‘LONDON’ BY WILLIAM BLAKE
INTRODUCTION
In this paper the subject is William Blake’s poem ‘London’. My objective is to analyse this poem from my point of view.
However, firstly I think it is convenient to talk about the place that the poem occupies among his complete works.
Then it is important to put the poem in relation with the society and historical moment it was written.
Next, I will continue talking about
the relationship between the poem and his complete works. Then I will explain
the importance of the poem for the poet’s life.
And finally, I am going to analyse
the relation of the poem with today.
ROMANTICISM & WILLIAM BLAKE
As I said before I have chosen
William Blake, and his meaningful and extraordinary poems are the main reason.
Furthermore I admire his tremendous courage because he shows and he faces up
the hidden and bad side of reality that nobody saw or wanted to see.
Firstly, I must add that this
information about Romanticism is based on the Wikipedia
1 2.
William Blake belongs to the
beginning of the British Romanticism, concretely he
was between the neoclassicism of the 18th century and the early
Romanticism. So, the most convenient conclusion to this issue would be this
that we can also find in the Wikipedia: ‘The difficulty of placing William Blake in
any one chronological stage of art history is perhaps the distinction that best
defines him.’3
At this time he was not a well known
poet, his works were valued in the 20th century.
Respect to the concept of Romanticism,
at this time they didn’t have a specific term to call this period. The
term Romanticism will appear in the Victorian period.
The poets in this early Romanticism focus
their attention in the relation between man and nature. Blake talked about
topics as society, childhood, slavery, racism, poverty and, of course,
religion. He always fought against these problems, but I will give more details
of that in another section of this paper.
POEM: ‘LONDON’
Now we can explore inside of the
main issue, his poetry. All his production is amazing and it deserves to be
read and analysed very carefully and with attention to appreciate the power of
his words and what he wants to transmit to us. However I only have the
possibility to choose one of them, so I have chosen the poem ‘London’ because he gives a
different vision of this city, as I said before, he shows this that anybody
want to see.
This poem was written in 1794 when
Blake was 37 years old. ‘London’
belongs to
‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ where also are included other poems
as: ‘Introduction’,
‘The Chimney Sweeper’ and ‘The Tyger’. 3.1 3.2
Before of start the analysis of the
poem we should know the context of the poem (following the Wikipedia)
4, the situation
where the poem was created.
The poem was written at the end of
the 18th century, by this time:
- The city of London had showed an incredible growth and
the main cause was The Industrial Revolution.
- In this century the appearance of
the printing press was also very important; the writers could print their
works.
- The crime is one of the main aspects
of this century and the poem shows it.
- The citizens also suffered the
confrontations between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics.
- And finally the Enlightenment
appeared.
- When Blake writes this poem
poverty was clearly visible in London
that also was present during the 19th century.
This was the social-historic context
where Blake was living and the context that influenced him to write the poem.
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM:
LONDON (The poem has been taken from 4.1)
1 I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d
Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
5 In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice; in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
10 Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro’ midnight
streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
15 Blasts the
new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
Now I am going to analyse the
external and internal structure of the poem. Firstly I think is better to start
with the analysis of the external structure; and then focus on the internal
structure to study what the author feels, what is the main topic of the poem
and what he wants to show.
External structure:
The poem is composed by four
quatrains with four lines each one. The poem follows this rhyme: ABAB CDCD EFEF
DGDG. When we hear the poem recited we see that the whole poem is connected by
a rhythm. So every verse of the poem is connected with the other, the author
wanted to create this kind of music.
Furthermore, inside of the quatrains,
especially in the first and second quatrain, Blake plays with the words. He
uses the repetition of words and with this he makes stronger the effect of
music I said before.
For example, in the first two lines
we have ‘charter’d’;
in the next two lines he repeats ‘marks’.
In the second quatrain, lines 5- 7
we have ‘every’ five
times and ‘cry’ in lines
5 and 6.
I will deal with the meaning of
these words and their repetition in the analysis of the internal structure.
Internal structure:
Now we can continue with the
internal structure. I am going to start with the establishment of the subject
of the poem: The poem talks about the English city and society of London at the end of the
18th century.
The poem can be divided into parts,
making an internal division, forgetting of the lines and quatrains and thinking
if there is an introduction, a development and/or a conclusion.
The introduction would be the first
two lines. Here Blake establishes the
place, the place where the action happens. With this he is helping the readers
to create an idea of the place where they have to be while they are reading the
poem. Now the reader is ready to face up what he/she is going to find in these
streets of London.
