Titular Editing

My old banner subtitle of "my musings on antiquity, religion, and other phenomena and ephemera," while perhaps complete, since all things perhaps fall under "other phenomena and ephemera" still seemed incomplete to me given the many postings I have done on Proust, Shakespeare, etc--basically the increased occurrence of non-antique literature. Thus, I have included "literature" into my subtitle to represent more accurately the content you might find here--still heavily biblically and anciently oriented, but inclusive of a great deal of musings on other literature.

Thank you for reading!

Hamlet's Last Words

I confess I never really thought of Hamlet's last words until I watched the PBS production of the recent Royal Shakespeare Company's performance. They take out the aftermath of Fortinbras picking up the shattered pieces of Denmark, and end simply with Horatio's words: "Good night, sweet prince, / and fights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Yet just before this, Hamlet's final words just before death are quite strange, eerie, interesting:

"The rest is silence" (V.ii).

The rest is silence. As in the interview for the PBS special, the actor who plays Hamlet says he is going off into oblivion. It is as if he has gotten his answer to the problem in the "to be or not to be" speech. For, indeed, it is the fear of things to come, the "undiscover'd country" that makes cowards of us all--that is, if living is cowardly. I am struck, as a specialist in the study of religion, in this particular phrasing--"the rest is silence." Indeed, the interpretation of oblivion may be preferred, may be most correct. But, there is another way to read it. Silence, indeed, need not mean oblivion--it need not be Lear's "nothing." Silence could be a more poignant word for peace. After the noise of life, a particularly neurotic one in Hamlet's case, silence/peace. Not the noise of the inferno, but perhaps not the choirs of heaven either: a completely unimagined, unimaginable silent peace; not oblivious nothing but superfluous silence. I am reminded, however, of ancient traditions of holy silence. For example, it is said (in the Letter of Aristeas) that the entire officiation in the temple is done in silence. It is as if silence is the necessary auditory posture before God. In the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth, a Hermetic work, an adept ascending through the heavenly spheres, observes the angels singing songs in silence. This paradox of songs and silence also appears in the work found with the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, depicting heavenly praise by the heavenly host on the Sabbath. Silence, in fact, is often associated with the most holy and most heavenly, as if silence were the result of perfect harmony. Was Shakespeare tapping into something of the silence of an afterlife of rest? I mostly doubt it. But I do wonder...especially when we reread the second word of "the rest is silence."

As readers we have been assuming that "rest" means "what remains." But what if it means something more like "repose." The rest, the cessation of work, is silence, itself a synonym of rest. In this reading, "the rest is rest." It is a tautology, something the opposite of Lear's "nothing" because it is complete in and of itself. We should note that in the ancient Jewish tradition, particularly prominent in Rabbinical writings and thereafter the Sabbath--the day of rest--is a precursor of the world to come; that is, the world to come is an everlasting rest. This did carry over into Christianity--for example, St. Augustine's Confessions and City of God both end with a meditation of heavenly rest based upon an exegesis of Gen. 1:1-2:3. The afterlife as "rest" is such a truism these days that we abbreviate it as "R.I.P." Rest is peace. Rest is silence. Perhaps complete nothingness, complete oblivion would be best for Hamlet, but his last words have a doubled edge. It could mean that the "undiscover'd country" is no country at all, that it is nothing--a fairly radical statement. Or it could be tapping into the extensive Jewish and Christian associations of the afterlife with rest, peace, and silence. It is up to the audience to decide, and that ambiguity in phrasing that could go either way is, indeed, how Shakespeare's speech continues to live with us, how it speaks to so many different people of such different dispositions. It, it seems, never rests. It is never silent.

From Self to Society

People foolishly imagine that the broad generalities of social phenomena afford an excellent opportunity to penetrate further into the human soul; they ought, on the contrary, to realise that it is by plumbing the depths of a single personality that they might have a chance of understanding those phenomena.

(Proust, Guermantes Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

Born Again with the Weather, with Proust

Although it was simply a Sunday in autumn, I had been born again, life lay intact before me, for that morning, after a succession of mild days, there had been a cold fog which had not cleared until nearly midday: and a change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and ourselves anew. Formerly, when the wind howled in my chimney, I would listen to the blows which it struck on the iron trap with as keen an emotion as if, like the famous chords with which the Fifth Symphony opens, they had been the irresistible calls of a mysterious destiny. Every change in the aspect of nature offers us a similar transformation by adapting our desires so as to harmonise with the new form of things. The mist, from the moment of my awakening, had made of me, instead of the centrifugal being which one is on fine days, a man turned in on himself, longing for the chimney corner and the shared bed, a shivering Adam in quest of a sedentary Eve, in this different world.

