Re: hmm....birthdays...

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Wed, 10 Feb 1999 13:36:38 +1100 

Kudos to you, Jim! I think I've already gotten in trouble for daring to
sideswipe ol' Wordsworth on this list but I thoroughly stand by your
opinion on Blake as the superior poet, and, to a lesser extent Coleridge
(it was Wordsworth, not Coleridge who decided to put those fu- okay those
godawful (: - glosses in the later editions of `Rime of The Ancient
Mariner') - hey, he wasn't even *in* a churchyard when he wrote Tintern
Abbey! That's just unforgivable (: Seriously, Wordsworth has all the marks
of a section man and Blake an uber-Salinger. In fact I believe I read or
heard some very interesting stuff about Blake's influence on Salinger (at
very least he mentioned him in that fabled list of favourite authors) -
well, think about it. We have an intensely religious, intensely spiritual
man who marries his own very idiosyncratic view of spirituality with his
equally induvidualistic work - and whom everyone regards as being more than
a bit mad. Has anyone heard anything else along these lines?

Scrubbing the f-you's off the wall before Holden can get to them (:

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST http://www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest

> Thank GOD Wordsworth wasn't the only English Romantic Poet :)  I always
> thought he was Up to Here in Feces.  I much prefer Blake -- more honest,
> more real, more thoughtful, plenty of ideas without idealism.
> 
> Blake also provides a good paradigm for the growth out of innocence. 
> While we do pass through experience (disillusionment, selfishness, etc)
> we do not have to stay there.  We can enter into the Old John state,
> where we attain an informed innocence once again.  If you want to give
> Wordsworth some credibility, I would say we pass out of a "body-centered"
> experience into something less "physically" passionate into something
> more thoughtful, directed, and "effectively" passionate.  
> 
> In short, we know what we want, value, and how to serve those ends in the
> real world. We accept limitations and work within them; and when we're
> really experienced, we use them to our advantage.  In short, we learn how
> to win and how not to defeat ourselves.
> 
> At least, we CAN know :)  We can also stay Stupid our entire lives...
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> <<Wordsworth was (I think) the one who said that genius is childhood
> rediscovered at will; while I don't wholly subscribe to this early
> Victorian form of child-worship I have barely found anything to refute it
> so far. Maybe this is an early-20s type of thing. Sometimes I wonder if
> and
> when I become a parent (hopefully many years from now) it will all
> change,
> but I fear, as I have found with so many things, that the anticipation
> doesn't match the fulfilment.
> 
> Camille>>
> 
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