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Tangent: William Blake

Posted by Pharmakon on 2024-June-13 17:28:30, Thursday
In reply to Tangent: Robert McElvaine posted by LaudateAgno on 2024-June-12 16:54:06, Wednesday
Thanks for this. My library does not have that McElvaine book (it has others), but I will pursue other sources. Given our respective perspectives, I don't know if I should consider the "disappointingly flaccid... feminism" of the book's second half a virtue or a flaw. Certainly your mention of the "shift towards agriculturally based ways of life" reminded me of Engels' famous thesis (in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State) about the roots of patriarchy.

Meanwhile, and perhaps even more tangentially, SR's invocation of Marx has had me thinking about Blake. While SR is right to chide me for characterizing capitalism as an "invention" (I aimed at those who see feminism rooted in a mythical demand by women to participate in the wonderful world of wage labor), its innovations were certainly subject to contemporary debate. Probably most people viewed them with alarm, which is not to say anything could have prevented them, but a major source of support for them was the rich white men who managed the capitalist class. (Karl Polyani, whom I still haven't read, published what seems to be regarded as the definitive account of this debate in 1944, coining the memorable phrase, "laissez-faire was planned but planning was not.")

For Marx, capitalism was supposed to be a stage, necessary for the development of productive forces so that the standard of living could be raised for all, but to be discarded once it had done its job, like the raft in the Buddhist parable (MN 22.13, linked below).

I suppose Blake's best known contribution to the politics of the industrial revolution is the phrase "dark satanic mills" which appears in his work in the following context:

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.


SR's nick (not, as he has mentioned several times, his first) comes from another Blake poem. I knew this, but hadn't until now thought of that poem in the context of Blake's anti-capitalism (if that's what it is). When I did, it made more sense to me, though perhaps SR had something entirely else in mind:

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.


I had previously taken "dark secret love" to mean boylove, at least for SR. Perhaps I should instead have been thinking about what it meant for Blake.

Looked at with more political eyes, I like the "Rose" poem better, and it now seems to me to echo another Blake poem that has become my favorite:

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.


I am just now noticing, as I post this, that the Sutta with the raft simile also contains a famous Buddhist snake simile. An interesting coincidence, in view of your closing words.

hugzu ;-p


Pharmakon
  • (https site) Simile of the Raft (Majjhima Nikāya 22, Bodhi trans)
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