(Marcel Proust, Guermantes Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

Reborn by the changing of the weather leads to something else. It is an exterior change that leads to interiority and a search for a new Eden. But it is not just weather, it is adapting to new forms. As it turns out, these new forms turn out to be literature. New forms of literature are new because they create new associations between things, associations heretofore unseen. When this new literature shows new associations between things, we ourselves are transformed as we adapt to these new associations. This, however, means something about literature--that is is not static, that it progresses. In fact, it is a different perspective of art in the association between works of art:

And I was led to wonder whether there was any truth in the distinction which we are always making between art, which is no more advanced now than in Homer's day, and science with its continuous progress. Perhaps, on the contrary, art was in this respect like science; each new original writer seemed to me to have advanced beyond the stage of his immediate predecessor; and who was to say whether in twenty years' time, when I should be able to accompany without strain or effort the newcomer of today, another might not emerge in the face of whom the present one would go the way of Bergotte? (ibid.)

Bergotte is the writer the narrator adored in his youth, but now has found new forms of art that show new associations between things that build upon, advance beyond his youthful favorite author. That new author, in turn, shall be surpassed as new associations between things are discovered or, better yet, imagined. In reading something new, by seeing new associations, we are reborn as we incorporate these new associations into ourselves and see them in our own lives.

On the Symbiosis of Heaven and Hell

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active springing from Energy.

Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell

(William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

This past week I just finished up my Literature class by reading Mikhail Bulgakov's amazing Master and Margarita, which happens to be one of my favorite books. One thing often commented on about the novel is the prominent solar and lunar imagery: the sun and the moon align the scenes as they alternate between 20th century Stalinist Russia and first century Jerusalem. The sun is often portrayed as merciless, unbearable, taking away one's breath. The moon allows one to breath, but can be deceptive, creating shadows in the dark. Yet, considering the dark, in the end Night personified strips away all illusions--it is as if illusion and deception were used in order to reach deeper truths. For example, when the devil, Woland, comes to town, he stages a theatrical magical performance, using magic (the real thing) in order to discern the inner truth about humanity--humanity's greed--but, interestingly, also humanity's ultimate mercy.

One might want to suppose that we have a series of opposing binaries between light and darkness, sun and moon, and finally Yeshua (as Jesus is called in this novel) and Woland. But that turns out not fully to be the case--neither Woland nor Yeshua are particularly associated with the merciless sun. They both have strong connections with the moon. When it comes to light and darkness--with Yeshua associated with light (and compassionate, merciful light, like the moon?) and Woland with darkness (in which that darkness shines), they seem to work together to bring deceptive and revelatory light in the darkness. Woland speaks to Levi Matvei (Yeshua's disciple), who shows up in Moscow, allowing the Moscow and Jerusalem chapters to blur, in which Levi addresses Woland--who, by now, has becomes somewhat of a sympathetic character--quite rudely, calling him "Spirit of Evil and Sovereign of the Shadows," and wishing him evil. To this Woland responds:

You pronounced your words as if you refuse to acknowledge the existence of either shadows or evil. But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living things beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid. (trans. Burgin and Tiernan O'Connor)

Woland notes that perhaps light could exist without darkness, but it would be naked light without any life. As long as there is any life, the light hits it and creates a shadow; and therein lies Woland. Darkness and shadows will exist as long as life exists. Interestingly, it turns out that the light needs the shadows as well. The reason Levi is there is that Yeshua (or "he") requests, very nicely, that Woland grant peace and rest to the Master (who wrote a novel about Pilate that Yeshua really liked). Woland grants Yeshua's request. Woland and Yeshua, it seems, work together, and work well together, as interdependent beings. Woland exposes human vices and executes divine justice; Yeshua acknowledges the inherent goodness of humanity and grants mercy. (Blake's note of the passivity of Good resembles Yeshua, who recognizes the inherent goodness of all humans, who is also ultimately passive--Yeshua tells Pilate that all forms of power are violence; that in the kingdom of light to come, there will be no power at all and, therefore, no violence.) Each, as Woland says earlier in the novel when Margarita begs mercy for someone suffering eternal torment, belong to their own "department" and do what is expected of them in their respective "departments" of justice and mercy, but do not infringe on the other's territory. Both are necessary and both need each other. There is a great deal that resembles Manichean doctrine here, but, I would note, for at least Bulgakov's novel, light and darkness are not in opposition, but excepting the stupidity of Levi Matvei work together.

