David Whitmarsh: William Blake's The Four Zoas and Jerusalem

2008-04-30T14:28:00.001+01:00

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The search lines are here for research students and interested Blake readers..............or those who want Blake's The Four Zoas 'explained' or Jerusalem 'explained' in detail... or want to understand Blake's art more profoundly. Blake's art is embedded in his myths and thus his myth, symbol and story not understood, Blake's art is also poorly understood. My studies are about making sense of Blake's mythology. his myth, also thought of as his sublime allegory, (wittreich) has to be realised in the perceptions of readers and viewers....in a like manner, myth and symbol is necessary to realise the iconic, typological and allegorical meanings of classical or renaissance art. likewise the geometry of composition is typically sacred such as in the theology of the ikon in bizantine art, its sacred geometry of internal symmetries and colours, and from the earliest, sacred architecture...and that means the indigenous circle builders and their clarity of astronomical alignments and so time.

an essential methodological principle is that there are many swirls of myths in Blake's mythology of Albion's fall and redemption... dynamic 'vortices' involved in multi inter engagements in multi complexities... foucault like vortices of them all as a whole in unity...such are the torus-like vortices of Albion's inner collapse... and there is no final definition until Plates 94-100.

Blake's depictions of mental energies are profound. It is a commonplace amongst Blake's audiences and analytic thinkers that he develops a causal cosmology of mental energies, events and materiality that is of extraordinary value to to our understanding of human consciousness itself. his value is enhanced by his universality...though he is christian, his readers need not be.

Though he sees a four-fold unity with Christ, others may see that Blake symbolises a 'god's eye' concept of time and space such outlined by polkinghorne(I discuss this in the opening chapters to Jerusalem Explained). Jungian and Freudian critics have long seen Blake's work as revealing that which otherwise is unrevealed even unconscious... his impact upon art is formidable. Blake's remarkable poetic re-creations of mind and processes of dream and waking self-revelation are known as very valuable... god or no god so to speak.

2008-04-26T23:11:00.004+01:00

To the Southwark of The Globe, The Swan and The Fortune, the bear pit and the taverns and happyhouses and the the Blakeless Bride. The genius of Southwark? The cleric failed to see the chances are few for the pounding heartbeat of self kenosis in art and love and life in Southwark, and the jewel of Blake's hymn, Jerusalem.

no flower once picked grows back however strong the stem

her got done too, sent back
failed to meet the something ...
Off the list now
Breath-bated and clogged-ears in the charity camps

Banjos in the tunnels by the air blasts
cloth caps tin cups coins
and a wild-eyed child with a dummy
in a crowd of kneecaps and pounding feet.

Airless hairless and eyeless
and groaning in Gaza the lot of us
Not a temple to think on
nor jaw-bone to recall.

There's an asteroid on its way as big as Gibraltar
Galileo's under house arrest
Crime pays, rules tax
ans superheated lava fills the caverns left by gas wells

the round glass circles of the cathedral roses
and grounded mazes give hope
there's rumours of oxygen outside the windows of the world
stars do last longer than poverty, says the vatican, Infallibly.

But eternity's an idea that experiences nothing
Nothing of the bone-cold concrete dirt
of a rough shaveless life
in the midst of surplus waste

2008-04-19T19:49:00.005+01:00

this a fourth verse about the cleric of Southwark who banned Blake's Jerusalem, Blake saw Jerusalem as the bride of Christ which is a reasonable model for any one... methinks.
Now the disappointment is honey mooned into the future life of the bride i pen a further poem
lives about the young and the struggle of it ...

psychic clay not to be mined or thrown on a wheel

it's hard to keep faith
in the coffee-grind and sweaty hair of cappuccino time,
for a hard-breathing-clear eyed idealist
with firm thighs and a pert blouse that bounces

a teacher who like her and a third world feeling
for eye treatment radio and a well for village life
prey to the faith-in-loving lyrics
the truly lazy offer

two bedrooms more and a larger lawn
habits like parking in front lead lined windows
eyes reddening in shadows and swirl of curtain, and
well-fed waiting crying poor-mouth to make taste rich

the pretty girl
fingers straight as a check out key
blinks back the long grimed day
and the longer struggle of a loving heart

she knows how long it really takes
to dig a veggie patch on a wet spring day
and the Kremlin tower of a leek flower
working to give a kitchen the smell of heaven

and granny's old mahogany bed
the thump of life they all said she loved

2008-04-15T09:43:00.003+01:00

FOR BLAKE ...JERUSALEM IS THE BRIDE OF CHRIST.....

BANNED

HERE'S ONE FOR BEAUTY
and all brides

Helen

She never saw beauty she was put away
folded like linen with skins of iron
magicked memories celibate ideals
and angels dancing up and down ladders
massaging the conscience of the world

The older we are the closer to timelessness,
Helen's lovely legs have yet to reach full stretch
not yet closed in the mercy of an unseeing eye.

Surprising where the last ditch stands are
where certain people are that's where
who simply fight until they simply die.

I don't wish to pass through any of your doors
she told each keeper of the keys in turn passing out the gates
by the smell of food tables and cowls bent forward
around her the temple keepers
crouched like stone lions waiting for Alexander.

