The Experience counterpart to The Lamb is The Tyger with the compelling vistas poetically drawn no less crucial to the antinomian suggestions that may be extracted. The poems environment may essentially be viewed as a dreamscape where the speakers’ consciousness has temporarily transcended time and is thus able to witness and question a powerful component of the Divine Creation. There has been a multitude of diverse and often conflicting interpretations articulated about this poem in the past, however one interpretation suggests that the “forests of the night” are constellations and therefore the poem is set in the heavens. The supernatural is again summonsed to mind with the phrase “distant deeps or skies” which reinforces the ethereal nature of the poem. Thus once the cosmic stage is set through the landscape, the subsequent questioning may serve to act as a criticism of religious philosophy. This is particularly significant when The Tyger which contains twelve inquiries and no answers is contrasted with The Lamb in which all questions are answered. The suggestion latent in this comparative disparity is that Church, in seeking to instruct on moral law and justify the pernicious living conditions, paints an idyllic picture of God and the afterlife while disregarding the darker side of Creation. Implicitly the Church denies the divinity of the Tyger representation, a notion which Blake contests. Instead Blake creates “the poetic equivalent of an oxymoron, an impossible combination yet one that is ultimately true to the conditions of life”. He contends that holiness is inherent in all living things, a concept in diametric opposition to the Churches cornerstone of Original Sin. Thus the Tyger represents an imperative sine qua non which is as much a part of the Divine Creation as the Lamb.
The landscapes delineated in The Tyger and The Lamb also allow for an interpretation concerned with Blake’s reflections upon revolution, both the Industrial and the French Revolution. The industrialization of England is alluded to with the depiction of the fiery “furnace” conjuring images of the grueling and dangerous working conditions imposed in the name of progress. This vitriolic view is then further reinforced by the terms “dread” and “terror” being conjoined with the reference to instruments of trade, the “hammer”, “chain” and “anvil”. Contrastingly, the Arcadian landscapes of The Lamb are picturesque places of joy in which the inhabitants are able to commune with God in nature. Hence the denunciation of capitalist driven mechanization becomes clear when the two poems are considered together, and the darkened picture of widespread smokestack industrialization is juxtaposed with the “delight” of the agrarian fields. Alternatively the Blakean landscapes of The Tyger may also be analysed in terms of the moral ambiguities of the French Revolution. In this instance the fiery portrayal of the environment acts as a metaphor seeking to illustrate the revolutionary energy “consuming” France. While fire has purgative qualities, it also has destructive power, much like the Revolution. Although Blake essentially agreed with the destruction of the nobility and the desire to create a more egalitarian society, the widespread massacres meant that the human costs of achieving this ideal were high. In keeping with this incendiary revolutionary energy interpretation, the “deeps or skies” referred to may allude to the legend of Prometheus. In this Greek myth, the fire conferred a great advantage upon man but this blessing had a price, Pandora’s Box. Further parallels may be drawn from this vein of interpretation with the portrayal of a celestial landscape at war. “When the stars threw down their spears” may allude to the counterrevolutionaries surrender or the release of their material power. Thus the emotive poetic scapes of The Tyger and The Lamb are pivotal to the various social protests suggested in these works.
The poem London, located in Songs of Experience, is again a condemnation of oppressive religious dogma and the institutions which perpetuate this tyranny of abstract moral law. This social reprimand is reflected in the stirring landscapes related in this poem. The “blackning Church” in this poem operates as metaphor where the “Chimney-sweeper” is working among the waste dirt of all systemized religion, black with sanctimonious piety and punitive zeal. Similarly the somewhat incongruous phrase “every…Church appalls” conjures the concept that while the Church ought to be appalled by the degrading conditions thrust upon the poor, it is in fact that which is appalling. Another possible interpretation of the aforementioned line, and one that is no kinder to organized faith, suggests that the Church is becoming vacuous and blanched institution. The word appall is derived from the Latin pallidus meaning to become pale and thus this analysis illustrates an anemic Church devoid of the populations lifeblood; indeed a system draining the very spirit from the people.
London’s indictment of society does not end with the castigation of the Church; the government and its ineptitude to ease the peoples suffering at the hands of industrialism is also criticised. The title London, while not a descriptive landscape as such, is an important aspect of the poem, immediately evoking images of a densely populated urban area; a symbol of the progress of man. This poem however seeks to examine the human cost of this technological amelioration. The cityscape is described in terms of “charter’d street[s]” which depending on the various definitions of ‘chartered’ gives rise to several possible expositions, all of which vilify the ‘Establishment’. One connotation of ‘chartered’ is concerned with the written document evidencing a contract or deed. Thus the city, a place generally thought to be the property of the people, is in fact bound up in an exclusionary contract barring the lower classes from an opportunity to own assets. Alternatively, the word ‘charter’ may be interpreted as a written grant from the sovereign power conferring rights and privileges upon an individual. When used in this sense the adjective operating on the streetscape establishes irony. In the context of the rest of the poem, the people are shown to be dispossessed of rights and privileges; they are limited in their freedoms and thus the word comes to mean the very antilogy of its original definition. Still another possible function of the descriptive, ‘charter’ on the landscape, is characterized by a document elucidating the principles, functions and organization of a corporate body; in other words a constitution. This rendering of meaning suggests that the dictates of the government are so expansive and oppressive that they pervade every aspect of human life. This analysis is later reinforced in “mind-forg’d manacles” which delineates the ubiquitous nature of the moral law expounded by those in power. An additional censure against the government is conveyed when “the hapless Soldier’s sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls”. This evocative depiction of what at first appears to be a metaphorical landscape indicates that Blake considered the blood of the fallen Soldier to be a stain upon the tyrannical men in power. The Palace setting operates on two levels; it not only draws attention to the ruling body but also suggests that the already degraded men are arbitrarily dying because of expansionist government policy. The ruling class, already secure in their sumptuous homes, send the lower classes to wage Imperial wars, despite the fact that the closest the poor will come to a “Palace” is when they spill their blood. While this line can be seen to work on a metaphorical level it can also occupy a literal plane as during the Romantic period there was the “constant…thunders of war” and so much bloodshed. Hence, the unique and avant-garde landscapes poetically painted in London play a pivotal role to Blake’s enucleation condemning the oppressive government of his time.
The Romantic poet, William Blake, operating within an atmosphere of revolutionary thought and radicalism proffers subversive political and religious commentary through his poetry. In aid of this discourse he depicts emotive landscapes, a common feature of Romantic writing, and one central to Blake’s conveyance of meaning. Indeed his written landscapes are so evocative that they cannot be approached with equanimity and thus are liable to elicit multifarious interpretations.
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