Blake and RoyProphets against Empire

1. Possible Blake topics

• Blake’s work (general: titles, years)• Blake’s life• Innocence and Experience (titles of poems)• Blake’s art (illuminations) contemporaries’

reaction to his art• Symbols (the Sun as a symbol of the Soul)• Themes (unease with rationalism?)• Favourite images (angels?)

2. Discuss “Jerusalem” (“And did those feet in ancient time”)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCYG5Z9MXjs&feature=related

• a short poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton a Poem.

• Composed around 1804 -1808• is best known as the hymn "Jerusalem," with

music written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916• Why do you think this hymn is so popular?

Jerusalem• And did those feet in ancient time.

Walk upon England's mountains green:And was the holy Lamb of God,On England's 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 England's green & pleasant Land

3. Innocence and Experience

• “the two contrary states of the human soul”• Songs of Innocence (1789)• Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)

Songs of Innocence

• Introduction• The Shepherd• The Echoing Green• The Lamb• The Little Black Boy• The Blossom• The Chimney Sweeper• The Little Girl lost/ found• The Little Boy lost/found

• Laughing Song• A Cradle Song• The Divine Image• Holy Thursday• Night; Spring• Nurse's Song• Infant Joy• A Dream• On Another's Sorrow

 

Songs of Experience

• Introduction• Earth’s Answer• The Clod and the Pebble• Holy Thursday• The Little Girl Lost/Found• The Chimney Sweeper• Nurse’s Song• The Sick Rose• The Fly • The Tyger• My Pretty Rose Tree• Ah! Sun-Flower

• The Lily• The Garden of Love• The Little Vagabond• London• The Human Abstract • Infant Sorrow• The Angel• A Poison Tree• A Little Boy/ Girl Lost • To Tirzah• The Schoolboy • The Voice of the Ancient

Bard

4. William Blake, ”my favourite poet”:fetishizing (?) Blake

• The Dead Man (available in the Central library)

http://ramhornd.blogspot.com/2011/01/blake-dead-man.html• fetishize, fetishise [ˈfɛtɪʃˌaɪz] = to be

excessively or irrationally devoted to (an object, activity, etc.)

PS I love you• you were so cute, trying to impress me with William Blake and all your grand plans. I

had no idea what you were talking about... ...but I couldn't help loving the way you talked.

• "I must create a... " Something. "... or be enslaved by another man's... " Something. Wait, "I will not... I will not reason or compare. My business is to create…”

• - Something. Oh, God. • - Did you just make that up then? No, it's William Blake, but I completely screwed it up. • No, you didn't, you made it better. I understood it. I didn't have a clue, actually.• All I know is, if you don't figure out the "something," you'll just stay ordinary. And it doesn't

matter if it's a work of art, or a taco, or a pair of socks. Just create something new and there it is.

• And it's you, out in the world, outside of you. And you can look at it, or hear it, or read it, or feel it... ...and you know a little bit more about you. A little bit more than anybody else does. Does that make any sense at all?

• Yeah. You're saying you want to paint socks. • Maybe. • I loved you right then and there. • http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/a1/ps-i-love-you-script.html

Blake and Sting

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScjBaZ0_ZU

• Sting, ‘Send your love’ - re-writes the beginning of “Auguries of Innocence”

• See also “William Blake Singing for England,” especially the attachment of people like Kathleen Raine, Tom Paulin, Jah Wobble (John Wardle), and Adrian Mitcell

(BBC Documentary -VCR in the Central Library)

Blake and popular culture~Indie Blake~

• http://www.indiegogo.com/William-Blakes-Songs-of-Innocence-and-Experience-the-CD

5. London: Structure and meaning

• How many quatrains? • Basic rhyme scheme?• Overall meaning. Main ideas. • What feelings does the poet convey?

Key words

• "charter'd"

• "mark" Can you find a synonym? Is there a difference between your synonym and Blake's word?

• What are the "manacles"? Why are the

"manacles"  "mind-forg'd"?

