Romantic Literature-William Blake

Q: Write a critical appreciation of the poem “London” by William Blake

Answer: William Blake is the precursor of “Romanticism”. English engraver, artist, poet, and visionary, author of exquisite lyrics in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) and profound and difficult “Prophecies” He was the greatest visionary poet in English, was born in 1757 and he was the second son of James Blake. We get the expression of his sublime thoughts and ideas in his poems. As he was a boy of a poor family, he could realize the sufferings of the poor people. So, we can see that, he writes against the social tyranny, child labor, war, harlotry and other social discrimination with his mighty pen. Blake divided his poems into two series- (i) Songs of Innocence and (ii) Songs of Experience. Both series of poems take on deeper resonance when read in conjunction. Innocence and Experience, “the two contrary states of the human soul” are contrasted in such companion pieces as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”. Blake’s subsequent poetry develops the implication that true innocence is impossible without experience, transformed by the creative force of the human imagination. Our above-mentioned poem “London” is under the part of “Songs of Experience”. In “London” Blake outlined three great evils of the London city like callousness, adversity of war and miseries of harlot.

 

 Now, we will discuss about the critical appreciation of the poem “London”. In “London”, Blake decries the three great evils of society—

(i) Callousness of the society, as exemplified by the chimneysweepers miserable life, (ii) The adversity of war as expressed in the case of the soldier and

(iii) Lust represented in the malpractice of harlotry that looms large as a threat to purity of marriage and the happiness of the offspring. Blake is not the only poet who laments the collapse of humanity in London. Later Wordsworth in his “London 1802” wishes Milton were living in that period to redeem England from the deterioration it has undergone. In this century, T.S Eliot has portrayed the cultural collapse of London as well as the whole world in his “The Waste Land”. In “London” Blake attacks the hollowness of society and the helplessness of the church. Through this poem Blake gives a step through all the streets of London and along the streets, which stands by river Thames that flows freely. Like the Thames River every streets of London is free for the people for enjoying freedom. Though the city people enjoying so much freedom but Blake finds the faces of Londoners sad and pale. He starts his poem stating—

“I wander thro’ each chartered street,

Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe”

In London city the poet hears not only the crying of every man but also the children. The poet hears the sound of chains which men of money and power impose. He expresses them through—

“In every cry of every man,

In every infants cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forged manacles I hear”

“The mind-forged manacles” indicates that, the chains they have forged for themselves fetter the city peoples; it is they who have invented the society, which now oppresses them. Nothing absolutely nothing has escaped the curse man has bought upon himself. In this poem Blake refers to the miserable life of the chimney-sweeper’s. He hears the cries of the chimney-sweepers which appal the helpless church. They are deprived from their fatherly and motherly love. The chimney-sweepers have to work hard for their livelihood from the very tender age. It is worth mentioning that, the chimney-sweepers are very little in age as they are very little they can’t utter the word “sweep”, they say “weep, weep, weep”. The chimney-sweeper’s cry seems to have blackened every church and made it appalling. Everybody knows that, church is the place where one hopes that he will get the justice, which he deserves. But, the church never hears the cries of the chimney-sweepers. The idea is that, the pitilessness shown to the chimney-sweepers blackens the souls of those who are its cause and it is this cruelty which is shocking to the church. According to another interpretation, the church is not “appalled”, but is “made appalling”. Again it is also held that, it is the smoke of industrial London, which blackens the church since the poet means a continuous process of staining by his phrase “blackening”. He also realizes the actual meaning of the sigh of the helpless and dying soldiers. They fight to protect the king and palace and the blood flows down the royal palace. They have to kill many people to protect the palace against their wish. They feel sorrow for the lives but cant do anything as they wish because they are bound to do their cruelty. Really it is very tragic. In the last stanza the poet describes the worst situation of the harlots as he notices when he walks through the midnight streets of London city. The harlot may be the curse of the harlotry that spread in the city or may be the misfortune of the harlot. The sight of harlots in the streets of London convinces the poet of the derangement of it causes in the married life of the people. But, harlot is made by man himself. The dead institution of the loveless marriage which causes man to seek physical pleasure elsewhere in effect brings the harlot into being and so the curses the marriage hearse. The newborn infant, who is the product of that marriage or harlot, is made wither as soon as he is born. This new baby adds the misery of the harlot and this baby also has some physical problem and suffers from many other diseases. The baby deprives from the happiness of the world by born. The man can gave birth babies but fearful to take the responsibility. Note, the use of “hearse” in combination with marriage to imply the hollowness of institutions as it is practiced. He ends the poem with the following lines—

“Blasts the new born infant’s fear

And blights with plagues the marriage hearse”

 

