Songs of Experience and Tao Te Ching: A Parallel

Blake’s Songs of Experience, especially Holy Thursday and The Human Abstract, shares a same spirit with one of China’s oldest philosophical work, Laotse’s Tao Te Ching. They both advocate that the society should follow nature. Furthermore, they both condemn the process of categorization, and the proposers of it, the institutions and industrialization in Blake’s version and the society and the ruler in Laotse’s version.

As we discussed in class today, Blake views charity and all forms of institutions to be hypocritical and the existence of poverty as sins, not matter what they do to relieve poverty. This inclination becomes more obvious in The Human Abstract: “Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody Poor: And Mercy no more could be, If all were as happy as we” (42). In these sentences, Blake challenges the common categorization of noble and inferiority. To him, pity would be unnecessary if we don’t invent the concept of poverty. And the present of mercy is a hypocritical means because it grows on the misfortune of other.

Blake’s theory reminds me of Laotse immediately. Laotse, who views nature as only proper way, dislikes the categorization of good and bad at his time either. In his Tao Te Ching, he expresses similar opinions: “When knowledge and cleverness appeared, Great hypocrisy followed in its wake. When the six relationships no longer lived at peace, [T]here was (praise of) “kind parents” and “filial sons.”” He believes that all good features, which are praised by the society at his time, exist because the gap and inequality makes contrary possible.

Though both of them are viewed as geniuses who speak to the later generations, their theories appeared in time of change. Blake’s resentment towards all forms of institutions was accelerated and magnified by the outstanding effect of Britain’s industrialization. The coming to power of capitalism and industrialization caused a huge income gap. Similarly, Laotse’s time, around 5^th to 4^th century BCE, was characterized by the emerging centralized state power and social hierarchy, first time in Chinese history.  However, the future developments of these two theories are quite different. Blake’s poetry, though has the characteristics of religion, is studied more in English class. On the contrary, developing from Tao Te Ching, Laotse’s theory transforms into one of China’s major religions, Taoism.

The translation of Tao Te Ching is from Yutang Lin’s The Wisdom of Laotse. Most of the theories of Laotse are from my high school History and Chinese class.

Innocence vs Ignorance

In Blake’s “Songs of Innocence,” what does it mean to be “innocent”?  After rereading the introductory material to the Songs on pages 8-10, I was struck by this line – “to be innocent though, is not always to be ignorant of the facts that girls and boys get lost, or have to live in orphanages or on the street, or are sold as slaves or chimney sweeps” (9).   This suggests that innocence and ignorance are not the same thing – someone can be aware of all the unfairness, tragedy, and sadness of life, and still remain innocent.  The passage continues, “These invincible innocents, despite their circumstances, retain their spiritual resilience and fresh outlook; with joy and contentment they love their enemies and dream of a better world” (9).  Thus, “innocence” is “spiritual resilience” and “fresh outlook,” basically optimism.  At first, there seems to be nothing inherently wrong with this optimism, but this positive outlook is so relentless, causing innocents to “love their enemies,” that the idealism seems almost blind.  Innocence, then, is a problematic concept.  The problems of innocence  are stressed  in “The Little Black Boy”.  In this poem, a young black boy is not ignorant to his situation in the world.  He says, “And I am black, but O! my soul is white./ White as an angel is the English child:/ But I am black as if bereav’d of light”.  He knows that he is black – he is not totally ignorant of his situation.  However, he also believes that his soul is white and that once he goes to heaven he will be loved by the white boys who hate him now.  Innocence, then, is a product of the stories mothers tell their children.  The black boy says all that he knows based on a story his mother taught him underneath a tree.  Innocence has to be taught.  If it wasn’t, the black child, would probably be less optimistic and idealistic about his future.    If innocence has to be taught, then innocence is a system of logic and reason.  Innocence is the system of knowledge and beliefs children are taught so that they can cope with the experience.  Innocence and experience are not two separate modes of experience, but rather innocence is the system of logic that is learned so that people can cope with everyday life, which is inevitably filled with experience.