God Made in Our Image

There is an ancient truism that is the inversion of the Genesis statement that God made humans his God's image that humans always image God in their own image, and that if horses could speak, they would speak of God as a horse (I do not quite recall the reference off-hand, but if someone would like to supply it in the comments, it would be much appreciated).

But such truisms, however true, seem trite to just speak it outright, and so to help make the point, I have enlisted a poet (W.B. Yeats):

The Indian Upon God

I passed along the water's edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from his eye.
I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.
A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?
I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feather gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

(W.B. Yeats, "The Indian Upon God," Crossways; italics original)

The Foreign Body

It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.

(Proust, Guermantes Way, In Search of Lost Time; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

In his essay, "On the Power of the Imagination," Montaigne gives examples of psychosomaticism: basically the physical manifestations of a robust imagination--how the imagination affects and transforms our body and bodily states as well as society, from the realm of male impotence (a psychological issue with measurable effects) to religion (belief in spirits, ghosts, saints, and gods/God). Proust, by contrast, seems to identify the self wholly with the mind, our minds are the "we" and our bodies are the "them." Nonetheless, there remains a psychosomatic trace--the great chain. It does remind me a bit of the ancient Greek notion of the body as a prison; here it is our ball and chain. But it is a quiet chain until sickness disrupts it, sending reverberations down it to the mind, reminding the mind of its own vulnerability and of its own limitations: language. Language allows the mind to express itself (notably through the body: the tongue, the mouth, the lips, the throat, not to mention non-verbal communication). Even if the body is the instrument of communication to other minds, it does not understand this language nor does the mind understand the body. Even as the body is the mediator to other minds, another mind must be our mind's mediator with our own body: the medical doctor. The physician has learned the language of the body and acts as the interpreter between the mind and the body. But the physician also belongs to the world of the mind, and so her or his understanding of body language is not that of a native speaker--the physician may miss certain nuances or inflections apparent to a native speaker; thus, cannot be fully trusted:

For, medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognised in a few years' time. So that to believe in medicine would be the height of folly, if not to believe in it were not of greater folly still, for from this mass of errors a few truths have in the long run emerged. (ibid.)

There are only two follies available to the mind vis-a-vis the body: to believe medicine is folly; to not believe is greater folly still. To reach truth by error reminds me of Razumikhin's statement in Crime & Punishment of finding truth through lying. Or even in the Master & Margarita where the Devil (Woland) uses evil in the service of ultimate good (that is my reading of Woland, anyway--and frankly I do not find him very evil at all). Sometimes the best way to reach our desired goal is to walk in the opposite direction of it with an untrustworthy interpreter. That is the means to health, but, it seems, in health is the means to forgetfulness of one's chains.

Brown and Clegg Hiking their Leg

From BBC. Most awkward and yet humorous picture of the day: why do both Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown both have the same leg in the air at the same time? It is like both are doing balancing acts while David Cameron puffs his cheeks and looks off skyward.

Online Coptic Resources

AWOL (Ancient World Online) has posted on a site Coptica that gives a great wealth of digitized Coptic material collected together, including free unicode fonts and digitized manuscripts. It will prove to be an invaluable resource for those of us interested in Coptic literature and language. I will also place this site in my sidebar.

New Hamlet

I am excited about the new filmed version of Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company that premiered this evening on PBS. It has Sir Patrick Stewart as Claudius. Here is the info on the Great Performances site where it will soon be available in its entirety.

I really liked the use of mirrors in the production, particularly broken mirrors (a broken self?).

Judy Redman's article in the latest JBL

I know a lot of other bloggers have spoken about this, and I am not going to say much, except READ Judy Redman's article on memory in psychological research as it bears upon the gospels. It is quite thought-provoking and, frankly, a breath of fresh air on what seem to become rather stale debates.

Just one completely unimportant note: Her discussion of schema reminded me of Albert Lord's definition of "theme" as something of a standard outline to fill in with detail (with each new remembering for Redman; with each new performance for Parry/Lord). She does speak of Lord briefly to discuss the memory of trained tradents, although I think I read Lord a little differently. Whereas she indicates the oral tradents' usage of verbatim speech--what Lord would call the Formulae--my reading of Lord (which is something he highly emphasizes in his introduction to the Singer of Tales) is that the moment of performance is itself the moment of composition. The entire narrative is not repeated verbatim, but constantly changes from context to context in length, in elaboration, etc. Certain formulae may be remembered verbatim (but these are limited to repeated clauses, like "rosy-fingered dawn," "manslaughtering Hektor," "godlike Akhilleus," etc.), but the smaller units of narrative, the particular imagery used in simile, and even larger chunks of narrative change with each new performance, since each new performance is a new composition. This is neither here nor there, however, for Redman's main point, since the earliest "earwitnesses" as Redman calls them were hardly highly trained bards.

