ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
David Erdman has caused or helped most of
the happy events in
my career. A brief anecdote will
reveal his easy graciousness.
When I
arrived at Stony Brook in 1977, my first stop was to visit
Erdman,
for whose inspiration and instruction I had signed up. A
few days into the semester, I was walking in the hall past a
classroom in which he was teaching.
At the end of the hall stood
a graduate student named David.
Not even thinking about Dr.
Erdman's
first name, I called out, "Hi, David." The next time I
walked past that class, David Erdman called out cheerily,
"Hi,
Mark." I blushed when I realized what was happening:
he thought
that I had interrupted him in the middle of class to yell out his
first name. I then
blushed again in honor of David's insult-
proof egalitarianism.
Multiply that graciousness by thousands of
his students and colleagues, add his massive scholarship, and you
see a man who deserves even more honors than he has already
received.
During the summer of 1991 I studied with
Leo Damrosch in his
NEH
seminar devoted to Rousseau and Blake.
His Symbol and Truth
in Blake's Myth
had already prodded me more than any other book
to try to formulate my own ideas.
During the seminar, he handled
my disagreements with good humor.
His self-described eclecticism
and marginality helped make him a perceptive interpreter of Blake
(and of Rousseau in that seminar). This book is in large measure
an attempt to answer not only Damrosch's book
and its strong
philosophical basis, not only Damrosch's
common-sense refusal to
grant Blake's mystical vision, but also his persuasive voice,
skeptical eyes, and bemused laugh.
During the summer of 1985 I studied with
Michael Cooke in his
NEH
seminar, "English Romanticism: The Problem of Wholeness."
His Acts of Inclusion had already inspired
me with its
similarities to my own ideas.
During that seminar, I completed
an essay, "Striving with Blake's Systems," which appeared in
Blake and his Bibles, edited by David Erdman, published
by Locust
Hill Press. That essay was
really the seed of this book and
could easily be a chapter of it.
Michael was killed in a car
accident on September 14, 1990.
Although I do not converse with
him daily, as William did with Robert, I often hear his
encouraging voice, see his beaming smile, and feel his religious
laughter.
I could dedicate this book to any one of
those three, but I
do dedicate it to Sonja Lallemand, with whom I
have been joined
in a passionate coincidentia
oppositorum for over a decade. My
daughters, Priscilla Barbara Smith--who now knows more about
Buddhism
than I ever will--and Catherine Blake Smith--who loves
to recite the Introduction to Songs of Innocence--make every day
glad.
Other people have helped me in large ways
and small, from
substantial advice to chance remarks that gave me renewed
strength to accomplish this task: Pat Skarda
and the other
members of NEH summer seminars in 1985 and 1991, Ron Lunsford,
Katherine
Lederer, Don Holliday, Jim Jones, Tita Baumlin, Dean
Hinnen, Bill Burling, Anthony Vital, Ruth Goehring,
Dingman, Judy Reynolds, Thomas Maresca
(who first introduced me
to Nicholas of Cusa as a way of reading Pope), Thomas J. J.
Altizer, Lee Miller, Betty T. Bennett, David Sheehan, Jerome
Christensen,
George Gilpin, Pam Senter, Maria Cecilia Fortou,
Michael
Tolley, Eric Link, Phill Pulsiano, Paula Uruburu, Lyn
Yonack, Duane Bedell, Ellen Gardiner,
Janice Queen, Karen Otis,
Duane Coltharp and many other students in my classes, and the
librarians at Harvard, Stanford, and
University.
Tom Bechtle,
publisher at Locust Hill Press, has shown me the
most extraordinary patience. Let his
greatest reward be the
knowledge that my patience toward others has increased by his
example.
Jim Baumlin, not for the first time,
performed beyond the
call of friendship.
The two summers that I spent studying in
NEH seminars
stimulated my intellect more than any other experiences in my
life. I thank the National Endowment
for the Humanities for
their wise and generous support of their summer seminars for
college teachers.
The final two chapters of this book have
been re-worked from
my dissertation, "William Blake's Transfiguration of the Bible in
published in the journal of the Midwestern Modern Language
Association;
the chapter on Shelley has been re-worked from an
essay published in the journal of the Missouri Philological
Association;
the chapter on Mary Shelley has been re-worked from
an essay published in the journal of the Arkansas Philological
Association.