William Blake uses his two compilations of poems, The Songs of Innocence (1789) and The Songs of Experience (1794) to present two opposing pictures of human divinity and human corruption in his two poems “The Divine Image” and “A Divine Image.” In these two poems Blake uses several techniques and literary devices to transmit his thoughts on the ideal and more realistic views of human nature.
William Blake was born in 1757 and died in 1827 after living a very long, happy, and stable life; as opposed to many of the other important Romantic poets of his time. He had very strong Christian beliefs but wasn’t religious, which seemed to come up frequently in his writing, and he believed that “imagination is the doorway to the infinite.” His two major works, The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience, were based on the two contrary states of the human soul (Marshall). These two ideals, and also Blake’s definitions of “innocence” and “experience,” are imperative to understanding the meaning behind each poem (Ashok). Blake believed that innocence was “a state of genuine love, naïve trust, and unquestionable belief” while experience was the “profound disillusionment with human nature and society” (Marshall). “The Divine Image” from The Songs of Innocence is the key to interpreting “A Divine Image” from The Songs of Experience. When looking at the two poems it’s obvious that they are directly related to each other.
“The Divine Image” has five ballad stanzas that, with the use of repetition throughout each stanza and a meter that alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, has a hymn-like quality; making the poem seem very simplistic and natural. He pairs repetitive diction with a flowing syntax to charac...
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Works Cited
Ashok. "On Blake's "A Divine Image." 5 March 2007. Rethink. 6 April 2011 .
Glen, Heather. "Vision and Morality: Songs of Innocence." Glen, Heather. Vision and Disenchantment: Blake's Songs and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. 149-64.
Granger, Ivan M. "Poetry Chaikhana." 2002. A Divine Image. 6 April 2011 .
Marshall, Kristine E. "William Blake." Marshall, Kristine E. Elements of Literature 6th Course. Orlando: Hott, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1977. 640.
Romantic, The True. "Blake Is My Homie." 2011 6 January. Reading Response #3 "An Interpretation of Blake's, 'A Divine Image.'". 2011 6 April .
While William Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence was written before the French Revolution and Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Experience was written after, creating obvious differences in formal structure; these poems are also uniquely intertwined by telling the same story of children arriving to church on Holy Thursday. However, each gives a different perspective that plays off each other as well the idea of innocence and experience. The idea that innocence is simply a veil that we are not only aware of but use to mask the horrors of the world until we gain enough experience to know that it is better to see the world for simply what it is.
Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and jealousy Satan wants humans to feel to lure them to Hell. The poems of experience reflect those feelings. This is illustrated by comparing and contrasting A Divine Image to a portion of The Divine Image.
From childhood he was unlike those around him. He went to school to study art and found his love of poetry. From his early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions. He spoke of seeing God and the Angels. He married his with Catherine Boucher in 1782. His brother, Robert died, but this is where Blake got a lot of inspiration for his work. In 1789 Blake wrote and illustrated the popular Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in 1794. His poetry was extremely non-conformist and focused on imagination, rather than reason. Both works have many common parallels and themes. His poetry also deals with the common aspect of a romanticism work; it has moments of sin, suffering and salvation. In Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper, it is a heartbreaking poem about the young children that were forced into doing labor as chimneysweepers. Mostly because they were the only ones small enough to fit in the spaces and they were sold into that work. It was damaging and cruel how they treated these children and Blake writes about it in such a powerful way. In the first stanza alone the reader learns about the difficult life and the suffering this child has had to overcome, “When my mother died when I was young, my father sold me while yet my tongue…so, your Chimney’s I sweep and in soot I sleep.” (Songs of Innocence) This poor child is portrayed so innocently and gentle, yet leads this suffering unfortunate life. People treated
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Childhood is a time in one’s life where innocence and experience are seemingly two separate worlds. Only when one becomes an adult, and has been thoroughly marked by experience, one realizes that innocence and experience resides in the same world. Innocence and experience are equivalent to the flipsides of a single coin. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience demonstrate that religious doctrine and experience are responsible for destroying and understanding innocence in childhood.
Natoli, Joseph. "William Blake." Critical Survey Of Poetry, Second Revised Edition (2002): 1-12. Literary Reference Center. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
In Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789 and 1794), William Blake arouses readers' minds and leads them into a path of finding their own answers and conclusions to his poems. He sets up his poems in the first book, Songs of Innocence, with a few questions as if they were asked from a child's perspective since children are considered the closest representation of innocence in life. However, in the second book, Songs of Experience, Blake's continues to write his poems about thought-provoking concepts except the concepts happen to be a little bit more complex and relevant to experience and time than Songs of Innocence.
Blake had an uncanny ability to use his work to illustrate the unpleasant and often painful realities around him. His poetry consistently embodies an attitude of revolt against the abuse of class and power that appears guided by a unique brand of spirituality. His spiritual beliefs reached outside the boundaries of religious elites loyal to the monarchy. “He was inspired by dissident religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the English Civil War “(E. P. Thompson). Concern with war and the blighting effects of the industrial revolution were displayed in much of his work.
William Blake was born in 1757 and of an early age he wrote poetry, soon enough he became well known to the Church and also the wealthy. Blake was very critical towards the Church despite being a firm believer of God. He thought that the Church were overpowering the poor side of the Country. Blake would get his message through to others in the use of poetry, if people studied the poems they would get a clear idea of Blake's views. William Blake wrote two books which included some of his poems, they were called 'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience.' Songs of Innocence was written in 1789, five years earlier than 'Songs of Experience'. This book contains poems of trickery, I say this because if you just read the poems you would think that he is writing about happiness, but if you look harder at each line individually you would see that he is trying to state the unhappiness in the world, the darker side of the poems. The other book 'Songs of Experience' contains some of the same titles of poems but with different contents. If you compare the two books you will see that this book contains the truth about the world, with the misery.
In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake differentiates between being experienced and being innocent. In the poem "Spring," the speaker focuses on the coming of spring and the excitement surrounding it which is emphasized by the trochaic meter of the poem. Everyone, including the animals and children, is joyful and getting ready for the new season, a season of rebirth and a new arrival of nature’s gifts.
There are often two sides to everything: chocolate and vanilla, water and fire, woman and man, innocence and experience. The presence of two opposing items allows for harmony and balance in the world. Without water, fire cannot be put out and without woman there can be no man. William Blake’s poetry collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience draws parallels between poems of “innocence” and poems of “experience”. His poem The Lamb is mirrored by his poem The Tyger.
Swiss political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is known for his conception of the “myth of the nobles savage,” which discusses the contrasts between natural human existence, and the corrupted, societal existence in which human beings adapt and grow. English poet and activist William Blake addresses the concept of human existence in his Romantic poems, “The Lamb,” and “The Tyger.” In both poems, Blake presents the ideals of innocence, and acquaintance, demonstrating the contradictions and similarities between untainted existence, and the effects of modern worldly life.
Referring closely to at least two poems in the Songs of Innocence and Experience Anthology, show how Blake explored key Romantic themes
Although both Blake and Wordsworth show childhood as a state of greater innocence and spiritual vision, their view of its relationship with adulthood differs - Blake believes that childhood is crushed by adulthood, whereas Wordsworth sees childhood living on within the adult. In the William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the vision of children and adults is placed in opposition to one another. Blake portrays childhood as a time of optimism and positivity, of heightened connection with the natural world, and where joy is the overpowering emotion. This joyful nature is shown in Infant Joy, where the speaker, a newborn baby, states “’I am happy, Joy is my name.’” (Line 4-5).
William Blake was born and raised in London from 1757 to 1827. Throughout his early years, Blake experienced many strange and unusual visions, claiming to have seen “angels and ghostly monks” (Moore). For those reasons, William Blake decided to write about mystical beings and Gods. Two examples of the poet expressing his point of view are seen in “The Tyger” and “The Lamb.” Both poems demonstrate how the world is and to sharpen one’s perception. People perceive the world in their own outlook, often times judging things before they even know the deeper meaning of its inner personification. Blake’s wondrous questions actually make an acceptable point because he questions whether God created the tiger with the same intentions as he did with the lamb.