blake’s songs of innocence and experience is both a satire on contemporary english society as well...

8/21/2019 Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience is both a satire on contemporary English society as well as an attemp

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M. Krishna Rao

0409069

Mr Nikhil Yadav

Paper 6; Tutorial 1November 2011

Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experienceis both a satire on contemporary English society

as well as an attempt to create a personal mythology.

William Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both poetry and

the visual arts of the Romantic Age, although he was largely unrecognised during his life

time. Blakes work Songs of Innocence was published in 1789, followed by Songs of

Experiencein 1793 and the combined edition that was published the following year bearing

the title Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing the binary states of the human soul.

Blake published these in the form of poetic sketches that incorporated poetry as well as

artistry into one concise recitation of his thoughts. This paper shall try to explore the poets

view point on the English Society through the construction of his personal mythology.

It may be interesting to note that Blake had nothing but contempt for ritualistic

mystery and hidden knowledge. He recognised these two attributes as being the essential

features of priest craft and the repressive power of what he called State Religion, which he

associated with the notorious State tricksters. Against the closed texts and the careful

regulation of knowledge and power which he took to be essential to state trickery, Blake

offered a series of open texts. As Shernaz Cama further elaborates,

the facade of late eighteenth century Reason and stability hid an England in turmoil.

The early eighteenth century had believed that science could produce a blueprint of


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the universe and economic progress would end social problemsBlakes movement

away from the secular stream of thought to the sacred tradition was an attempt to find

synthesis in a fragmenting world.

His belief that Christianity advocated the repression of natural desires and inhibited earthly

joys led him to create his own personal mythology.

Blakes usual religious posture, then, is not submission but protest. His poetry is a

sustained denunciation of the cruelties, mental and corporeal, perpetuated in the name of God

by those who claim to be doing his will. This can be seen in the Garden of Love fromThe

Songs of Experience;

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

(Pg. 77; lines 1-4)

In the above lines, Blake critiques the interfering priesthood and the power that has robbed

the child of his innocent affections. To him the Church, much like the King and State, relies

on such powers to ensure obedience. He also utilises this mythology to explain his belief that

without contraries there is no progression. This is evident in The Songs of Innocence and

Experiencethrough the dichotomy that he sets between the innocent thought of the child

versus the experienced reasoned thought of man.

The Introduction to both the collections utilises a type of invocation of the muse. In

The Songs of Innocence, the muse is a child on a cloud, who laughing said to me, pipe a

song about a Lamb. The muse figure in this poem is a carefree child wishing to be pleased


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by the piper. The child also relates to Christ, the Lamb of God. This seems to portray Blakes

belief that infants and children share in the divine,

everything around them is beautiful and true. This innocence is not the same as

ignorance, i.e. being too young to know that the world can be a dark, threatening

place.

(Pg. 1)

On the other hand, the muse in The Songs of Experienceintroduces a different mood.

Hear the voice of the Bard!

Who Present, Past, and Future sees

Calling the lapsed Soul.

the first difference to be noted is that this invocation is not a request; rather it is more like a

command. The second distinction is that a person cannot be innocent who has seen the Past,

Present, and Future. Finally, a lapsed Soul refers to a soul that has fallen from the truth.

The Songs of Innocence and Experiencesets up the two polar opposites of the human

condition. Blakes poetry is about human souls quest for truth and self-realisation. The effort

is mans, man must cultivate the imagination-the divine spark within- for during moments of

creativity or inspiration or poetry, truth and vision is revealed. The innocence of the child for

Blake is, then, the closest that a human can come to divinity. Songs of Innocenceportrays

this, while on the other hand, Songs of Experienceportrays the view of issues through the

restricting lens of rationality, hence, the loss of innocence.

It is interesting to note that Blakes personal mythology permeates even his critiquing

of English society. Thepoem Chimney sweeper from both thebooks shows this. While in

bothInnocence andExperience, the Chimney Sweeper suffers the same fate, in Innocence


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there is still a belief in the divinity and a deep human sympathy available companionship of

all the little sweeps. The sufferings of the world are temporary, for if the human father sells

the child, the real Father or Christ is still there at hand to protect and remove to a perfect

world.

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

And he opend the coffins and set them all free;

Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,

And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

(Pg. 67; lines 13-16)

The above lines show the innocence that is reclaimed through divine intervention. In contrast

to the Chimney Sweeper inInnocence the Chimney Sweeper inExperience ironically has

both his parents living, but suffers from their exploitation instead of enjoying their care. He is

the only source of material profit for them and is fully aware of his tragedy. This child has

been abused by authority, and made a victim of cruelty and exploitation by a society whose

trinity is God, Priest and King. There is no recourse to faith and companionship, the

authoritarian divinity here is the opposite of Jesus the Saviour. The Chimney Sweeper in

Experience takes on a satirical quality when compared to the one inInnocence; it directly

implicates the family, church and King as the cause of oppression.

An interesting thing to note in order to understand Blakes critiquing of English

society, is through studying the pictures that accompany the poems. In The Songs of

Innocencethe settings depicted in the pictures are shown to be pastoral, this presents an

image in direct contrast to that of the imagery of commerce and industrialisation, repressed

sexuality and fettered thought that are shown in The Songs of Experience.Pictorially the


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vegetation that decorates the pages of The Songs of Innocence,are shown to be decaying and

rotting, in turn signifying the loss of imagination due to the process of industrialisation. The

symbolism that forms a dominant part of The Songs of Innocence are The Child, The Father

and Christ while that inExperience is The Church, King and State. InInnocence the child

is surrounded by others who share his sorrows and joys while inExperience he is left alone.

To conclude, throughout The Songs of Innocence and ExperienceBlake uses the

opposing views to critique the loss of imagination due to the process of commerce driven

industrialisation. His views on religion, is that of pure faith rather than the ritualistic and

unquestioning following that was prevalent at the time in England. Blakes personal

mythology that believed that art and imagination was a way of being closer to god was

followed closely by him; indeed The Songs of Innocence and Experience were written, drawn

and finally printed in his backyard at a time when the print industry had picked up in

England. This in turn shows the intensity with which he believed in his own philosophy.

Bibliography:

1. Ed. Debajan Sengupta and Shernaz Cama; Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge;

Worldview Critical Edition 2008.

2. The Cambridge Companion to Blake; Cambridge University Press 2000

3. Price, Martin; The Vision of Innocence.

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