The Blake Society at St James’s Piccadilly
Programme
2006

Tuesday 24th January 2006
The Spiritual Form of Blair
Spiritual Forms & Heroic Villains:
Interpreting Blake’s Paintings of Pitt & Nelson
A Lecture by David Fallon
Two hundred years ago in the month of January 1806 William Pitt died & the State Funeral of Nelson was marked with five days of celebrations.  Three years later at Blake’s exhibition of 1806, his mythical renderings of Pitt & Nelson were particularly confusing to viewers & were ridiculed by Robert Hunt in a savage review in The Examiner.  By examining the ways in which these paintings relate to their bizarre description in the Descriptive Catalogue, & by reading them within the culture of criticism & commemoration surrounding these two figures, the Lecturer will show that they are a more astute appeal to politics & contemporary taste than has previously been acknowledged.
David Fallon is a doctoral student at University College, Oxford.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 14th February 2006
Blake’s Film of the Life of Christ
A Lecture by Luis & Carol Garrido
If all of Blake’s illustrations to the life of Christ are assembled together & viewed in sequence as a slide projection, we gain the illusion of watching a film on the life of Christ directed by William Blake.  Conversely, the same sequence of slides can be watched while reading the particular passages of the Gospel that Blake chose to illustrate to recreate Blake’s unique commentary upon the Bible.  
Luis & Carol Garrido have recently re-discovered the location of the graves of William Blake & his wife Catherine Sophia Blake.  They are now campaigning in conjunction with the Blake Society for the erection of a monument to mark the exact site of Blake’s grave.  Their other enthusiasms include a project to publish of all of William Blake’s Illustrations to the Life of Christ, & the reproduction of Blake’s painting of the Last Judgment on a grand scale in a public space. 
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 21th March 2006
Blake & Varley
A Lecture by Sibylle Erle
This paper examines one of Blake’s most notorious imaginary episodes—the sketching of the Visionary Heads which have been so carefully documented by John Varley, author of Zodiacal Physiognomy (1828). What was Blake trying to represent? In many ways, especially given the by then complex contexts of early nineteenth-century Swedenborgianism & the burgeoning interest in phrenology, Blake’s Visionary Heads provide a remarkably pure incarnation of spiritual physiognomy. Long considered amongst the most remarkable of Blake’s works, or else as merely a late Georgian parlour game, the Visionary Heads are evidence for Blake’s artistic venturing to the core of self-expression. Within the context of Varley’s Zodiacal Physiognomy he conceived an identity which displaced birth as well as death, without ever transcending the human body.
Sibylle Erle is a Visiting Junior Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 4th April 2006
Energy Is Eternal Delight:  Blake & the American Counter Culture
A Lecture by Jeff Kripal
There is an American culture that is counter to the prevailing orthodoxy. It is embodied in such organisations as the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado & the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.  Blake is central to their aesthetic as well as the poetics of such influential individuals as Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception), Allen
Ginsberg (who came to his poetic vocation through, he claimed, literally being possessed by the spirit of Blake), & the writers on human potential  like Michael Murphy (The Future of the Body) & George Leonard (The End of Sex).
Jeffrey J. Kripal is Professor & Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University, Texas.  He is the author of Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001) & Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago, 1995).  He has also co-edited Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism (Oxford, 1999).  He is presently writing a “nonordinary history” of the Esalen Institute.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 16th May 2006
Blake reads Richardson
A Lecture by Susan Matthews
Scattered clues suggest that Blake read at least some of Richardson’s Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandison & His letters.  Perhaps this is unsurprising—everyone read him.  But in other ways, it seems very strange indeed.  This paper explores how Blake might have read Richardson & tries to reconstruct an unfamiliar culture of reading.
What do Blake’s annotations show about how he read? Why did William & Catherine think that Bysshe’s Art of Poetry was such fun?  Why did Fuseli value Richardson so highly?  And why did an anonymous early reader, perhaps George Cumberland, think that it was acceptable to write in ink all over Europe copy D?
Susan Matthews is a senior lecturer in English at Roehampton University & is currently completing a book on Blake & the politics of the erotic in the period.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Saturday 10th June 2006
William Blake’s Milton
A theatrical presentation devised & performed by Richard Ramsbotham.
“All lovers of Blake should see this” Susanne Sklar, Queens College, Oxford
(Steiner Theatre, 35 Park Road London NW1 6XT; 7.30pm.)
Tickets cost £10 (£7 conc.).

