Almost finished with Caleb, but at present it's difficult to find time to breathe, never mind read.
Now feeling a yearning to drown in Blake - but this is a familiar temptation.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Dissent
Blake's The Great Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun adorns the cover of my World's Classics edition of Caleb Williams. What a great choice by the designer. Godwin may be clumsy but his analysis of power and the tradition of dissent fundamental to that analysis is essentially Blakean. What an honour it is to be able to think of oneself in relation to that tradition - the best thing about being English I can think of. In fact, the only thing about being English that makes me feel some vague sense of pride.
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What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
Sound familiar?
:)
It took a yankee to see what was of value in English history. Old Possum's at his considerable best here.
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