Saturday 6 March 2010

A first: the chiastic structures of the Zoas and of Jerusalem

The basic Chiastic form is simple to describe..... ABC CBA is an example Biblical chiastic structure is complex, and termed Davidic, but it involves reading from the first and last lines to the middle lines. Thus A then the other A, B then the other B, then C and C. Developments of this literary pattern involve parallelisms and opposites. The Songs of Innocence and Experience are noted as chiastic by Jacobson back in 1970 and the parallelism between such poems as the two poems both named Holy Thursday are helpful for the seeing of both.

However the application to Jerusalem and The Four Zoas is presented as a theory of Blake's composition. Blake's use in the major epics is explored in definitive detail in the three books. Both major epics are seen as beginning in medias res, as continuing in chaos and incoherence and as ending in an inexplicable apocalypse. By contrast, I see the chiastic structure as the core to understanding Blake's The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem.

Blake's four levels of vision, four-fold, three-fold, two-fold and one-fold are essential to always bear in mind. Blake uses the terms circumference, centre, zenith and nadir. Blake takes us from the circumference to the centre. There, Divine energy enters and reverses the vortex back to the circumference. In essence, this is the chiasmus. The chiasmus is a vortex, the energies within Albion are like a line in this vortex spiralling inwards to the centre. The spiral tightens and tightens till the energies compact and, and drained of energy, the centre condenses into one-fold death...the white dot at the centre. When Albion is so drained, Divine energy enter the centre of the compressive vortex. The intensities of infinite energy explode and the energies reverse to flow back, expanding in all direction from the chiasmus of the centre back to the circumference, where Albion enters into unity with Divine energy within, and without. Plates 94-100 in Jerusalem is the magnificent conclusion to each of the four unique chiastic vortices inerwovenn into one great four-fold Chaismus in four directions.

In the epics we see the 'finger of God' intervene at the chiastic centre. Divine intervention establishes the incarnation/crucifixion/resurrection event as infinite energy revealing and consuming finite energy. Thus the apocalypse is the revelation and movement though finitude in Divine self-sacrifice and forgiveness. After the chiastic reversal, the component energies are fed by Divine energy and find harmony and mutual unity as earlier they had collapsed into war and mutual predation till dead.

Thus the symbolism, the characterization, and the fulfillment of emanative unity in Blake's New Jerusalem follows the chiastic reversal at the centre and takes us to the circumference. It should be noted that the term back-to does not mean Albion 'returns' returns back to the earlier state before his collapse. It means Albion moves 'on to' the circumference, his divided masculine and feminine energies harmonised in Divine energy.

Sunday 13 December 2009

The Shakespeare links

The third proof is edited, the final one. On to the master pdf and off to the printer. Ready for Xmas? Probably.

And about time...some of the post-moderns do seem to need a proverbial boot up their textual methodology so that their serious apparent contempt for Blake's poetry and their mutual conversation with their images of each other can be tested against Blake's text As as been oft been said, they now seem to have a private conversation.

..........Frye/Bloom are excellent and find limited evidence of cycles as does Raines, but for different reasons each believes Blake's mythic poetry ends in chaos. Ault/Dortort, likewise are interesting, and for reasons they share between themselves also find Blake's mythic poetry ends in chaos. The advocates of a cyclic myth seem to admire Blake, but lack deconstruction: the post-moderns seem not to give Blake the benefit of doubt, and dismiss the man-as-poet to be replaced by the critic.......

It may be that since his Yale Lectures of the early 1970's, Derrida's Freudian based methodology of discontinuity has overwhelmed postmodern Blake criticism; so ambiguity became their new meta-system.

In the research done and put forward in the web site here, and in print, namely:

Structure as a Key to Meaning in William Blake's The Four Zoas
William Blake's Jerusalem Explained
and now
Shakespeare's Heir: Blake's Doors of Perception in The Four Zoas and Jerusalem

there is no chaos of creative management by Blake...not even in syntax, grammar or rhetoric. The binary stasis, the either/or of Frye/Bloom or Ault/Dortort, has been left behind........ and a fresh canon of information is now advanced, argued from the texts more closely than has previously been accomplished.