New York as Babel in Reverse

Or perhaps it is a veritable Noah's ark of language. New York has become a refuge for dying languages. According to a recent New York Times article, New York may be home to around 800 distinct languages! Different languages from pockets in Eastern Europe, African tribes, and what might interest biblicists...Aramaic! Mandaic!

In addition to dozens of Native American languages, vulnerable foreign
languages that researchers say are spoken in New York include Aramaic,
Chaldic and Mandaic from the Semitic family; Bukhari (a Bukharian
Jewish language, which has more speakers in Queens than in Uzbekistan
or Tajikistan), Chamorro (from the Mariana Islands), Irish Gaelic,
Kashubian (from Poland), indigenous Mexican languages, Pennsylvania
Dutch, Rhaeto-Romanic (spoken in Switzerland) and Romany (from the
Balkans) and Yiddish.

My Ideal Introductory Literature Course

Today in my Literature Humanities class, we were a bit reflective, reflecting over the year and critiquing our syllabus from the year. There was much catharsis, I think, in this discussion. There were several issues raised, but the root of much frustration with the syllabus is that there are simply too many works on it (other issues are that it is too western-focused, too androcentric, too historicist--the last refers to the structure or sequencing). And so this evening, I have begun to reflect what my ideal introductory literature course would be like. What if we started from scratch?

I decided that my ideal course would be one in which we would read a single work for the entire semester in great detail intertwining our close readings with the various approaches that have been taken in studying literature (formal, Marxist, feminist, Freudian/Lacanian, historicist, new historicist, etc.), skills, theoretical approaches, and methods of reading and writing that would then be transferable to other works. In fact, everyone would write papers using these skills, methods, theoretical positions on other works and presenting them to the class (that is where the diversity of literature would come in). That one work could be most anything....almost. Many may not be complex enough to sustain a semester's reading and the various approaches of reading. And this is where my curiosity set in. I have asked my class the following question and asked them to think on it a bit: if you had to choose any work of literature in the world (whether it was on Columbia's Lit Hum syllabus or not) to read for an entire semester, what would it be? And why?

OR: If you simply object to this ideal course, what would your ideal course be?

Being Born Circumcised

A long while back, I posted on how Jubilees portrays Angels as being created already circumcised. These pre-circumcised angels mirrored Israel, much like they mirror them in things like Sabbath observance, etc. It turns out, however, that pre-circumcision is not limited to angels! According to Genesis Rabbah, which I have been slowly working through, Noah's son, Shem, was born already circumcised:

Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Surely Japheth was the eldest? [Shem, however, is written] first because he was [more] righteous [than the others]; also because he was born circumcised, the Holy One, blessed be He, set His name particularly upon him; [other reasons for his priority are that] Abraham was to arise from him, he was the minister in the High Priesthood, and because the Temple would be built on his territory.

(Gen. Rab. 26.3; trans. Freedman)

The passage tries to explain Shem's priority given Japheth being elderly--I should wonder, however, given that Ham is the most accursed in the story, why his name comes second and not last? The reasons for Shem's priority: more righteous, he's pre-cut (and, therefore, God set His name on him), Abraham's ancestor, a high priest, and his future territory would have the temple. Two of these deal with covenant (pre-circumcised and Abraham), and three the temple/cult (Name, high priest, and temple). I say the name is related to the temple because of Deuteronomy, wherein the future temple is where God will cause his Name to dwell, and the fact that the Name--the tetragrammaton--was inscribed on the headdress of the high priest. To have God's name set on you is to represent God on earth to the people. He receives this name, however, because he comes pre-circumcised; thus, the covenantal and temple issues are causally connected. What does it mean, however, to be pre-circumcised, especially at this moment before circumcision was given to Abraham as a sign of the covenant? My guess would be chosen-ness; to be born circumcised pre-circumcision is to be especially chosen (chosen for God and chosen as God's representative). I don't know if the Rabbis speculated on angelic phalli, but if they thought of them in terms of Jubilees (a big if), this would make Shem like one of the angels.

Centaurs in Genesis Rabbah?

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh (iv, 26). Abba Cohen Bardela was asked: "[Why does Scripture enumerate] Adam, Seth, Enosh, and then become silent?" "Hitherto they were created in the likeness and image [of God]," he replied, "but from then onward Centaurs were created."