2008-04-13T14:40:00.004+01:00

FOR JERUSALEM THE SINGING BRIDE OF SOUTHWARK

no truth merit or grace for salvation army sally

surrogate sister of mercy shapely as a saint
cruises down the sinning streets singing songs of patience
waiting for a second flood

burned with the spaces and absence of blessing
she smiled back behind the blindfold, I'm supple
beneath the bandage she told us lifting cloth

stone circles of divines in seas of verbal nonsense
scream lay-lines of faith
each at the other's compass

blind priest blind church blind church blind vision
what we need are priests that see
and priests who save each other

Then she said I am so sad this is not how I meant to be
this happiness came over me
while they were facing quite another way, see,

see, in the patchy grass wild flowers white and gold
a child is laughing voice and limbs
rise and play small things are stirring, washed

all things are shining
words beating like wings in the heart
sing ancient rights hard won

2008-04-12T15:46:00.007+01:00

IN MEMORY OF A BLAKELESS SOUTHWARK WEDDING

life plan for believing fishes

Buzz buzz the see-saw
back and thrust slip-slide-slip-slide
rock-a-billy trombone call
to the glittering fantasia of young flesh and belly bouncers of dance
in the bumble stumble of the gene circus

Do you really want the fast food job that's every job?
want to sell and sell and chime the hour for a clocked amount?
while higher and higher the bonus for the boss
in the crime regulated
tick-tock number flash of taxation legislation

Do you really need this crap as the pretty girl's toothpaste
larger than a bill board's faithlessness
gives you the weather?
Without god sex or money there is only the weather
and the melting of the icecaps

Up jumped the archetype
in the ying yanking ad nonsense
whispering waves
that cook into yolk
brain dead pictures of prosperity

The higher the rank the easier
the sun-tanned cock-a-doodle-doo of glad stock tidings
paddling down the morning rivers of laundered plenty
crowing excellence is the greatest threat to
the survival of the richest

So my bonused beauties
bubbling in banquets and stemmed glasses
check out the inside run of long crossed legs
in the snake and ladder cocktails
of the davy jones casino

where numbers measure the holiness of manna on the monitor

2008-04-10T20:03:00.032+01:00

the elephant in the cathedral is the voice of recividism.

i have just seen that a cleric actually banned blake's hymn...that's shocking...such a lack of theological insight and critical blindness...and at a wedding too...seems the collared one doesn't know what Blake is saying...did he get up to the phrase 'holy lamb of god'?... possibly... methinks.... this is Jesus? ... the christian bloke ....God knows him well...highest recommendations in theological fact. brain collared anti-celtic/saxon church too I suppose...

Blake had a apt phrase...'mind forg'd manacles'...Blake knew Southwark too...but didn't get married there...perhaps women are banned from singing too? they can LALALALA the words...just chuck in a 'Jeeerrrruuuu-salem' or two and of course a 'holy lamb of God'... and there we are back with the music of the wedding.

do we have the whiff of envy in the banning of beauty and faith...

does any cleric STILL believe augustine is the first to bring us christianity?

augustine didn't for a minute........ see his two letters to the pope. he was invited by a christian frank who married the saxon multi-faith king...of Kent no invasion a whole tribe acceptance of roman alliance/union...six years or so later augustine was on his way home...lost it........took the norman crusade 1066 to finish the job...lasted till Henry. so that is only 500 years or so of the pontifex maximus and the new roman city state

or that there was a dark ages?

or the earth is flat?

or that the only slavery is slavery to sin?

or that theology is the science of reading the cosmos for God's 'easy to read' mind?

or that there is a great chain of being? climb the ladder or success or power... know our place?... first rung, second rung...bung for rungs...climb over to gain upper... go to the top...down to the bottom...weakest links...chains on chains on chains?...all medieval rubbish...there is no ladder in creation not made by a person. gravity is not a chain. still less a theocratic or secular hierarchy of expressed supernatural or natural law. Stanilaoe...love of power and money alike based on lack of faith.

or that angels fly up and down this ladder from hell fires to heaven?

or that exit stage left is really off to the human bbq pit ... like burntime europe and latin america... that burned for several centuries

or that the vatican has never approved an abortion.
(It has...the woman had cancer of the womb, the baby had cancer and would have died. so that there were not two deaths there was permission for an abortion. How can that be wrong? The anti-abortion lobby pro-life...need to modify their claims. their hysteria needs to be theologically informed in the dogma of law of double effect and the rationality of the church as a unity as a whole as one church. someone got killed by a zealot already. no Christ in that...Christ was killed by zealots, the IRA or al-queda of the times.) the living Christ is eternally crucified and eternally resurrected. the dogmatic fact is that nothing in the universe suffers anything not suffered by God...impossible to be God and not suffer all suffering.)

how hot is hell then? 'oh collared-bell-book-and-candle' neo-exorcist'?...is it as hot ...as...say as the centre of the sun...or a black hole...will that take care of Blake's jerusalem... onceandforall?

Augustine believes that in his city of god one of the rewards of heaven is like the rewards of being the pontifex maximus at the circus of rome ...neo-neros...and lets-do-lunch-caligulas...the reward for those blessed saved ones in heaven was to watch the torture of those in hell...all holy ones capering about in heaven without useful sex organs... watching the suffering of those crackling away having their sex organs eliminated ... or is hell even hotter?...filled, to some apparent visitors, with gleeful demons having a self-intoxicated time inflicting even more tortures on usually genital organs. ...aside from much else that is part of the mind of God to Augustine....and to the modern recidivists....

take this to the psychic and physical present...anger is an epidemic in uk today...a mental disease. the bullyboysandgirls are armbanding their minds and their laws.

BY CONTRAST : Fr David Coffey points out forgiveness is unconditional.

so someone likes it 'upthere'...lovesthetop...anddizzyheights of it... and likes it hot too. and good old gnostic augustine wants to keep-them-at-it....

they know their job is to provide entertainment, and that endless 'modernise/reform for productivity' is not Christ's message. He is not big on commodification.......caesar and God are not siamese twins of paid-up-unitedhealthforall....78 billion last year profit on commodified suffering and premature death.....when one thinks on it ...we ask with open profiteering minds for our rich super-rights...what's in it for the saved?...well one has to ask... how much is it worth to the 'low-hanging-fruit' of the faithful-poor ....to invest-pay-their-way now?

where is jerusalem here?

