Golgonooza -- City of Imagination: Last Studies in William Blake

by Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Raine's seven studies are the culmination of more than forty years of research into the meaning of Blake's symbolic themes by a scholar-poet who is recognized internationally as one of the most profound interpreters of his works. They are written in a way that reaches into the very heart of Blake's symbolic thought and, for this reason, may be read as an introduction to the whole of his imaginative vision. This is an essential work for understanding...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0940262428
• ISBN13: 9780940262423
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Lindisfarne Books
• Length: 182 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A good companion to The Inner Journey of the Poet

The first address in the book, "Science and Imagination in William Blake", is a kind of recap of her book "The Inner Journey of the Poet" (a book I wanted to reread as soon as I finished it), so it was good to have many of its points summarized in this address. I believe it's in this address where Raine makes the point that we've turned away from eternity in favor of futurity. In other words, that we are less tuned in to the enduring archetypes of Imagination to the extent we focus on the naturalized thinking of advancing our futures in the material world. She makes the claim the Imagination is real to the extent that its archetypes are present in the minds of humanity, and that the real world is unreal because we keep dividing it into smaller and smaller units until what is most basic is insubstantial. All of her points are arguable, but they make food for contemplation. In "Blake and Maya", Raine compares similarities of Blake's thought about Imagination with the thought of Berkeley, Plotinus and the Bhagavad Gita. In "Mythologizing of Time", Raine discusses the Blakean character Los, who's claimed to represent Time, and sprinkles her observations with thoughts pulled from Berkeley, Swedenborg and Jacob Boehme. "Blake, Swedenborg & the Divine Human" discusses Raine's claim that Blake saw all of humanity, all reality, as essentially being one human, not in a personified sense, but in the sense that, to the extent we are aware of anything, it must be accessible in human terms, and thus must in a way be human. She quotes passages from Swedenborg, Blake, and C.G. Jung to support what she acknowledges is a subtle argument. "The City in Blake's Prophetic Poetry" again invokes Plotinus in describing Jerusalem as the archetypal city of imagination, with Babylon representing the archetypal materialist city of efficiency without beauty, and Golgonooza as those parts of our cities which are built in an attempt to realize Jerusalem. "Blake's Illustrations of Job" invokes the writings of C.G. Jung in a plate-by-plate description and explanation of how Blake's vision was similar and different from Jung's. In "Blake and Michelangelo", Raine does the same thing in comparing Blake's vision with Michelangelo's in rendering The Last Judgement. She points out that Michelangelo focuses on the damning Jesus, where Blake focuses on the welcoming Jesus. In "The Sleep of Albion", Raine discusses how Arthurian legend influenced Blake. Coupled with "The Inner Journey of the Poet", this book takes the reader through ideas that will probably be absorbing to those who feel a dissatisfaction with mere realism and technology, and will probably be tedious and annoying to those who who are perfectly satisfied with a materialist, scientific, technological, purely rational way of seeing things.