Aural imagery

• stretches the impact of the poem on the reader's senses. Example: "every cry... In every voice".

• What is the purpose served by aural imagery? • humanises the people who he is trying to

generate sympathy for?

Alliteration

• the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words and/or phrases to reach a certain effect.

• examples of alliterations in "London"?

Anaphora

• Rhetorical device: repeating a sequence of words at the beginning of neighbouring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis.

Examples?What is the effect of using these repetitions?

6. Choose a Blake poem and talk about it. “The Voice of the Ancient Bard”

Youth of delight, come hither,And see the opening morn,Image of truth new born.Doubt is fled, & clouds of reason,Dark disputes& artful teasing.Folly is an artful maze,Tangled roots perplex her ways.How many have fallen there!They stumble all night over bones of the dead,And feel they know not what but care,And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

NB Dr. Donald Kerr would be delighted if you used Special Collections resources.

7. Quiz

• If you wish you can write a Blake quiz for the rest of the class

• E.g: http://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/Literature/William-Blake-The-Prophet-Poet-141731.html

8.Blake facsimile

• Latin "made alike”• a copy or reproduction of an old book, manuscript, map, art print, or other

item of historical value that is as true to the original source as possible. • replicates the source as accurately as possible in terms of scale, color,

condition, and other material qualities. • For books and manuscripts: a complete copy of all pages; an incomplete

copy is a "partial facsimile". • used by scholars to research a source that they do not have access to

otherwise and by museums and archives for museum and media preservation

• sold commercially, accompanied by a volume of commentary• Limited editions (500–2,000) copies, and cost the equivalent of a few

thousand NZD

9. Roy and Blake. Discuss similarities and dissimilarities

• Themes: edges, boundaries, and limits: crossing boundaries (eg of race “The Little Black Boy”

Uneasy with “meta-narratives” (big stories, all-encompassing official narratives that do not consider the “small things/people”)

• The ideologies of the Enlightenment (rationalism), of power, of (British) colonialism

Prophets against Empire• considered “strategic threats”

• of caste: Velutha-Ammu

• the ideology of power, of (American/corporate) colonialism

“the greater common good” http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/arundhati_roy_vs._india/

Blake & Roy (cont.)

• Untraditional (unorthodox) Christians• Lent a voice to the under-priviliged• Activist artists • Preoccupation for the well-crafted phrase“every word and every letter is studied and put into its fit place”

(Blake, Jerusalem)

• Reflected on their art & believe that the mission of the artist is to change the world

Roy’s article “Not Again”https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~peer/arundhatiRoy.html• Had an impact on popular culture – both have thousands of

friends on facebook

Compare Blake’s and Roy’s “agendas” Similarities? Differences?

Blake:

I rest not from my great task!To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal EyesOf Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity

• We have to lose our terror of the mundane. We have to use our skills and imagination and our art, to re-create the rhythms of the endless crisis of normality, and in doing so, expose the policies and processes that make ordinary things - food, water, shelter, and dignity - such a distant dream for ordinary people.

Blake’s hope, or Imagination, Images, and Happiness

• “If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought, if he could Enter into Noahs Rainbow or into his bosom or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these Images of wonder which always intreats him to leave mortal things as he must know then would he arise from his Grave then would he meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy” (Blake, A Descriptive Catalogue. “Vision of the Last Judgment”)

Roy’s self-proclaimed aim as novelist and political activist

• To try to help people understand what is being done to them

• …, by contrast, try to prevent this (The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile 2004: 120)

• To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.

• To be able to communicate to simple people what is happening in the world

10. Arundhati Roy: writer and activist (or the writer as activist)• We have to lose our terror of the mundane. We have

to use our skills and imagination and our art, to re-create the rhythms of the endless crisis of normality, and in doing so, expose the policies and processes that make ordinary things - food, water, shelter, and dignity - such a distant dream for ordinary people.

(Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, 2004)

Roy’s political manifestoes.

