The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author Quoted 
Title QuotedBhagavad Gita
Date (Year/Month/Day)1938/08/11
Imprint 
QuotationTruthfully I have an enormous obscure subtle thesis that Blake is all full of Indian and Chinese theories of art, for a certainty. That he has read the Bhagavad Gita, I have found out, and then found out that others know this well. But they have not gone into this as I intend, and they say nothing of his art anyway, only explain he was tussling with the druids every word he wrote. But I do not up and be a loud roaring fellow and a stupid shit saying how Blake picked up some old Chinese book and writ down all his theories of art and poetry. I say how he knew about the Indian works from books of travel, how he read the Gita, how he was anyhow a fine mystic, how he read strange histories about the east all full of half modern ideas about how one race influences another through means of etymology, and the Greeks weren't so smart as to be all holy and full of truth of their own for that they swiped everything from India and Egypt the book states clearly. This Blake read. Anyhow he hated Plato "¦
Quotation SourceThe Road to Joy: Letters to New and Old Friends.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / [S.l.] : Flame. 1990, p. 142-43
Letter toRobert Lax
Notes 
Link to Merton's Copy 42077 

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