Single Vision Is Deadly

How do you know but every Bird / that cuts the airy way, / Is an immense world of delight, / clos’d by your senses five? WILLIAM BLAKE The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 

Philip Pullman's article on William Blake in last Friday's Guardian is well worth reading. Here are some extracts:

'Sometimes we find a poet, or a painter, or a musician who functions like a key that unlocks a part of ourselves we never knew was there . . .

So it was with me in the early 1960s, at the age of 16, with William Blake . . .

That was 50 years ago. My opinions about many things have come and gone, changed and changed about, since then; I have believed in God, and then disbelieved; I have thought that certain writers and poets were incomparably great, and gradually found them less and less interesting, and finally commonplace; and the reverse has happened, too — I have found wonderful things, unexpected depths of treasure, in books and poems I had no patience to read properly before . . .

But those first impulses of certainty have never forsaken me, though I may have been untrue to them from time to time. Indeed, they have been joined by others, and I expect to go on reading Blake, and learning more, for as long as I live . . .

Single vision is deadly. Those who exalt reason over every other faculty, who condemn those who don’t respond to life with logic but allow themselves to be swayed by emotion, or who maintain that other ways of seeing (the imaginative, the poetic, etc) are fine in their place but the scientific is the only true one, find this position ridiculous. But no symphony, no painting, no poem, no art at all was ever reasoned into existence, and I knew from my youth that art of some kind was going to be the preoccupation of my life. Single vision would not do. I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create. Jerusalem . . .

To get lost in that bleak state when inspiration fails is to find yourself only a step away from an even darker labyrinth, which goes by the entirely inadequate name of depression. A savage deadly heaviness, a desolation of the spirits, an evil gnawing at the very roots of our life: if we’re unlucky enough to feel that, we will know from experience that the opposite of that abominable condition is not happiness, but energy. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. Energy is Eternal Delight. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In its absence, goodness, intellect, beauty — and reason, too — are listless, useless phantoms pining for the blood of life . . .'

A Robin Red breast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage.

A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate

Predicts the ruin of the State.

Each outcry of the hunted Hare

A fibre from the Brain does tear.

The wanton Boy that kills the Fly

Shall feel the Spider’s enmity.

WILLIAM BLAKE

The whole piece can be found here.

Two Worlds In One

Tread lightly in this world
That you may slip more easily
Into another; step soundlessly
That you may hear the music
Of both worlds: one world seamlessly
Woven within the other by one thread.

Dip fearlessly your toe
Into the river of eternal delight
And walk in wonder through
The forests of the night; seek wordlessly
The logos in the landscape; find
Infinity in the palm of your hand.

Two worlds in one: the lily
And the rose, the worm and the dove;
One world in two, both intertwined:
A double helix of grace and love.
Tread lightly in this world that you may know
How softly steps the unicorn in snow.

(With thanks to Christina Rossetti and William Blake for the inspiration)

Children Of Albion

Michael Horovitz, editor of Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, has written a wonderfully informative obituary of Adrian Mitchell in today's Independent. Do read it: www.independent.co.uk/obituaries/adrian-mitchell-poet-and-playwright-whose-work-was-driven-by-his-pacifist-politics-1208517.html

Many of the jazz/Beat/Beatles influenced poets in Children of Albion were also entranced by the poems, paintings and prints of William Blake.

The above illustration is William Blake's Vision of the Children of Albion.

Siddhartha

Siddhartha laughed warmly. 'Yes, I have become a ferryman. Many people have to change a great deal and wear all sorts of clothes. I am one of those, my friend.' Siddhartha to Govinda - from Siddhartha by HERMANN HESSE

Every harlot was a virgin once. WILLIAM BLAKE

I'll end my brief postings on Hermann Hesse with a piece from Siddhartha, probably Hesse's best loved book. This is taken from the last chapter, and is one of Siddhartha's revelations to the monk Govinda, his friend from youth:

'Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. I suspected this when I was still a youth and it was this that drove me away from teachers. There is one thought I have had, Govinda, which you will again think is a jest or folly: that is, in every truth the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is one-sided. Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly saint or sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real. Time is not real, Govinda. I have realised this repeatedly. And if time is not real, then the dividing line that seems to lie between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.'

A World Within This One

Hindus believe in a great soul or spirit, called Brahman, or God. Brahman has no shape or form and cannot be seen but is present in everything. Each of the thousands of Hindu deities represents an aspect of Brahman. From The Atlas of World Religions (2002) by Anita Ganeri

For days I've been haunted by the quote from Paul Éluard, the French Surrealist poet, posted recently on Old Girl Of The North Country's blog: There is another world, but it is in this one.

What better example of this truth than the life and work of the great visionary mystic William Blake (1757-1827).

Blake wrote: If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. He believed that mankind allowed itself to be bounded by perceptions, and that it is the unseen mind (or understanding or soul or spirit) that truly perceives - not the 5 senses. One could say that this mind or soul "looks through" the window of the 5 senses.

There is an "Internal" and "External" world, a "Within" and "Without", in every bird, beast, flower and insect, every living thing - and also in stones and rocks and all inanimate objects. The physical form of these bodies, which we perceive with our senses, is the "correspondence" or "signature" of the soul.

Blake turned these concepts into the myths which permeate his work - his poetry, his paintings and his drawings. Nature is seen as a "veiled" goddess. She is mythologized by Blake as the moon goddess, Vala. You can also find her in the figure of Persephone, who, according to the Greek myth, wore a veil for Demeter when she fell into Hades. The Roman Minerva and the Egyptian Isis, wife of Osiris, are other personifications of this veiled goddess of Nature.

Man falls in love with Vala, is deluded by the world of phenomenal appearances, and from this follows every evil of the Fall - a story resonating in the Biblical legend of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The veil is the cause of war, materialism, all human vice and wrongdoing. The veiled face of the goddess is forever hidden from all but those few who have attained Enlightenment.

Blake also wrote: To me this World is all one continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination. Once more he's referring to another world intertwined with this world...

All such ideas and many more are discussed in the poet Kathleen Raine's erudite and exciting 2 volume work Blake and Tradition.

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Feeling I gave sheep a bit of a bad blogpress in yesterday's post, I thought I'd try to redress the balance. But it's difficult. I researched quickly the poetry field. There seem to be very few good poems about sheep.

There's Ted Hughes' blood-and-gutsy description of a stillborn lamb in February 17th from his collection Moortown Diary (1989) and his long poem Sheep from Season Songs (1976).

There's the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa's book of poems The Keeper of Sheep - but this is more about God, nature and metaphysics.

So I fear sheep are still getting an indifferent coverage in these pages. With one notable exception - William Blake's delightful The Lamb from his Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789-94):

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and he is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Final thoughts about sheep. When I walked the Pennine Way in springtime this year I was accompanied throughout by the sight and sound of lambs - which was a continual joy. To watch their protective mothers constantly keeping an eye on them was very touching.

And lastly, let's not forget Black Sheep Ale from the Black Sheep Brewery based at Masham, North Yorkshire - one of the finest of British beers.