All created in mercy by the God of Love without contradiction...and theocratic self-contradiction swags and heaves and slouches toward South London the new bethleham... to be reborn....in asset stripped england.....and there is no faith..... no mere human is divine, for all human theories of God must be deficient. The dogmatic theology of it is simple enough...if human knowledge was perfect all revelation is gratuitous and that is impossible. No human knows the mind of God.

especially God's taste in music

the elephant in the cathedral is the voice of recidivism.

Jonathan's English Chess

2008-03-30T05:58:00.001+01:00

Part1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKbdPHowV5g
Part2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TdOo2JicsY
Part3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9y7i8pm3u8

2008-03-09T18:59:00.005Z

Dr David Whitmarsh-Knight. William Blake's Jerusalem Explained The William Blake Press: Cambridge; 2007. 612 pages.

... is now available on Amazon $45...after discounts currently approx $33...it is found on Amazon.com ...or on... Amazon.USA

ISBN 978-1434821010

2008-02-21T17:57:00.002Z

In William Blake's Jerusalem Explained you will be reading Blake's vision of a anglo-celtic, north European (and its diaspara) vision of Christianity.

He deconstructs the mediterranean centered prejudices of history once thought true now now seen as recidivism........for example 'flat-earth' histories, pre-darwinian concepts of time, evolution and science, set chronologies of creation, economic abuse and the sexual repression of women and their sexual abuse, as in prostitution and mere pleasure, the abuse of innocence in child labour and slavery and sacrifice of the human form Divine, of the god within, for power and money.

Likewise Blake saw war as the consequence of closed shells of consciousness... he symbolised these closed 'prisons' of perception, giving twenty-seven of them, which with the final boundaries of finitude make twenty-eight 'churches' of perception. Blake' s shapings of mental entities and core energies engages his audience in a remarkably practical engagement with real suffering and real collapse and renewal. Blake's commitment to his idea of christian prophecy was profound; it was the mission of art to bear witness in a manner not unlike the ikon and its theology of witness inwhich Christ breaks through the self-created inner shells of human perception. Blake's myth bears witness of Christ infinitely transcending within and without.

.........Blake's visionary spirituality is anglo-celtic. it is essential to see he consciously crafts a vision inspired by prophetic origins antecedent to the invited-to-britain-and-soon sent home augustine.

late millenium papal christianity, post roman, came together with indigenous anglo-celtic christianity. Of course there was inter-communion... throughout east, centre, west, north and southern (egyptian christianity c.f. beatty/bodmer fragments of NT c.200 c.e.).

heresies were not not part of anglo-celtic practice...c.f. Gildas the Wise and his hatred of the 'arian poison' as he calls it ...or marcion. The normans completed the accommodation of anglo-celtic christianity with papal religious and secular authority. the weight of church support for william is typically understated in 1066 and all that...Blake's myth is northern and western european, and its origins shared by augustine though its expression fully contemporary.

on the other hand, it is equally essential to know reading Blake means we do see rome as the centre, not as the east... and not as the west... for 'all roads lead to rome'.......further, clearly when they left Jerusalem after the crucifixion..... Peter and Paul did not 'go west... there's gold in them thar seven hills' as i put it elsewhere. .....they went to the centre called rome....(and yes... there was and is gold in those seven hills..... unimagined wealth)....it is beyond philosophical doubt and archaeological dispute that the west was the tin isles of thucidites, ... eventually called england, ireland, scotland and wales. (see below, 2007)...DNA studies and studies of 'saxon' burial sites show the western isles were a genetically homogenous indigenous civilisation that remained reasonably intact before the romans came and after the romans left... including 'migrations' from europe. modern archaeology proves 'England' did not collapse into a dark ages in which the celts were driven into cornwall and wales, for example kent was not conquered by a pagan saxon invasion. genes show kent to be as anglo-celtic as cornwall or wales or scotland, and strontium/oxygen levels in teeth of 24 skeletons from 5th - 7th cent a.c.e...confirm the genetic studies... (Sykes, Goldstein, Oxford 2002, 2005; Budd, Durham, Antiquity 2008; BBC Seven Ages of Britain TV series). it seems small-scale immigration that adopted and adapted. It does seem there were movements within england but that 'less than half of paternal input' was diue to 'anglo-saxon migration' concludes Goldstein. The pagan dark ages is now seen as replacement history and as such fails the criteria of truth necessary for revelation theology, which must always reform itself in the light of historical facticity to avoid heresy.

we need begin the literary journey of Blake's 'golden thread' knowing we read of Blake's religious understandings of the new Jerusalem....that Blake draws immediately from Swedenborg's 'New Jerusalem' as is well known and researched (see viscomi, Marriage of Heaven and Hell). He also drew from the earliest discourses of spirituality, symbolism, vision and prophetic inspiration (frye bloom percival bentley bloom percival lincoln rowland et al)... the meta summary of these scholars conclusions begins with Blake's tradition as a necessary critical departure point.

I discuss Blake's poetic story and his spiritual realities of a new Jerusalem in Chapter 4, especially Plate 86, of Jerusalem Explained. I have found is not possible to expand our critical perception of Blake's new Jerusalem without the philosophical pre-condition of knowing it in as exact a mythic context as is possible. I analyse Blake's religious moral and economic symbolism in Jerusalem.... and conclude we clearly see a fully developed and articulated myth in Blake's 'jeweled' setting for the new Jerusalem.

I have put these search line below for elements of my research...... and for those those who want to understand Blake's story as an aesthetic whole, 'simply' explained in terms of Blake's fundamentally symbolic meaning of Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem.....and for those who want Blake's plots, myth, story and characters re-presented as developed and set in exquisitely precise narrative context...........and those who want to see in ways similar to Blake when writing...that means in terms of Blake's one-fold, two-fold, three-fold and four-fold states of perception.