• Roy reads out from ‘Come September’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbZMUInKDGI• To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance.

To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget." - Arundhati Roy, Come September

• What is Roy saying here?• http://www.weroy.org/

Roy and Politics

Sardar Sarovar Project-the Narmada dam project•-displace half a million people, with little or no compensation and other benefits•donated her Booker prize money as well as royalties from her books on the project to the Narmada Bachao Andolan. •Franny Armstrong's Drowned Out, a 2002 documentary about the project. •criticised as "maligning Gujarat" by Congress and BJP (Bharatya Janata - National, conservative) leaders in the state.

US foreign policy, the War in Afghanistan

• In a 2001 opinion piece in a British newspaper, Roy responded to the US military invasion of Afghanistan, finding fault with the argument that this war would be retaliation for the September 11 attacks. She disputes U.S. claims of being a peaceful and freedom-loving nation, listing China and nineteen 3rd World "countries that America has been at war with - and bombed - since the second world war", as well as previous U.S. support for the Taliban movement and support for the Northern Alliance (whose "track record is not very different from the Taliban's").

Roy’s other campaigns

India's nuclear weapons•“The End of Imagination” (1998), a critique of the Indian government's nuclear policies.

- published in The Cost of Living (1999)•Criticism of IsraelIn August 2006, Roy, along with Noam Chomsky signed a letter in The Guardian called the 2006 Lebanon War a "war crime" and accused Israel of "state terror."

2008 Mumbai attacks

• the November 2008 Mumbai attacks cannot be seen in isolation

• wider issues in the region's history and society such as widespread poverty:

• the Partition of India, the atrocities committed during the 2002 Gujarat violence, and the ongoing conflict in Kashmir.

• Her remarks were strongly criticised by Salman Rushdie: condemned her for linking the Mumbai attacks with Kashmir and economic injustice against Muslims in India.

Views on the Naxals (communists)

• Roy criticised government's armed actions against the Maoists

• "war on the poorest people in the country". According to her, the government has "abdicated its responsibility to the people" and launched the offensive against Naxals to aid the corporations with whom it has signed MoUs.

Field notes on Democracy

• Hope• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkTsE8fU1KY&feature=fv

wrel

Roy against India? Colonising nature? Current issues and ‘Slumdog Millionaire’

Will Roy write fiction again?• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3-ZSlO4554&feature=rela

ted

Australian interview

India’s greatest security threat?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnTS9gHCZoI

• Any connection to Blake?

11. Roy in pop art

• Pranava Prakash Pic/Mid Day: way of protesting against Roy’s supporting Naxals and Kashmiri separatists

• http://www.mid-day.com/news/2011/mar/030311-news-delhi-Arundhati-Roy-artist-paints-nude-painting-with-Osama.htm

12. Power, Stories and Story-telling

• Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world.  I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so.  That it's actually the other way around.  Stories cull writers from the world.  Stories reveal themselves to us.  The public narrative, the private narrative -- they colonize us.  They commission us.  They insist on being told.  Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling.  For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me.  Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.

Power and powerlessness

• The theme of much of what I write, fiction as well as non-fiction, is the relationship between power and powerlessness and the endless, circular conflict they're engaged in.  John Berger, that most wonderful writer, once wrote: 'Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one'.  There can never be a single story.  There are only ways of seeing. 

Story-telling

• So when I tell a story, I tell it not as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another, but as a story-teller who wants to share her way of seeing.  Though it might appear otherwise, my writing is not really about nations and histories, it's about power.  About the paranoia and ruthlessness of power.  About the physics of power.  I BELIEVE THAT THE ACCUMULATION OF VAST UNFETTERED POWER BY A STATE OR A COUNTRY, A CORPORATION OR AN INSTITUTION -- OR EVEN AN INDIVIDUAL, A SPOUSE, FRIEND OR SIBLING -- REGARDLESS OF IDEOLOGY, RESULTS IN EXCESSES.