In William Blake’s literary works he offers a vast amount of perspectives, philosophies, and topics. Though the most prominent have got to be his contraries and oppositions in the works The Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In these works where he delves deeper into the juxtapositions in the human world as well as the divine. Blake’s decision to have his work revolve around this is voluntary and premeditated. He undoubtedly does this to not only try and abolish the rigid dichotomies in the given topics but to also create a unity that contains the totality of human experiences and spiritual evolution. Through the lens of the Yin and Yang ancient Chinese Philosophy we are able to gain a deeper understanding as to why contraries and oppositions are so crucial and important in not only literature but the real world as well.
Fear is one of the primary emotions all humans feel. It is a near inevitable sensation that everyone will experience once as they go throughout their life. Evolutionarily, fear is the emotion that helps us stay alive, through its ability to make us avoid dangers in the environment, which is true for us in today’s world as well. However, there are many fears that aren’t instinctually within us, and are instead developed by our parents or guardians during childhood. This specific phenomenon, whether intentional or not, is the starting point for the ingrained ideals that children grow with throughout their life. This concept has been given a voice in William Blake’s The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience, primarily in the short poems On Another’s Sorrow and Infant Sorrow, along with supporting evidence of biased development within his other works. In Infant Sorrow, the interaction between the parents and child expresses that a child’s psyche is directly influenced and limited by the thoughts and feelings of their parents or guardians, shining light on how a care-taker’s emotions influence a child’s perspective of the world, and their biases and prejudices as they develop.
I found myself having issues with the last sentence of the intro and the rest of it. It feels like there’s a disconnect between the two, but I’m not really sure how to fix it. I thought of adding something like “Starting with Infant Sorrow…” but that sounds like the start of a new paragraph, rather than the end of the intro. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
On Another’s Sorrow, one of Blake’s works from The Songs of Innocence, claims that everyone is sympathetic or empathetic to someone else’s struggles or emotion, leaning more to the specifics that when someone feels negative emotions, anyone who witnesses this will be affected by the display. In The Songs of Experience, this concept is delved further into by Infant Sorrow. The short poem tells the story of a baby and their parents. While the baby is acting as babies do—being helpless and defenseless, but equally curious of the world— the parents aren’t as excited about the infant’s wild nature. Because of this, they swaddle the child, preventing any further child-like behavior. I bring up On Another’s Sorrow from the idea that the child is not upset and sulking at the end of the writing because they were bound by their swaddle, but because they witnessed their parents’ sorrow. If you have ever seen a baby during their early phases of learning, you may have noticed that when they experience something new, such as toppling over after attempting to stand or hearing thunder for the first time, they’ll look at the adults around them before making a reaction. This is known by many as the child trying to figure out how they should react from their guardian’s reaction, similar to how when we as people see how someone feels, we will be impacted as well. Infant’s Sorrow is the other half of On Another’s Sorrow, expressing that not only can adults get affected by other’s sorrow, but inexperienced children can as well. Children and their ability to feel sympathy as adults do may speak on the topic of how adults influence them. Do children fear the dark forest, the wild animal, or the vibrant colored bug because it’s simply scary, or do they fear it because their parents are afraid of what could happen to them if they went, which gets projected onto them?
With the poems in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience being framed together as contrasts, it makes sense for two poems within them to compliment each other not as opposites, but two outlooks of the same idea. The poem “Infant Joy” in Songs of Innocence is crafted as a moment of spontaneity right after birth and struggling to pin an identity to a person so full of potential. In a way, the poem’s description of the joy of new life and a new identity to build on reminds the reader of the simplest of times when they were an audience for the changing world around them, and their worries of adulthood were nonexistent. By calling the infant of the poem “Joy” out of the sheer happiness they feel and embody, the outlook and positivity couldn’t be bothered by any afterthoughts of what comes next, and serves only as a reflection on what is happening now (that being the joy of being alive).
In the Songs of Experience, Blake uses his poem “A Dream” to reflect on a life already lived and almost as a surreal mirror image of “Infant Joy”. The newborn in “Infant Joy” has a narrator who is overcome with serendipity at the thought of a life just starting off on the happiest of notes, but in “A Dream”, the narrator does not reflect death or the ending of a life, but rather the life that is already lived by a peculiar subject: an emmet, or an ant. This ant, tired and ready to rest itself upon the other insects around it, begins to wonder about how hard its life has been and how it can really rest among the others when it has become to beat and exhausted, undoubtedly because it carries so much weight on its back (literally and figuratively). An ant is a particularly strong insect, able to carry objects much heavier than its own body weight, and because the ant also reflects on its children and their own life ahead of them, it feels the weight of the world on its back from such a thought. The ant’s children recognize their father becoming overwhelmed with emotion, and as if the infant joy has lapsed, readers can see the adult with its own feelings becoming just as unbound as the child’s in Blake’s first poem.