Tuesday 18th July 2006
A Visit to Linnell’s House: Old Wyldes
With a Talk by Philip Venning
At the end of his life Blake found great happiness in his visits to the Linnell family. On a Sunday he would take the two hour walk to Hampstead from Fountain Court often accompanied by Samuel Palmer. 
The farmhouse John Linnell rented is known today as Old Wyldes & the building has an extraordinary lineage of tenants drawn from the worlds of art & literature.  A history of the house was written by Philip Venning who is now Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings set up by William Morris.
We are most grateful to the Roseborne family for the generous hospitality in opening their home to our visit.
(Old Wyldes, North End, Hampstead, London NW3 7HS; 7.30pm.)

Sunday 13th August 2006
A Visit to Wesley’s House & at WB’s Grave the Announcement of a Competition to Design A New Memorial for Blake in Bunhill Fields
We meet in the courtyard of Wesley’s Chapel at 1pm to step back into the 18th Century with a tour of the townhouse built for John Wesley in 1779 & where he lived the last 11 winters of his life. Afterwards we will gather at Blake’s Gravestone for the announcement of an international competition to design a new memorial in time for the 250th anniversary. Then, as is our custom, we will repair to a nearby pub.
‘His eyes Brighten’d and He burst out in Singing of the things he saw in Heaven’
(Wesley’s Chapel opposite Bunhill Fields, 49 City Road London ECIY 1AU; 1pm.)
Nearest Tube: Old Street exit 5; buses 43, 141, 214, 271.

Friday 22nd & Saturday 23rd September 2006
Conference: Blake & Conflict
This is a gathering of some of the leading Blake academics from around the world.
(University College, Oxford.)
Tickets cost £100 (some concessions available)
Please write to the Conference Organiser at University College, Oxford, OX1 4BH
or email   blakecon@univ.ox.ac.uk

Tuesday 31st October 2006
Mysticism Unfolding
A lecture by Donald John
William Blake encountered Jacob Boehme through the translation known as the ‘Law’ edition published between 1764-81. Blake was influenced by the illustrations or illuminations made by Dionysius Andreas Freher. Blake remarked to Crabb Robinson, ‘Michael Angelo could not have surpassed them.’
The three sets of Freher’s opening-out designs illustrate the involution of the human soul into materiality, the struggle of humanity to keep alive a vision of Eternity in its vegetated state, & the eventual realignment & re-spiritualisation of the soul. They chart, to use Blake’s words, ‘The Sleep of Ulro! and of the passage through Eternal Death! and of the awaking to Eternal Life.’ 
This lecture will explore the strong parallels between Freher’s work & Blake’s  prophetic poetry, as well as Freher’s influence on Blake’s engravings for the Book of Job.
Professor Donald John lives in the Napa Valley, California where he is working on his next book Embarrassed for God: Theodicy, Regeneration and the Constitutive Imagination in Blake.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)

Tuesday 28th November 2006
Blake Society Annual Lecture
 This year’s Lecture entitled Auguries is to be given by Patti Smith—poet, artist & rock musician.
(Church of St James, Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL; 7.30pm.)
A free ticket will be sent out to each member of the Society in the autumn. Additional tickets will only be available on the night & will be for sale at the door priced £10 each.

Tuesday 12nd December 2006
Over a glass of wine Adrian Mitchell will read a selection of his own poetry together with some of the words of Blake that have inspired his own life as one of England’s great spirits—performance poet, storyteller, journalist, playwright & pacifist.
The Poetry Reading will immediately follow the Annual General Meeting.
(City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London SW1P 2DE; 7.30pm.)
Agenda of AGM
1) Minutes of last year’s AGM
2) Apologies for Absence
3) Chairman’s Report
4) Treasurer’s Report
5) Secretary’s Report
6) Election of the 3 Honorary Officers for 2007
7) Election of the Committee for 2007
8) Any other business.