There is a need to be very specific here...looking outward..one-fold cannot see two-fold...which cannot see three-fold'... which cannot see four-fold...looked at again but going inwards...four-fold can see three-fold... which can see two-fold... which can see one-fold which cannot see anything but it self. Seeing with Blake is the journey of his descent into himself and the transformation in time to a renewal into unity...a unity purged of that which thought it self divine. it is not strictly a return, not a cycle that is back to where it began...

I trace Blake's four organising vortices of being... enter Blake's clearly defined narrative levels or points of view... engage the reader in his dramatic tension and use of irony... and present as a critical whole Blake's literary perception of humanity's tragic fall, cleansing and and redemption...

.... again none of Blake's states of vision are properly grasped without a grasp of the work as a whole, and in turn that needs a proper textual analysis according to the science of textual criticism. that is make much more possible by my two books.

2008-02-20T08:04:00.001Z

Flash page: William Blake's Jerusalem Explained: The William Blake Press: Cambridge 2007 --611 pages

When i lectured in an institute of education/teachers college (as head of school: liberal arts and sciences) we ensured we taught future educatrs that children must physically turn their heads one side right, and, the other side left when they cross a road, because the child has not developed peripheral, perceptual, vision and literally cannot perceive the cars coming from either side. So they walk out, suddenly, for if there is no car immediately in front of them they cross. This is an example of ‘restricted field articulation’....the child’s ability to scan is perceptually restricted, and their behaviour thereby modified, sometimes fatally. Moral scanning is concomitant.

Universally we experience restricted scanning. Without it we could not be an evolving identity, grow or age. Simply put, in love we transform our perceptions to scan in beauty and hope and joy within and without around us. By contrast, in fear, poverty, pain, confinement and depression, fear and anxiety are perceived, threat is universal and the spin or ‘vortex’ of such scanning leads to inwardness, paranoia and self-harm or harm to others. We say we can ‘turn things around’ by scanning more and more positive events and realities in our individual ‘vortex’. Blake calls the ‘spin’ about us a vortex. The vortex expands and contracts within and without us. His epics symbolise how his continuum of improved practical scanning of all he perceive is possible. His work helps show how his understandings led to his self-realisations in art and life.

Now we turn to Blake’s Jerusalem. He seeks to enhance our perceptual field articulations, and as with all great art, he succeeds. In Blake’s aesthetics art enhances individual perceptions. He is perfectly clear; to him the purpose of being is unity with God. We survive and improve our lives through love and hate, food and shelter, justice, art, science, feeling and thought, and above all through others, living in the image of God, which Blake called the human form Divine, best expressed in Plates 94-100

Blake’s genius in Jerusalem and The Four Zoas engages us in the movements of mind and perceptual scanning of consciousness within and without to a degree of comprehensiveness and insight not found in others. while he is profoundly christian his work explores human consciousness in ways comprehensive and universal.... for brief examples, we learn from Blake of the intricate mechanisms and articulations of the mind in process of birth, love, death, time and being ...we see his depiction of the multi-levelled action and reaction of act... and we perceive his unequaled symbolising of the fragmentation of consciousness, its levels of psychosis and healing ,and its integrations into reconciled unities

William Blake’s Jerusalem is a long and brilliant epic. Here is my conclusion: it will probably take a year or so to read Jerusalem; a reading target of one plate a day is racing through the work. How many books offer that kind of self-enhancement…in order that we might perceive more deeply and further? That is Blake’s gift to us all and his art expands our personal perceptual scanning. IIt's taken me a decade or so to decipher and then write Blake’s Jerusalem Explained and likewise, earlier, Blake's The Four Zoas Explained. It has taken that kind of determined effort to outline his story clearly. He is not impenetrable. These two epic books on Blake's christian myth will transform your perceptions of Blake's mastery of his mediums; Blake’s art and his poetry. It should help clarify Blake's explicit trinitarian christianity and his implicit and explicit visionary grasp of spiritual truths of human existence, nature, time and eternity

Once a reader has been through Blake’s myth from beginning to end then Blake reads swiftly and brilliantly, and we share great poetry, philosophy, drama and participate in a spiritual vision that spans, scans and re-engages us with the internal landscapes of our consciousness. As I write elsewhere, the reader is liberated into the practical act of reading an excellent story. Blake is well worth the effort needed to come to terms with his remarkably contemporary picture of humanity.

2008-02-16T17:20:00.000Z

Looking through blogs.... it has been William Blake's Jerusalem Explained published by The William Blake Press and nothing else since last october.............so ignore the last several posts to read about extensions of the literary philosophy and methodology of analysis of Blake's Jerusalem. go back to april 07 in the blog

deconstructionism has been my focus....namely the connection between word and word, i've recalled the word logia...........avoiding imposition of preconceived system on Blake's system. the emergent meanings structured on architectures of possible meanings......kabbala.....classical....paracelsus... ossian and the gothic.... longinius and the sublime...moor and his hindu pantheon....bacon hobbes newton locke hume....the french enlightenment and the humanists....dante....swedenborg....boehme ..... the great chain of being as in 'the bard'......deism.....astrology......the industrial revolution and Blake's london, the french and american revolution ....the influences of paine, godwin and early feminism wollstonecraft....slavery, child labour and abuse, mercantalism, mendel and the prisons and (c.f.1797-1834, essay on population and the workfare/workhouse discourse ending in the poor act, 1834)...marxism...jung/freud/lacan...barthes ...derrida...linguistic analysis...foucauld... gramsci... structuralism, modernism and post-modernism....semiotics and the philosophy of the sign and grammatical studies.... even, i read, Blake's autodidacticism (an unconvincing theory holding that Blake was basically self-taught, which Bentley shows incorrect, that seems to suggest that Blake's poetry was 'automatic writing') and discourse and meta-analysis..... and every approach is full of insight. I replace none....I add Blake's plot or logia, the structure he consciously created and the myth he wrote, worked out in all its symmetrical beauty.

