WILLIAM BLAKE          

 

“THE TWO CONTRARY STATES OF THE HUMAN SOUL”

 

First of all, I would like to help you to better know William Blake, not just a writer, but also a visual artist. I will try to make a little study about him, especially his major work: “Songs of Innocence and Experience”. It maybe useful to start giving you some important information about his life.

He was born on 28 November 1757 into a world unready to receive the artist and poet of genious he proved to be. His father was a hosier living in London. He was the second son of  afamily of four boys and one girl. Only his younger brother, Robert, was of great sifnificance in William’s life, as he was the one to share his devotion to the arts. William very soon declared his intention of becoming an artist and was allowed to leave ordinary school at the age of ten to join a drawing school. Here he worked for five years , but when the time he came for an aprrenticeship, his father was unable to afford the expense of his entrance to a printer’s studio. A premium of fifty guineas enabled him at the age of fifteen to enter in 1772 the workshop of a master-engraver, James Basire. There, he worked faithfully for seven years, learning all the techniques of engraving, etching, stippling and copying, that after helped him to invent methods of his own.

Despite of having left ordinary school at ten, his intellect developed early and he became a voracoius reader, and by the age of twelve he was writing poetry.

Having emerged form his apprenticeship in 1779, he was full of confidence in his own capacities and entered as a student at The Royal Academy. His art was in fact too adventurous and unconventional to be easily accepted in the late 18th and 19th centuries. However, he was not fully accepted until his remarkable modernity and his imaginative force, both as poet and artist, were recognizes in the 20th century.

Blake was therefore obligued to earn his bread and butter for many years as a journey engraver , making book-illustrations, etc. He married Catherine Boucher in 1782, but she was not able to provide him with the children he wuold have delighted to raise.

In 1784, after his father’s death, he was ready to take place among people of intelligence and it was the time when he created his most succesful work: “Songs of Innocene and of Experience”.

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. New York in association with the Trianon Press. 1967.(pages 1-12)

 

Songs of Innocence and Of Experience

It supposed to be Blake’s major work, but he probably produced less than a hundred copies in his lifetime. It is a mistaken enterprise to struggle to make a hard-and-fast contrast between, say, the two “Chimney Sweeper” poems, or the two “Holy Thursday” poems, for example. The difficulty one will inevitably encounter in the attempt is some part in their meaning. It is true that Blake’s title “Songs of Innocence and Experience”, sounds downright and confident about moral distinctions, while many of the individual poems have a strong, simple emotional colouring.

Blake, William. Selected Poetry.Oxford World’s Classics .1996.(pages 10-11)

There is no reason for thinking that when Blake Composed the Songs of Innocence he has already envisaged a second set of antithetical poems embodyings Experience. The Innocence poems were the products of  a mind in a state of innocence and of an imagination unspoiled by stains of worldliness. Public events and private emotions soon converted Innocence into Experience, producing Blake’s preocupation with the problem of Good and Evil. This, with his feelings of indignation and pity for the sufferings of mankind as he saw them in the streets of London, resulted in his composing the second set. Both series were combined with plates by his colour-printing method and in 1794 he believed that he did not issue any separate copies of these poems, always combining them with the Songs of Innocence, shewing as he asserted on the general title.page “The two Contrary States of the Human Soul”.

Blake “Songs”  have been the most popular of his Illuminated Books and every book on him, biographical, critical or exegetical, necessarily gives some attention to the “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”.

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. New York in association with the Trianon Press. 1967.(pages 11-12)

I have considered that it maybe useful for you if I include a version of one poem form Songs of Innocence “The Chimney Sweeper”, which will be analysed at length on the next point of the paper, and the “contrast” version from Songs of Experience.

Here are both versions:

 

 

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER (from Songs of Innocence; 1789)

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curl'd like a lambs back, was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.

And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight,
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe Ned & Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm,
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

“Poesoi”.Universitat de València Press. 27 Nov 07

<http://www.uv.es/fores/poesia/01blake.html>

 

 

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. New York in association with the Trianon Press. 1967.(page 136)

 

 

 

The Chimney Sweeper (from Songs of Experience; 1794)

A little black thing among the snow,

Crying "'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!

"Where are thy father and mother, say?"

"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

 

"Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smiled among the winter's snow,

They clothed me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

 

"And because I am happy and dance and sing,

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,

Who make up a heaven of our misery."

