William Blake and Gerrit Gong

[USU78]

Elder Gong, speaking of creative acts, specifically his painting alongside a more experienced painter, noted:  "There is joy in imagining, learning, doing worthwhile new things."  And he references remarks by Weepy Hal Eyring, who stated that "his artistic meditations as motivated by 'a feeling of love,' including 'the love of a Creator who expects His children to become like Him -- to create and to build.'"

Creative acts are, or ought to be, holy, as we are in the moment of creation aping Him Who created all.  William Blake understood this as well, when he notes that the Heavenly Child of G-d, Who is also the Lamb, both weeps for joy at and enjoins our engagement in creation, in Piping Down the Valleys Wild:

 

Quote

 

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again."
So I piped: he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe,
Sing thy songs of happy cheer."
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read."
So he vanished from my sight,
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

 

But it isn't enough for us merely to pipe or sing, even when our music and our songs adorn G-d's creation:  our creations need to be communicated in a form that every child of G-d can enjoy.  Through the written word.  Even though we stain the communication and our implements are rural, cheap and inadequate.  If we can bring even one of G-d's children joy, we have to some degree fulfilled the measure of our creation.

And when the ascended Child of G-d calls us to create, to sing, to play for our peers, after the manner of their language, we'd best play. 

Mark?  Whatcha think?

 

[Kevin Christensen]

I'm very fond of William Blake, and wished he'd lived another few years and read the Book of Mormon.  Blake used to write interesting comments in the margins of books he read, and I imagine he would have had some interesting responses.

Quote

Obey thou the Words of the Inspired Man! . . .

The Negation is the Spectre, the Reasoning Power in Man. . . .

To cast off the idiot Questioner who is always questioning.

But never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin

Silently plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave;

Who publishes doubt & calls it knowledge; whose Science is Despair,

Whose pretense to knowledge is Envy: whose whole Science is

To Destroy the wisdom of ages to gratify ravenous Envy

William Blake, “Milton,” in Blake’s Poetry and Designs (New York: Norton, 1979), 303-4 (plate 40, lines 29, 34; plate 41, lines 12-17).

Quote

Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.

William Blake, “There Is No Natural Religion,” in Blake’s Poetry and Designs, 15, punctuation added.

He had a good handle on themes that recur on our discussion boards.

Quote

What is now proved was once only imagin’d

William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[USU78]

2 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I'm very fond of William Blake, and wished he'd lived another few years and read the Book of Mormon.  Blake used to write interesting comments in the margins of books he read, and I imagine he would have had some interesting responses.

William Blake, “Milton,” in Blake’s Poetry and Designs (New York: Norton, 1979), 303-4 (plate 40, lines 29, 34; plate 41, lines 12-17).

William Blake, “There Is No Natural Religion,” in Blake’s Poetry and Designs, 15, punctuation added.

He had a good handle on themes that recur on our discussion boards.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

The era Joseph was born into, as well as its immediate antecedent, evidence to this here piper that the Child in the cloud spoke to more than merely one  ... and that He wept for joy at that now lost but magical era's productions.  And, no, old buddy old pal, that weren't no "FWIW."  That were a main course.

Edited November 27, 2018 by USU78
sloppy fingers

[CV75]

57 minutes ago, USU78 said:

we are in the moment of creation aping Him Who created all.

This brought me great joy!

[USU78]

2 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I'm very fond of William Blake, and wished he'd lived another few years and read the Book of Mormon. 

Kevin, did you ever read Scott Card's Seventh Son series of fantasy novels?  In them he posits a different timeline, where Blake survives, emigrates to America, and becomes an itinerant singer and talespinner  ...  as well as a companion to the JSJr stand-in.

[Kevin Christensen]

8 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Kevin, did you ever read Scott Card's Seventh Son series of fantasy novels?  In them he posits a different timeline, where Blake survives, emigrates to America, and becomes an itinerant singer and talespinner  ...  as well as a companion to the JSJr stand-in.

