WILLIAM BLAKE & HIS POETRY
MEG-1 Block-6 Unit 28 - WILLIAM BLAKE & HIS POETRY
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Blake saw visions even when he was a small boy of four. As a child he started I was screaming when God pressed his face to the window. At eight, Ezekiel appeared to I him, and at nine, he saw angels on a tree.
The sensory organ of sight which is called the "Corporeal or Vegetative Eye" stimulates "the Divine Arts I of Imagination-Imagination, the real and eternal World.
BLAKE'S REVOLUTIONARY VIEWS
He could not accept the prevailing culture of the eighteenth century. He opposed the mechanistic view of the universe of his time. He despised the tendency to analyze rather than synthesize.
Blake as an Anarchist
Blake was attracted by revolutions. He was eighteen when the Declaration of Independence by the American Colonies inspired idealists all over Europe. He was an eye-witness to the burning of Newgate Prison (1780) as an expression of the hatred of authority. He sympathized with the French Revolution. He hated all political systems and favoured complete personal freedom.
Blake's Views on Christianity
Blake hated traditional Christianity. Blake believed that all churches are a kind of prison. He attacked the lack of individual freedom in the Church in his poems.
Blake's Anti-classicism
Blake hated the classics and in this be foreshadowed a common romantic tendency.
The established cultural tradition was shattered in the Romantic period.
Another reason for Blake's detestation of the classics is that they, in his opinion, are
related to the adult world of experience, and represented intellect. He favoured an
intuitive and imaginative view of the world.
BLAKE'S INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
He did not have any formal education; his reading was perhaps uneven. literature. He
identified three stages in history which corresponded to three stages in the life of an
individual.
The first stage corresponds to that of the Garden of Eden, or of primal innocence.
The second stage was the eating of the hit of the forbidden tree or the Fall.
The third stage was that of achieving a higher state of innocence or redemption.
Blake also divided history into a number of periods corresponding to the historical
divisions in the Bible.
Blake's Triadic Division of Poetry
Blake extended his scheme of the triadic division to poetry also. He thought that the The function of poetry was to regain a kind of oneness with life which had been lost. The The eighteenth century represented the Fall. The Age of Reason which emphasized the intellect, in his view, was equivalent to the eating of the hit of knowledge of good and evil. Works - Jerusalem, in Auguries of Innocence, Songs of Innocence.
APPROACHES TO BLAKE'S POETRY
Blake's poem are simple and direct; there is no sentimentality which makes poetry distasteful. One may approach Blake as a child or as a scholar.
Blake's poems can be read in several ways : as direct statements, as indirect statements, or as clusters of images.
Four Levels of Meaning of Blake's Poems
Again, Blake's poems can be read on four levels, the levels which Dante had
suggested for the interpretation of his Divine Comedy. These are:
1. Literal : On this level, the poem can be read simply as a sequence of actions, situations, descriptions, and so on.
2. Moral: On this level, the poem may be read as a series of moral commands, both positive and negative. A system of rewards for right actions and punishments for wrong deeds is given in Dante's poern.
3. Allegorical: On this level, all actions are interpreted in terms of some dogma.
4. Anagogical: On this highest level, a poem can be given a mystical reading.
Eg. way. 'Jerusalem may stand for different things depending on the choice of the level of interpretation. On the literal level it is a city in Palestine, allegorically it may mean the Church; morally it may mean the believing soul; anagogically it means the city of God.
THE NEW PROCESS OF PRINTING
Blake used an entirely original process for printing his poems, starting with Songs of, Innocence. He engraved the text and the related illustration on a copper plate in varnish. The letters and designs were then made to stand out after an acid had lowered the surface of the copper plate. Impressions of these were taken from the raised etchings and then painted in water colours by hand. Thus he could give his visions substance through all the arts at his command.
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND SONGS OF EXPERIENCE
Songs of innocence published in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794. Although these are epoch-making in more ways than one, they hardly made an impact then.
Blake reverses the roles of the poet and the child and makes the child teach the poet. Broadly, in Songs of innocence, the child narrates the joys of life & hature; in Songs of Experience, the child is trapped in prisons of state and Church.
Note on Songs of Innocence
It is a statement of the reaffirmation of the New Testament doctrine, "Lest ye become again as a little child ye cannot hope to enter the kingdom of heaven". This is underscored by Blake's use of pastoral Christian symbols (the Christ child, the lamb, the shepherd, etc,) As Russell Noyes observes: "The poet has left out all art, all moralizing, all pretending. The theme of loss and finding runs through the songs and the gaiety and laughter of children fills them."
Note on Songs of Experience
Having experienced the hypocrisy and cruelty of the world personally, Blake was indignant in Songs of Experience. The children's laughter is silenced by adults; the children are exploited an insensitive world (The Chimney-Sweeper), The Church and the State, two pillars of society, are indifferent. Sometimes they even connive, to cause suffering to children.
Comments on Both the Collections
The world of innocence is the world of childhood, and childhood coveys suggestions of the Christ child. The world of experience is the adult world. It is urban and it is opposed to the natural world of childhood. The pure simple love innocence becomes lust and depraved sexuality in the world of experience. In Blake's poetry there is generally a dominant symbolic pattern based on these two
worlds. The child is good, and he represents the world of innocence. The father, who represents the adult world of experience is evil.
