Exhaustive Study Notes on William Blake's Songs of Experience

Critical Interpretations of "The Tyger"

• Poetic Foundation: Critics such as Wolfgang Mankiewicz consider the poem to be a product of philosophical complexity or confusion, specifically expressing questioning regarding the very existence of God.

• Misconceptions of "Naive Wonder": While frequently interpreted as an expression of naive wonder at God’s ability to create both the tiger and the lamb, it is better understood as a commentary on the limited capacity of humans to conceptualize or conceive of God at all.

• Anthropocentric Terms: The poem is comprised of questions that humanize God through specific human-centric imagery:
      * $shoulder$
      * $arch$
      * $dread\,hand$
      * $dread\,feet$
      * $the\,hammer$
      * $the\,chain$
      * $the\,anvil$

• Cumulative Effect of Questions: The speaker's inability to describe God in non-human terms suggests a fundamental inability to grasp the divine concept. The question "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" reflects incredulity regarding the notion of an all-creating God.

• Capitalization Symbolism: Blake gives a capital letter to "The Man"—a reality he can vouch for—while God is presented only through a series of unanswered questions.

Setting, Etymology, and the Problem of Predation

• Atmospheric Backdrop: The poem is set in "forests of the night," a stark contrast to the open pastoral fields and village greens of Songs of Innocence. This setting represents darkness and disorientation.

• Etymology of "Bewilderment":
      * The term "bewilder" (dating to the 1680s) is formed from the intensive prefix "be-" (meaning thoroughly) and the obsolete verb "wilder" (meaning to lead astray or lose one's way).
      * It is derived from "wilderness," describing being completely lost in an untamed area where man feels the limitedness of his resources.

• The Problem of Predation: Night and forests are places of threat where humans are at the mercy of predators. This setting is appropriate for a poem grappling with the presence of suffering and evil within God's creation.

• Biblical Allusions: In the Book of Revelation, the prophet looks forward to a time where the predatory threat is removed ("the lion will lie down with the lamb"). Until then, creatures like the tiger retain their devouring power, maintaining the speaker's ideological dilemma.

• Cosmic Dimensions: The "deeps or skies" represent infinite dimensions that were literally immeasurable in Blake's time. Unlike modern capabilities (e.g., measuring a black hole), Blake’s era had no way of quantifying space.

• The Divine Forge: The poem utilizes a semantic field of blacksmithing (fire, art, twist, hammer, chain, furnace, anvil) to describe the tiger's creation.
      * In Blake's day, smiths were common due to horses being the primary transport.
      * The word "What" is repeated 14 times, beating through the poem like the flat blow of a hammer, resulting in a "stupefied response" to an impenetrable mystery.

• Structural Loops: The poem creates a "closed loop" (forests $\rightarrow$ deeps $\rightarrow$ forge $\rightarrow$ heavens $\rightarrow$ forests). The speaker returns with questions both unanswered and unanswerable.

• Alice Ostrike's Thesis: Identified "stasis" or "stationariness" as a key feature of Songs of Experience, which holds true for this poem as the speaker never resolves the central question.

Philosophy and Artistic Context

• Theodicy: The poem acts as a frustrated "theodicy"—an argument in the philosophy of religion that attempts to reconcile the presence of evil and violence with an all-powerful, good God.

• Artistic Influences (George Stubbs): Kathleen Reign notes that savage beasts were fashionable in late 18th-century painting. George Stubbs’ famous tiger painting was displayed at the Society of Artists in 1767. Blake, aged 12 and attending Parr’s drawing school in the same building, likely saw the painting.

• The Sublime: Influenced by Edmund Burke’s theories, the "sublime" refers to aspects of nature that fill one with fear, terror, and awe. Burke stated, "Terror is in all cases whatsoever… the ruling principle of the sublime."

• Modern Eco-criticism: Today, apex predators like tigers, wolves, and bears are understood as necessary for the welfare and balance of nature (culling and regulating ecosystems). The tiger, however terrifying, is an integral part of the created order.

• Divine Wrath: Blake extended the concept of the sublime to include "divine wrath" or righteous anger. He cited Jeremiah 23:29: "Is not my word like a fire… and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?"

• Proverbs of Hell: Blake wrote, "The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God" and "The tigers of wrath are wiser than horses of instruction."

• Dual Attributes of God: The Lamb represents salvation and mercy, while the Tiger represents righteous anger against evil. Blake capitalizes "Lamb" to indicate Jesus.

• S. Foster Damon: Argues the poem moves from the terror of a doubter to an assertion of faith in the oneness of God and the "holiness of prophetic rage."

Visual Discrepancy and Political Allegory

• The Illustration Critique: Blake’s own illustration is considered a "destabilizing" element because the visual tiger looks like a "gourdness looking sweetly smiling rainbow coloured muggy" rather than a terrifying beast. Critics call it a "comic shadow."

• Susan Wilson's View: Suggests a possible joke where either the speaker’s fears are unjustified or the reader is being lulled into a false sense of security.