What about the title of the poem?
The title ‘London’
is the key to know about the subject of the poem, however with the title we
obtain a general knowledge because we don’t know exactly where the action
will take place yet. So, with the first two lines we have the information we
needed. The union of the title and these two lines gives to us the point where
the poem starts: the streets of London.
The development of the poem would be
the rest of it because the narrator is describing what he is seeing in the
streets. Maybe the last quatrain could be a kind of conclusion. The narrator
gives special importance to this quatrain because perhaps it tells the most
terrible things that can be found in the streets. I will give details of that
later.
Now I am going to continue with the
analysis of the poem. (To make the analysis of the poem I have taken some
references from different websites 5 6 7).
‘I wander thro’ each charter’d
street, near where the charter’d Thames does flow’; the key word here is the word ‘charter’d’.
Nowadays this word doesn’t mean exactly the same that in 1794. In the poem it means
mapped out, constricted… So, for Blake it seems that London
is a constricted city, all is defined, even the Thames.
With that beginning Blake is already showing his negative vision of London. The term ‘charter’d’
transmits this kind of negative feeling.
I think it is important to make a
comment about who is telling the poem. As it is said in the Norton Anthology of Poetry (website), in
the final version of London,
in a notebook sketch by Blake, he drew ‘an old man with a crutch being
led by a boy’ 8 .
(Here is the draw of the old man and the boy). This means that maybe who is
telling the poem is this boy because he is leading the old man through the
streets of London.
But the old man also can be the narrator of the poem; an old man has more
experience in life than a boy and this old man can be showing him and telling
him about what they find in the streets.
With this draw we have in our mind
an image of the narrator, this makes we feel closer to the poem and closer to
this that it wants to transmit.
So, Blake is seeing through the eyes
of these two persons. (This is my interpretation of the draw. Each one can have
their own interpretation of it).
The next two lines of the first
quatrain: ‘and mark in every face I
meet/ marks of weakness, marks of woe.’ In these lines he starts
describing the citizens of London.
We can see clearly that these people are not happy, they are weak and they have
these marks of woe. We can see again that Blake is showing the negative part of
this city. He does not want to tell us what we already know; for example we
know what makes happy to people (love, money, good health…), but we do
not know why people have these ‘marks of woe’. He deals with the
opposing aspects of happiness.
In the next lines he will answer the
question: why people have marks of weakness and woe?
‘In every cry of every Man, In every
Infants cry of fear, In every voice; in every ban, The mind- forg’d manacles I hear’. Here starts the answer to the
question I said before. The narrator hears the cries of people, men,
children… everybody cries: ‘every
voice’. But children have cries of fear, why they have cries of
fear? Blake will answer that in the next quatrain.
He also hears ‘the mind- forg’d manacles’,
but only he can hear them in his mind because he knows that these manacles
symbolize that this people have not freedom:
‘in every ban’. This is the cause of the cries and consequently
the cause of ‘marks of weakness,
marks of woe’.
Now Blake continues explaining why
children and men cry. First, he focuses on children: ‘How the Chimney- sweepers cry/ Every blackning Church appalls’.
First of all, Blake always had been
very concerned on the topic of childhood, children… and of course he was
completely against the slavery of children. Because of this he wants to show in
his poem the injustice that the society made with them.
At this time the children had to
work a very early age because most of them lived in a terrible poverty. And the
only way to help their family was working (even there were children who did not
have a family).
The work that most children had was this of
chimney- sweepers. This work was very dangerous and following the Wikipedia 9 : ‘The boys also suffered from deformed
joints, burns, and a form of testicular cancer caused by the carcinogenic chemicals in the
soot.’
These were the reasons why ‘the
chimney- sweepers cry’.
The next line is talking about the church.
I think that here there are different ways to understand this line. Firstly,
the church is a place where many people feel safe, except the chimney-
sweepers. The blackening church appalls and it has to be cleaned by the
chimney- sweepers.
Another reason is maybe that this work of
chimney- sweepers is a terrible injustice for these young children. And related
with this, the church also needed that someone cleaned it. Who? The chimney- sweepers. So, why Blake uses the word appalls?
Because the church, that was very powerful, could do something for fighting
against this injustice with the little chimney- sweepers, and they do not do
anything.