Songs of Innocence: Study of Some Poems
1.The Lamb
If the first stanza stresses the beauty, gentleness and tenderness of the innocent lamb, the second stanza attributes similar qualities to the creator. And the creator calls himself lamb or child. This short poem describes innocence and refers to the mystery of creation. The speaker in the poem is an innocent child who asks the lamb a series of rhetorical questions concerning its birth and upbringing. The first stanza of ten lines mirrors the child-like quality of innocence. There is an air of gaiety which is expressed in words like 'delight', 'bright', 'rejoice'. The lamb's own "gentle" nature is indicated by words
like 'softest', 'wooly', 'tender'. The speaker who is himself tender, young and gentle is delighted by the sight of the lamb. There is a parallel in that the lamb and the child share the same qualities. The second stanza of ten lines attempts to answer the questions posed to the innocent lamb. Without naming Christ, the speaker says that the maker (or creator) calls himself a lamb. He shares the qualities of meekness and mildness with the lamb and becomes a child. The lamb, the child and Christ are one.
There is the same divinity that hedges a child and a lamb as it does Christ.
2. The Chimney Sweeper
The pathetic condition of a child who was sold to be used as a chimney sweeper even before he could learn to speak the word 'sweep' ('weep' in line 3 is child's lisping for 'sweep') correctly is heart-rending. The pathos is reinforced when the speaker says that he sleeps in the soot. Children are innocent and meek like lambs. The children who worked as chimney sweepers were shaved. The implicit comparison is with the lamb shorn of its wool. The lamb cannot protest; it has to accept what is done to it. So also the child has to meekly accept. There is biting irony in line 8 when the The speaker says that the soot of the chimneys cannot spoil a tonsured head. The spirit of acceptance may be noted in Tom's dream in the third, fourth and fifth stanzas. A A chimney sweeper is like a body in a coffin. As the child is innocent, an Angel sets him free so he can wash himself clean and enjoy himself in the green plains in the Sun. In Tom's dream, the Angel tells him that he could enjoy endlessly if he is a good boy. God would be his father, his protector. But this is only a dream. When Tom woke up, it was business as usual; they had to get back to sweeping chimneys. In spite of the cold and discomfort, Tom was happy because he had learnt that doing his duty was its own reward.
3. The Divine Image
This poem presents the four virtues of mercy, pity, peace and love in direct terms. The simplicity of its statement and its ballad metre remind us of the hymns of Isaac Watts and other hymn writers who influenced Blake. These qualities are identified with God and his child, man. God dwells in man. Hence the human form is divine. Loving men is loving God.
Songs of Experience : Study of Some Poems
The Sick Rose
The rose which stands for purity or innocence is perhaps ruined by (the worm) . experience; the rose which is a symbol of love is perhaps destroyed by selfishness; The rose, which is a thing of beauty, is wrecked by jealousy.
The rose is employed by the poet as a personal symbol which is capable of different interpretations. The poem makes one thing clear. A crimson rose has been entered and sickened and destroyed by a worm secretly. This destruction may symbolize the destruction caused by secrecy, deceit, hypocrisy and pain.
London
It is a social and economical protest on level 1 but must be approached on other levels. Reason, which has an important place in the lath century, exercises tyranny and hence "mind-forged manacles". Reason, nature and society which are highly valued in that age has forged their own tyrannies. These are the ''triple goddess of destruction Everyone and everything, the streets and the river, are chartered", that is, used commercially. The word "ban" may refer to Pitt's ban on people's liberties. The
the nation is sick of weakness, woe and fear "bight" it. The child chimney - sweeper, the adult soldier, the young prostitute are living testimony to the neglect of Christian ideals and humane personal relationships, Blake saw madage as an institution invented by a fallen man. Like any other institution, it also limits freedom. Hence Marriage is a 'hearse'.
The Tyger
Spelling of the word, "Tyger".
Although Dr. Samuel Johnson mentioned it as an alternative form of the more common spelling, "Tiger. Blake's spelling conveys a unique feeling. In this context, it is important to remember that for Blake a poem is not a group of words presented in a linear fashion on a page, but a poem is a visual object. His engraving and paintings are integral parts of his verbal art. Thus a poem by Blake is meant to be seen and read. Only then is its full impact felt. So the unconventional spelling reinforces our sense of wonder at the beauty, fierceness and strength of the tiger.
Our astonishment is expressed through a series of fourteen questions in a span of twenty-four short lines. Eleven of these questions are fired rapidly in the first sixteen lines. In the first four stanzas, the poet attempts to augment the reader's sense of wonder progressively by asking a series of rhetorical questions on the extraordinary perverse required for creating an animal like the tiger. The creator must possess the same qualities to be able to produce such a creature. The nature of the Tiger, as Lionel Trilling says, is defined by the nature of God. In the last two stanzas, there is a reversal of this procedure. God is defined by the nature of the Tiger. God who created a meek and mild creature like the lamb dared to create the ferocious Tiger. Earlier we saw that the lamb, the child, and Jesus are one and the same. That such a God created the tiger is not comprehensible to the stars who are the agents of divine law. As Blake himself suggests, it is the "contrary state of the soul". The Lamb and the Tiger represents two aspects of God and two states of man.
BLAKE'S CONTRIBUTION
He had stated: "I copy Imagination; I write when commanded by the spirits". During his sixties, Blake devoted himself entirely to engraving and painting. He produced hundreds of paintings and engravings. These include illustrations for Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, for the Book of Job (see Appendix) and for Dante's Divine Comedy.
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