...In a proverbial nutshell, it is shown beyond reasonable critical doubt that Blake is not a grammatical illiterate, nor in creative confusion...... let alone living in the poetic psychosis of a self-subversive-who-is-always-in-syntactical-ambiguity as demanded of us by Ault and Dortort................ A pseudo-principle seems to have been set into Urizenic stone: namely, because no plot has been found to connect every line to every other line, then it must be that there is no coherent plot at all..........After this pseudo-principle became conventional wisdom any Blakean thematic interconnections become outlawed.... no linkage was accepted, all are ambiguous and pointing out ambiguity became 'a career goal'. All of Blake's themes/characters/events are presented as non-thematic (Ault) and ultimately as self-subverting (Dortort). For example, Dortort claims that 'Luvah' and the 'Saviour' are in some sense ambiguous variants of 'one being' and who is further identified with the being of Blake's Satan....Between them, they claim that the confusions thereby generated self-subvert Blake's narrative in both the The Four Zoas and Jerusalem.

It is shown these views of Blake's epics profoundly misunderstand his texts, characters and plots.

This new book, Shakespeare's Heir: Blake's Doors of Perception in The Four Zoas and Jerusalem, addresses the frozen either/or of current critical thought. In terms of the structure and the plot of the two epic poems, the book responds to the need of the field to move forward in critical confidence.

One key is to show beyond reasonable doubt that Blake wrote a specific and consistent chronology for The Four Zoas and for Jerusalem. The myth-cycle school and the post-moderns stand as one in three conclusion. namely:

(1) the epics/poems begin in medias res
(2) the myth/story is chaotic
(3) the respective works founder on their respective apocalypse

By contrast, in Shakespeare's Heir, it is shown these conclusions for different reasons have not been accurately argued from Blake's texts. In Shakespeare's Heir, a more systematic redaction methodology and hermeneutics is used and the conclusions thereby more soundly based.

Thus it is shown:

(1) The poems do NOT begin in medias res
(2) The two different myths are NOT chaotic, but are beautifully crafted and consistent and while they have elements in common, they but are not transportable from The Four Zoas to Jerusalem and vice-versa.
(3) The respective apocalypse are intricately crafted into eack epic and are proper, entirely credible poetic closures.


Ambiguity is often essential to poetry.

Thursday 29 October 2009

PRIMUS INTER PARES

There's a thought to consider before absolute power in the zealot coup of President EU ...first among equals....

It does means some perspective on the dictator illusion of a big-daddy state. It took hundreds of years to get rid of the dictator. The Prime Minister is the first among equals. The other cabinet ministers are equals. That's why there's a constitutional monarchy. The crown holds all power and is not constitutionally empowered to use it. Thus the armed forces take an oath to the the crown not the prime minister, who is not above the law. no one was till Blair rewrote laws so that there was no law that applied to him.

by contrast, adolf hitler got the german armed forces to swear to him in the first few hours after hindenburg gave him power. the rest is history...oh, and 55,000,000 dead who didn't get to claim benefit.

The head of the EU should be first among equals. The chairperson. Bound by rules to follow in the exercise of the chair. No veto of a majority vote. Minutes are required, and right to add to minutes. No armed forces of Europe under the direct orders of the president. No right to make 'tough decisions'. No 'strong man' to lead us to China's parades and and the booted heart of the zealot right

Why do we need the term 'president'?. Why not chairman? like chairman Mao? Or Captain of EU? Think of a term?

Why do we need more sexed-up-dossiers of weapons of mass destruction, or war or pure bell-tones of selfhood called President of Spin and the First Lady of Webs on the moneyed cat walk.

Tuesday 27 October 2009

1930's solutions for 2030 problems

Dictatorships don't work, we have tried it. Or it has been imposed on us,

save for bill of rights, and magna carta, and juries, and progressive taxation and free enterprise and votes in and votes out.........A new thing is here... the tsar of all europe....UK has the legislation for a police state....and the data.