Yes, I have read them all, and most of his other books.  Seventh Son is my personal favorite of Card's novels, and The Bully and the Beast my favorite shorter work.  I liked his use of Taleswapper/Blake, occasionally letting fly with apt proverbs from Blake's fascinating The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.  I've met Scott a few times over the years, having sold him a short story for his Dragons of Darkness Anthology back in 1979 or so.   Last time I met Scott, over ten years ago at a signing in Pittsburgh, he hooked me up with Kathy Kidd at Meridian.  That led to my having a dozen or so essays there, till the recession hit, and Kidd was let go.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[USU78]

52 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Yes, I have read them all, and most of his other books.  Seventh Son is my personal favorite of Card's novels, and The Bully and the Beast my favorite shorter work.  I liked his use of Taleswapper/Blake, occasionally letting fly with apt proverbs from Blake's fascinating The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.  I've met Scott a few times over the years, having sold him a short story for his Dragons of Darkness Anthology back in 1979 or so.   Last time I met Scott, over ten years ago at a signing in Pittsburgh, he hooked me up with Kathy Kidd at Meridian.  That led to my having a dozen or so essays there, till the recession hit, and Kidd was let go.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

I figured you had.  Have you been following Bukowski's and my conversations hereabouts on aesthetics and Mormonism's place in the intellectual life of the Romantic period?

[Robert F. Smith]

I especially love Blake's "Jerusalem," which has been adopted as the unofficial anthem of England:

 

 

[clarkgoble]

10 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I'm very fond of William Blake, and wished he'd lived another few years and read the Book of Mormon.  Blake used to write interesting comments in the margins of books he read, and I imagine he would have had some interesting responses.

I loved the William Blake character in the first two volumes of Card's Alvin Maker series. There he's a bit of a Gandalf figure who is the Joseph Smith character's mentor into the magic. I always thought that after Card left that style and the Blake character in volume three that the series went downhill fast.

[MiserereNobis]

Wow. I did my honors thesis as an undergraduate on William Blake but did not know that he was honored among some in the LDS church. Please don't fault my research -- I was analyzing his uses of circles in Songs of Innocence and Experience and connecting them to gestalt theory, so I wasn't looking into who was influenced by him.

He's a great soul, for sure.

As a teen, I read Ender's Game and loved it, but have not read anything else by Card. Perhaps I'll check out Seventh Son. Thanks.

Romanticism has been and is a great part of my spiritual and intellectual life. It's rebellious yet retentive, subversive yet spiritual, loud yet quiet. It thrives off of paradoxes. Quite a time, indeed, for all the arts.

Edited November 28, 2018 by MiserereNobis

[clarkgoble]

13 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

Wow. I did my honors thesis as an undergraduate on William Blake but did not know that he was honored among some in the LDS church. Please don't fault my research -- I was analyzing his uses of circles in Songs of Innocence and Experience and connecting them to gestalt theory, so I wasn't looking into who was influenced by him.

He's a great soul, for sure.

As a teen, I read Ender's Game and loved it, but have not read anything else by Card. Perhaps I'll check out Seventh Son. Thanks.

Romanticism has been and is a great part of my spiritual and intellectual life. It's rebellious yet retentive, subversive yet spiritual, loud yet quiet. It thrives off of paradoxes. Quite a time, indeed, for all the arts.

I think Seventh Son and Red Prophet are among Card's best works. I really wish the series had continued as strong.

Blake is an interesting figure in a Mormon context and I understand why Card utilized him. In a certain sense Blakes making London into a kind of New Jerusalem parallels some of Joseph Smith's actions of seeing Jews here in American, the New Jerusalem in Missouri, and the Garden of Eden in Missouri as well. Likewise some of the more gnostic aspects of Blakes work even non-Mormons like Harold Bloom see the connection. Bloom sees Smith through a lens of a genius who takes Kabbalistic and gnostic elements reworking them in an uniquely American fashion much akin to Blake. Speaking of Smith and Blake Bloom wrote the following:

• William Blake wrote that all religion consists in choosing forms of worship from poetic tales and men thus forgot that all deities reside in the human breast. I am certain—as prophets, seers, and revelators go—Smith was closer to Blake than Hinckley is.