instead of conventional mediteranean mythic sources (as in homer, virgil, dante and more immediately, milton's Paradise Lost, Regained or Comus and the cambridge platonists) the weight of meaning Blake shaped into inter-related concepts and sounds was 'key-stoned' or set in a unique semiotic/semantic units like Alla....Ulro....Adan-Udan....the gate of the heart....the cup of Rahab....Entuthon Benethon....Bowlahoola.....Golgonooza.........and personality after personality....Tharmas......Enitharmon.....Palamabron....Bromion....the daughters of Beulah... all empty of pre-determined meaning save for the diachronic and sychronic meanings that are strictly contextual in Blake's myth and confined in its meaning to his linguistic seriality.....concepts like shadow.....shade....spectre....are a third micro family of sign....Blake's geography is yet another...Bath... London... Jerusalem... Babylon... Shiloh... England. These form vortices of resemblances and energy identities. In Blake's poetic method each 'minute particular' is always self-transcending in the ongoing expansion of Blake's articulated perceptions of existential-being-unto death.....and the logically unexpressed interplay of feeling for meaning.....Plates 94-100 symbolises this best........Blake's extraordinary expansion of language units to render meaningful his experiences of four-fold perceptual realities is possibly unequaled in English....concepts like sytagmatic, paradigmatic and pragmatic discourse....all help....but none are sufficient unto themselves.

Indeed, central to Blake's mythic unity is that all aspects of creation.... rocks, hills, rivers, mountains, oceans, cities, counties and countries, zoas, emanations, sons and daughters are conscious entities in Blake's vision of life. .....this means, for example, that the traditional literary distinction between humanity as 'soul-invested' or as locke holds, 'intelligence' invested conscious and moral being, and environment as existentially alienated though aesthetically recaptured being, is dissolved by Blake.....how, in un-deconstructed critical methodologies does one distinguish between the 'character' of Urizen, Los, Jerusalem or Vala and the 'character' of Bath? or the 'character' of the Atlantic?......typically, critical methodologies are corralled by 'plotlessness' and impenetrability pre-suppositions as to be unable to interpret the developed characters of Blake...

.....the commonplace current critical position position is denial (see blog april 07)....Blake's figures and their characters are thought NOT to be dramatically 'fully developed' is based, I find, on a paradigmatic failure in the field to perceive the plot and therefore the detailed and intricate relations between the each figure's being and actions, and, the continuum of such acts after such acts to become and form a linear whole.....what i show is that there is the gamut of emotion feeling act, blindness and moral and spiritual epiphanic and insight in each figure in Blake's plot as a whole......

I read of Blake's figures as NOT being 'fully developed' characters.....and i think, 'compared to whom'?...... Homer's 'Ajax'.......Chaucer's 'wife of Bath'....Lear and the 'fool'?

the modernist and post-modern methodologies exhaust sensibility, and empties language and perception of all but sound and grammatical relations......the semiotics of marks of sound, the repetitions lifted into phonetics and into alphanumonic language of discourse........... all are replayed in Blake's deconstructed poetics.... for language is re-expressed....even re-invented...by Blake to shape the momentums of meanings that culminate in the almost impossible simplicities of his prophetic clarities.....

.....there is something wonderful in Blake's ideas of English 'the rough structure'...........he re-expresses the nature of sound 3000 odd years after its first mesopotanian cuniform sounds-before-consonants were lifted out from the hieroglyph into a written form......

so.....go to april 2007 in the blog and walk backwards into blog-time. when you want to read about the movement from thought into print in William Blake's The Four Zoas and Jerusalem Explained......

2008-02-13T21:34:00.000Z

time rolls out the details of printing profits.................40% for marketing........30% for taxes and then printing costs say US$20. there's profit foryerbuyanapartmentblock...........!!!!!!!!!!

saw some marketing facts. Cambridge University Press prints some 12500 books p.a. of that some 8000 sells less than 100......5000 less than 50........3000 less than 10.

so here we go ...out for the 10....... a few weeks and it should be out in Amazon's list of books on Blake and Jerusalem.

David Whitmarsh. William Blake's Jerusalem Explained. William Blake Press: Cambridge; 2007, (611 pages).

2008-01-19T16:57:00.001Z

Just a bit of print news......the final proof copy of William Blake's Jerusalem Explained is being printed now. There were lots of small errors my copy editor pointed to....typically, inter-textual references....so those were fixed.

I've contacted The Blake Society and joined.....the chairman Tim Heath, a very welcoming person, has helped make a youtube filmed celebration over Blake's grave....the location of which has been identified precisely....and is under the footpath!........this is very well-done, the church records were studied and the co-ordinates identified.......

it does little credit to see how this magnificent visionary 250 year anniversary remained so unrecognised.........not even a stamp.

However, the symbolic meaning and explanation of Jerusalem was finished to coincide with Blake's birthday, .........and is now available.......thefourzoas.com.......... or my e-mail davidwhitmarshknight@hotmail.com............The William Blake Press: Cambridge is the publisher

2007-12-23T20:09:00.000Z

for research students and interested Blake readers...............those who want Blake's The Four Zoas or Jerusalem explained in detail.......those who want to understand the structure explained and the symbolic meaning of Jerusalem and The Four Zoas analysed......those who want Blake's myth, story and characters explained and set in narrative context...........those who want to see as Blake saw.........that means in terms of Blake's four-fold, three-fold, two-fold and one-fold vision, narrative points of view, dramatic tension and use of irony and perception of tragic fall and redemption

I have re-introduced the search lines to the front of the blog. the first point i'd like to make is that the Plates can be individually called up.