27 elected heads of state appoint from a group that have been voted out. The ex-leaders of state are the pool to elect a lord of the rings or Pontifex Maximus/ Divine Caesar/ Tsar to rule the other rings?.

And the new person can write his own rules this time around having been got rid of after 10 years of the worst financial catastrophe in history. Except for the biggest boom in China's history. And boom boom boom boom in Iraq's recent happinesses.

Crime has got the opiates and cannibis for Afgan...now the shooting starts and then all the little taliban's will go neutral and the US can go home. There's no one TALEBAN...just like there is no dissedent IRA.

Four aides for Tony. Five to rule all? We are in the banker's bunker.

Darkness. freedom fries

Tuesday 20 October 2009

SHAKESPEARE'S HEIR A good day today the revised proof arrived. There are minor corrections and then it will be on the market. Requests for copies thus will be OK in a week or two.

The web-site is to be re-born into a friendly face. Art work, intros, and reduced copies of the four major texts available too.......... bearing in mind that the versions on the web are not the latest edition, are largely uncorrected, I've changed my mind here and there and they are there because they is free. Something has to be kept behind to buy the books and pay for their costs I'm told.

Fair enough

Thursday 15 October 2009

How much time it all takes? Blake really stayed with it. The proof is edited and sent back. The process is well worth it. From beginning to end.

The politics of democracy seem to have died in Europe.

A new dark ages seems about to have returned...the medieval days of darkness when Europe 'went inquisition' and the torches went out save for human torches. recidivism rules and the reforms of Vat II are reformed out, and as with all recidivism we do not return to the reform, but to the generation before the generation of reform. Back two generations to reform the reform out. Everything is silent save the strident shriek of the banking status quo and the shuffle of the votes of the feet. The 1930's dictators and fusions of sectarian state funding and feudal capitalism. The concordats.

The word democracy has died. Just the sound fades away.....Freedom fries....

Friday 4 September 2009

Two books now are made available. ...namely, Shakespeare's Heir and The Four Zoas...the first is about 290 pages and the other about 500 pages.

I have had several requests and can only say that orders and the books will be available very soon. The site re-designed and made user friendly too.

The first proof of Shakespeare's Heir is edited and corrected. From an introduction to the study of The Four Zoas (which needs to be put in print, not just published virtually) a new book evolved quite naturally.

A fresh canon of information to settle Blake's multi-linear narrative is offered, and it is promised...without the relentless perjoratives of Ault/Dortort and the school of post-modern ambiguities. I'm astonished at their view of how poor a poet is Blake, so here is a bit of a response...in favour of Blake the poet.
......................................



the classical model of the logical positivists and the pure grammar of the computer language and grammar models sit happily with the syntax of aspect ratio and lighting in the grammar of film...so where's the grammatical problem in Blake that so overwhelms the post-modern Blake critic?

literary response is always a unity in the mind of the reader...the idea of author is always a idea of self-reflected attitude...an attitude in process ...and not an algorithmic procession but an information quanta....there is nothing consistent about reading or imagining, or listening/watching to the 'someone else's words' of it, in self-contradiction, halts, runs, staggers, pleasure, rage, love, enlightenment and moments of silence: in short, an infinity of response...and there are other things to do all the time...like listening to music at the same time or visual silent noise...of course it is always a temporary 'withiness' of fragments/identity in dialogue...and it involves the whole person however fragmentary that wholeness seems...To engage in this wholeness of process is one reason why Blake wrote....in conventional concepts its a philosophy, a zen or a yoga or even a mythology....we use what words we can and as Bahktin put it most of our words are someone else's anyway....



You can't read Blake exclusively in the light of modern grammatical usage and help your self to much in the way of meaningfulness.


Enjoy the books, if you like Blake you will enjoy these books...Shakespeare's Heir being the most readable, and the other two books are detailed studies available for in depth clarification