I don't buy the "Smith as poetic gnostic genius" view of Bloom obviously. Although I can perhaps through Bloom understand a bit those Mormons who stay with the faith but see all Joseph's work as fiction. 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by clarkgoble

[MiserereNobis]

25 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I think Seventh Son and Red Prophet are among Card's best works. I really wish the series had continued as strong.

Blake is an interesting figure in a Mormon context and I understand why Card utilized him. In a certain sense Blakes making London into a kind of New Jerusalem parallels some of Joseph Smith's actions of seeing Jews here in American, the New Jerusalem in Missouri, and the Garden of Eden in Missouri as well. Likewise some of the more gnostic aspects of Blakes work even non-Mormons like Harold Bloom see the connection. Bloom sees Smith through a lens of a genius who takes Kabbalistic and gnostic elements reworking them in an uniquely American fashion much akin to Blake. Speaking of Smith and Blake Bloom wrote the following:

• William Blake wrote that all religion consists in choosing forms of worship from poetic tales and men thus forgot that all deities reside in the human breast. I am certain—as prophets, seers, and revelators go—Smith was closer to Blake than Hinckley is.

I don't buy the "Smith as poetic gnostic genius" view of Bloom obviously. Although I can perhaps through Bloom understand a bit those Mormons who stay with the faith but see all Joseph's work as fiction. 

 

 

Wow yet again. That was quite an interesting read; thank you for sharing it. I felt Bloom was representative of the best of academia. He was objective yet understanding, stance-based yet open. His comparison of Joseph with the modern church felt right on from my point-of-view, yet he obviously held respect for both. He implied a disbelief in Joseph's claims, yet placed him alongside Emerson and Whitman (and just for emphasis, two American greats!). I think he was quite fair in his assessment.

Thanks again for sharing.

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by MiserereNobis

[mfbukowski]

11 hours ago, USU78 said:

 

Mark?  Whatcha think?

 

Oh my, don't get me started on William Blake, genius, prophet, and precursor of Joseph, a follower of Swedenborg and arguably the author of British Romanticism that arguably influenced Joseph in one way of seeing it, or in another way, was the John the Baptist of the Restoration.

In my book perhaps the greatest human mind ever.

Whenever I think of Blake I think of John Dewey and especially "Art as Experience"- the source of many of my ideas and love of art as the ultimate human activity- not "fine art" but creation itself.  Fine art becomes the conceptualization of all other human activity as I see it-  it makes creativity abstract and self-conscious.  Just as philosophy became non-representational so did the "fine arts"- jumping off the walls into performance pieces and even back to cubism where art was seen as a genuine CREATIVE act instead of representation of a reality which cannot be represented.  That's why I use Picasso's self portrait in a soft cubist style as my avatar- it is the CREATION of oneself - not the representation of oneself.

Romanticism really in attitude is Alma 32, turning all "reason" on it's head and making "that which is sweet" into truth!

Alma is really the romantization of reason tearing itself down to it's most basic level, noting that "reason" itself is what is sweet to us- really showing the value of reason as emotion.  It is about learning how to survey land and build houses and the invention of math as an activity which is "sweet" because now you have a house and a community instead of a hut or sleeping in a tree.

And curing cancer when it happens is "sweet" for all humanity.   So what is "sweet" is the goal of all science and is the motivation for all that is rational and good.

But this is all romanticism- this is all Blake and this is all the gospel

And the art!!  Oh my gosh!

God with his compass measuring the heavens and with it the "measure of man" .  Elohim creating Adam with the snake already part of the natural man, drawn from the waters of chaos, organized by intelligence as the force which makes life itself "sweet" and that which grows into a tree of wisdom.