blake's jerusalem textual analysis
blake's textual analysis
blake's textual analysis four zoas
four zoas
zoas
blake's vortex
william blake's plot
blake's plot
blake's major prophecies
blake's four zoas
blake's myth
blake's jerusalem
blake's symbolism
blake's four zoas meaning
blake's satan christ
blake's jerusalem meaning
blake's symbolism four zoas jerusalem
william blake's four zoas
william blake's jerusalem
william blake's four zoas jerusalem analysis
blake's jerusalem zoas time space
blake's jerusalem visionary symbolism
four zoas blake plot
jerusalem blake plot
blake vision meaning
blake's myth meaning
blake's zoas emanations meaning
blake's albion jerusalem
blake's anglo celtic christianity
Blake's soteriology
blake's golgonooza zoas
blake's golgonooza jerusalem
blake mythological personae
blake albion's fall and salvation
blake's four fold vision vortex
blake's two three four fold vision
blake's golden string jerusalem
blake aesthetic unity jerusalem
blake aesthetic unity four zoas
blake textual analysis jerusalem
blake interpretation jerusalem
blake spirituality jerusalem
blake spirituality four zoas
blake's textual analysis
blake's two nights the seventh zoas
blake line by line analysis zoas jerusalem meaning
blake's sexuality zoas jerusalem
blake's major symbols
blake jerusalem beulah eden ulro generation
blake's mythological persona
blake psychology jerusalem
william blake's mythology
william blake's myth
blake's myth
blake's myth zoas
blake's myth jerusalem
william blake's plot
blake's narrative
william blake narrative jerusalem
blake erin jerusalem
blake's narrative jerusalem
blake's narrative the four zoas
blake's meaning
william blake's meaning
blake's golgonooza
william blake's golgonooza
blake's prophetic vision
william blake's jerusalem
blake's craftsmanship
william blake's craftsmanship
blake's visionary mythology
william blake's visionary mythology
william blake's prophetic epics meaning
blake's irony
blake line by line analysis four zoas
blake line by line analysis jerusalem
blake's two fold vision
blake's three fold vision
blake's four fold vision
blake's web veil symbolism
blake's fractal structure
william blake's theory of composition
william blake's fractal structure
blake fractal narrative
blake sexuality zoas four
blake sexuality
william blake's epics analysis
blake sexuality jerusalem

2007-12-21T19:27:00.000Z

William Blake's Jerusalem Explained proof is copy edited and proof-read. the qualities of concentration, persistence, attention to detail, eye for any lumpiness of phrasing, editing out weak presentation of argument and research findings, and elevating poor English....... all talents were shown to me by my consultant copy editor. the book is noted on Amazon though not yet for sale through Amazon Books....after this proof copy is edited the process goes to e-marketing........... as it is, William Blake's Jerusalem Explained can be ordered by direct e-mail.

print on demand editing consultancy is a seriously enjoyable process with a good copy editor. Mine is a colour specialist too.....layout and cover design needs a copy editor that is a fine art trained specialist colour theorist...and the IT editing skills...this time around i'll not be using colour................ but i'm thinking of a coloured plates edition with commentary sometime down the line, chiefly to produce a beautiful book............

.......chattered to an coffee aquaintance .....mature PhD student....Theology...studying here at Cambridge...... english not a first language.....struggled successfully with thesis expression.....finished now she said....went through three editors......first two weak...she didn't know my partner a professional free-lance copy editor and thesis consultant or else she would not have hesitated.... she has seen the quality of William Blake's Jerusalem Explained... hit or miss trying to find a good one.........wasted a couple of grand and a failed presentation before she found one that worked with her and helped articulate the research....a lot of money but the whole education process has been corrupted by costs.... quite a bit to thesis consultancy....as thesis editing, research structure, grasp of the thesis as a whole, clarity of expression, good use of sentence balance and structure, accurate grammar, proof-reading, and 'house' formatting when done by a good copy editor like my partner makes the difference..........fair enough........ the presentation is a vital component to a graduate supervisor....................

...................... if he or she is anything like i was when i supervised graduate dissertations, a reader is irritated by weak presentation of research and conclusions, poor formatting, proof reading and clumsy phrasing....... and the proper scholarly response poorly articulated research is that the thesis is average to poor to unacceptable without revision........the candidate has to bear in mind too who is going to get the thesis.......... a supervisor.....(lotto)........, second dept reader......(unpredictable).........third Dept reader.....(sometimes political....one of the three may have a history) ........... reader from another Dept .......(who????) .........and external reader (which university?)........are the peer review core and each of us have different expectations..... which is why it works too......none of us will copy edit, not even a supervisor......none expect to proof read for good English, or re-write........no layout or style sheet proof reading will be done .....just the first few errors scratched out and then the whole back to be proof read....if a candidate can't present a literate thesis, literate in every way....then no award should be considered.

......... for print on demand books, especially if there is colour involved, a top consultant like The William Blake Press is essential to produce a good book.....i might add my editor doesn't read my blog....too many mistakes......but I have learned a book is much harder to copy edit than a thesis....whether writing one or supervising or examining one........

......... however if you need a good essay consultant, thesis copy editor, or print on demand copy editor, a colour specialist too and you live or study in Cambridge...try The William Blake Press: Cambridge............especially if english is not your first language or you are a visual thinker................ if you are a graduate student writing a thesis on Blake this is a specialist press and one of the very best around.......i think that is irrefutable ....and if you are writing Education, Sociology, English or Drama, Religion or Philosophy dissertations or essays .............and then there is design, layout, colour, font, tables, charts...bars and pies ....Linguistics.....Art a specialty printing the art of contemporary practicing artists..........

Academic professionals like me, the 'professors of expertise' in a field who want to put forward their research.............. as I do, ........and enjoy the freedom print on demand offers.......... as i do.........may find as i did...............print on demand copy editors are essential.

watching the copy editor working is instructive....normally there is physical distance between writer and book or thesis......we don't tend to watch a proof-reader for a couple of hours for example. i've learned a lot from my editor while she creates a book.

