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WILLIAM BLAKE
William Blake was born in London in 1757 in a humble family. At 10 he left school in order to be self-taught and at 21 he attended the Royal Academy of Arts. He was particularly good at painting and engraving and, as a painter, he broke with the conventions of perspective and proportions, creating a new kind of art which emphasized the power of imagination. He was a political radical freethinker that supported the French Revolution and he had a strong sense of religion, in fact he mostly drew inspiration from the Bible. Unlike other poets, Blake had visions without taking any drugs. He is considered a pre-romantic poet since he rejected neoclassical literary style and themes, emphasizing the importance of imagination over reason and he believed that ideal forms should be created not from the observation of nature, but from inner visions. He invented the “Illuminated printings”, highly symbolic works of art, made by using copper plates, in which he combined both painting and poetry. His most relevant poetic collections are the Songs of Innocence, written in 1789, just before the French Revolution, and the Songs of Experience, written instead in 1794, in the period of Terror. Furthermore, he also published prophetic books in which he created a complex personal mythology. He died in London in 1827. In Songs of Innocence, Blake’s enthusiasm for the liberal ideas was high; the narrator is a shepherd who receives inspiration from a child in a cloud to pipe his songs celebrating the divine in all creation and the language is simple and musical. In Songs of Experience instead, Blake created a counterpart to the songs of the innocent shepherd in the form of the bard who questions the themes of the previous collection. The visual of the world is more complex and the view of life is more pessimistic. The Songs of Innocence are about the purity of the dream, while the Songs of Experience talk about the knowledge of reality: they basically represent two different states of our lives (not related to our age), therefore they provide two different points of view on the reality and for this reason they should be read simultaneously. According to Blake, imagination and not sense perceptions are the means through which man could know the world. Imagination means to see beyond material reality, into the life of things. God, the child and the poet share this power of vision, that coincides with the power of creating things. Therefore, the poet becomes a sort of prophet, who can see more deeply into reality. Blake was concerned with the political and social problems of his time, in fact he believed in revolution as purifying violence, necessary for the redemption of man. Later, disillusioned, he will focus on the evil consequences of the Industrial Revolution, such as injustice and exploitation of human beings. In his poems, he sympathizes with the victims of both industrial society and oppression by institutions. Blake’s poems have a simple structure and an original use of symbols. His verse is linear and rhythmical and is characterized by the frequent use of repetition.
Blake also wrote an essay called “The marriage of Heaven and Hell” in which he talks about complementary opposites and about the balance (marriage) there should be between the two. “Without contraries, there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to human existence”: according to Blake, we need tension to develop and contraries to evolve, and it’s the clash between them that creates progress and evolution. INFANT JOY: I have no name I am but two days old.— What shall I call thee? I happy am Joy is my name,— Sweet joy befall thee! Pretty joy! Sweet joy but two days old, Sweet joy I call thee; Thou dost smile. I sing the while Sweet joy befall thee. This poem shows a total state of joy, also thanks to really soft vocabulary and sounds. It is made up of 2 stanzas, in which musicality matters a lot. The term “joy” is repeated many times. This poem shows a conversation between a mother and her child, who has a voice even if he is a newborn. The mother asks her child how to call him and then, she decides to call him “Joy” since he seems to be happy. The sentence “Sweet joy befall thee” is repeated two times: literally, to befall means to give, yet Blake uses this term in order to convey the idea of a mother who knows existence involves falling. INFANT SORROW: My mother groand! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud; Like a fiend hid in a cloud. Struggling in my fathers hands: Striving against my swaddling bands: Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mothers breast.
The Illuminated printing shows a nature that is keeping a child protected, framed. In the background, we can see how, even in the state of nature, there might be a storm of knowledge since innocence and purity do not last forever. The sounds are very soft. The child is speaking to the lamb asking him who had made him. In the second stanza, the child answers the question by saying that his creator (God) is called by his name, so “Lamb” (representing purity, sacrifice and forgiveness) and he is meek and mild, exactly like him. The creator became a little child (through Jesus). Therefore God is both a Lamb and a child, and both God and the child can create things. It is not easy to discover the mystery of creation and here we can see how Blake’s own spirituality influences his poetry. THE TYGER: Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp! When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? The tiger is a symbol of fear, violence, aggressiveness, power and authority. Balance comes from fear, in fact human beings are attracted to what is frightening, to the sublime, which is beyond their control.
