William Blake: Vita, Opere e Analisi di "Songs of Innocence and Experience"

Questo appunto di Letteratura Inglese riguarda il poeta, pittore e incisore inglese William Blake. L’appunto riassume brevemente la biografia dell’autore, presenta la raccolta di poesie “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” e analizza due componimenti importanti, “The Lamb” e “The Tyger”.

William Blake’s life

William Blake was an English poet, painter and printmaker. He was one of the most important English Romantic poets. He was born in Soho on November 28, 1757, and except for a brief period in Sussex, he spent his entire life in London. He was the son of a small tradesman. He soon showed his passion and inclination for art; at the age of ten, he began his apprenticeship as an engraver in James Basire's shop, and in 1779 he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. In 1784, Blake opened a print shop, which allowed him to experiment with different printing techniques and led him to develop and refine a new method called relief etching. He developed his own original engraving technique, which he called “Illuminated printing”: he combined his poems and pictures through a form of colour printing. As a matter of fact, Blake thought that a book was a combination of art and poetry. He began printing his illuminated books as early as 1780. His most famous works are “Songs of Innocence”, which was published in 1789, and “Songs of Experience”, which was published in 1794. Blake died in August 1827, and only later, in the early 1900s, his work began to be appreciated by scholars and readers.

“Songs of Innocence and of Experience”

“Songs of Innocence and of Experience” is a collection of illustrated poems written by William Blake. This work appeared in two phases: in 1789, Blake published “Songs of Innocence”, a collection of poems printed and illuminated by Blake himself; five years later, in 1794, the author combined these poems with a set of new poems in a collection entitled “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”. The title of the book refers to two opposed, but complementary, states of the human soul. Blake considers innocence as a state of freedom and happiness associated with childhood, whereas experience represents the corruption of innocence. However, innocence cannot reach ultimate wisdom alone; so, experience has the important role of developing one’s soul. As regards the themes of the book, "Songs of Innocence" collects poems that deal with themes such as innocence and the joy of nature, advocating free love and a deeper relationship with God; it includes one of Blake's most famous poems, "The Lamb". The poems belonging to this collection are light, optimistic and pastoral, and are written from the perspective of children. In contrast, "Songs of Experience" deals with the loss of innocence after contact with the material world in adulthood; an example is the poem "The Tyger". The poems included in this volume are darker and focus on political and more serious themes in general. Often the same situations are analyzed in both books, so much so that the poems can almost be analyzed in pairs. In fact, many of the poems that appear in "Songs of Innocence" have counterparts in "Songs of Experience", with opposite points of view. According to the poet, growing up caused not only most people to lose the gift of imagination (which was extremely important for English Romantic poets, including Coleridge and Wordsworth), but also to lose innocence. However, he did not believe that children should be totally preserved from experience: in fact, in his view, it was not possible to achieve true innocence without experience.

“The Lamb”

"The Lamb" is the counterpart poem to "The Tyger" in “Songs of Experience”. It consists of twenty lines, all septenaries, divided into two stanzas. The text of the poem opens with two rhetorical questions, in which the poet, who adopts the point of view of a child, asks who the creator of the lamb is: "Little Lamb, who made thee? / Dost thou know who made thee?". The figure of the lamb belongs to Christian symbolism; it represents innocence, purity, and the crucifixion of Jesus, aimed at freeing men from the bondage of sin. The lamb is opposed to the figure of the tiger in the poem "The Tyger," which exists only as a counterpart to the lamb, just as the latter necessarily entails the presence of the tiger. In the following lines, Blake answers the questions he asked in the first part of the poem: the creator of the lamb is Jesus Christ, who is also called “The Lamb of God”. In line 17, the poet states that he is a child, innocent and pure like the lamb. According to Blake, in fact, children are the archetype of an ideal state that is not yet corrupted; they are characterized by innocence and imagination, and they are corrupted by "experience" when they become adults. In this poem, Blake uses few Latinisms and refined terms, but he makes extensive use of archaisms ("thee," "dost," "thou," "thy"). The syntax is paratactic, with few subordinates.

“The Tyger”

“The Tyger” consists of twenty-four lines divided into six stanzas, each of which is made up of four septenaries. In the first stanza, the poet directly addresses the tiger and asks: "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?". In the second stanza, the poet asks the tiger where he was created, while in the third stanza, the focus moves from the tiger to the creator. The fourth stanza is about the tools that were used to create the tiger. In the fifth stanza, the poet wonders how the creator reacted to the tiger, and asks who the creator is. Finally, the sixth stanza is identical to the first one, but rephrases the last line, changing its meaning. Rather than ask “What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”, the speaker asks “What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”. The tiger, described as a fearful creature, is a symbol of the suffering that comes from human experience. It is the opposite figure to the lamb, which is instead a symbol of innocence and purity. The poet explicitly compares the two animals in line 20, in which he asks the tiger, "Did He who made the Lamb make thee?" Blake, in fact, understands that the power and perfection of this terrible creature can only be the result of God's design, yet it is the same God who also created the lamb. Just like “The Lamb”, this poem features few Latinisms and refined terms, numerous archaisms ("tyger," "thine," "thy") and a paratactic syntax.
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