Cities of the Imagination

Cities of the Imagination

Kathleen Raine explores the city as an image of the soul in William Blake and W. B. Yeats. She contrasts Blake's Jerusalem and Golgonooza, the fourfold city of the imagination, with the Babylon of commerce and the mechanistic ideology of modern planning, then reads Yeats's Byzantium poems through Plato, Neoplatonism and Vedanta, and closes on Blake's prophetic claim for the imagination as the true faculty of knowledge.

1. 0:00 — Blake's London, Jerusalem and Babylon
2. 10:31 — Corbin, Compostela and the Emblematic City
3. 21:12 — The Fourfold City of Golgonooza
4. 31:13 — Modern Architecture and Dark Satanic Mills
5. 40:56 — The Inexhaustible Treasury of Art
6. 50:43 — Plato's City and the Order of the Soul
7. 1:00:47 — Yeats Sailing to Byzantium
8. 1:10:44 — Yeats, India and the Golden Bird
9. 1:20:30 — Yeats's Turn to Vedanta
10. 1:30:22 — Platonic Death and Yeats's Christ
11. 1:40:08 — Byzantine Vision and the Mundus Imaginalis
12. 1:49:19 — Dolphins, Smithies and the Dancing Floor
13. 1:59:07 — Blake as England's Religious Prophet
14. 2:09:32 — The Interior Last Judgment
15. 2:19:24 — The Moment Satan Cannot Find
16. 2:29:25 — Imagination and the New Age

Kathleen Raine — 9 recordings in the archive.

The book: Golgonooza, City of Imagination by Kathleen Raine.

William blake is of course england's supreme poet of the city blake was born in london in the year 1757 before the industrial revolution and died in 1827 having lived his whole life apart from three years in a cottage of felpham on the sussex coast in the city to whose inhabitants he addressed his great prophetic books the last of these jerusalem birth the name of the holy city of the book of revelation the city coming down from heaven which it is the human task to embody on earth blake's jerusalem is the city of the imagination the work of the golden builders who labor to create on earth a city in the likeness of the invisible world within for the kingdom of heaven is within the outer world unilluminated by the imaginative vision blake calls babylon biblical symbol of the city of exile where the jews lived far from the holy land jerusalem is the kingdom of the human imagination which blake following his master swedenborg calls the divine humanity who is in all the city of our the city is our human kingdom our human collective task never completed ever building ever decaying desolate in blake's words it is for every generation to keep that city in repair to add to it new works for the soul to inhabit as we inhabit the entire human past these works embody our deepest knowledge and sublimeness visions and in turn serve to awaken their inhabitants to know ourselves as participants in that invisible kingdom we ever seek to embody for blake there the city is above all its people has a collective life of the many in one and one in many who inhabit and create it over the generations and its own a special character he wrote of the cities of england verulam canterbury venerable parent of men generous immortal guardian golden clad for cities are men fathers of multitudes and rivers and mountains are also men everything is human mighty sublime the giant albion that is the english nation reposes among his 28 cities and blake names edinburgh clothed with fortitude york celsius chichester oxford with its healing leaves bath durham lincoln carlisle ely norwich peterborough each with its own character but jerusalem is not to be found at any one time or place but is universal created wherever humankind is at work and there are…