Blake, William - Songs of Innocence and Sons of Experience

Songs of Innocence and Sons of Experience

William Blake(1757-1827) was concerned about the problems of the society he lived in. He witnessed the evil effects of industrial development on man’s soul, in particularly he tries to show to people the injustices, the exploitation of both human beings and materials realized with the industrial revolution. For this reasons he supported the French revolution, seen as a way to purify this corrupted world.
He rejected neoclassical literary style and themes and stressed the importance of imagination over reason, in fact imagination was considered by Blake the means through which man could know the world, an energy inside us.

Humans are warned of the evils of the society by the poet, who becomes a sort of prophet, that thanks to his more powerful imagination can see more deeply into reality.
He can not be considered strictly a romantic poet, but it is undeniable his influence of the romantics.

, published in 1789 and in 1794,are meant to contrast with one another but at the same time they are complementary, in fact they should be read together, the subtitle is: “showing the two contrary states of human soul”
The “Songs of Innocence” represent the stage of human existence that is childhood during which men are innocence, free, weak, unconscious, while the “Songs of Experience” are about adulthood, when human beings loose their instinctivity and starts using reason; the symbols of this two states are the lamb and the tiger. The lamb refers to God incarnated in the figure of baby Jesus, while the tiger is perfect but at the same time fearful because it embodies the contradictory and complementary forces of good and evil.
The passage between childhood and adulthood is a fall, because reason produces the evils of the society, under the aspects of institutions, and the result is that men are not free any more; but life for Blake is made up of contradictions so the evil is necessary to reach progress and perfection, given only after a mental choice.

London (Songs of Experience, 1794)

It is formed by four quatrains and in this poem Blake, the protagonist, is walking in the streets of London, seeing everywhere exploitation, not only in nature, like the Thames, but also people and children are exploited and so they suffer and cry. The reason why they are all subjected and not free is industrialization. The meaning of this poem is contained in the metaphor that says that is human mind itself that creates its own restrictions, people, using their reason, produce their prison. In the last two stanzas Blake indicates some of the victims of industrialization, like the chimney sweepers, young children obliged to work in unhealthy places condemned to die very young, other victims are the soldiers, that have to give their life for the king, who is safe in his palace, and the harlot and their babies that will suffer in any case, because there are born out of a marriage and because of the risks of being contaminated by venereal diseases. He indicates also some oppressors like the church, that doesn’t help the poor babies, the king and the institution of marriage, that Blake sees as the death of love.