2007-12-19T20:02:00.000Z

the second proof copy of William Blake's Jerusalem Explained arrived today. clearer and clearer, print on demand editing offers a great deal of sheer pleasure.....the layout design, creative copy editing by my editing consultant for print on demand publication is exceptional.....and the search line..... blake's jerusalem amazon....brings up William Blake's Jerusalem Explained in Google Books and Amazon Books. my copy editor handles the marketing and even now has enabled e-mail ordering. my consultant is with The William Blake Press: Cambridge. copy editing, proof-reading and style development, and the cover design.

2007-12-14T20:59:00.000Z

the print copy of William Blake's Jerusalem Explained has arrived....set for Blake's 250 birthday.... the number of mistakes missed by me was very high....caught by my consultant editor's publication editing and proof reading skills.....and I'm pleased by the excellent ranking on Google and Amazon for critical and analytic books on Blake's Jerusalem, it is listed on Page I on both. it is a weighty tome well over 600 pages.

i find self-enhancement in writing and presentation.......there is a point in holding critical excellence in high regard.. ... this is means i needed to learn the print on demand requirements and its market environment.

my print on demand suggestion is to begin with a professional editing consultant to take responsibility to take the text through the publish-on-demand publication editing requirements....... cover design........ layout and copy editing....... proof-reading, all supported by IT, photoshop, adobe, quark, publisher.......and the science of colour.

i found the text needs a professional academic consultant editor to produce a professional copy for high level publication ............... evidence of course is William Blake's Jerusalem Explained itself. the editor, with The William Blake Press: Cambridge created the layout and cover design, proof-reading, hard text and market location. not all are so fortunate as i am to have the time of an expert editor who has now completed William Blake's Jerusalem Explained.....if you are a professional academic who needs a good copy editor for a print on demand publication, use The William Blake Press: Cambridge.

2007-12-05T10:28:00.000Z

early december............. back to thinking about Blake. print on demand and editing thoughts follow...........this is signification and the semiology of writing. the technical is interfused with the drafting and redrafting casting the elements and recasting.....editing for the book to be there...... the product. the art.

editing consultancy highly trained Graphic Designer.....the graphic design for a book like William Blake's Jerusalem Explained, and shape for my publication of my William Blake's The Four Zoas Explained. part of the professional editing consultancy skills is to market through to print and marketing. my consultant for print on demand sees it into Amazon.

Here's the lesson I learned......the print on demand copy editor is needed when the writer begins....before, not after...research shaping..........creative copy editing for the quality needed for print on demand help shape the whole because the most frequent reasons for the publication houses rejections is poor editing.. charges up to $50 per hour, and $3000 is judged as what it might cost for a thousand copies. that is the cost of a PhD Thesis.

now, looking at my next print on demand book, which will be William Blake's The Four Zoas Explained, and my textual consultant is needed. once i turned to an excellent freelance textual consultant, the right texts to be downloaded to print on demand specialiats becomes properly and professionally completed.

William Blake's Jerusalem Explained is available by direct order now and my editing consultant markets. my e-mail will be fine to order a copy now on paypal.

two points to this blog...

first....... William Blake's Jerusalem Explained is being printed as I write...which satisfies me after many years of analysis. To take the process through the stages up to the book on Amazon has been a long process and echoes the technological isolation William and Catherine Blake found in taking everything through to the end. and in the end we have a single work of art we call the printed coloured copy. I have always wondered why Blake did not print more copies once the plates were cut. i hear the poverty argument, he was too poor and the expense.... but i wonder still at the uniqueness of his aesthetic focus. one unique work of art is the residue of failure to communicate. who then..... even now has worked out Blake?

back to print on demand and copy edits

print on demand thoughts .........i was surprised to read Amazon and competitors write of £3000 odd all up for a 1000 book run, publishing cost per copy and distribution being most of it. ....

getting the text edited is a consultant's field i learned....copy editing/proof reading, layout and design cover and format detailed finish....... before the work is at the publisher and corrections is a very demanding hidden cost. beyond my skills...book editing is a consultancy class of its own.... for example each change runs on through hundreds of pages in William Blake's Jerusalem Explained.....my editor is currently dealing with William Blake's The Four Zoas Explained. everything is easier.

there is a blank space beside the cost for reading/corrections/re-editing in the sites for print on demand.....back to specialist creative editing time...thesis and book design layout and the modern publish on demand editing .....sentence structure, phrasing management and editing.

editing consultancy i found is the bridge for print on demand excellence is part of the cost. there are only ever a few very good at any thing...by definition.......how much is the editing worth in the investment cost of a editing challenge or from the student's situation....they have to invest editing cost in every thesis.....

before retirement, i know there was a low success rates in the dissertations i supervised...as with print on demand, editing deficencies accounted for most rejections.

2007-11-16T21:28:00.000Z

i've made revisions throughout....one area needing on-going adaptation is the self-contradictory phrase called 'pre-history'. professional scholarly understandings of the important findings of stone circles and the indigenous ante-druidic culture are evolving quickly .....i had one of many thoughts turning through the photographic records.

why aren't the rocks and engravings protected? protected from decay....

one looks at the extraordinary number of stone/wood circles/standing stones, hills, graves and chambers and the like now found and still counting across europe and the meditterean, and roughly calculate the hours of labour and the logistics of supply, food, hygene and shelter, and noting the labour that was used was that left after survival 'work', and consider the infra structure of support, there seems little depth in the stereotypical claim for a scattered small population of hunter/gatherers. all waiting for cuniform, slavery and the pyramids, the rome and the world wide empire.

