whiteangel
Registered User

So, how went the exam. I am reading Count Lautreamont books, hehe, now he is the evil Blake...

Heh, i'l decide when I get to it
;]

yeap, it is great, his fame should be bigger than the white whale (Melville)...

oo sounds like a good read.....
I may read it after i finish reading Ian McEwan's books...

I have no idea, I think even revolutionary guys like Blake are rooted in their universes. He could not imagine what kind of cultural relation united states would develop or the politically correct notion. I think a good evidence of that is how writers after him keep following this thread. I often see on Blake an strugle to find a freedom, and this may be because he is eager for future, but not there. Devil's side, or the mistakes of present.
Interesting read (as Herman Melville can be). He had a lot with Blake, perhaps a good analogy. Melville was between the white supremacy of XIX century and a deep admiration of wildness and the natives (Mostly related to his sea travel). In this book, a big allegory, the evil is represented by a black slave, who is at sametime atractive to the european captain who is giving us a narrative. Short story, from the unreliable narrator point of view, with a deep psychological horror, in the style Poe or Henry James would like. Melville would say a hundred times africans are inferior to europeans (Or north-americans) but his admiration for them (present also in Moby Dick) would allow a turn of interpretation and analogy with Black boy poem.

At Blakes times at may have been the norm but do you think for Blake it was? Ofcourse not. So we asses the poem as coming from Blake- he was the creator not his times- if anything he was indifferent from his time ... "why was I born with a different face from the rest of my Kind" [Blake quote]

and no I haven't read it.

What I mean as backward reading is how some works are reanalysed by the new notions we have. Today, placing a black subservent boy is certainly shocking, at Blake time, it was maybe meaningless. So, he could not be thinking of anything with real vallue there... Of course, it is more credit to him, since it allows living interpretations today.
Have you read Herman Melville's Benito Cereno?

If you re-read my last post you may see that I did not see it as a nasty reading but a rather Blakian method to evoke sympathy. Although there is just as much evidence to suggest that it can be- it is not backwards reading but simply a literal interpretation.

What I mean with hypocrisy is him suggesting that anything related to slavery. It can be that he saw subservience as a good trait before good, and not before (White-european) - the imagery is always improtant - the black (dark) who is good inside is, i think, more important than the social vallue of african criticism. If we, today, reckonize it as nasty - itis backwards reading, pretty much like what is did with Mark Twain or Herman Mevlille. I do not think the theme is showing the african as bad, no more than showing the european is flawed despite his light (Or civilization, which make him unable to bow before god, which is probally where he is arming his irony: we europeans are superior to africans, so be it)...

He wishes to be loved by him. It is a fact of the poem no?
The black boy does welcome subservient, but do you not see that that is typical Blake- hypocrisy or rather mockery.....for in this subservience is the fact that he is stronger - he can bear the heat. Even in language he is subservient "English child" "black boy"....notice capitalisation of English child - it is the "unpleasantness" which T.S.Eliots speaks of - the honesty in Blakes poetry is too unpleasant - his hypocrisy is far too calculated- e.g. the poem is in innocence- is it in actuality innocent? of course not the theme it self does not allow it to be and yet our poet had forced it there.