While looking for two contrary poems to compare and read in the context of each other I happened to see a footnote under Little Girl Lost ”This poem and the Little Girl Found first appeared in Innocence. In the context of Experience, the first two stanzas, set apart from the rest of the poem by a snake on a vine, are in the voice of the “Bard of Introduction”.” pg 32 of Blakes Poetry and Design, Footnote 5. This made me consider a few things about the two poems. Why had they been moved to Experience, why had they been placed in Innocence in the first place? After reading not only The Little Girl Lost and The Little Girl Found but also The Little Boy Lost and The Little Girl Found I feel like I understand the connections between the two sets of poems, and how they blur the lines between Innocence and Experience.
Both “Lost” poems feel like they are starting to border on the opposing theme. Themes of loss of something vital as well as intense fear are very evident in The Little Boy Lost. But there are also themes of love and hope, though it semes to be fading like vapor. While conversely the theme of care for others was the first I felt in The Little Girl Lost, while the secondary themes were sadness and losing ones self. The two poems seem to mirror each other, both having themes that feel more inline with those of the other set of poems. In fact the tone of The Little Boy Lost feels much less hopeful and I would not be surprised if it had been placed in Experience as an example of the loss of ones faith. And similarly, though to lesser degree, I could see The Little Girl Lost being placed in Innocence as a poem representing familial love and care.
But the second “Found” poems of each change this quite a bit. The Little Boy Found is hopeful and joyous as god comes and comforts the little boy and returns him to his mother, returning both his faith and safety. While The Little Girl Found leans into the themes of fear as her parents search for her, and ends on the note that she is still metaphorically lost and has lost her “innocence”. The second sets of poems lean into themes inline with Innocence and Experience in The Little Boy Found and The Little Girl Found respectively. And so the two “Lost” poems feel more similar than contrary, Even feeling out of place in their respective collections when not read with their accompanying piece. They each lean heavily towards the opposing theme, starting to blur the line between them. And so they represent crossroads, moments where the line between innocence or experience can be crossed. And In each “found” poem the children either return to innocence, in the case of the boy, or cross over into a life of experience.
The complex binaries that Blake illustrates in The Song of Innocence and Experience provides the audience to challenge that both innocence and experience can coexist. The contrary twin poem’s that I have chosen are “A Cradle Song” and “The Angel”. If one were to read both these poems without knowing that they “belong” to two separate sections of “innocence” and “experience” they would probably still describe them as “whimsical” “innocent” and “dreamlike”. However, I believe these two poems are meant to intertwine with one another yet oppose in order to force the reader to delve into seeing different perspectives. “A Cradle Song” is both illustrated and written for the “Innocence” section, skillfully alluding to both The Virgin Mary and Jesus and the relationship between the “Mother” and “Angel”. This comparison is made through the association between the child and Jesus, when Blake implements a metaphorical connection, “Weave thy brows an infant crown” which creates the idea of a divine infant. Also the poem’s aura is centered around a child’s happiness through the Mother and the wishing for “Sweet dreams and pleasant streams” which furthers the divine feeling. Though one can argue that “The Angel” is also similar in nature, that would be a simplification of the poem. In the very first line, “I Dreamt a Dream! what can that mean?” having the speaker question their own dream signifying the uncertainty of their purest form of innocence. This is awfully different from the certainty of “A Cradle Song” and their child. In this poem, the child is no longer alive and has become an Angel who is now visiting the speaker (parental figure). The speaker describes their day to day life as “And I wept both night and day/ And he wip’d my tears away/ And I wept both day and night” the opposition of “day and night” to “night and day” exemplifies how long the speaker has been mourning. The illustration is seen as a small Angel and a woman looking away laid down on the floor grabbing the Angel’s hand. This is a very peculiar image due to the fact that the woman is being visited by an Angel and she is choosing to look away. Though puzzling, this could be a factor of the Angel being her own child, since Angels do not age, she is also seeing herself grow in age when stating “For the time youth was fled/ And grey hairs were on my head” signifying grief moves differently. The juxtaposition illustrated between the mother cradling her child and the lady being as far away from her Angel is significant yet heartbreaking. Blake provides these mother-like figures to explore their relationships with their child through sadness and joy.
