that if it does matter, there's no way of approaching it with anger. Blake was struggling with some of the same emotions we struggle with, which I assume are more or less common, for his revolutionary times — post French Revolution — and the destruction of idealism, radical disillusionment.
    • There are similar revolutionary conditions now as in Blake's time, similar social and emotional problems...So actually Blake is up to date in the psychology of wrath vs. pity, compassion vs. anger, that runs through all of his work and is visible for our own decade as well as his.