Welcome to GOLGONOOZA!
Launch of new William Blake Substack site
Exploring William Blake in the 21st century!
Golgonooza is a new William Blake Substack site which combines free monthly newsletters and blogs with news, notes, podcasts, and updates on the writer and artist William Blake. It explores his work in relation to contemporary discussions around mental health, politics, and culture as well as much wider areas such as contemporary neuroscience, quantum mechanics, psychoanalysis, art, philosophy, music, technology and science, and how his thinking might help illuminate and deepen these areas - and how they might also help illuminate his work. The recent application of ideas concerning hemispheric difference, as articulated for example by psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist, is already profoundly shifting the landscape within which we view and understand Blake’s mythology and extraordinary cognitive and intuitive understanding of the human brain and body.
Blake himself was fascinated by multiple worlds and domains of human thought and experience, including literature, the history of art, spirituality and mysticism, Newtonian science, Lockean epistemology, engraving, physiognomy, philosophy, and contemporary politics – and Golgonooza will therefore reflect and continue these interests and discussions, as part of a collective and creative ongoing multimedia space.
The Substack platform also allows for a particularly interactive and immersive form of communication, and therefore this site will be especially focussed on developing global community and interactive conversations through participatory threads, notes, group chats, and individual comments, as well as shared discussions about Blake and his relevance to what’s going on today.
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What’s coming up on Golgonooza!
Coming up in the next few weeks there’ll be posts exploring various aspects of Blake’s extraordinary mind and vision, including an article on The Tao of Blake, delving into the striking similarities between Blake’s thought and Taoist traditions; a post on War is Energy Enslaved to mark Armistice Day and examining Blake’s acute distinction between ‘Mental Fight’ and what he calls literal or ‘Corporeal War’. There will also be a virtual guided tour of Blake’s London; a post exploring the subject of schizophrenia and Blake - not only his interest in division and the divided self, but also touching on the ongoing debate about his own mental state - whether he was, as many critics over the years have suggested, ‘mad’ (such as critic Robert Hunt, reviewing Blake’s only exhibition of his work during his lifetime) – or whether he can be considered, in more contemporary terms, as either borderline neurodivergent, hyperphantasic, schizophrenic, or bipolar. These have all recently been put forward as possible diagnoses to try and account for and make sense of his visions and unusual perceptions of the world. I consider these attempts to medicalise and psychoanalyse Blake, and also suggest what he might have made of such rather Urizenic labels and approaches.
There will also be a series of posts looking into Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence, ‘one of the greatest political poems in the language’, as Philip Pullman rightly observes, as well as articles on ‘Awakening from Woke’ (exploring Blake and the current Culture Wars); an article on ‘William Blake and the problem of revolution’, and a special Christmas edition surrounding the Nativity Ode and Blake’s profound and moving illustrations for it.
Plus in the new year there’s the start of a major reappraisal and investigation of Blake’s neglected masterpiece The Four Zoas, and how I think it’s key to all his later work and mythology. This will include a new Reading and Performance Text of the poem, to help clarify and illuminate the voices and characters. Hopefully this might also enable readers and fans to follow and immerse themselves in the rather complex and intrapsychic, hologrammatic world of the poem - and even to act it out it for themselves if they like! As Philip Pullman notes, Blake’s words are meant to be heard, and spoken – experienced through the mouth and throat and tongue – not simply looked at passively on a page.
Coda
I hope you’ll be able to join me in exploring and looking into all of these areas of Blake’s thought and work, and contributing to the ongoing discussion about them. There’ll also be book reviews, community threads, and chances to chat, discuss, and leave comments, or contribute pieces and responses, to make this, hopefully, a genuinely interactive domain and shared imaginative space.
So if you’re interested in Blake, or are interested in finding out more about Blake – the way he thinks, how he relates to today – and in having access to the latest news, updates, ideas, and different current takes on his work - or would simply like to connect with others who have an interest in Blake and find some kindred spirits - please consider subscribing to this platform. There will be regular posts and information on forthcoming Blakean events and meetings, as well as in-depth explorations of his work aimed at providing clear and compelling expositions of his thought, images, and words.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions about what you’d like to see here please let me know – if you’d like to read something on Blake and AI, for example - his views on technology, machinery, and the place of the human in such a world – or perhaps on the perennially interesting subject of sexuality, and where he might fit in with contemporary debates. Just subscribe below and become part of the conversation!
To find out more about Golgonooza please click on the ABOUT page.
Be part of a community of people who share your interests. Participate in the comments section, or support this work with a subscription.
To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.
The Daughters of Los and Enitharmon in the Looms of Golgonooza - Blake, Jerusalem