In the next two lines of the third quatrain,
‘And the hapless Soldiers sigh/
Runs in blood down Palace walls’, Blake talks about other aspect of
society, the soldiers and Palace. This part of the poem isn’t difficult
to understand, but it is difficult to interpret what Blake wanted to tell. From
my point of view, the Palace is the other powerful part and the soldiers are
the affected. The Palace controls the soldiers and the soldiers had to fight,
and fight involves death. So, the life of many soldiers was sentenced to finish
with death.
Blake in these lines says that the Palace
is the responsible of these deaths that are marked (symbolically) in its walls.
And finally we have the last quatrain ‘But most thro’ midnight streets
I hear/ how the youthful Harlots curse/ Blasts the new- born Infants tear/ And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse’. Now
he is in the world of midnight and he talks about the main problem that is
found in the streets of London,
the prostitution.
With the word ‘harlots’ he is
referring to the prostitutes that in this case are also young. He says that
they have a curse, a curse that possibly is the illness passed by the sexual
relationships. So, if the girls are ill when they are pregnant, her children
also will be ill.
Surely they (the harlots, her children,
the ‘fathers’ of the children that passed their illness to
them…) will die because of these diseases: ‘…And blights with plagues the Marriage
hearse’. Here he uses two words that are contradictory
‘Marriage’ and ‘hearse’. With ‘Marriage’ he
refers to this kind of ‘union’ that the harlots have with their
clients producing the babies and that at the end they will finish in the
‘Marriage hearse’, there is a relationship between union (marriage)
and death (hearse).
THE POEM IN RELATION WITH THE REST OF HIS COMPLETE WORKS
At the beginning of this paper I
talked a bit about the place that the poem occupies. But now I will continue
explaining more specifically what place the poem occupies among his complete
works and putting the poem in relation with these other poems.
Taking as a reference the Wikipedia 10, firstly we have
to know that the poem ‘London’ belongs
to a serial of poems called ‘Songs
of Experience’. The poem, with the rest of the other poems included
in ‘Songs of Experience’
was published in 1794.
According to Wikipedia: ‘It is one of the few poems in Songs of Experience which does
not have a corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence.’
First, in 1789, ‘Songs of Innocence’ was published
and in 1794 ‘Songs of
Experience’ was published with ‘Songs of Innocence’. ‘Songs
of Innocence and of Experience’ shows the ‘two contrary sides
of the human soul’.
With ‘Songs of Innocence’
Blake wanted to show the innocence of children and the innocent world where
children lived. Some of the poems talk about this innocence as something good,
lovely, nice…in children, but in others Blake shows that because of this
innocence, the children are suffering in the world. So innocent they are that
they are exploited by society. ‘The Chimney Sweeper’, for example.
Then, with ‘Songs of Experience’ Blake makes a contrast with ‘Songs of Innocence’. Now he wants
to deal with the other side, and in these poems he is talking about the
experience that the children do not have before. These children are now more
powerful as we can see in ‘The Tyger’. Children have lost the Innocence.
However in the poem ‘London’
Blake doesn’t focus only on children, here he makes a description of
the city, paying attention to every important aspect found in its streets.
Comparing both parts, innocence and
experience, we can see that in the part of ‘Songs
of Innocence’ the poems are more religious, more
‘optimistic’… And in the part of ‘Song of Experience’ he becomes pessimistic, less
religious… being the main cause French Revolution. These terms are
contradictory, but at the same time if we don’t have innocence, we cannot
have experience because most of the times innocence makes us victims of the
society and with these fights against society we achieve experience, we become
hard, we lose innocence.
All of this is reflected in the
compilation of poems ‘Songs of
Innocence and of Experience’.
We have already established the poem ‘London’
in a first group inside of the works of Blake. Now we can continue establishing
the poem in relation with his complete works. To do this I am going to follow
some web sources, I will mention them along the explanation.
1. Among his complete production ‘London’
is established more or less in the middle. According to the Academy of American Poets
11, the first production
of Blake was ‘Poetical
Sketches’ (1783). This is a collection of apprentice verse where he
follows the classical model. Blake deals with topics such as tyranny and war,
he also critics King George III because of his treatment of the American
colonies.
(Coming back to Wikipedia)
12 Ten years later he published ‘Visions of the Daughters of Albion’ (1793). Now in this work he talks about
women, their rights, he shows his rejection of marriage without love…
These works
would belong to his early career.
