ENGLISH BLAKE & MARXIST AESTHETICS --- REPLIES

[Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

To Chris B.:

>I am sorry that I do not know the Robeson version.

I have some old Robeson albums, but I think the most easily
locatable Robeson version of "Jerusalem" can be found on the
disc/tape THE ESSENTIAL PAUL ROBESON.

>to try to understand separately 1) Blake's political
>position.  2) the political position that Blake's "Jerusalem"
>came to represent, as a possible anthem for democratic hopes in
>England, which may not be quite the same thing.

I am helpless with regard to (2), though I do believe "Jerusalem"
was used as an anthem in the UK.  With regard to (1), it is
important to understand Blake's metaphysical-political position.
Blake presents a vision and not a specific political program.
Quite clearly Blake is anti-capitalist as well as anti-feudal.  I
would also like to challenge some of the common presumptions
around lumping everybody who shares certain characteristics into
big categories like "Romanticism".  Blake's view of the
imagination, the prophetic role of the artist, etc. has
commonalities with others of his time.  But Blake's conception of
culture and his cultural role is not bourgeois, in contrast to
Coleridge and Wordsworth.  They were interested in "Culture",
Blake in freedom.

>In fragmented form at least Carrol IMO is laying himself
>vulnerable to a charge of reductionism

There are just some things that hit my last nerve.  One of them is
his approach to culture.  I have tangled with such people before,
and I am sick of them.  On another list there was a Maoist
subhuman by the name of Grover Furr, who is an English professor
in some small college, no less.  I had quite enough of his
approach to literature.  There is some vicious nonsense which just
has to be put down ruthlessly, as ruthlessly as the ruthlessness
for which such people stand.  More below.

>Am I a Marxist-Leninist creep or a real human being? Are these
>necessarily exclusives?

I owe you an apology here.  By "you" I meant the generic "you",
i.e. "one", not you personally.  Whoever you are out there, which
do you want to be?  They are mutually exclusive.

To JJ Plant:

>the best way to progress this thread is a review of EP Thompson's
>book on Blake, if possible with comparison and contrast with
Peter >Ackroyd's.

Please tell me more about Ackroyd, since I have not seen this one.
Review this one by all means.  Years ago I read Jack Lindsay's
Blake biography (1979), which is how I learned about Lindsay.  I
read most of Thompson's pathbreaking book.  Do you know how highly
esteemed Thompson's book (WITNESS AGAINST THE BEAST) is in the
_mainstream_ Blake scholarly world?  I was amazed to find that
they appreciated Thompson much more than do Marxist lit crits like
Terry Eagleton.  The question for this list is, however, to what
end do you wish to review these books?  What you will find in
Thompson is Blake's relationship to his sources, to traditions, to
antinomianism, to the Muggletonians.  Thompson's work is
magnificent, but it goes far beyond the political concerns
expressed so far in this thread.

To Jim J.:

>Billy Bragg does a good rendition on his `The Internationale'

Well, someday I shall have to force myself to endure his
unpleasant, grating voice once again just for the sake of this
song.  You know, "political" artists bore the shit out of me most
of the time, not that I'm against political art per se, since the
purpose of art is to encompass all of human life.

To Scott:

I agree with you in this case.  And as I said, Woody Guthrie was
not narrow-minded himself.

To Doug Henwood:

>Art prefigures utopia. More Coltranes, fewer jails and Ninja
>Turtles.

This is my philosophy as well.  Only beauty is revolutionary!

To Lucinda:

>There are of course several potential lines for a Marxist theory
>of aesthetics,

It's the Leninist part that bothers me, see below.

>ala Rossi-Landi.

Is this Ferrucio Rossi-Landi, the incompetent fraud who wrote
LINGUISTICS AND ECONOMICS and other pseudo-scientific works?

>What I think is most important, however, is to advance the cause
>of the working class, and this means the construction of
>alliances, the mobilization of people.

Thanks for articulating the position I most vehemently oppose.
This is precisely the conception that must be stamped out.

>Next time you're down on the shop floor, try telling the guys and
>gals how Coltrane's innovations relate to their own experience of
>alienation and resistance.

This is contemptibly silly.

To Jon Beastley-Murray:

>was interested by Ralph's point that there can be no such thing
as >a Marxist-Leninist aesthetics.  I agree, but I suspect for
very
>different reasons than does Ralph, and I would be interested to
>hear his reasons

Alas, I suspect they are very different reasons.  I am not against
Marxist attempts at aesthetics, provided that the Marxist part
does  not mean reducing everything to narrow political concerns,
which I don't believe it does, any more than Marxist philosophy of
physics need do so.  It is the _Leninist_ part that I oppose, not
because of any animus I have against Lenin per se, but against
what Leninism has meant for culture, which is deadly in practice.
That monster Grover is exemplary of what I hate, and I also don't
believe that you can define art or anything else as something
which  must "serve the working class".  This is an empty and
harmful notion.  Did your last orgasm serve the working class?

>Myself, I think that left has to be against aesthetics.

Here is where you are wrong.  And if you think that way, what the
hell are you doing in an English department?  I am not the only
person to note that lack of a notion of aesthetics is what fatally
cripples Marxist criticism.  Without aesthetics, art is reduced to
to social provenance and political propaganda.  Therefore
everything is to be judged by whether it contains social protest
or not.   Hence Ice-T and not Coltrane becomes the revolutionary
artist.   This is a very convenient notion for academic parasites
like yourself, especially at vile institutions like Puke
University.  English professors are the second lowest form of
human life, next to the rappers.  Ice-T rapping is like man
attempting art before he has descended from the trees.  There is
nothing revolutionary about the ugly and the vicious.  I seek to
wipe his kind and yours off the face of the earth.


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