All of what we call "rationality" is the creation of art which makes life "sweet" to us.

What motivates all human activity?  The search for truth- that which is sweet and useful to us, makes life sweeter and gives us peace.  That is Romanticism- turning rationality into the search for the sweet tree that grows within us and bears sweet fruit.

Anyway- I am babbling.   

[Bernard Gui]

46 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

It is about learning how to survey land and build houses and the invention of math as an activity which is "sweet" because now you have a house and a community instead of a hut or sleeping in a tree.

And turning trees into harps, pianos, violins, guitars, baseball bats, vases, beds, chairs, desks, homes, ships, churches, ......

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by Bernard Gui

[Kevin Christensen]

16 hours ago, USU78 said:

I figured you had.  Have you been following Bukowski's and my conversations hereabouts on aesthetics and Mormonism's place in the intellectual life of the Romantic period?

Not closely.  Though back when I was at the University of Utah, 18th Branch, I remember a discussion with a member who talked about how his conversion was triggered by his study of the Romantics, and a very strong sense that God was definitely up to something big at the time, if he could only find out what it was.  It wasn't until later, when I changed my major to English at SJSU, and read Blake and Emerson and Whitman and others, and got a handle on what he was talking about.   And I've noticed Eugene England's use of Blake and Romanticism.  The notion of doing a close study of Blake and Mormonism has been on my bucket list, and retirement is still, economically speaking, at least six years away.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[MiserereNobis]

For those who aren't aware, there is the William Blake archive: www.blakearchive.org

One of its great features is that you can compare various "editions" of his illuminated books and see how his changes to the coloring affect the overall tone and meaning of a poem. It's also nice to get a good transcript of his writing -- sometimes (like in Jerusalem) deciphering his script can be difficult.

I'm actually starting the British Romantics today with my AP English classes. We begin with Wordsworth (today it is "London, 1802") to get a grasp on the overall concepts, then hit Coleridge and then on to the next generation: Shelley, Keats, Byron. I end with Blake because he is easier for the kids to grasp once they've had a good tour of Romanticism.

Along the way we study neo-Platonism to understand some of the philosophical underpinnings.

It's a great way to end the fall semester and I'm excited about it

 

 

[The Nehor]

12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I especially love Blake's "Jerusalem," which has been adopted as the unofficial anthem of England:

 

 

That was my mission anthem. Still sometimes makes me tear up.

[mfbukowski]

8 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

And turning trees into harps, pianos, violins, guitars, baseball bats, vases, beds, chairs, desks, homes, ships, churches, ......

 

Building a world from matter unorganized through human intelligence. !

I already knew that philosophically through my study of Romanticism and it's precursors, but to find a CHURCH??

Seeing God as an infinitely perfected HUMAN INTELLIGENCE?

Whom we mystic/fideists/non representationalists could talk to??

I surrendered. No other choice was possible.

Then God whacked me with an Experience.

Representationalism in culture has been dead in both art and philosophy for 200 years, waiting for us as a church, and here we waste our time talking about the historicity of the book of Abraham or Noah's flood?

Sometimes I think God looks down at us and just shakes his head. 

Representationalism in art is the equivalent of Correspondence in philosophy.

Both are dead concepts and here we still are immersed in them.

Shame on us.

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Kevin Christensen]

1 hour ago, MiserereNobis said:

For those who aren't aware, there is the William Blake archive: www.blakearchive.org

One of its great features is that you can compare various "editions" of his illuminated books and see how his changes to the coloring affect the overall tone and meaning of a poem. It's also nice to get a good transcript of his writing -- sometimes (like in Jerusalem) deciphering his script can be difficult.

I'm actually starting the British Romantics today with my AP English classes. We begin with Wordsworth (today it is "London, 1802") to get a grasp on the overall concepts, then hit Coleridge and then on to the next generation: Shelley, Keats, Byron. I end with Blake because he is easier for the kids to grasp once they've had a good tour of Romanticism.

