A Little More Whiteness, Please

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

> How would an  Idealist sense of Whiteness tie into the artificiality
> that Terrance spoke of a second ago prompting this thread. The world
> of chemical synthesis is one freed from certain natural contingencies,
> from Reality so to speak--at least Reality as we found it.
> 
>         P.


At the end of the 18th century, many Europeans looked upon
America as the initial historical epiphany of a new heaven
upon the earth. Blake believed this, and in 1793, he printed
his first fully symbolic prophetic poem, "America."  Before
"America," Blake wrote his "Visions of the Daughter of
Albion, a vision of the transition of Oothoon ("the soft
soul of America) from Innocence to Experience. 

In "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", where Blake collects
"The Proverbs of Hell" he goes walking through the fires and
he asks Ezekiel "why he ate dung and lay so long on his
right and left sides." Ezekiel replies, "the desire of
raising other men into a perception of the infinite, this
the North American tribes practice." 

Blake, as others did, during those Revolutionary times,
believed that the American Revolution was the first clear
sign of the dawning of Last Judgment. The hero of Blake's
"America" is Orc, a figure who embodies the primordial and
now in America, Revolutionary fire of passion. He is a
Cosmic Rebel who will later become Los in Blake's more
mature poetic Visions. In the "Preludium" to America,
history itself is redefined by the American Revolution. The
Poem's historical and mythical prophetic visions begin when
"The King of England looking westward trembles at the
vision,"
the new morning approaches, graves burst open, and the souls
begin to sing: 


The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave
their
     stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk &
dry'd.
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are
burst; 

Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors
are open.     
And let his wife and children return from the opressors
scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a
fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.  

Orc, or America, is Red and Urizen, or  the Christian God,
is white. 

TBC
TF