Rossetti Manuscripts and Innocence and the Songs of Experience

Rossetti Manuscripts and Innocence and the Songs of Experience

Innocence and the Songs of Experience, and the poems from

the Rossetti manuscripts, are the poems of a man with a

profound interest in human emotions, and a profound

knowledge of them." (Grant, Pg 507) These two famous books

of poetry written by William Blake, not only show men's

emotions and feelings, but explain within themselves, the

child's innocence, and man's experience. A little over two

centuries ago, William Blake introduced to the English

literary world his two most famous books of poetry: the

Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience. In his own

day, he was widely believed to be "quite mad," though those

who knew him best thought otherwise. Today, few of us take

Blake's madness seriously, either because we don't believe

in it or because it no longer matters. Blake's fundamental

concepts speak mainly about the human condition and emotion;

and within the realms of this paper, I would like to

persuade my readers that William Blake uses simple language

and metaphors to show the two contrary states of the human

soul - innocence and experience.

The world of innocence is a child's world, and it is

preserved in the minds of full-grown children by projecting

the memory or desire for parental protection on to a higher

realm. The lambs with their "innocent calls", the orphans

and children with their "innocent faces", are simple and

pure in that they have done no harm; but they are also

innocent in that nothing challenges their faith. They are

naive and vulnerable to the conspiracy of the experienced

world, and yet superior to it in their blessed simplicity.

The world of experience is a different world then the one of

inno...

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...n a larger universe. Experience is marked by

despair and a withdrawal into one's private self.

"Ultimately one can see that the nettlesome bards 'belong'

to the thorny ground of fallen Earth, but that is not to

reduce them to the same level of delusion. The bards are

one means of universal redemption, not least because they

call the readers to action against the social evils that

make innocent people suffer." (Ferber, Pg 22)

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Work Cited Page

Johnson, Mary L., and John E. Grant, eds. Blake's Poetry

and Designs. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979.

Bloom, Harold. William Blake. New York: Chelsea House

Publishers, 1985.

Ferber, Michael. The Poetry of William Blake. London:

Pengiun Books, 1991.

Rossetti, William M., ed. The Poetical Works of William

Blake. London: G. Bell and Sons, LTD., 1914.