Beginning with poem A: “The Lamb,” in the visual artist’s plate, we see a little boy extending his arms towards a little lamb, who trustingly points its head towards the direction of his hands, seemingly unconcerned with human contact. We see from the short narrative in the poem, the little boy is asking the lamb “who made thee/Dost thou know who made thee?” (Blake, Songs of Innocence). It is quite curious that there is a little boy standing alongside the lamb because, from the context of the questions directed to the lamb from the boy, the symbolic representation of the lamb is of Jesus Christ himself, created in God’s image. The little boy himself is innocent, standing in front of the lamb, naked and pure. However, despite it all, he fully understands how lambs were created and who was the first to give them their names for he says: “Little lamb, I’ll tell thee, (x2)/ He is called by thy name,/ For He calls himself a Lamb/ He is meek and He is mild,/ He became a little child.. We are called by His name” (Blake, p8). Towards the end of the poem, there is comprehension of who the little boy is speaking about when he refers to: “he is called by thy name/For He calls himself a Lamb.” It is Jesus Christ, who himself is a Lamb borne in God’s image to perform his miracles upon the people Although Jesus did not physically turn into a lamb, the significance behind this transformation is that he supposed to appear as an innocent figure, who represents a world of good over evil. Hence the little kid, symbolizing innocence itself, guiding the lamb as if it were his friend, at peace surrounded with the flock of sheep. Blake’s poetic genius revolves around not only, bringing the symbol of innocence in the little kid and the sheep, but as well as the image of Jesus Christ himself infiltrated among the lambs.
“Spring,” Poem B, displays an image of a mother holding her small infant on her lap as he is holding out his arms towards a flock of creatures that appear to be either sheep or small horses. This poem is meant to be a happy one, especially, as the title is meant to welcome in the Spring season with merry invitations in the poem inviting in the little kids and animals to join alongside each-other: “Birds delight/ Day and night/Nightingale/Merrily, merrily, to welcome in the year/.. little boy, full of joy;/ Little girl,/ Sweet and small..” (Blake, 25). The joy in the little infant’s face as he extends his small palms towards the herd of animals in front of him depicts an image of innocence that is very similar to that of “The Lamb.” They are both taken out of nature and assimilate to each other in the sense that the audience is supposed to be emotionally moved by how beautiful the relationship between the animals and the little kids is. The welcoming of the year, brought in with a valuable amount of cheer and joy, can relate back to the Christmas season, quite close to when Jesus himself was born. In the last few stanzas of this poem, the words “Little lamb,/ Here I am” connect back to how we are still viewing Jesus as a lamb, Blake heavily emphasizes religion in his works, bringing this together alongside the image of the inner child within us, and the kids we hold dear in our families as well.
Last but not least, “The Echoing Green” poem C, in which the visual plate is full of young girls and boys, joyously playing among-side their mothers and little siblings who are all sitting down in front of a green oak tree. Now, this is another poem that repeats the theme of nature, significantly Spring, the season of abundancy, fertility, and joy. One character in this poem, “John” as he is referred to appears to be one of the men sitting under the oak tree: “Old John with white hair/Does laugh away care, Sitting under the oak/ Among the old folk” (Blake, 6). It is a questionable matter whether Blake unintentionally inserted himself as John in this poem, he was laughing at how all these little kids were enjoying themselves in their youth, finding humor in their youth as he grows older. However, this seems more of a self-indulgent piece. The inner child within us is still there, yet we decide to not part-take in it most of the times, believing we are now older, wiser, and do not need to be running around and making our joy as obvious anymore. Overall, what is transparent in all these poems is that they all concern themselves with the epitome of Spring, Jesus being born, and the momentary happiness of being youthful. Blake’s poetic genius stems from his ability to create the natural world in his own view, straying away from the conventional texts written in the Bible, writing them from the inner child and experiences every one of us experiences.
I found myself pleasantly surprised when I read On Another’s Sorrow. With how perspective and individual perception was a theme expressed openly in The Songs of Innocence, and how Blake dislikes his era’s artistic ideals, I expected that this piece would be about how people don’t care about other people’s struggles or ideas in the name of keeping up with the categorized norms of his time. Completely destroying my expectations, this piece is actually the exact opposite, instead saying that there’s no way that someone, when seeing someone else’s sorrow, wouldn’t also react with sympathy or empathy. This point is later used to explain how God is the same as us in this aspect, where our sorrow is felt by our Maker. This passage tells us that when we struggle, God is right next to us, working through it with us. I believe that the visuals of this page express this point as well, but the variations of the page change the message and the balance of the relationship between God and mankind. In the first image, there is very little color on the page, being mostly yellow with darker shades being used for shadows. The easiest objects to identify are the tree stretching all the way to the top of the page, and the man at the bottom left. The concept of God being represented as a tree isn’t farfetched when thinking of how plants and trees are commonly used as symbolism for better things to come. Here, the message expresses that the tree (symbolizing God) is right there next to the man, as Blake wrote. They are, figuratively and literally, on the same page! This is the same in each version, but for the first model, thanks to only the man being visible on the left, the tree towers over him, not only being more prominent in height, but also in the amount of space it takes up on the page. This leads to more focus on the tree, expressing that the tree is significantly more important than the little man in the corner, and yet the tree is still with him. In the second version, there’s more color to the page making it easier to notice the tree and the man, but also giving the man a contrasting colors to make him pop out on the page with the tree. The ground is now colored in, further emphasizing the connection between man and God. Along with this, the left side of the border is easier to identify as another plant reaching upwards. It could be seen as mans individual connections, or as God reaching and enveloping the man. The last model page is filled with a lot more colors, revealing objects in the image that we couldn’t see before. The most noticeable difference is the fact that the left side has multiple humans along the branches of the left tree, which was completely obscured from the lack of colors in the other models. This brings a balance to the visuals of the page, as both sides of the border are filled in. Along with this, there is a new perspective revealed with this discovery. It could now be interpreted that God reaches everyone. One could also claim that man’s empathy is equally as important as God’s, now that the trees are equal in height. I personally believe that the image acts as a visual of Blake’s statement; humans feel for each other when they feel sorrow, connecting and branching one another together, which can also be said for God, a much more well developed and sturdier tree on the other side of the border.