While reading t…

While reading the song’s of innocence I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for my own childhood and even a little tinge of anxiety at the fleeting nature of time. Many of the poems in this series address the cyclical pattern of seasons that parallel the pattern of sunlight everyday. In Nurse’s Song, the speaker notes “well well go & play till the light fades away” which seems like a simple comment on the surface, but hints at the inherent sadness that accompanies happiness because all joy must come to an end, and exists as a passing moment instead of a state of permanence. This idea is also expressed in The Ecchoing Green that says “Till the little ones weary/ No more can be merry/ The sun does descend,/ And our sports have an end.” There is also a sense of yearning in the poems, and an ominous tone in the descriptions of innocence. In The Blossom, aspects of birth and intimate  relations are being outlined with more menacing words such as “arrow” and “sobbing.” The picture Blake uses to illustrate this poem also seems to have darker intensions, as the angles seem entangled or ensnared in an overgrown blossom’s extremities. Laughing Song seems to be an expression of enjoyment in nature, but the constant use of the word “When” to begin lines suggests that the happiness is not current, but the speaker awaits its return in the future. These poems simultaneously embody the present while acknowleding that soon the moment will be lost. The tension between Innocence and Experience governs many of the works, and often we see a child’s youth tainted by the teachings of a parent. This relates to the line in Blake’s other poem, Yah & His Two Songs Satan & Adam: “The outward ceremony is Antichrist.” The children’s mimicking of their parents’ teachings demonstrates a hollow expressions of human morals that their parents attempt to impose on them despite their lack of understanding instead of being a reflection of their maturation. Throughout this series, Blake’s poems occupy a sort of third-space, expressing the simultaneous existence of opposites and the influence they exert on people.  Instead of trying to resolve the tension, however, Blake creates an awareness of opposition and offers no solution to the reader but to accept the uncomfortable duality.

Lambs and lambs

In the Songs of Innocence and Experience Blake makes frequent references to lambs and to Lambs.  He manipulates the capitalization here to achieve a variety of effects, but on one distinct level he uses the difference to refer to the Biblical Lamb of God.  The lamb is frequently used in the Bible as a sacrifice offered to the Lord.   The idea of comparing human beings to the sacrificial lamb takes it’s root in Genesis when Abraham tells his son that ‘God will provide the lamb for the offering.’  (For those not familiar with the story, Abraham has been instructed by God not to sacrifice a lamb but to sacrifice his own son.)  From here the image of the sacrificial lamb takes on new meaning when it becomes one of the epithets given to Jesus in the gospel.  In John’s gospel Jesus is referred to as the “Lamb of God,” now with a capital L.  This image is meant to emphasize Jesus’ status as a necessary offering to the Lord.  The lamb makes for a good sacrifice because it is pure and innocent.  By Old Testament standards the lamb is among the pure, clean animals that are worthy to be sacrificed.  In a way there is a paradox here, that the lamb’s innocence and purity are the reason it is used for the sacrifice.

Blake’s audience would have understood the meaning of this epithet as it is used in the Songs of Innocence.  In poems like “The Lamb” the speaker keys in on the Lamb’s lack of knowledge and understanding.  The speaker here adopts the same tone one would use when talking to a small child who lacks education.  The Lamb does not even know it’s creator.  But this lack of understanding serves to justify the use of the capital L here.  The Lamb is actually connected to the Lamb of God by this extreme innocence.  Because the lamb lacks any understanding of the world, he embodies those qualities that are sought after in the Lambs.

Blake Explains Innocence in Songs of Innocence

          Songs of Innocence express Blake’s belief in the contrary nature of the human soul; joyous freedom and restriction.  For Blake, childhood is a state of innocence, a state of freedom that is lost as we age into adulthood and the faculties of reason.  Because of this, the Songs of Innocence poems are childlike filled with nursery rhymes, observation, and little meaning.

Sound the flute!

Now it’s mute.

Birds delight

Day and Night.

Nightingale

In the dale

Lark in Sky

Merrily

          These lines taken from “Spring” represent freedom because they illustrate a state absent of reason.  As mentioned during class, Blake believed adults were always confounded to a state of experience.  Innocence is not a faculty adults express.

For Blake, a child is introduced to experience through defining realizations and labor.  In the picture of “The Shepherd Below” (below)  the boy is “watchful while they are in peace.”  The boy’s head is looking downward in a state of contemplation.  It is his responsibility, or lack of freed action, that makes him begin to question life and his role as a living person and reason, being developed through labor, is his continuing restriction to freedom.  In this way, Songs of Innocence is also protesting the industrial revolution because of its effect on the human mind.  The darker colors expressed in “The Shepherd” indicate the darkness of experience, or the way it influences the soul through taking away innocence, joy, and a divine presence.

