The works of William Blake, poetic, symbolic and critical/2/Songs of Innocence and Experience
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE.
The "Songs of Innocence," like the book of "Vala," begin with Tharmas. But it is the innocent Tharmas whose face Vala blesses, whose flocks give her companionship and whose rivers grow reeds well fitted for the pen that should write what "every child may joy to hear." He is now quite different from the "false tongue" or "sense of touch" to whom the spirit of Forgiveness and Imagination was sacrificed. The portion of "Vala" which begins with Night IX., l. 384, shows the return of nature, now the "sinless soul," to the state of innocence.
The symbolic element in the songs is slight, delicate, evanescent. Here, more even than elsewhere, the heavy tread of the interpreter is oppressive. Even the "Little Black Boy," however, cannot be understood, unless it be taken as part of the general mystical manifesto that runs through all the work. In this poem Man's heart and imagination need, we are told, to be exercised for a while on the dark things of the five senses with their seemingly solid and opaque world around. Man is then the little black boy, taught by mother Nature underneath the tree that is the Vine in its good aspect, and becomes Mystery when Priesthood perverts this teaching. The mother, who is the "vegetative happy,"—Mnetha herself,—points to the East while she teaches symbolism. The sun is the signal of Love, that paradoxically manifests itself by giving us a cloud, the dark body, to screen us from Himself. By death or by inspiration we shall presently be free of it, and then it will be seen that the white boy is also the inhabitant of a cloud as much as he who is outwardly dark. Compare "Jerusalem," p. 14, l. 34, and "Vala," Night IV., l. 255, where the daughters of Beulah — the mild emotions of the bodily regions — speak, and explain in the same manner as this song the "garments of Luvah," as the "cloud" or mortal blood is there called.
In the "Little Boy Lost" symbolic vision is again as evident as in any of the Prophetic Books. Here the "Little Boy" is lost, for a while, because the movement of the Light, as the "Father," is too swift for the mind clogged with body to follow. He does not at best see the Father otherwise than as a vapour, and even this flies from him, and leaves him in the darkness of fleshly growth, which becomes increasingly "opaque," — to use Blake's later term. The region of the darkened West, the shadowy Female, is indicated by the signs night, and dew, as the Adamic Red Earth is by the mire.
In the "Little Boy Found," the flying vapour is separated from the Father and shown to be, — when alone, — only tin fen-light, "wandering," — the "false morning," as it is after- wards called in "Vala." God appears in the Human form, which, to the little boy, seems that of his father and leads him to his mother. Mnetha has become Enion, who loses her own children in her own element. The Father gives back to her those who are not advanced enough to leave her, for until the experience of the lower nature, or senses, is completely matured, the higher should not be permitted to separate, lest empty abstraction, and the solitude of the Spectre in Entuthon Benython and Udan Adan, be the result, and not the ultimate unity only to be reached through experience and brotherhood.
In the next song but one, the "Divine Image," or "Similitude," is described, — that which he "ceases to exist" who "ceases to behold" ("Jerusalem," p. 38, 1. 12).
It is this Vision against which "Self-Righteousness" hardens itself "conglomerating" ("Jerusalem," p. 13, 1. 52).
In the song called "Night," all the terms are used in symbolic sense, as in the prophetic books. It relates th power of the passions, whether devouring loves or destructive angers, when mind has gone down into the darkness of experience from the light of imagination, as when "Urizen fell as the midday Sun falls down into the West" ("Vala," Night VI., 1. 258). The last verse tells of regeneration. The lion is Bintrah, with the companion symbol " gold," and stands for the re-risen Urizen. The lions and tigers, &c., are "animal forms of wisdom" ("Vala," Night IX., 11. 701, 830).
The "Infant Joy" is the same referred to in "Vala," Night I., 1. 48, and "Jerusalem," p. 22, 1. 22.
In "A Dream," the next song, a story is told of insects that is evidently the same as that of the "Little Boy Lost." The "human forms" of these insects are referred to, for when they feel, God feels, Humanity, who " suffers with those that suffer" ("Jerusalem," p. 25, 1. 7), and "Man looks out in tree and herb and fish and beast," for these contain the "scattered portions of his immortal body" ("Vala," Night VIII. 1.553, &c). When the dead wake these scattered portions, furious forms of Tharmas, humanize, with joy,—"Vala," Night IX., 1. 607,—their description is in the lines immediately preceding—590-606.
