ParticoRomulus reviewed Version 2 -
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The final stanza is quite compelling. I’m not sure I’m all the way there with you, but I think you’re saying that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are both ‘holy’ (or natural?) and that separating the two as pure opposites is illusion, ie. the Devil’s work.
I’m not well versed in Blake, but I recall this non-dualism as being important in his visual art and poetry. A quick ‘google’ turns this up in ‘Tyger’ and ‘A Poison Tree’... the tiger, the snake… At any rate, it’s clear. The beast here is not ‘it’ but ‘us’. But the title gives us the key as to how to view that.
I dig the core of this, that mainstream Christianity is a sort of spiritual mathematics (S2) and is ultimately illusory (S3). But, the ‘void’ is fertile ground and not ‘empty’ in a western sense. With this and the Dick Dawkins piece I really think I see mysticism informing your perspective, but it may be that that’s what I WANT to see because it informs mine!
Now to the nitty gritty…
Unity and coherence is strong, though structure not so much. On the former point… The theme of illusion is pervasive (lost, drugged, S2, and the implications of S4) as is the theme of enlightenment (We are… Gods, all of S3.) You use your own non-dual dualism (ignorance/wisdom) and substitute it for the traditional dualism of good/evil.
But to get all that, I really have to lay the whole poem out in front of me and ignore the linear structure. I read it a few times and couldn’t really access it until I sat with it a bit. In my case that’s not because of the content as this stuff is right up my alley, so I’m thinking the culprit is your organization.
I’m not sure why for example you go from ‘We’re lost’ in S1 to ‘You’re lost’ in S2, then back to universals in S3 & 4. Though I understand and appreciate the imagery in S2, the construction makes it sound like more traditional atheism. ’YOU’RE a fool because you have faith in a dead god, but I KNOW the truth.’ The other three stanzas don’t go there at all and put us all in the same boat. That discontinuity threw me hard for a couple of reads.
I love ‘drugged Gods’, and I understand the need to equate us with beasts in S1 (and bulls is a good choice, evoking Zeus for one) but something about that part of the image trips me up. Why ‘thwarted’? That doesn’t fit the tone of ‘drugged’ for one, and I don’t think of a ‘thwarted’ animal as being ‘creative’. I want to see there animals in heat, a frenzy, ‘creating’ in the carnal sense, lost in their bestial being… Dionysus, that sort of thing. Maybe just me, but that seems to fit your core metaphor more appropriately.
Don’t change that last stanza much if at all though. It’s really the most powerful part.
Dunno, I’ll stop there. I hope this gets point capped at 215 and that it was helpful. If not, you can… well, I don’t know, yell at me in a private message or something unsatisfactory like that.
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