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Angelic Knight Press: Blood Related
Angelic Knight Press: Blood Related: http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Related-ebook/dp/B006QG1WA4/ Look what's up on Kindle! BLOOD RELATED by William Cook! At present, it's in the ...
Modernism, The Waste Land, & Spiritualism
§ I.
In T.S. Eliot’s The
Waste Land (1922), a society decays while humanity turns upon itself in the
name of industry. Even that most rudimentary characteristic of human nature and
existence, sexual love, is reduced to a type of capitalist transaction of ‘automated’ experience. It is a lasting impression of humanity
at its lowest and most fallible point. However, despite Eliot’s reactionary
portrayal of the spiritual and cultural death of western society, The Waste Land is not without hope or
redemption. Indeed, in the knowledge that the text itself will generate wisdom,
through the process of understanding and interpretation, there is a certain
degree of optimism present.
Modernism
(particularly Modernist writing) was essentially a search for absolutes, or
fundamental truths, about human existence and experience. Art (with a capital
‘a’) was the idealized domain for this aggressive hunt; aesthetic autonomy,
however, was far from the romantic notion of beauty as the purest aesthetic.
Modernist idealism centered on language, or on the limits of language, as the
aesthetic principle that governed the range and depth of their ‘meta-fictions’.
It was a theoretical dictum, flavored with euro-centric philosophy and anglo-cultural
morality that attempted to address the fallibility of the modern consciousness,
and ask the age-old philosophical question: ’how do/should we exist?’ This
question was one which Eliot felt the need to pose and respond to in The Waste Land.
Throughout
the poem, an underlying spiritual quest is underway. With allusion to biblical,
mystical, theological references and characters (e.g. St. Augustine,
Ecclesiastes, Buddha, Madame Sosostris etc.), Eliot concludes the poem with an
affirmation of all things unknown, a ‘shantih’. This spiritual motif is the organizing and thematic device by which Eliot structures the disjointed
contexts of western culture. Each sequence displays literary and
classical/mythological allusions that reflect a decaying society whilst
positing a philosophically spiritual affirmation of religious idealism, either
in motif or analogy. The spiritual
themes and recantations subtly and forcibly emphasise the need for
spirituality, in a society ignorant of its lack of faith and the consequential
connection to social ills.
After
Nietzsche’s proclamation in Thus Spake
Zarathustra (1883–1892) that “God is dead”, and his recognition of the over
riding human will and its tendency toward self gratification and sin, Eliot
continued to address the questions raised by the German philosopher in regard
to the state of his adopted nation. The use of biblical concepts and classical
ideas is present in the description Eliot gives of a 'fallen' world where
darkness reigns supreme. Through the clutter and chaos, discord and despair,
light breaks through the haze and ‘fog’ of this Babylonian abyss.
It
is not the ‘western dream’[i] that lights
upon a progressive metropolis, but an eastern sun that illuminates the decline
of western civilization. Through the symbolic parallels and contrasts, a
message is relayed: the west is no longer the pantheon of the civilised modern
world. Now the ancient grace and customs of the east[ii]
are the new provider of light in the heart of darkness. In other words, the
depiction of the negative suggestively emphasizes the positive or the alternative. Eliot’s subtle
proposal in The Waste Land integrates
religious idealism into a society whose access to ‘high’ cultural aestheticism
has previously been discouraged or impractical. If society at large can believe
in the numinous doctrine of religion, then it would follow that their belief
in the divinity of aesthetics as a social cure is not beyond grasp. In this
respect, the ideal behind the art proposes autonomy on a par with divine
doctrine, yet also interdependent on an audience’s faith and understanding of
theological principles and concepts.
§ II.
Modernist texts like Eliot’s were part of a
development of an aesthetic sensibility, that was not merely an expression of
the interior psychological world, but an experience in itself that forced the
reader to decipher their own individual existence as much as that of the text.
This reliance upon the reader to navigate their way through the dense forest of
metaphor and allusion makes interpretation difficult in relation to the
reader’s own knowledge and experience. The author is needed to provide a
critical compass to guide through the intellectual organization of the text
that would otherwise remain inert to the average reader. Hence, the courteous
notes Eliot put together in consideration for an audience that may not ‘be in
the know’, after writing The Waste Land. This in itself is a
significant aspect of Modernist literature; effectively it generates the
necessity for coherence and education through its use of complex symbolism,
literary tradition, myth, and philosophy. When one attempts to interpret the
Modernist text, one also attempts to decipher the major (and minor) texts of
western philosophy, science, literature, and religion.
