William Blake was an artist and an apprentice to an engraver in his early years. Blake used his training as an engraver to illustrate his works. At first glance, William Blake’s writings appear simple, but it takes some effort to decipher the true meaning of his visionary perspective.
In All Religions Are One, Blake refers to man’s Poetic Genius, or the imagination, as the source of knowledge and truth. This Poetic Genius exists in the inner spirit of all of us and we can draw from it to look beyond consciousness (the senses) and open our mind to true understanding and wisdom.
In Songs of Innocence and or Experience, The Lamb symbolizes a pastoral world of peace, goodness, and innocence. In contrast, The Tyger represents the evil, darkness, and violence that is realized as innocence is lost. If both the lamb and the tiger are made by God, how can we explain the contradictions between the two? The complexity of creation leaves many unanswered questions.
The Little Black Boy tells us that even though our skin may be different, our souls are the same. The color of skin is apparent in the physical world, but is irrelevant to God and racial differences are transcended in heaven. Again, Blake’s message is that we must look beyond the senses to understand the truth.
In The Divine Image, the virtues of mercy, pity, peace, and love symbolize God. When Blake points out that mercy, pity, peace, and love are also human qualities, the distinction between God and man is blurred. Blake is saying that we must look beyond religion, because regardless of religion, all men pray in distress and send their thankfulness to the “human form divine.” Perhaps Blake is saying that God is inside all men, and by looking beyond our consciousness, to our Poetic Genius, we will find him.
The virtues of mercy, pity, peace, and love are seen again in The Human Abstract. Blake tells us that if poverty did not exist, we would not need pity. If we were all happy, we would not need mercy. Blake describes a tree that is rooted in humility, but grows with fear and bears fruit of deceit. At the end of the poem we find that this tree does not grow in nature, but in the human brain. In other words, we start out with peace and innocence, but through our experiences and growth, we find fear and evil.
Blake emphasizes two opposite worlds, good and evil, heaven and hell, black and white, and the complexity with which they come together in our lives. The recurring theme in Blake’s work is that only by looking deep into our inner beings, to our Poetic Genius, will we be able to find truth, wisdom, and understanding.
5 comments:
Brenda, I agree with you on the Poetic Genius concerning the inner spirit. I believe that we all have an inner spirit. I find that I listen to the inner more than the flesh. I feel that the inner spirit helps to lead and guide you and give you better understanding and wisdom to different circumstances and experiences.
On the thought concerning The Lamb, I must say that I do not believe that God created evil beings. I believe that evil is a choice and individuals chose to go the route of evil compared to innocence. I enjoyed Blake’s writings on the Songs of Innocence and Experience.
Mercy, pity, peace and love takes me to the point of we have all struggles and temptations. My viewpoints on Blake are more from a spiritual point of view. I’m not for sure if that was Blake’s goal or not. I found peace, love, innocence, experience, darkness and pity all within his writings. Overall, I agree that if everything that we faced were good then why we would need mercy, pity, peace, and love.
I agree with you, Mignon that evil is a choice for individuals. I think Blake was saying that evil is inevitable in the world and we will all face it in our lives. Regardless of the route we chose to take in life, we will encounter and are affected by the evil in the world, and as a result we lose our innocence.
Brenda,
Good observations on this challenging poet. I think you might have been more effective in this posting, though, had you focused on fewer of Blake's poems. At times you seem to be making scattered comments about numerous poems in this posting. Perhaps it would have been better to focus on "The Divine Image" and "The Human Abstract" instead, and compare and contrast them in more depth. Remember, as a general rule in these postings, "say more about less."
Blake was a little difficult to understand but the more I read, I was able to feel what he was trying to express through his spirituality.
You hit on my favorite part of Blake: his constant duality. There is always some sort of contrast in his works, and it may be that there is a comparison within a single poem, but more often than not he uses two different poems to contrast the ideal of a situation with the reality of that same situation. Poems like "Lamb" and "Tyger" are a perfect example of this. He explore's God's creation of good in "Lamb," but then he follows up with God's creation of evil in "Tyger," which is very characteristic of Blake.
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