“The Shepherd”  contrasts “The Echhoing Green”  because in “The Echhoing Green,”  the children are dancing freely and joyous while the adults are left under the tree of experience because of their dedication to reason and responsibility.  Innocence is synonymous with joy, the divine nature of the lamb (Jesus Christ), the divine heat in “The Little Black Boy,” and also natural landscape.  The innocent is appreciative of nature and engrained in the freedoms and joy of natural landscape while experience, in Songs of Innocence, is more associated with labor (The Shepherd), questioning (The Lamb), or sadness (The Little Black Boy, whose logical faculties are developed because he is an outcast of society).

               

Now, although Blake believes innocence is a state only had in childhood, he points throughout Songs of Innocence ways  one can access aspects of innocence or in other words, the poetic genius.  Through the appreciation of natural landscape, one is able to further engrain oneself in the joy received from it.  Contacting divine nature like hearing “the lambs innocent call” and being watchful of this peace or “To Mercy Pity Peace and Love, all pray” will bring the soul further toward innocence, a state resembling the poetic genius.  Blake is calling for both adults and children to harness those ideals which make a child innocent.

In this way, this book is not only for educating children but also adults.  This books is to teach about the human condition, or contrary nature of the soul, and in turn, foster its “better” aspects.  Although Blake believes experience is the status quo of all adults, in Songs of Innocence, he is advocating self-betterment and a way to lessen the detriments of experience.  For Blake, this process can lead to many realizations.  A switch of soul may bring differing feelings about the monarchy, the industrial revolution, the royal academy, and the origins of art (the divine imagination), all those issues which Blake has strong opinions on.  Although seemingly simple in structure, design, and poetical strategy, Songs of Innocence is actually promoting radical beliefs and attempting to alter how a child grows into experience.

Trees as Models of Experience

In Songs of Innocence, Blake integrates text and image to express his understanding of the dichotomy of Adam and Eve’s fall told in the book of Genesis. By representing trees and foliage around the poems themselves, Blake manipulates the evident theme of the text, undermining the establishment of any one conclusion. On the title page, the tree grows from the right side of the page, engulfing the words “Songs” and “of” while only circling the word “Innocence,” indicating there was a state of innocence before the Fall. In the opening poems,  however, the tree (assumed here to represent the biblical Tree of Knowledge) becomes less upright as on the title page and instead looms heavily over the figures—a physical reminder of the burden of knowledge and experience. In “The Little Black Boy,” two trees sprout from each side of the composition, so even as the mother comforts the worries of her enslaved son, the branches reach toward the pair, omnipresent and dark foreshadows of reality. By analyzing the progression of the foliage from the cover page onward in Songs of Innocence, one can see how Blake imagines the progression of experience—first from a visible temptation to an interactive and inescapable part of human existence.

Race and “The Little Black Boy”

"The Little Black Boy"

Blake’s “The Little Black Boy” appears, on face, to be a kindly demonstration of how race doesn’t really matter since one day all    Christians will be free from the “cloud” of skin color and equal in the eyes of God. However, upon further examination, the poem contains statements about race and how it affects both our mortal and immortal lives that do not quite jive with the idea that race is a temporary burden.

In the first stanza, the black child who is the narrator of the poem cries, “I am black but O! my soul is white” and “I am black as if bereav’d of light.” Blake immediately associates whiteness with goodness and innocence, and even if he is correct in asserting that outward skin color doesn’t matter in light of the state of a person’s soul, it is a rather hard judgment upon a small child to inform him that his skin color is associated with evil and judgment.

Blake continues to develop the idea of “light,” as the boy recounts his mother’s instructions: “Look on the rising sun: there God does live / And gives his light, and gives his heat away. / And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive / Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.” Here God is associated with heat, light, and the Sun – physical entities that all convey the presence of God to man. The mother instructs her child to “receive comfort” from the rising of the Sun  (which is the verbal equal of Son, or Christ) when he is tiring from his work in the “noon day.” When we compare this stanza to the first, in which whiteness has been set up as the opposite of blackness’s being “bereav’d of light,” then light and white emerge as the same thing. In other words, the boy’s white masters become symbols of God. Thus he is to obey them and even rejoice in serving them, despite their enforcing difficult labor in the “noon day.” Moreover, the mother says, light (or whiteness) is a gift from God – which seems to imply that God has chosen to give the “gift” of whiteness to the boy’s masters and withhold it from him.