• French Revolutionary Context: The tiger was a contemporary symbol for the chaos of the French Revolution.
      * Sir Samuel Romilly described the revolutionaries as trying to create a "republic of tigers."
      * William Wordsworth found revolutionary Paris as "defenceless as the wood where tigers roam."

• Revisions and Drafts: Martin K. Nurmi argues Blake revised the poem to reflect different phases of the Revolution.
      * First Draft (1792–1793): Emphasized "horrid ribs," "sanguine woe," and "cruel fire," reflecting second thoughts about revolutionary violence.
      * Second Stage: Blake emphasized the creator smiling, suggesting the "tiger of revolution" brought a good result.
      * Third/Final Stage: Reached a state of "equipoise" (balance) where the tiger is seen as both terrifying and necessary.

Meter, Rhythm, and Structure

• Trochaic Meter: The poem is written in trochaic meter (stressed-unstressed), which Blake favored for Songs of Experience. It creates a "hammering" quality suitable for the forge imagery.

• Alice Ostrike's Rhythmic Analysis: The parallel constructions and brief phrases encourage a fixed beat. This is the first rhythm the human ear perceives (associated with breathing, walking, and drum beating).

• Historical Precedent: The four-line stress with alliteration echoes Beowulf, the oldest surviving English poem, making it appropriate for a poem about the dawn of time.

• Symmetry in Construction: "Fearful symmetry" is built into the poem’s bones:
      * Written in rhyming couplets.
      * Most lines have a natural pause (caesura) in the middle, creating two symmetrical parts.
      * The poem balances contraries: man vs. tiger, wrath vs. mercy, heat vs. tears.

• Iambic Contrast: Ostrike points out that Blake mixes in iambic lines (e.g., "Could frame thy fearful symmetry"), which act like "water pouring into the poem" amidst the hammering trochees and spondees.

• Psychological Symbolism (C.M. Barrow): The tiger symbolizes the fierce forces of the soul needed to break the bonds of ignorance, repression, and superstition (the forest of the night).

Analysis of "London"

• Biographical Setting: Blake was a lifelong Londoner, living in areas like The Strand, Holborn, Oxford Street, and Lambeth. Oliver Elton describes "London" as Blake's "mightiest brief poem."

• Contrast with Isaac Watts (1715): Watts’ "Divine Songs for Children" features a child speaker who sees the poor and feels gratitude for their own blessings rather than moral outrage. It lacks social justice, implying poverty is God's created hierarchy.

• Contrast with William Wordsworth (1802): In "Composed upon Westminster Bridge," the city is depopulated and sanitized, wearing beauty "like a garment." The beauty is associated with monarchy ("majesty," "glittering").

• Radical Political Language: Blake’s first draft used the word "dirty," but he swapped it for "chartered."
      * "Chartered" refers to commercial monopolies condemned by radical Thomas Paine in The Rights of Man.

• Mind-Forged Manacles: Echoes Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762): "Man is born free but he is everywhere in chains." Manacles are the self-inflicted mental limitations of the state of "Experience."

• The Hanoverian Context: A draft mentioned "German forged links," referencing King George III (of the German House of Hanover) and the German soldiers used to suppress uprisings.

• Systemic Failure: The poem highlights specific victims:
      * Chimney Sweeps: Child laborers physically broken by the city.
      * Soldiers: Representing the perpetual state of war. Their blood runs down palace walls—possibly an apocalyptic sign of civil war.
      * The Church: Termed a "blackening church." It is the travesty of the "bride of Christ," darkening minds with disinformation and failing to save victimized children.

• The Harlot’s Curse:
      * Refers to the approximately $10,000$ prostitutes in London by 1800.
      * Plagues/Syphilis: Passed to infants and husbands, ruining the health of marriage.
      * Oxymoron: "Marriage hearse"—the marriage bed becomes a container of death.

• Acrostic: The word "HEAR" (H-E-A-R) appears as an acrostic in the third stanza.

• Indignation: The poem reflects Blake’s belief that "honest indignation is the voice of God."

Analysis of "The Sick Rose"

• Structure: Consists of exactly two sentences. The first declares the rose is sick; the second describes the etiology (cause).

• Metrical Opening: Starts with a spondee (double stress): "O Rose."

• Symbolic vs. Literal:
      * The Rose may represent a specific woman, womankind, or a literal plant.
      * The informal pronoun "thou" suggests intimacy between the speaker and the subject.

• Historical Context (Syphilis): By the late 1700s, over $20\,\%$ of London's population had contracted syphilis by age 35. It was a lingering disease that caused disfigurement and death.

• Horticultural Reading:
      * The "invisible worm" may be the rose sawfly larvae (rose slugs), which are nocturnal feeders.
      * They are most active during wet weather or storms, matching the "howling storm" in the poem.
      * They cause "skeletonization" (total defoliation) of the plant.

• Illumination Imagery: Features young blonde women in rose-colored dresses drooping or sitting on thorns. A wiggling figure (worm or male form) dives into a rose, suggesting phallic and yonic symbolism.

• Scansion: Written in dimeter (two feet per line). The meter is highly irregular, using a mix of spondees and anapests ("thou art sick").