The
Waste Land is constructed with literary remnants and images of a fragmented
western civilization that values materialism above wisdom. Apparently unrelated
references and contexts evoke a pervading sense of confusion and disharmony, in
a cultural, social, and spiritual sense. Despite the negative impressions, all
perspectives seem to end with a different proposition, or connection, to larger
fundamental issues of human existence and meaning. These remnants are the
literary ramparts of Eliot’s craft; used categorically and historically, they
form a profound literary image (or montage of images) of post-war Europe and
London in particular. A dense allegorical landscape that is as much a
reflection of society (literary and social) as it is of Modernist literature, The Waste Land is the epitome of the
Modernist tendency in poetry of the Twentieth Century.
Moreover
it is a poem consisting of differing viewpoints (from different sources) that
ultimately and resolutely provides an overall perspective of a culture
(western) without absolute ideals. It is a satirical depiction of a modern
world that is supposedly advanced with all its industrial, technological,
scientific, and accumulated resources of knowledge. It is a world without
coherence and solidarity, despite this great historical capital, that The Waste Land addresses, with its
intellectual organization of sensibility and society. Paradoxically, the poem’s complex web of intellectual and
literary meaning imposes its boundaries on any attempts at interpretation. For
Eliot it is his coup de grace, his poetical entrance into the elevated world of
‘fine art’ as defined by the institution of the literary canon. However, there
is a sense of affinity with those outside the institution within the poem. A seemingly
moral empathy with the people who populate his landscape of cultural woe and
fragmentation.
It
is the ‘machine’ of capitalist industrialization, which Eliot undermines in the
poem. This is perceived as the enemy of ‘high’ art; with its subtly coercive
social structures and powers of mobilization, its ability to envelop whole
nations, to process its individuals into social robots, to transform the living
into the dead. Above all, The Waste Land attacks
modernity’s capacity to ‘dumb down’ its masses, in order to increase economic
productivity at the expense of literacy, education, and its culture’s producers
that are the writers, poets, and artists. It is a poem that requires (demands!)
intelligence, literacy, wit, and above all a certain amount of courage, not
just in the reading but ultimately in the writing of it. Like Joyce’s Ulysses, it is a work that is designed
to achieve an absolute resolution of literary, aesthetic, and social malaise,
that was so much a part of the early Twentieth Century period.
As
is the case with most (if not all) Modernist literature, there is a heavy
investigation and saturation of selected significant events of the past. It is
this quality of Eliot’s poem that connects the reader to all humanity;
especially the modern being, to a historical tradition and the “dialect of the
[mythic] tribe”. The final stanza of the poem is the best example of this. The
solipsistic figure of the Fisher King; the ‘every-man’, the poet, stranded in The Waste Land is revealed “upon the
shore, / Fishing, with the arid plain behind” (WL, V, 423-424). In this, the poem’s finale, all the motifs,
allusions, and language converge in a chaotic textual reconnaissance, not
dissimilar to a battle zone:
London
Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon--
O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Acquitaine a la tour abolie
These
fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why
then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta.
Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih
shantih shantih
(WL,
VI, 426-433)
The use
of “shantih” is interesting, not only, because it is the final line to the
poem, but because of its characteristic conformity to the Modernist principle
of discontinuity and metaphoric allusion. It has a phonetic resonance that
itself imparts meaning. It could be the tolling of a bell; the shuffle of the
crowd flowing over London Bridge, the ticking of a clock, the ebb and flow of
the tide. Alternatively, it could represent “a savage beating a drum in a
jungle”,[iii]
the sound of the origins of poetry.
As
the sound creates multiple impressions, the literal meaning conveys a complex
construction of theological and literary metaphor. Within its Hindu context,
‘shantih’ is a mantra, an affirmative ending to the Upanishads which tell of
the personal self or “atman”, originally part of the Godhead. This individual
self is seen as separated from God by imperfect knowledge and experience, the
redemption being, that “the obligation of each individual is to realize this
original oneness by means of extensive and complex spiritual, moral and
physical disciplines”.[iv] In this
respect, the usage and meaning fits nicely into the general theme, of western
spiritual decay, as a counter point and as a redemptive allegory.
In
keeping with the classic response to Modernist literature, further analysis
also places significance on the symbolism of the line; the three lines resound
with exegetic meaning. In light of the questions of western spirituality, one
could read the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost (or Mary) into the three
Shantihs. There is a sense of overlapping, of one religion taking prominence
over another, of a shifting set of values that are fundamentally the same yet
experienced in completely different ways due to cultural values.
Tradition,
in The Waste Land, is never an
obvious foundation for western culture, although it is implied. Tradition
presents itself in the form of an assortment of allusions (and illusions) that
does not unify itself in any one perspective, as the ambiguous culmination of
the poem demonstrates. Consequently, set against this fragmented tradition, the
individual proves unstable. Tiresias fails to unify the poem’s disparate voices
in a conventional allegorical way; instead, his sexual division creates a tone
of ambiguity between the languages and characters of the poem. Each character
in The Waste Land, is individualized
to the extent that the only common trait to be found amongst them, is either
their respective genders, their madness or despair, or else the characteristic
and monotonous lack of volition which they possess:
Under
the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A
crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I
had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs,
short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And
each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
(WL, I, 61-65)
Thus, with
individuality becoming socially detrimental and cultural foundations awry, the
hope of unifying social values or of an autonomous moral ideal seems doomed.