 

“1794, The chimney Sweeper by William Blake”.Classical Poems from Passions in Poetry.10 January 2008.

<http://www.netpoets.com/classic/poems/003003.htm>

 

 

 

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. New York in association with the Trianon Press. 1967.(page 146)

 

Analysis of the poem

Now I am going to make a deeper analysis of The Chimney Sweeper, from Songs of Innocence written in 1789 from Blake’s Illuminated Books. I have choosen this version because I consider that child’s innocence is one of the most beautiful things in the world.

The title, as we can see, is referring to a boy (chimney sweepers are always boys). Maybe it is referring to the same Blake when he was only a child.

This poem is divided into six different quatrains and each of them is composed by 4 lines that have more than eight syllables, so the rythm scheme is AABB.

I will try now to explain briefily the meaning of each quatrain in the poem, so:

1. The speaker, a young chimney sweeper, starts talking about his feelings after his mother’s death. He uses the first person.

2. The little boy talks about his friend, Tom Dacre, whose head was shaven to prevent the spoiling of his hair with the dark soot.

3,4,5. They talk about Tom’s dream: many sweepers (Dick, Joe Ned and Jack) were locked up in black coffins when an Angel came with a brilliant key and set them all free. The Angel told him that if they were good, God would help them and they would be always happy. The two stanzas that are completely about his dream are perfect nursery-rhyme rhythm. The rest of the poem is not

6. Tom woke up; he was happy, and he went to work thinking that people who does their duty is free of problems. This is a prove of the innocence of children.

“Chimney Sweeper,The Analysis”.Elliteskills.27 November 2007.

<http://www.eliteskills.com/c/5080>

In the first stanza, we can see the repetition of the expression “weep,weep,weep,weep”, which seems to be the boy’s cry (line 3). The little boy also says in a metaphorical sense that “in soot I sleep” (line 4), not referring to the real way he sleeps, but the way he always feel: black and dirty, and the way he may find his death because of the darger of his job. The second stanza has a clear simile (lines 5 and 6): “Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head that curl’d like a lambs back, was shav’d”. Here, Blake is comparing Tom’s shaved head with a lamb’s back. We find also an alliteration that forms the fourth stanza. The repetition is made with the word “and”. Metaphors are also present in the fifth stanza (line 18), when Blake says that the boys “rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind”. He wants to say here that they are really happy while they are playing, jumping, laughging.... Where it says, "never want joy" (line 20) it means that he'd have plenty of it and never want any more.

 The last stanza has also a significative metaphor like is “we rose in the dark” (line 21), referring to an unlighted morning of hard work for the children.

Symbolism is also used by the author. For example, in line 6, Tom Dacre, who is younger than the narrator, is compared with a lamb, a symbol of purity and innocence for many religions. Also in line 8, the white hair of the boy is also symbol of purity.

“Chimney Sweeper,The Analysis”.Elliteskills.27 November 2007.

<http://www.eliteskills.com/c/5080>

If we compare Blake with other poets, it is important to say that he was the most revolutionary of his contemporaries in Romanticism (Byron, Keats and Shelley in the revolutionary part; Coleridge and Wordsworth in the conservative one). He was a libertarian who included in his writings and paintings the equality of all people and fought against explotation, slavery and racism. He had extra marital sexual relations, but he never got married or had children.

Blake’s songs were not to entertain people or only to be sung; they were songs of protest. People did not have enough food to eat; if they dit not find a job in the city they must go to the countryside. Blake is worried about that in his songs, and two hundred years ago he was talking about problems that exist nowadays.

He was a modern artist, so he has many difficulties for being understood. However, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. He was voted 38th in a poll of the 100 Greatest Britons organised by the BBC in 2002.

According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's entire poetic corpus, his prophetic poems form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language." Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, at least one modern critic proclaiming Blake "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced." Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical vision that underlies his work. He himself once indicated, "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."

“What do you know about William Blake?”.Yahoo Answers. 27 November 2007.

<http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071225232842AAyAWpU>

In my opinion, I think that William Blake must be a very strong man, as all people who passed all these difficulties in 18th Century. It is surprising how he made a huge battle against injustice, against the explotation of that children who were deprived of their childhood, against hunger, against racism...and whose first aim was to protect children and women.

 

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

·         Blake, William. Selected Poetry.Oxford World’s Classics .1996.

·         Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. New York in association with the Trianon Press. 1967.