2. Now starts a
new stage (1788), he creates the illuminated books. He used this technique in
some of his works as ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’
(here is the poem ‘London’), ‘The Book of Thel’, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ and ‘Jerusalem’.
From 1788 he
started to write his prophetic books and he created his personal mythology to
show his thoughts. The prophetic books are: ‘Visions of the Daughters of Albion’,
‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Milton’,
‘Europe’, ‘The First Book of Urizen’.
In 1794 he
wrote ‘Europe’ and ‘The
First Book of Urizen’. And next year we
have ‘The Book of Los’, ‘The Song of Los’ and ‘The
Book of Ahania’. (Still from Wikipedia, see note 12).
3. And finally,
we have his later stage where Blake wrote ‘Milton’
in Felpham,
Sussex. When he
returned to London he started to write ‘Jerusalem’
(1804- 1820). In 1806 he wrote ‘For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise’.
In 1818 he
continues with his work and wrote ‘The Everlasting Gospel’.
(See note12).
To sum up, as we have seen, the works of
Blake can be divided in three stages: his beginnings, the stage of the
illuminated books or (early career) and his later works.
BEGINNINGS AND EARLY CAREER (ILLUMINATED BOOKS)
At the first stage Blake deals with
general topics: war, women, rights… Here Blake doesn’t focus
exactly on specific topics as religion yet.
In the second stage he starts to deal with
more complicated issues, his poems are more difficult to understand. However we
have ‘The Book of Thel’ that is easier. It talks about childhood,
youthful, motherhood and death. (Reference from 12.1).
As we know, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ and ‘Jerusalem’ are
prophetic books. (Taking as a reference for the next lines: 13 ). They deal
with morality, religion, Blake’s mythology and symbolism. In the ‘Marriage
of Heaven and Hell’ the main idea is that without contraries we
don’t have progress. They express the thoughts of the poet. We have to
pay attention and read them carefully to understand what they want to transmit.
‘Europe’ is also
another prophetic book that talks about the political events (French
Revolution). However in ‘The First Book of Urizen’
Blake deals with religion.
Comparing with
the first stage we see that at this second stage is when Blake focuses on
determinate topics, concretely on politics, children/childhood and religion.
Blake also starts to develop his creativity and becomes more mature. This can
be appreciated in the creation of his personal mythology with his personal
characters.
In the poem ‘London’ we can
see the maturity that Blake has in this stage; furthermore the poem was written
when Blake was reaching his complete stage of maturity.
However, if we
compare this poem with the rest of the poems of these two stages we see that
his way of express ideas is different from the other poems. The main cause is
that ‘London’,
as we know, belongs to a serial of poems, ‘Songs of Experience’
and it is difficult to compare it with the other poems without include it in
the compilation ‘Songs of Experience’.
LATER WORKS:
Taking still as
a reference the Wikipedia we continue with the last stage. Here we
have Blake’s ‘Milton’
and ‘Jerusalem’.
These poems represent a new way of writing that requires a different way to
read them. ‘Jerusalem’ is
included in the preface of ‘Milton’.
It is necessary to distinguish between ‘Jerusalem’
and ‘Jerusalem: The
Emanation of the Giant Albion’.
The first one is which appears in the
preface of ‘Milton’
(‘Jerusalem’ is the famous lyric to a
hymn) and the second one is which contains the personal mythology of Blake. In
this prophetic book we can see the use of his mythological characters as the
spirit of war, of beauty, of reason, of inspiration…
Every work on
this stage deals with religion in a different way. With regard to Blake’s
‘Milton’,
the poet justifies ‘the ways of God to men’ (Information from 14).
And in ‘The
Everlasting Gospel’ Blake talks about Jesus as a symbol of the
relationship between humanity and divinity. (Information from
14).
And now if we
compare this stage with the others we can reach a conclusion. Blake works in
depth with his poems; we have a poet who has established his ideals and
thoughts about the topics he has been dealing with.
We already have
a general idea of the topics that Blake uses, his techniques, his
mentality… So, we can see that the difference between the poem ‘London’ and the
poems of his later career is clear. ‘London’ is in the middle of his
complete production. On the one hand it belongs to a serial of poems that deal
with topics that people found in everyday life. And in the other hand, as we
have seen, the last poems are basically dealing with Blake’s own ideals
and feelings and he is also using his own mythology. This makes that the last
poems be more complex. It isn’t the same thing to read a poem that talks
about aspects that everyone knows: children, slavery, innocence, society and
religion…, that to read a poem talking about the relation between
humanity and divinity, for example.