Along the way we study neo-Platonism to understand some of the philosophical underpinnings.

It's a great way to end the fall semester and I'm excited about it

Incidentally, I wrote a paper for my Senior Honors English class at SJSU called "The Structure of Poetic Revolutions."  I compared the reasons given to justify new forms and subjects for poetry offered by Wordsworth in the 1805 Lyrical Ballads and Whitman's introduction to the 1856 Leaves of Grass  to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Turned out, they apply the same value-based arguments.  Blew the other student's minds.  Of course, I was a lot older than the rest of them.

I ought to dust that one off and publish it somewhere.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited November 28, 2018 by Kevin Christensen

[clarkgoble]

12 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Incidentally, I wrote a paper for my Senior Honors English class at SJSU called "The Structure of Poetic Revolutions."  I compared the reasons given to justify new forms and subjects for poetry offered by Wordsworth in the 1805 Lyrical Ballads and Whitman's introduction to the 1856 Leaves of Grass given to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Turned out, they apply the same value-based arguments.  Blew the other student's minds.  Of course, I was a lot older than the rest of them.

Many people surprisingly don't see things like physics as poetics yet they are - especially mathematics and logic. There's a sense they're cold and purely "logical" in the sense of being the opposite of poetry. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

[mfbukowski]

15 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Incidentally, I wrote a paper for my Senior Honors English class at SJSU called "The Structure of Poetic Revolutions."  I compared the reasons given to justify new forms and subjects for poetry offered by Wordsworth in the 1805 Lyrical Ballads and Whitman's introduction to the 1856 Leaves of Grass given to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Turned out, they apply the same value-based arguments.  Blew the other student's minds.  Of course, I was a lot older than the rest of them.

I ought to dust that one off and publish it somewhere.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Oh absolutely!

To me poetry is the highest human activity because it explores truths which ironically cannot be said- and yet through symbolism and metaphor and all else it brings as tools to the table-  it allows one to reconstruct in one's own mind something close to the thoughts of the author.

In that way it is like music- which is non-verbal direct emotional communication- yet to me it does not contain conceptual information.  Poetry can do both.

But I am sure my dear friend Bernard will have a lot to say about that. 

 

[MiserereNobis]

24 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Incidentally, I wrote a paper for my Senior Honors English class at SJSU called "The Structure of Poetic Revolutions."  I compared the reasons given to justify new forms and subjects for poetry offered by Wordsworth in the 1805 Lyrical Ballads and Whitman's introduction to the 1856 Leaves of Grass given to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Turned out, they apply the same value-based arguments.  Blew the other student's minds.  Of course, I was a lot older than the rest of them.

I ought to dust that one off and publish it somewhere.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

That sounds great! 

[mfbukowski]

15 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Many people surprisingly don't see things like physics as poetics yet they are - especially mathematics and logic. There's a sense they're cold and purely "logical" in the sense of being the opposite of poetry. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Which we know because it is "sweet" 

And yet we still have the tacit assumption of "correspondence" to some unknowable reality.  Totally inconsistent

Edited November 28, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

3 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Which we know because it is "sweet" 

And yet we still have the tacit assumption of "correspondence" to some unknowable reality.  Totally inconsistent

Reality is only unknowable to the degree it's not in experience. The reality manifesting itself in experience is by definition knowable.

[MiserereNobis]

14 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Many people surprisingly don't see things like physics as poetics yet they are - especially mathematics and logic. There's a sense they're cold and purely "logical" in the sense of being the opposite of poetry. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I read an interesting book that was simply a compilation of writings about mysticism by the founders of modern physics. It's intriguing that all of these Nobel prize winning scientists (you know the list: Heisenberg, Einstein, Plank, Schroedinger, etc) believed in mysticism in one form or another and had had mystical experiences.

It's called "Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists."