Blake's States of Mind in the Songs of Innocence and Experience

Blake's States of Mind in the Songs of Innocence and Experience

"When you put two minds together, there is always a third mind, a third

and superior mind, as an unseen collaborator."

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, "The Third Mind"

We are symbol-using primates in search for an ultimate Truth. No poet has

understood and exploited this idea more successfully than William Blake,

and this was solely due to his mysticism, the fact that his doors of

perception were cleansed. What is his world like, then?

In the "Songs of Innocence and Experience" we are apparently presented

with two different worlds, narrated by two different narrators. A more

careful reading will present several interesting correspondences between

the two. For example, the meek "Lamb" becomes the fiery "Tyger". The

former appears to foster a syllogistic reasoning, a format of simple

questions and easy answers in the midst of it's catatonia, we are unnerved

by what we as readers bring to the text, inserting our alien (to the

pastoral scene) phantoms of our experience. The latter poem, although

pounding us with unanswered questions and awe-inspiring images, is,

curiously, a more comfortable read in that it is a better fit into our

perception. It seems that the open prairie and the dark forest belong to

two entirely different worlds, but it is my belief that it is not the Lamb

or the Tyger per se, that make the difference but the way they are

treated, that is, narrated.

Both "Chimney Sweeper" poems appear to be about the same situation. What

clearly changes is the narration.