Om Jerusalem! Almost missed these posts, hidden under that other subject heading.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : It's a wonderful poem, that Jerusalem, S3raphita. It sounds like you know it well, which is rather amazing, since very few people do, unless they are Blake scholars. I lived with it for several years when I was studying Blake. This is the title page: Jerusalem, at the bottom, asleep, waiting for Albion to arise, who will then awaken her. Vala, the woman just above Jerusalem on the left, is awake, of course, since she is Nature, who holds sway while the spiritual value that Jerusalem represents sleeps. Perhaps you know all this. Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion, copy E, c. 1821 (Yale Center for British Art): electronic edition http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=jerusalem.e.illbk.02&java=no http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=jerusalem.e.illbk.02&java=no Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion, copy E, c. ... http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=jerusalem.e.illbk.02&java=no View on www.blakearchive.org http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=jerusalem.e.illbk.02&java=no Preview by Yahoo ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : Re "The idea was that the people who lived in the country first were closest to the "natural laws" of the country": I wonder if there might be something in this. Could it be the case that a country is not simply a patch of real estate but is in some sense a living being in its own right? What I'm thinking of is William Blake's prophetic poem Jerusalem, the Emanation of Albion which tells the story of the fall of Albion, "the Universal Humanity". In the poem, Albion is both a man and a land (Britain). Blake's idea of "the divine Albion" (the British Isles) would have parallels in other places. Can a land modify the behaviour of settlers who move into it - as Europeans did into north America? Is that so far-fetched an idea? Probably - but it does appeal to me.