Blake continues: “And we are put on earth a little space, / That we may learn to bear the beams of love, / And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face / Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.” Though Blake seems to innocently connect warmth and light with God, this stanza supports the symbolism of the above paragraph, noting that the “beams of love” (the prosecutions of the white master) are to be borne, rather than joyfully received as they might be if they were from God. The mother argues that black skin and the heritage with which it is associated, “like a shady grove,” enable the little boy and others of his race to withstand their earthly trials and comforts him by telling him that their outward appearance “is but a cloud.”

 Following his mother’s lead in anticipating the joy of eternal life, the boy contemplates what heaven will be like, discussing his position in relation to that of a white boy: “When I from black and he from white cloud free, / And round the tent of God like lambs we joy: / Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, / To lean in joy upon our fathers knee. / And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair, / And be like him and he will then love me.” The irony in this childlike contemplation is twofold. First, even in heaven, the black boy is subservient to the white, “shad[ing] him from the heat” that in this sense appears to stand for the heat of God. If the boy’s “white cloud” has not prepared him to stand in the presence of God, then how is it good or innocent or pure? Blake’s point is that yes, perhaps outward appearances are misleading – but that is because often the white man’s soul is the most corrupt. Second, Blake presents the futility of the black boy’s subservience throughout his life on earth and in heaven: it will never be good enough to earn the white boy’s acceptance. Even in heaven, where race is apparently nonexistent, the little boy suggests that he will be distinct from the white boy by the appearance of their souls. And even if the black boy’s is purer than that of the white, he will still be forced into a position of submissiveness to his former master. Though the black boy anticipates that “he will then love me,” why should his efforts in heaven gain any more acceptance than those he put forth upon earth? Contrary to the initial perception of Blake’s point here, his argument is that race is more than skin-deep and encompasses actions, beliefs, and behaviors that will not disappear upon the removal of skin color. Carried to its logical conclusion, Blake’s poem might urge a revolution of sorts, as his work usually does, though in this case it is one of the black slaves against their white suppressors. This is a prime example of the religious Blake rejecting the popular notions of his faith (that endurance and good work lead to a reward in heaven) in favor of supporting human actions to redeem the human condition.

Blake and Wonderland

As I was reading Songs of Innocence and doting on the engraved companion facsimiles to each poem within the series, I couldn’t help but find a parallel to the work of Lewis Carroll. Known predominantly for his children’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll was also a prolific Victorian-era photographer. Carroll’s photographs acted as inspiration for the illustrations accompanying the unconventional text of his works, most especially Alice, and certainly recall Blake’s “illuminated printing.” Just as Blake’s work is practically incomprehensible without the inclusion of his engravings, Carroll’s works is rather cryptic without the aid of his illustrations. Blake is known for his eidetic imagination and the prophetic visions he claimed to have that birthed such radical figures as Urizen. The peculiar cast of characters within Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the tale that Carroll weaves similarly reveals his vividly eccentric imagination. I would argue that Carroll, in Blake’s opinion, attained if not at the very least striven to achieve Poetic Genius.
Another similarity between Carroll and Blake is the central theme of their hallmark pieces: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Songs of Innocence, respectively. Both encompass the main tenet of education. While Blake’s works seem to emphasize a scene of instruction about Christian truth and values, Carroll’s work seems to implicitly teach audience members, bringing to light societal and political ills. Both works start with images of a woman teaching a child. The cover page for Songs of Innocence features a woman holding a book with two children at her feet, eager for instruction. Correspondingly, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland begins with Alice’s sister reading to her from a worldly novel.

Blake spoke against and challenged the ideology of late eighteenth century England. He attacked the moral codes of English society, the political monarchical institution, and the Enlightenment veneration of human reason as egregious components of the country. Carroll’s story likewise seems to retaliate against such conventions and norms. His sarcastic depiction of the monarchy with his “Red Queen” and “White Queen,” dramatization and mockery of the judicial court system through Alice’s trial, and illogical arguments of the Cheshire cat and Tea Party guests, among others, illustrates Carroll’s similar contempt or, at the very least, dissatisfaction with the status quo of England.