These romano centered/mediterreanean centered histories are flat-earth, elite god priest/king divinities......the first reformation seemed to be islam...and the absolute finish of the roman empire....add gaul and britain (occupied by the celts 600-400 bce) and that's it...........basque celts under red-haired isabella stops islam as the saxon/polis euros stopped them in north.........pontfex maximus colonised s. america for the human bbq....islam into afganistan, pakistan and india.....

there was a richly subtle international culture for millenia before the relatively recent cuniform cultures .....boats marshes corn cultivated, weaving, jewelry, medicines and drugs, permanent highly effective, complex astronomically based calandars and stellar knowledge, stone houses and long term oak buildings and food available to the skilled indigenous population including the beaker people and pottery and metals.

....the ill-cut animal skins and shapeless uncut hair of 'our ancestors' seems ludicrous parodies...how many hides did one cure to make even a few clothes? the thrown bearskin over the shoulders and waving animal taisl on the grunting straggling wanderers are like cartoons.......see rudgley at oxford

......however with cuniform, stone, not much timber and immortality-driven-tomb builders seemed to come institutionalised slavery. .....or enforced labour......in the east.... chin took out 700,000 odd workers from the whole population for a generation to build his 'magic tomb'...........immortaility became limited to a human life...for everandeverandever. then the patriarchy

henges, pyramids....greece...rome...mediterranean theocracies and despotism..... all about a few lights in the sky and time deemed holy. pyschoses of holiness. the crucifixion ended god-as-time......bearing in mind the idea of a beginning is a recent idea.........no year '0' or year '1' in non-masoritic theologies......the ideas of the world starting in a year (solar/lunar and both....with intercalations and animals and people being killed to ensure the stars will turn, the eclipses will come to and end, and of course that God started it all 4-5000 years ago. Blake's represents all this at the end of Chapter 3.....for Blake, Christ breaks through all of the determined 28 heavens of serial time and utterly transforms two-fold vision and the ideas of time, ideas of power, control of procreation and human breeding stock, and ideas of economic control.....thus Blake's sociology describes two-fold perceptual being as deficient structures of priests, kings, petty officials (tax collectors), warriors, slave labour, prostituted females and sacrificed children. his vision sees with three-fold vision. Christ is four-fold vision.

the celts and saxons were not the circle builders.........there is a lot of archeology yet to come. middle east is really interesting....circle builders built right there all over jordan and israel sryia etc. evidence is stones by the thousand...2000-5000 bce...indigenous,

coming 'later' is cuniform in west.......... and hierogliphic in east........ sets indigenous humans in an 'unexamined well' or 'pre-history'....which methodologically is a self-contradiction to archeology

finishing the last tweaks to William Blake's Jerusalem Explained.....the solutions found by my copy editor at The William Blake Press: Cambridge essential. nothing done without Rhonda ........in fact she's formatted the book. huge effort.

i'm tying it to The International Society of Human Rights at the United Nations. blake a key figure in literature and art in the great tradition of enhancing our spiritual articulations in practical living and human justice.

review of the blog oct 07

2007-10-16T13:00:00.000+01:00

this is an evolving blog....it is continually revised and freshed, .......while detailed and scholarly at times. e-mails to me frequently let me know it is found to be very readable.

there are different sections in it....i'll review them in three main groups for ease of reading:

1...... i list over 90 search lines from Google in which this web site is listed number one or on page one. the site list as strongly in Yahoo and other search engines too.

2..... there are three sections dealing with Blake's crafted and consistant 'narrative points of view': namely his 'within' and 'without' myth; his use of finite and infinite geography; and embedded in his text, his two-fold, three-fold and four-fold vision. in context these are original to the field.

3......i deal vigorously and precisely with Blake's two Night(s) the Seventh, and shown how they are reconciled....i compare this to music.....in an analogy just as two speaker give two sides of a musical arrangement, different in the instruments and musical task, that together create a third, fully harmonised, whole in the mind of the listener, so too did Blake consciously reconcile the two Night(s) the Seventh.

this hypothesis in context is original throughout the textual analysis per se, and, till this site was published seemed unknown by all scholars who have completed later full scale studies of The Four Zoas. this study is in fact the first full-scale study and remains original throughout.

4......i deal in some detail with Blake's anglo-celtic christian myth, especially Joseph of Arimathea.....in Blake's Chapter 3, To The Jews, in his Jerusalem...... this study is paleographic, historical, archeological, and theological....in it i call upon some modern research on the Dead Sea scrolls.

2007-09-20T18:21:00.000+01:00

PUBLICATIONS

My book........ William Blake's Jerusalem Explained will be printed soon........print on demand.....it is important to me that this individual process completes the first full line-by-line analysis of Jerusalem....which like the line-by-line study of The Four Zoas, has no footnotes throughout the analysis per se, for as the PhD committee confirmed about The Four Zoas, it is original throughout; i have updated the standard doctoral opening of the 'survey of the field' for The Four Zoas thus the academic context is fresh. the content as peer-reviewed is as original throughout as it has been first draft 1981 and final award of PhD 1984.....taking into account i remind myself, i started 1970...... like my doctoral research, William Blake's Jerusalem Explained is original throughout the analysis per se, yet as always, embedded in the work of others.

for interest, further, the first translation of Jerusalem into brazilian portugese is currently completed and will be printed in brazil being translated by Saulo Alencastre ............ i was invited to write an introduction. i was surprised when Saulo let me know some of the existing translations of Blake into portugese:

Manuel Portela.......

Sete Livron Illuminados (Seven Illuminated Books): namely
All Religions Are One
There is No Natural Religion
The Book of Thel
America
Europe
The Book of Los
The Song of Los

Jose Antonio Arentes.........................

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Book of Thel

Saulo writes to tell me of a publishing house, Antigona:

Songs of Innocence
Island on the Moon
Pickering Manuscript

further Saulo recalls at least four translations of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, two of The Songs and two short poem selections.

His translation of Blake's massive epic Jerusalem to my mind is an extraordinary visionary journey and a significant contribution indeed.