(Gen. Rabbah 23.6; trans. Freedman)

Lest anyone get too excited to find centaurs in midrash, in his notes Freedman assures the reader that literal centaurs are not meant, but metaphorical, or spiritual ones; that thenceforth, humans undergo a depreciation of divine spirit, and, by implication, an increase in animality. Spiritual centaurs; incompletely human, having lost the image and likeness of God and instead the image and likeness of beasts. This means, therefore, that all humanity after Enosh are "centaurs"--that's you and that's me!

Lies that Lead to Truth

In Dostoevsky's masterpiece, Crime and Punishment, Razumikhin, the representative of "reason"--but who has disdain for cold, calculated reason--often speaks of why he loves liars, because in lying they unwittingly, inevitably speak truth:

I like it when people lie! Lying is man's only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie--you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man. Not one truth has ever been reached without first lying fourteen times or so, maybe a hundred and fourteen, and that's honorable in its way; well, but we can't even lie with our own minds! Lie to me, but in your own way, and I'll kiss you for it. Lying in one's own way is almost better than telling the truth in someone else's way; in the first case you're a man, and in the second--no better than a bird! The truth won't go away, but life can be nailed shut; there are examples. Well, so where are we all now? With regard to science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aspirations, liberalism, reason, experience, and everything, everything, everything, we're all, without exception, still sitting in the first grade! We like getting by on other people's reason--we've acquired a taste for it!

(trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

What truth is there in lying? For Razumikhin, there appear to be at least two truths of lying: it is the marker of our humanity (and positively so) and a marker of originality, that is, individual personality. They are connected, in fact. Firstly, all other creatures are trapped in truth; only humans lie and deceive. It leads to the truth of ourselves as a race. But it is also the truth of a person. Anyone can parrot the truths and verities and proverbs of others, of their surrounding culture, or other cultures (Razumikhin, at one point, calls the main protagonist, Raskolnikov, a "foreign translation"--not only are Raskolnikov's ideas unoriginal, but they are not even Russian). But a lie can be more personal. It gets into individual circumstances, has to consider particular data that regards one's own self--even if to evade and obfuscate. It is better, for Razumikhin, in these terms to be "true to oneself" and lie rather than to falsify oneself by telling other people's truths, since even a bird (e.g., parrot) could do that. Razumikhin throughout disdains people trying to advance themselves, make themselves look better, by just parroting whatever ideas are in the air, whatever ideas are popular in the moment--they are, what seems to be the worst sin for him, "commonplace" ideas. These are the people who do not operate on their own reason, but get by "on other people's reason." What is, however, the negation of the negation (to borrow a commonplace, foreign translation, concept from Hegel) is when people borrow other people's commonplace lies. They are no longer being true to themselves, but, perhaps, they are at least true to their humanity. One has to wonder, however, if Razumikhin thinks there are any ideas that are not commonplace. The threefold repetition of "everything" suggests that all is banal. Although, perhaps he would think his idea of the deeper truth of lies falls outside of the commonplace.

The Ale-House Church

The Little Vagabond

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,

But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;

Besides I can tell where I am use'd well,

Such usage in heaven will never do well.

But if at the Church they would give us some ale.

And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale;

We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day;

Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray,

Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing.

And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring:

And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church,

Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.

And God like a father rejoicing to see,

His children as pleasant and happy as he:

Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel

But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel.

(William Blake, Songs of Experience 45)

Oh wouldn't it be loverly?

Hell's Heaven and Heaven's Hell in Blake's "Clod and Pebble"

The Clod & the Pebble

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair

So sang a little Clod of Clay,

Trodden with the cattles feet:

But a Pebble of the brook,

Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only Self to please.

To bind another to Its delight:

Joys in anothers loss of ease.

And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.

(William Blake, Songs of Experience)

Selfless love for others creates Heaven in Hell, whereas self love, the love to seeks only self-interest and self-delight, because such occurs at the expense of others, can create Hell in Heaven. This mixture reminds me of the end of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

(trans. William Weaver)

If, as another wise person said, "The Kingdom of God is within/among you," the kingdom it resists does too. If hell exists, it exists here. To make heaven break through, for the Kingdom of God to emerge, one must give space to those who are not of the inferno, one must, indeed, act with selfless love to endure it. Those in the second half of Blake's poem, the love of self that overshadows all else blend into the inferno and no longer recognize it for what it is, at best a coping mechanism. The rub is in recognition: who are they who are not of the inferno but are within the inferno? My guess is the mad and the eccentric.