By looking at the Illuminated printing we can see a solid tree with twigs and a strong nature, yet it lacks a background. The poem is longer than “The Lamb” and its sounds are harsher. It is full of questions concerning creation, in fact Blake always asks the same question: “Who made you”, but in a different way given that the tiger is a more complex animal compared to the lamb. The adjective “immortal” elevates the question and the word “symmetry” alludes to perfection. Blake asks himself whether the tiger is the result either of God’s or of Devil’ creation (both represent excessive ambition) and wonders what this creator wanted to achieve by creating this animal. In the second stanza there is an allusion to both Prometheus’ and Icarus’ myths, as symbols of excessive ambition. In the fifth stanza, the stars represent a symbol of light and reason, but the tiger is beyond reason. Furthermore, Blake wonders whether God was satisfied after having created the tiger and whether the tiger and the lamb had the same creator: the answer is yes, since God is both a lamb and a tiger, so He is both pure and innocent and violent and frightening. As a consequence, Blake does not believe in the Christian conception of the fight between good and evil: according to him, it is the clash between these two complementary opposites that makes humanity progress, therefore he criticizes the Church. THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER (SONGS OF INNOCENCE): When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet; and that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, - That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins and set them all free; Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe "And because I am happy and dance and sing They think they have done me no injury And are gone to praise God and his priest and king Who make up a heaven of our misery." This poem’s atmosphere is darker than the other Chimney Sweeper and it reminds of death. The first impression one has while reading the first stanza is that something bad is about to happen. The child is in solitude, yet he is more aware of his condition since he criticizes his parents’ behavior. In the introduction, the child is a “thing”, not an individual, that is black because of the dirt and because he is wrapped in death. In the dialogue, someone sees the child and asks him where his parents are, and he answers by saying they were in church, and from that we can understand they are actually really devoted. Since he was happy, his parents wrapped him in the clothes (destiny) of death and taught him to sing the notes of concern (woe), without thinking they could harm him. Now, they have gone to the church to praise God and worship religion and institutions by exploiting their misery to get advantage, therefore they are more focused on other things rather than on their child, and he seems to be very conscious of the problem.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
In the English literature, we can distinguish 2 generations of Romantic poets: First generation: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Second generation: John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Byron. William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in the English Lake District, in the north of England. In 1790 he travelled to France, where he acquainted himself with the ideas of the Revolution. Once he returned to England, he saw the consequences and the effects of both the French and the Industrial Revolutions and this led him to developing a nervous breakdown. In 1795 he met Coleridge, with whom he wrote the Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798 anonymously. In 1800 Wordsworth added a Preface to the second edition that was to become the Manifesto of English Romanticism. The last years of his life were marked by the growing conservatism of his political views. He died in 1850. Wordsworth belonged to the first generation of Romantic poets, which mainly focused on theorizing about poetry. According to him, poetry was a solitary act, originating in the ordinary, in fact in the Lyrical Ballads, he deals with man, nature and everyday things, trying
to present them in an extraordinary way, with a new light, by “throwing over them a certain coloring of imagination”.The subject matter should deal with everyday situations or incidents and with ordinary people, since in humble rural life man is nearer to his own purer passions.The language should be simple, comprehensible, easy and accessible. Wordsworth shared Rousseau’s faith in the goodness of nature and in the excellence of the child. His poetry offers a detailed account of the complex interaction between man and nature: he believed man and nature are inseparable. In his pantheistic view, he saw nature as something that includes both inanimate and human nature. Nature is a source of pleasure and joy since it comforts man in sorrow and teaches him how to love and to act in a moral way. Wordsworth recollects emotions in tranquillity by using his inward eye, which is the memory that is capable of reawakening the same emotions one felt on the spot. Wordsworth almost always used blank verse, even though he proved skilful at several verse forms. A CERTAIN COLOURING OF IMAGINATION: Wordsworth decides to choose common incidents and situations as his principal aim and to describe them by using a selection of language really used by men and by throwing over them a certain colouring of imagination in order to present these ordinary things in an unusual and extraordinary way. Wordsworth makes these situations interesting by tracing in them the primary laws of nature in a state of excitement. He generally chooses to talk about modest and rustic life since in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can reach their maturity, they are less under restraint and they speak in a more emphatic language because in the countryside one feels more in contact with feelings given that there are no structures above nature, therefore they can be more accurately contemplated and more easily communicated. Wordsworth adopts men’s language, purified from its defects, since it is able to convey feelings and notions through simple and unelaborated expressions and it is more stable than the one of the citylife. The poet is seen as a man speaking to men, endowed with a more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul, a man pleased with his own passions and desires. His task is to reawaken people’s sensitivity by recollecting emotions in tranquillity: the poet is able to generate in the reader’s mind the same thoughts and feelings felt in a certain moment of excitement, without actually needing immediate external excitement. Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings that grasps its essence in this recollection; in this mood, successful contemplation generally begins and in a mood similar to this it is carried on, generating a whole state of enjoyment in the mind. DAFFODILS: I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
teacher, of the man since it is the child that generates a certain man, so the child is retained inside the man, and he can actually teach something to his father by guiding his parents’ behavior. Therefore, in this poem there is a contrast between childhood and adulthood.