In reading more poems from Blake’s Songs of Innocence, the more we can become aware of his intentional use of graphic imagery and Christian-oriented poetry. Blake’s poem The Little Black Boy uses several references to the prevailing notion of pro-slavery sentiment during his time, and includes the graphic image of a mother and her child under a tree beside a setting sun. In the three images of the same design, Blake’s cleverly used colors and shades incorporate even more meaning to the poem than if just left alone without illustration.
The first art block, entirely monochromatic, depicts a more literal sense of the black and white differences between White children in the world that Blake grew up in, and the Black children he saw being discriminated against in England and its colonies. Arguably positioning a more staunch outlook on the English slave trade and its proponents, Blake uses the clear cut silhouettes and dark images to paint a portrait of how the poem weaves a lamenting tone towards the boy’s opinions on who he is and who he should be if he wants to be loved by the people who are supposedly above him.
The second art block adds colors but they stand in sharp contrast to each other, almost as if the newly enlightened public cannot yet detect the nuances that were absent in a black and white moral society. By adding the stark colors to the evening sky and the lines radiating from the sun, they almost cut across the land below it, and the resulting lines in the field almost resemble farmland. Blake understood how agricultural societies in the American south were dependent on hard labor and could have been adding the splotchy color gradients in order to paint a more stunning image of how some of these children lived and how most of the were born into a system that kept them thinking less of themselves from birth and were put to work once their spirits were broken down into believing they were deserving of how they were.
Finally, in the last image, the stark contrasts between colors are muted and there is masterful shading between them. The skin tone of the mother and her child become visible, and it almost humanizes their depiction compared to the first image, where they are entirely obscured in shadow and darkness. The final image is able to grant them the kind of humanity they are denied, and Blake’s red sun sets on a picture that almost acts as a repentance of the kind of mistreatment that the first two images inflict. Though mistrusting of how powerful politicians and figures abused religious text to their own gains, Blake undoubtedly understood how humanity within free men and enslaved men could be found within themselves, but the true humanity that they are denied had to start from the men who were in the privileged position of not being in chains.
“A Cradle Song” by William Blake illustrates the spirit of innocence and the downfall of being indoctrinated by society. The theme of sleep and dreams is essential to understand because it emphasizes the idea of the mother not wanting her child to wake up from their dream. The mother wishes her child can be in their own sleep state because if they are to be awakened the innocence and corruption would infect the baby. The first line states, “Sweet dreams form a shade.” meaning, there is an imaginative “shade” forming and protecting over the child’s head which symbolizes the aura of innocence. There is a clear separation between child and mother yet similarities through God when the song states “Thy maker lay and wept for me wept for me for thee for all” (24-25) which demonstrates that both mother and child are connected because God is their “maker”. Blake describes the mother watching the child sleep as a “Holy image I can trace” (21) expressing the child as so holy and pure that the mother can physically see its manifestation as the child. There is a demonstration of innocence through the child because they don’t understand what religion is and therefore are not tainted by society yet, simultaneously, the mother can be represented as “experience” for identifying her child through religion. The child is seen peacefully sleeping; however, there is a high concern on the mothers face as the illustrations become saturated and darker. In the lighter blue illustration (Plate O & F) there is a sense of calm and less details on the mothers face, therefore, peaceful images. In contrast to red hues (Plate G & Z) interpreted as more sinister and angry. The order of the plates from lighter to darker is due to the beginning of the song being about innocence and towards the end the experience of living becomes darker. Blake still showcases nature through this illustration by having green vines of loops and spirals.
William Blake and Enlightenment Media 