The song, "On another's Sorrow," is practically an explanation of " Night," as the words,
" . . sit beside the nest,
Pouring pity in their breast,"
indicate, with their parallel expression,
"Pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by the bed."
The former line being the subject of the first illustration to the First Night of Young's "Night Thoughts."
In the last, the " Voice of the Ancient Bard," the symbolic intention of all is made clear. Morn is identified with the Image of Truth. The word Image here explains the use of the term Imagination, as equivalent to Christ as a spiritual body divinely present in each heart. Doubt, Clouds, and Reason are words used precisely in the same sense as in the Books where the Reasoning Power builds Vala, identified with the Shadowy Female, from whose clouds, which are blood, doubts are not to be suffered to rise up. That is to say, Tharmas, whose evil aspect is that of the sunset, or blood-red spirit of Uncertainty, is not to be permitted again to kill Imagination, the Saviour.
Songs of Experience.
In the Introduction the Bard speaks out more clearly. Many visions had been seen and some prophetic books written between the date when these songs were engraved (1794) and that of the previous collection (1789).
The Bard speaks with the voice of the East, the sunrise, when in a golden cloud it renews, for earth, the golden age; when Luvah walked from the hands of Urizen in the shadow of Vala's garden (" Vala," Night IX., l. 371), and, speaking the holy word among the ancient trees, called the lapsed soul from the evening dew (I. 384), and showed her that she was sinless (l. 450), and was not, as had been supposed, Sin, though she became such when separate from Man (ll. 619, 620).
But Vala answers that while Jealousy has power, the night is not yet over, nor the morning come. In her all the females of the Prophetic Books speak, and the sin of all the males, as well as their own, is evident. The darkness which belongs to the state when " the masculine separates from the feminine, and both from man " — still has power. This is " Experience." "The Clod and the Pebble " brings out, for the first time in Blake's writings, a principle that must never be lost sight of, for if it escapes notice, the stories of his myths, and the alternately reproving and affectionate language in which he addresses or describes his personages — the "states and spaces " — cannot be understood. This principle is found in the great idea, that everything can be seen in a good or an evil aspect, yet its individuality remain the same. Holy Thursday pleads that this world be made more like the world of imagination, that things should' be on earth as in heaven, though Blake has said elsewhere ("Vision of the Last Judgment") that until after the Last Judgment had passed on each of us this could not be.
But in the "Little Girl Lost" we return to symbolic utterance. This and the companion poem are fitting counterparts to those of the little boy. The little girl is that Innocence who from time immemorial has had no need to fear the lion. But the end of the story is new. The parents do not reclaim the child. They make common cause with the lion. Their own lost innocence is found when they cease to be jealous. They go after the girl, as "Milton" went, in "self-annihilation."
The "Chimney-Sweeper" is symbolic too, though it is none the less practical. The expression "clothes of death," reveals the intention. The chimney-sweeper is not merely a sooty child though he is this also. Blake is not merely indignant at the treatment the child gets though he is this also. The chimney- sweeper is Oothoon in disguise, shut up in Bromion's caves, till "all from life" the child would be "obliterated and erased," if God were not "within and without; even in the depths of Hell." The parents, meanwhile, go to church to make themselves "drunk with the cup of Religion" that is offered by "Mystery."
The Nurse who sings next is undoubtedly symbolic. She speaks with the voice of Envy. The use of the word "disguise" as connected with "winter and night "that is to say with Urizen in the North is technical in the Blake- vocabulary. It appears in "Vala," Night VII., 1. 515. In a more literary sense it is used in the half -bitter and half -playful verses quoted here from the MS. book on page
" 'Twas Death in a disguise."
The sick roser and the invisible worm would be understood , as meaning love and mortality, whoever had been the author. But in Blake it must be remembered that the howling (or sexually passionate) storm of night is the whirlwind of the North, — reverse of that of the South, from which God spoke) to Job, — and the worm is the chain of jealousy.
"The Fly" has always been popular because so easy understand, but the lines
- "Art not thou
- A man, like me?"
- "Art not thou
have usually been overlooked. The fly also is an "animal form of wisdom," and is a man, since " every truth is a man. " That the fly has its rich array, and man his human beauty from thought, which is life ; but that man may close his inner gates by error, while the fly may not, are ideas whose recognition is needed to complete our perception of Blake's thought. He gives them himself in a few impulsive lines that enter suddenly, as though on quick small wings, into a symbolic story where they would be least looked for (" Milton," p. 18, 1. 20)
" The Angel " is no stranger to literature. He is innocence in the sense of childish ignorance of evil. But Blake's use of this image is his own. The maiden queen, the body, a portion of mind that is female as distinct from the intellect, whether in man or woman, hides its heart's delight from, its own simplicity till childhood is over. So the simplicity flies. Morn, the young imagination, blushes. But jealous fears take the weapons of Urizen, and in return find that they have deceived the poor mortal, who is a prisoner in his own armour, till innocence that should have saved him from the folly of modesty only returns to find him in the helpless purity of senility.
