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The Tyger In order to understand the poetry of William Blake one needs to know a bit about the poet and his time. Blakes work falls at the beginning of the Romantic Era in poetry. These poems were characterized by very beautiful imagery, especially uplifting natural images, fantastic or spiritual content, especially the use symbolism, fantastic imagery and imagery from nature with symbolic contents to explore highly idealistic themes. In many ways Blake influenced contemporary romantic writers and this continued beyond his death.
Blakes life was quite interesting. He was trained as an engraver, and was quite enamored of art. He was quite a spiritual person, said to have had visions, and he had many friends among the clergy and attended church regularly himself. Many of the rhythms in his poetry can be traced to the hymnals of his time.
He was well educated, well thought of and well read. He was especially involved in visual arts. "Blake insists that "man's desires are limited by his perceptions, none can desire what he has not perceived"" (Wright 35) He, himself, perceived a great deal. The fact that he was an engraver made it possible for him to publish poetry like he did the Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience, on beautiful illuminated copies. They were not meant for mass distribution, The "Songs of Innocence" formed the first complete book executed by Blake by his new method of illuminated printing.
The text and designs were etched in relief on copper, the prints from these plates being then illuminated by hand. The "Songs of Innocence" were completed in 1789 and sold for a small sum; only twenty-one copies are now known to be in existence. The "Songs of Experience" were added in 1794. Twenty-three copies of the complete series of poems have been recorded, these having been issued by Blake at various dates between 1794 and 1827. The colouring is different in each copy and the arrangement of the plates also varies. (Keynes 50) "Though derided as a madman in his own time -- and even in ours -- William Blake developed a singular vision of the world, truth, and eternity that fascinates viewers the world over. " (Greer 254) Perhaps his poetry needs to be examined in this light. The student of Blake's moods might construct from the fragmentary record of the years after 1800 a theory of the pulse of Blake's whole mental life; might suspect that Blake was swung his life long up and down to the rhythm of the alternation from elation to depression to elation (Bruce 86) BLAKE, in other words, was neurotic.
He fell into "melancholy, -- melancholy without any real reason"; he oscillated violently from moods of deepest depression to moods of highest exaltation; hours of perfect and entire confidence and certainty were followed by hours of despair (Bruce 89) From these two quotes we have an insight into what drove Blakes poetry. He may have suffered from manic-depression. In looking at his biography, Blakes sanity was in question. Palmer, a contemporary, says of him, "I remember William Blake in the quiet consistency of his daily life, as one of the sanest, if not the most thoroughly sane man I have ever known. " Some of Blakes poetry seems to illustrate the extremes under which Blake suffered and how his moods swung from sublime elation and spiritual enlightenment (The Lamb) to deep depression and fear (The Tyger).
While Blakes work stands on its own, it is best understood in light of his visual arts and his personal history of probably mental illness. Today such illness can often be controlled with medication, the sufferers all agree that the medication takes something from them, and so we possibly should be thankful that Blake did not have these available. Each of his works in isolation have merit, but the body of work as a whole, with each poem seen also in connection with the rest of his work, and in the light of his personal life, shows brilliance which we must admire. How much creative work in this world is done by those who skirt the edge of madness.
Blakes work is still studied, and some are beginning to look at the poetry and the art together as a portrait of a brilliant artist. Bruce says that, n his mind he sailed as far as America and Jerusalem, as far as Heaven and Hell. The creative impulse which drove him on his mental voyages found double expression, now in poetry, now in drawing and engraving. The Tiger burns bright in one field against The Ancient of Days in the other; The Songs of Innocence make strange pattern with the Illustrations to Job.
Letters and marginalia open the shutters, show what was, at times, going on in his mind. (Bruce 7) The poem, The Tyger, was in sharp contrast to the earlier poem, The Lamb. The Tyger seems completed by the addition of the previous poem, as it also completes The Lamb. That it is part of the collection entitled Songs of Experience gives a hint to the workings of Blakes mind. It is not secret that Blake deplored the encroachment of the industrial revolution into the peace of existence, and that he was profoundly influenced by his knowledge of the French Revolution. The Tyger could be a reaction to either of these or both.