Blake’s tragic appreciation of the restriction, which imprisons and kills the living spirit, was no purely personal thing. It was his criticism of the society and the whole trend of contemporary civilization. Many of the poems of Blake are static when each of them is taken as an entity in itself. Whether in “Infant Sorrow” or “The School Boy” or “The garden of Love” the poet deals with a state of things but in his “London” though we may take the poem as an isolated specimen, we can sense a progression on terms of both thought and feelings. It moves from the chartered streets to the Thames that flows according to its own “sweet will” there on to the midnight streets. Blake has already given birth of “Londoners” in “Infant Sorrow” and struggles in vain to escape from this world. But, eventually, he has come to his full size in this poem where the vices of society welcome him. The use of symbols is one of the most striking features of Blake’s poetry. In the poem “London”, oppression and tyranny are symbolized by the king (who is responsible for the blood being shed), social institutions like lovers marriage. In the same poem, we have found the off quoted phrase mind-forged manacles which conveys the restriction that society imposes upon its members. Rather than a poem of protest “London” is also a psychological testament of the inhabitants of London. The poem reveals that The London society is corrupt and it is the corruption of civilization whose self-imposed manacles have restricted every spontaneous joy. The street cries of the puny chimney-sweepers loudly accuse the church and the death sighs of the soldier stain the State. Love itself the—fundamental human virtue—is negated and his negation degenerates the holly marriage-bed—the very institution basic to the Society—into a blighted hearse.

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Q: How does William Blake describe innocence and experience as “the two contrary states of human soul”?

Or Illustrate Blake’s idea, “Without contraries, there is no progression”.

Answer: William Blake (1757-1827), English poet, painter, and engraver, who created an unusual form of illustrated verse; his poetry, inspired by mystical vision, is among the most original lyric, and prophetic in the language. He stands as a bridge between the institutional religion of the past and the tendency to seek the celestial power within the soul. He tries to seek the psychological truth of life. In his poetry he combines the imaginative genius of the poet with the psychological insight of modern mankind. Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” portrays the psychological reality of life. He observes that in human souls there are two contrary states. He believes that attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, live and hate, are necessary to human existence. Blake represents a picture of the contrary qualities of human soul in his poems under the titles of “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”. The tittles themselves show the contraries of human soul. The essence of Blake’s poetry is that if is possible for the contraries of innocence and experience to co-exist within a human being. The poet as the two contrasting states of the human soul uses “Innocence” and “Experience”. With the word “Innocence” Blake seems to mean some soft and gentle qualities of human life and with the word “Experience” he means so extreme qualities.

In the “Introduction” to the first series Blake represents a laughing child as his inspiration to his poems. And in the poems that follow in this series, Blake gives us his vision of the world as it appears to the child or as if it affects the child. And this is one of purity, joy, and security. The children are themselves pure, whether their skin is black or white. They are compared to the lambs “whose innocent call” they hear. Both “Child” and “Lamb” serve as symbol of God. Like the Piper in the earlier “Introduction”, the Bard in “Songs of Experience” is a poet, but the Bards poetry is prophetic and brings a message. His inspiration comes from the divinity. He speaks with authority and like God he can see “Present, past and future”. He speaks to a fallen earth and so speaks in the manner of a seer, with weighty things to utter. In Songs of Innocence” the prevailing symbol in the lamb, which is an innocent creature of God and which also, symbolizes the child Christ. In the “Songs of Experience” the chief symbol is the tiger “burning bright in the forests of the night”. The tiger burns in metaphorically with rage and quickly becomes for some a symbol of anger and passion. The poet asks a crucial question here, “Did God who made the lamb also made the tiger? The lamb, innocent and pretty, seems the work of a kindly, comprehensible creator.

The tiger represents the universe in its violent and terrifying aspects. It also symbolizes violent and terrifying forces within individual man. Thus the two poems the “Lamb” and the “Tiger” do, indeed, represent two-century stables of the human soul. “The Chimney-Sweeper” in the first series of poems depicts the contentment and sense of security of a soot-covered boy. An angel comes and tells Tom that, if he would be a good boy, he would have God for his father and that he would never lack joy. But, in the second group, the poem with the same title emphasizes the misery of the chimney sweepers and the cruelty not only of priests and kings but also his parents. The wretched chimney sweeper here is clothed in “the clothes of death”, while in the first poem the chimney sweeper went leaping and laughing to bath in a river.

“Nurse’s Songs” in “Songs of Innocence and in Songs of Experience” express two contrary modes of mind. The nurse in the first poem is inclined to let the children play in the field even after evening as they as they appeal to her and adopt and easy going manner towards them; while the other has reason to be protective and fearful. The nurse in the second part thinks play to be a waste of time. She speaks of the “dews of might” which will soon arrive; and she speaks of the coming natural years of the children as a shame and deceit. The most fearful thing about experience is that if breaks the tree life of the imagination and gives a deadly blow to the cheerful human spirit.

On the wings of vision Blake hovers in the world of human psychology and explores the eternal truths. Blake wants to say that human soul in the combination of some contrary qualities that should be recognized for the usual course of life. Any attempt to destroy the contrary elements of soul in the name of religious decorum and social and political orders will destroy the normally of human existence. In portraying contrary states of soul, Blake wants to defy the conventional religious, social and political authority that controls the spontaneous forces of human soul. Blake seems to say that the juxtaposition of good and evil in human law should be accepted as the divine law demands and there should not be any grudge adjusts the evils of the human soul.