Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794)
juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of childhood against an adult
world of corruption and repression; while such poems as “The Lamb” represent a meek virtue, poems
like “The Tyger” exhibit
opposing, darker forces. Thus the collection as a whole explores
the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world.
Many of the poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation or
problem is seen through the lens of innocence first and then experience.
Blake does not identify himself wholly with either view; most of
the poems are dramatic—that is, in the voice of a speaker other
than the poet himself. Blake stands outside innocence and experience,
in a distanced position from which he hopes to be able to recognize
and correct the fallacies of both. In particular, he pits himself
against despotic authority, restrictive morality, sexual repression,
and institutionalized religion; his great insight is into the way
these separate modes of control work together to squelch what is
most holy in human beings.
The Songs of Innocence dramatize the
naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and trace
their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. Some of
the poems are written from the perspective of children, while others
are about children as seen from an adult perspective. Many of the
poems draw attention to the positive aspects of natural human understanding
prior to the corruption and distortion of experience. Others take
a more critical stance toward innocent purity: for example, while
Blake draws touching portraits of the emotional power of rudimentary
Christian values, he also exposes—over the heads, as it were, of
the innocent—Christianity’s capacity for promoting injustice and
cruelty.
The Songs of Experience work via parallels
and contrasts to lament the ways in which the harsh experiences of
adult life destroy what is good in innocence, while also articulating
the weaknesses of the innocent perspective (“The
Tyger,” for example, attempts to account for real,
negative forces in the universe, which innocence fails to confront).
These latter poems treat sexual morality in terms of the repressive
effects of jealousy, shame, and secrecy, all of which corrupt the
ingenuousness of innocent love. With regard to religion, they are
less concerned with the character of individual faith than with
the institution of the Church, its role in politics, and its effects
on society and the individual mind. Experience thus adds a layer
to innocence that darkens its hopeful vision while compensating
for some of its blindness.
The style of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is
simple and direct, but the language and the rhythms are painstakingly
crafted, and the ideas they explore are often deceptively complex.
Many of the poems are narrative in style; others, like “The Sick Rose” and “The Divine Image,” make
their arguments through symbolism or by means of abstract concepts.
Some of Blake’s favorite rhetorical techniques are personification and
the reworking of Biblical symbolism and language. Blake frequently
employs the familiar meters of ballads, nursery rhymes, and hymns,
applying them to his own, often unorthodox conceptions. This combination
of the traditional with the unfamiliar is consonant with Blake’s
perpetual interest in reconsidering and reframing the assumptions
of human thought and social behavior.