The Tyger is definitely the symbol of passion, and the expression of extreme emotional turmoil within the poet. From the earliest recorded time, we see demons with flashing or glowing eyes. In the knowledge that Blakes Christianity was unique with him and a result of his visions, one might conclude that the Lamb was the symbol for Christ and the Tyger was the symbol for Satan. This idea lends tremendous power to this line, Did He who made the Lamb also make thee? According to the story in Genesis, God made all the angels, of which Satan was the highest and most wonderful. So it is not a far jump to conclude that the Tyger symbolized Lucifer.
How wonderful this poem becomes when it is seen as part of this whole fabric in contrast to The Songs of Innocence, most especially The Lamb. In this context, this poem becomes a psalm to the wondrous work of the Creator, who created both the innocent beauty of nature and the awesome grandeur of hell and its inhabitants. Seeing it in this light makes the previously mentioned line even more important, perhaps the thesis line of the poem or even the group of poems. Even the title, Songs of Experience, takes on new significance.
We have to think of the incident in the garden when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That is the first recorded learning experience. By contrasting the images of this poem to those of The Lamb, we can see that this poem may be referring to something more primordial when the poet uses the forests of the night. Perhaps the night even stands for that final darkness which would be the condemnation of the soul to the infernos which Blakes contemporary, Dante, was describing. Blake even did some illustrations for Dante, so we know he was certainly familiar with this view. When Blake asks the questions about the creator of the Tyger, they take on much more spiritual significance if we assume that the Tyger symbolized Lucifer.
It would be a much more amazing thing to contemplate who made both the Savior and the Devil than just to contemplate the two opposite animals. We know from the first poem that the Lamb symbolizes Christ, so this could easily be the opposite. What the hammer! what the chain" is a really difficult line unless we consider that the hammer would be that of the blacksmith, making the chain that which he uses to lower the glowing mail from the forge into the cold water to cool it. The poet would have known about the process of tempering for Toledo steel, and could have seen this Tyger as a creation of a master who tempered His creations with repeated exposure to the fire and then the cooling water.
That this poem takes as its subject the opposing forces to the savior, and uses the imagery of a Tyger in a dark primordial forest makes it stronger, but no less romantic. The poem is highly spiritual and the images are quite fantastic when considered as tools of the Creator. The repeated sequence makes even more sence in this context, as Satan would have had quite fearful symmetry to people of Blakes time. We must remember that we are talking about a difference of 200 years between then and now, and the difference between then and the time of witch trials was no longer. The Spanish inquisition was not so distant in the past at that time either, so we can see that people would have taken Christian religion a lot more seriously than many do today.
Blake was an especially spiritual poet and artist and it was documented that he began seeing visions at age four, and there is no reason to assume that these did not continue. Are we seeing Blakes expression of his reactions to his awesome visions, both wonderful and terrifying? The importance attached both to nature and to the empirical in Blake is affirmed in "There Is No Natural Religion, " where the points are made that the human being "is only a natural organ subject to sense, " that perception occurs through bodily organs, that organic perceptions mean organic thoughts, and that desires and perceptions "must be limited to objects of sense" (Lawson) Blake certainly was investigating the reality of the world and of religion, and was, perhaps, tormented by fears of being wrong, wondering what was the true nature of existence. It really is not so far a stretch when you consider that he was thought to be mad by many contemporaries. Think about other famous artists and poets and we can see that they all seem to have a sort of madness which drives them. Blake certainly may have reconciled a condition of magic depression to some burden or blessing put upon him by God.
The images in this poem take on so much more significance if we see them as more than a poets invention to express his theme. Could they have been real to Blake? Works Cited Bruce, Harold. William Blake in This World. London: Jonathan Cape, 1925. Questia. 2 May 2006 < web >.
Greer, Herb. "Frozen Fire - the Visionary World of William Blake. " World and I Apr. 2001: 254. Questia. 2 May 2006 < web >. Keynes, Geoffrey, ed. Poetry and Prose of William Blake.
London: Nonesuch Press, 1927. Questia. 2 May 2006 < web >. Lawson, William. "Humanism in Literature: William Blake. " The Humanist Sept. -Oct. 1993: 36 +. Questia. 2 May 2006 < web >. Wright, Thomas.
The Life of William Blake. Vol. 1. Olney, England: Bucks, T. Wright, 1929. Questia. 2 May 2006 < web >.
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