So, in time,
the poems of Blake have become deeper, more sensible, more complex and with
very much feeling.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE POEM ‘LONDON’
FOR THE POET’S LIFE
William Blake was born in London and died in London.
He lived most of his life in this city, except during two or three years when
he went to Sussex
to work as an illustrator of William Hayley’s
works. (From Blake’s biography 14.1)
We can say that London was his house and he experimented and
lived every change and development of this city.
So, he was the best person to write
about London;
throughout his life he has seen injustices, crime, violence, poverty,
prostitution in the streets…
Blake wrote ‘London’
when the social situation was in its worst moment. At the end of 18th
century the problems I have mentioned before (crimes, poverty…) are
everywhere, but nobody wants to do or is interested in doing nothing.
Industrial Revolution was present
when the poem was written (from Wikipedia 14.2), but its
results were not clearly visible. (For
instance in child labour the first laws against it did not appear till 1833 and
1844 15)
Blake wrote about this situation in
the poem. It was very important for him that people knew the reality of society
and that problems were in every corner of the streets, he wanted people to open
their eyes.
‘London’ was a very personal poem where we
can see the personality of Blake. He was a strong supporter of children and
equality and Blake deals with that in the poem. (From Blake’s biography:
See note of Blake’s biography)
He saw that London society was declining and he was very
affected by this. All that he considered fundamental issues in his life appear
in the poem.
To sum up I can say that for Blake
it was very important to show the ‘hidden’ side of London and he achieves it
with the poem. This would be the main reason why the poem is so important in
his life.
RELATION OF THE POEM WITH TODAY
The majority of subjects that
William Blake used in his poems are present in today’s society.
Concretely, this poem, ‘London’, has
everything in common with today’s society.
Blake talks about the same problems
that we have nowadays, but logically, along the time these problems have
experimented some changes.
Firstly, Blake talks about labour
children, in this case about the chimney- sweepers and their suffering because
of their work. The first similarity with today is that in our society there
also are labour children who hold hard works. But these works are different,
for example, children are working for soldiers (as the Wikipedia
says 16 17 18 ) as ‘porters, spies, messengers, look outs, and
sexual slaves’ or
in the prostitution. These works would be the hardest works that we can find.
In Blake’s time there was not
any law that stopped the hard work of the young chimney- sweepers. It was not
till 1840 when a law was created to ban cleaning chimneys to people under 21.
Nowadays we have many organizations
that defend the rights of children as The United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Milton Friedman's Defense of Child Labor, Convention on the Rights of the Child, Worst Forms of Child Labour
Convention, 1999…
But many children are still working
because they need money for their families; this is a problem that will
continue in society.
Maybe child prostitution has not changed
so much. This is one of the most important problems that we find today.
However, it is not only child prostitution; children are suffering because of
sale of children and child pornography.
With regard to ‘youthful
Harlots’ that appear in the poem, maybe Blake is not referring to child
prostitutes, he maybe talks about girls of 17 or 18.
Comparing with nowadays we see that one
thing has changed: a drop in the sexually transmitted diseases. Why did occur
this? Because of the use of condoms. At Blake’s
time people did not use them because they were strange and very expensive. (You
can see how it was developed in the 18th century in the next
website: 20 Click on
‘Historia del preservativo’).
Regarding to ‘Soldiers’, there
is a difference between the soldiers of the poem and today’s soldiers.
The soldiers of Blake’s time had to go to fight, they hadn’t
another possibility. But, nowadays, this is voluntary. Who wants to be a
soldier, to work a soldier knows that he has the possibility to be sent to the
war.
So, we can understand the suffering of the
soldiers who did not want to be a soldier, as Blake says in the poem.
As we have seen, the poem ‘London’ has a strong
relationship with nowadays. Blake talks about the same problems that our
society has today.
CONCLUSION
As a conclusion I can say that Blake was a
person who defended the rights of children and women, he suffered for every
problem of his society (religion, politics, working class…). In this
paper we have seen that his poetry reflects all this topics.
As I said before, I have chosen this poem
because when I read it I felt that the problems Blake deals with are the same
problems that we have today.
Furthermore, what I have found very
interesting is the comparison and relationship between the poem and today.
Maybe this relationship is the aspect that makes the readers to think about it
and helps them to understand better the poem.
But this is not only applicable to the
poem ‘London’;
we can also apply it with his complete productions.
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