Category: Links

Reason

Jeff

Friendly Observations

I must warn against an opposite error—namely, that if Reason, as distinguished from Prudence, consists merely in knowing that Black cannot be White—or when a man has a clear conception of an inclosed figure, and another equally clear conception of a straight line, his Reason teaches him that these two conceptions are incompatible in the same object, i.e. that two straight lines cannot include a space—the said Reason must be a very insignificant faculty. But a moment’s steady self-reflection will shew us, that in the simple determination “Black is not White”—or, “that two straight lines cannot include a space”— all the powers are implied, that distinguish Man from Animals—first, the power of reflection—2d. of comparison—3d. and therefore of suspension of the mind—4th. therefore of a controlling will, and the power of acting from notions, instead of mere images exciting appetites; from motives, and not from mere dark instincts.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Locke and Blake

Jeff

Wood s lot uncovered Romanticism on the Net.

Might I further suggest Romantic Circles, which has published an article written by my mentor, Dr. R. Paul Yoder, on the language philosophies of John Locke and William Blake:

Unlocking Language: Self-Similarity in Blake’s Jerusalem

Blake’s system differs from Locke’s in significant ways. First, it accepts, indeed insists upon a human standard, the standard of the human form rendered divine by the incarnation. Blake does not seek to remedy the obscurity to which language is “naturally liable” as Locke puts it. Instead, he sees this obscurity as having been appropriated by the Savior for the work of redemption when he took on the human form. Second, Blake’s system is not based on an atomistic object-reference language in which one must always use the same word for the same idea.

Sometimes that grain of sand is a whole world; sometimes that one man is a multitude. As is so often the case for Blake, it all depends on perspective, the expansion or contraction of the organs of perception. And third, Blake’s system respects the integrity of the minute particulars; it does not celebrate the general terms that Locke says are so essential to human thought. (21)

Generalities, though essential, are not all there is to theory. This issue, from March 2001, dealt with Romanticism and complexity. There is an odd relationship between complexity and obscurity. I like Yoder’s take on “fractal self-similarity” in all aspects of Blake’s work. The more deeply I studied Blake, the further my jaw dropped to the floor with his mastery of the manipulation of a reader. Most authors that write on Blake tend to play a similar game, insisting that Blake must be read as obscure and difficult to unravel. That’s what keeps the Blake industry in business.

It depends on your perspective, I suppose. A great deal of Blake’s work is frightfully simple— though fractured through levels of reference that seem to recede into infinity. Once you “get it” it’s actually fairly easy.

Baudelaire in Babylon

Jeff

No Baudelaires in Babylon

We’re scribbling hostages to fortune, and there is no guarantee that anything will refrain from drying up and fluttering away. Our stuff might not even stick around long enough to prove our efforts more than vain to our own nephews. Traces remain of neither Nero’s Fall of Ilium nor Claudius’ histories of Carthage and Etruria, and these men were better placed even than Mark Helprin, if that can be imagined. I have a great uncle whose novels were made into Clark Gable and Alan Ladd movies, who lived like a king on the Riviera, and even abebooks.com can’t locate his titles or his name. And, remember, unlike us, these guys used to be in hard copy in a big way.

. . .

We are all Juvenals, and the web is our Bum-Fuck Egypt. The web’s our Patmos, and we share it with the ranting epileptoid Sons o’ Thunder of our time, our beloved fellow deportees, who dare to write the truth about, for example, America’s Reichstag fire last September. We’re saints producing and propagating the apocalypses of the day, but also the good news of the future. We’re Baudelaires kicked, safely and gratefully, out of Babylon.

—Tom Bradley