The "Tiger" is, of course, the tiger of wrath, wiser in his own way than the horse of instruction, but always, like the roaring of lions and the destructive sword, so terrible as to be a " portion of eternity too great for the eye of man."
The " Pretty Rose Tree" explains the worm in the "Sick Rose."
The "Sunflower" shows love, as the guide to imagination, or eternity. The Garden of Love develops Proverb 56 from the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
The little Vagabond comically proclaims what Blake made his great purpose of mental life, —
- "Therefore, I print ; nor vain my types shall be,
- Heaven, Earth, and Hell, henceforth, shall live in harmony."
- "Jerusalem," p. 3.
In "London" we find the purely literary equivalent for the passage in "Jerusalem," p. 84, ll. 11, 12.
In the "Human Abstract" no reader will now have any difficulty in recognizing Urizen in the North. The myth explains the connection of ideas which gave rise to the poem. But the poem helps to explain the myth.
In "Infant Sorrow," the "fiend hid in a cloud" is the symbol for the natural man, born entirely evil, and needing "continually to be changed into his direct contrary." That this change is not to come till after the troublous experiences of life is the truth that makes the helpless child sulky. The expression " sulk upon the breast," being the same as that used in " Vala," Night I., 1. 178, shows again how often Blake concealed an allusion to the Zoas under the most simple verses. His great myth was never far from the background of his mind.
"Christian Forbearance," taken along with the lines on the same subject in the MS. book, on the errors of friends and foes, and the sentence in "Milton," extra p. 3, on the wisdom ^of expressing anger, is rather of biographical than mystical interest, recalls the O'Neil descent, and shows the struggle of " blood and judgment."
"A Little Boy Lost" is suggestive in its title. The poem is to a certain extent a substitute for that called " The Little Boy Lost," and is in many ways its counterpart.
The fuller version quoted by Mr. Swinburne from the MS. book, shows that the central idea of the poem is the binding of the young imagination by the chain of religious jealousy, and the demand that the young passions also shall burn in bondage.
"A Little Girl Lost" gives another picture from the same thought. The ferocity only is left out. The little girl's father suffers for her innocent lawlessness, not the child.
"A Divine Image" gives beforehand an explanation of some of the symbols of " Jerusalem." But no single statement covers the richness of the symbolic suggestiveness, whose fulness is not to be recognized till the whole harvest of paradoxes is gathered in and made into "bread of knowledge."
In a "Cradle Song," the use of the word "light" in the last verse is the same as that in the third verse of "A Little Girl Lost." The word "wake" applied to the heart is used exactly as in "Jerusalem," — in the last verse but two, page 77, the first line of page 97, and in the "Book of Urizen," chap. VII., stanza 2, and elsewhere. Here and in so man; other places the technical or symbolic use of a word may be seen gathering firmness, until the whole language had its secondary meaning and each expression looked two ways, like Janus. But as the temple of Janus was only open in war time, so Blake kept his double meaning for the wars of intellect, and did not allow it outside poetry. His private letters, except when they touch on poetic subjects, or contain verses, are to be read exactly as those of anyone else, though unless the effect of mysticism in maturing the mind and giving steadiness to character is understood, they will always be more or less surprising and even incomprehensible.
"The Schoolboy" again pleads for freedom. The distant huntsman who winds his horn in summer time was presumably taking the hounds out for exercise. It is hardly to be supposed that Blake put in this touch out of his own head for literary effect, not remembering what time of year was the hunting season. The note on the horn was probably heard once and remembered with delight as an exhilarating addition to the pleasant warmth of the green lanes, during one of the long country in which Blake and his young wife spent so many hou
The last verse only brings in the symbolic use of the seasons.
The concltuhig poem, "To Tirzah," suddenly enters on new ground, and the name of a personage of the myth is added to general explanatory allusions. The song may be looked on as an abbreviated form of all the Prophetic Books. Experience and sense the female of mind have closed in the true intellect, until it seems as though man had a body distinct from his mind. But Imagination enters the dark region, Jesus dies, and the chain is broken.
VOL. II. 2