It is not difficult to find similitude between these two authors, though Carroll began his creative career some tens of years later than Blake, having only been born in 1832. I wonder if Carroll took to Blake as inspiration and possibly even reinforcement as he embarked on a seemingly controversial and unorthodox literary and artistic journey.

The contrary in Blake’s system of colors: an irony

I started my post during the weekend trying to summarize Blake’s representation system of color in Songs of Innocence, because he mentions certain colors repetitively throughout the whole series. Firstly, Blake uses the color of white frequently as the symbol of innocence and white is the color of lamb and the Lamb, which refers to Jesus Christ. Also, in The Little Black Boy, white is related to biblical image: “my soul is white. White as an angel is the English child” (16). The connection between white and innocence continues in The Chimney Sweeper, representing the sweepers rising upon clouds: “then naked & white, all their bags left behind” (18). Later in The Little Boy Found, white is again associated with God: “but God ever nigh, Appeared like his father in white” (19).

Green is another color that connects to the representation of innocence and green echoes with the color of white by referring to grass and lawn, where the lambs are. In Ecchoing Green, the color of green merges with the image of children playing cheerfully. Also, in Laughing Song, the color of green is associated with the concept of joy: “when the meadows laugh with lively green…” (19). In Night, “green fields and happy groves” are tightly connected with “where lambs have nibbled” (23). Finally, in Nurse’s Song, green is again presented with the laughing voices of children: “when the voices of children are heard on the green” (25). Besides Songs of Innocence, the image of green and white are seen in Blake’s other works. For example, in “And did those feet in ancient time”, England’s mountains are described as green (147).

Unlike white and green, the color of black is usually associated with image of industrialization and contamination of innocence. In The Little Black Boy, though Blake shows no discrimination against the boy’s dark skin, the color black is still presented as a contrary of white: “And I am black, but O! my soul is white” (16). This image is more obvious in The Chimney Sweeper, black is associated with factories and counter-color of white: “Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black” (18). Similarly, in “And did those feet in ancient time”, the Satanic Mills are described as dark (147).

(http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/comparison.xq?selection=compare&copies=all&bentleynum=B2&copyid=s-inn.u&java=yes
Songs of Innocence and of Experience, copy F, 1789, 1794 (Yale Center for British Art): electronic edition
Songs of Innocence and of Experience, copy L, 1795 (Yale Center for British Art): electronic edition)

However, after our first discussion, I realized that Blake himself might be against this strict division of color, which is what I am doing right now. Blake’s art work is destroying the system he created in his own words. He set up this point of view in YAH & His Two Sons Satan & Adam: “What can be created can be destroyed” (352). In the art works associated with Songs of Innocence, he is materializing this idea: using different color, an infant can be both an angel and a demon (pictures above). By creating the contrary of colors in art works and poems, Blake is mocking those who try to institutionalize and systemize things, in this case colors, from their experience and reason. For Blake, the state of innocence is not a boy who was taught white symbolizes Christ but one who learn the true Christ through their vision, their imagination, and their Poetic Genius.

The Whole Armor of God, Blake’s intended allusion?

I felt like this might help our understanding of the poem “And did those feet in ancient time…”. The references made in the poem to particular instruments of war (the bow, arrows, spear, and chariot) were reminiscent of Ephesians 6:10-18, and I can’t help but believe this was the allusion Blake was trying to make in the poem. It’s interesting that the tenets of Christianity are laid out in such a militant fashion when there’s so much talk of the violent aspects of other religions (read: Islam) by politically-minded Christians these days. I wonder how Blake would feel about the religious and political rhetoric in America concerning religions other than Christianity, especially after having read “All Religions are One”. In his own time, Blake was a radical. With the current political discourse in mind, I’d say he’d still be considered one, even centuries later. Blake seems to occupy an ostensibly incomprehensible middle-ground between religious zealot, broad-minded philosopher, and prophetic artist. Can we ever allow such contradictory attributes exist simultaneously in a single individual? Our own prejudices tend to subconsciously categorize both subjects and objects to help ourselves understand the world around us. Blake offers one of those glorious exceptions that, in his defiance of categorization, teaches us a lesson about our own propensity towards judgment.