the art and poetry of william blake

8/14/2019 The Art and Poetry of William Blake

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The Art and Poetry of William

Blake


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The Lamb p. 870


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The Lamb

The Lamb from Songs of Innocence istypical of one of the plates Blake produced.

Notice the embedding of the words withinthe branches and vines (which often seem to

be dying or oppressive, pressing on the

words themselves as in this poem).


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The Tyger p. 874


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Most of the plates in Songs of Innocence are meant to be balanced or read against the contrasting poem inSongs of Experience (one of the central concepts inBlake is the idea of the contraries, innocence andexperience being two contrary states of being, two

partial views of the world. He believed that contrarieswere necessary for any sort of progress but that both

were flawed, only partial ways of seeing.) In this caseThe Tyger is the contrary to The Lamb. Notehow


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the poem asks basically the same questionwho made you?Its an easy question with a creature such as The Lamb,associated with goodness and helplessness, but a much moredifficult question for a creature such as The Tyger, known asa dangerous predator. In this case, though, the tiger isnt

portrayed as the words of the poem might lead us to expect.This tiger isnt crouching, ready to attack; it appears to bealmost smiling, a larger version of a benevolent house cat.Perhaps the central line of this poem is Did He who made theLamb make thee? In other words, did the same God who couldcreate something good such as a lamb also create somethingdangerous and bad like a tiger? But from whose perception is

the tiger bad? From the fallen view of experience, only able tosee the part and not the whole? In Blake, only God is able tosee the whole and is not limited by one view or the other.


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Chimney Sweeper

Innocence, p. 871


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In this version of The Chimney Sweeper fromInnocence, the boy himself (the small chimneysweeper) is comforted by his belief system. Thothe morning was cold, Tom was happy andwarm. But we, the readers, can only read fromexperience. We can only read the final lineironically; the view from innocence is no longer available to us once we have fallen from it.


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Chimney Sweeper

Experience, p. 874


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In this version of The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience, note howthe chimney sweeper has been objectified, turned into a little black thingamong the snow. Note also the inversion of the stereotypical way of using

black and white. Here the little black thing is innocent and good, while thesnow, which is white, is cold and cruel. The speakers voice here is that of thechimney sweeper who has fallen from innocence into experience and sees hisown misery; the kind of comfort still available to the chimney sweeper in

Songs of Innocence is not possible for this speaker. Neither the speaker frominnocence nor the one from experience has the truthboth are only partialversions of the truth. By balancing us between the two, making us look at thecontrast, Blake tries to let us see from both perspectives at once.


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Little Black Boy p. 870


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This is an excellent example of how the engravedimages subtly change the meaning of the poem. This

poem appeared on two plates in Songs of Innocence.The speaker is a little black boy born in Africa (thesouthern wild) explaining to himself, and recallinghis mothers explanation, of his lot in life as a slave.Just as the two poems The Lamb and The Tyger

together ask the question, could the same goodloving God who would create a lamb also create atiger (with the answer being, of course, yes), this

poem also deals with the Problem of Evil. The boy

speaks from innocence and is comforted by hisanswer to his question, that there is a reason Godgave the black boy a harder lot in life, that he has amission to shade the English boy from the harsh rays


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of the sun. We, however, read from experience. We readhow the little black boy has internalized conventionalmessages about black and white (in the second line, for instance, the little black boy says my soul is white,indicating that he has learned societys message that whitemeans good and innocence). Note how the illustration fromthe first plate shows the African mother explaining to her son,

presumably already a slave. The illustration from the second plate shows the little black boys idea of heaven, in which heand the English boy will be free of the shade or shadow of color and will both equally enjoy Gods presence. In theillustration, though, in contrast to the boys words, the littlewhite boy seems to have all of Gods attention, while the little

black boy is once again off to the side looking on, in asecondary or serving position. The words of the poem, too,must be read by us (since we must read through experience,

the only lens available to us) ironically. The last two lines of


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boy are free of the shade of color) the little black boy will

the poem say that then (in heaven, when he and the Englishstand and stroke his silver hair / And be like him and hewill then love me. Does he mean God, or the little English

boy, or both? And dont these lines present a picture of

Gods love as conditional (he will love me when Im likehim, I.e. white) rather than unconditional? And what of thefact that the illustration seems to contrast with the words of the poem (the two boys seem to have different color even inHeaven, and only the white boy seems close enough to beable to stroke Gods hair)?

the art and poetry of william blake

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