Eliot’s explanatory note on the character of Tiresias gives the reader an
apparent, yet unsatisfactory and somewhat misleading, insight into the
technique used in employing such devices in the poem:
Tiresias,
although a mere spectator and not indeed a ‘character’, is yet the most
important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller
of currants melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly
distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and
the two sexes meet in Tiresias.
What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem.
(Note to line 218)
Indeed,
what Tiresias perceives, is the substance of the poem, in that his character
occupies the majority of the middle section of the poem (hence his centrality).
Eliot’s notes prove somewhat ambiguous in relation to the text itself. Whilst
they do provide a certain amount of elucidation regarding literary references
and modes the notes seem deliberately innocuous. They are almost salutatory in
their superficiality, in relation to the metaphoric density of the poem as a
whole. This set of token guidelines traces the history of the English literary
tradition, albeit at the expense of philosophical or theological explanation. Consequently,
this has the effect of encouraging a wider interpretation that in turn
questions the possibility of connecting aesthetic appreciation with moral
expression.
There
are no conclusions however, no affirmation of an ideal world or society. Insinuation
and suggestion are the only indicators of any logical answers to the illogical
problems besetting The Waste Land. In
this sense, Eliot has achieved an absolute of sorts in an artifact that is so
metaphorical, that its politics defy definition. All that remains is the text;
the aesthetic temporal object, that is as much from its own time as it is from
all. Like most other Modernist texts, the ideological goal has been achieved;
the work has stood the test of time, to affect discussion and debate about fundamental
cultural and anthropological issues up to the present day.
§ III.
Poetry
should not interpret experience for the reader, it should provide the objective
means by which the reader themselves discover meaning. Ezra Pound in How To Read argued that rationality of
speech, in science and in art, did not come from logic, but from the
combination or juxtaposition of objective images. This was the main Imagist
tenet that Eliot himself endorsed in his essay on Hamlet. It was he who
introduced it as a significant critical term for use in discussions of art and
literature; he called it the ‘objective correlative’:
The
only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective
correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events
which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the
external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the
emotion is immediately evoked.[v]
The
artisan was not so, unless they could relay the complexities of the human mind
through their art. Image must represent intellect and emotion in such a way, as
to invoke the same response from the audience, without the guidance of the
artist’s persona or the dysfunction of the art. Therefore, poetry should not
concern itself with conventional representation and technique like iambic,
regular rhythms. This was the main aspect of tradition the Modernist’s wished
to revolutionize. Formal restrictions and convention was avoided and modern
poetry freed itself from the past, through the employment of the avant-garde
influenced vers libre (or ‘free verse’) as their characteristic literary mode.
The Waste Land
is perhaps the most poignant and effective example of the Modernist use and
style of free verse in poetry; switching styles, languages, form, narration.
The poem epitomizes the liberating use of all
words, language, and styles within a modern world where ‘anything goes’. Whilst
Modernist verse addresses the world with language and images appropriate to the
modern experience, it also feels free to use any thing from all literature to
do so. If poetry was to communicate intellectually and popularly to a modern
metropolitan audience as well as to
the intelligentsia, then its ingredients would have to reflect the present
culture as much as any other reference to the past. Eliot’s The Waste Land established a transformed
tradition of modern poetry that influenced writers across the globe, especially
American poets like Hart Crane, and William Carlos Williams. Eliot’s poem is
the main literary doctrine of the modern western consciousness of the early
twentieth century.
It
is a reflection of a time when language, culture, and society was in a state of
flux; the sense of disharmony and instability conveyed, gives a historically
accurate picture of a society between wars and between poles of modernity.
Cultural definition and identity occurs when the present redeems a reconcilable
past. This awareness, of the importance of the past to the continuation of a
progressive present, is deep-set within Modernism’s fundamental idealism.
Modernism’s involvement with the urban environment reflects a realization that
society and its demands determine ‘culture’. The opposite view for critics like
Andreas Huyssen, is that Modernism:
constituted
itself through a conscious strategy of exclusion, an anxiety of contamination
by its other: an increasingly consuming and engulfing mass culture. Both the
strengths and weaknesses of Modernism derive from that fact.[vi]
Modernist
texts like The Waste Land attempt to
integrate, whilst remaining true to intellectual and aesthetic principles, an industrialized capitalist market place without becoming part of the ‘other’
institution of industrialization. Modernist text resists the commonality of
mass-produced commodity, by excluding the market from its message. It is the
main reason for the tendency in Modernist art to propagate styles that defy
mass-appeal, despite their characteristic dealings with fundamental issues of
human existence. The language is simply too intellectual, literate, and
metaphoric for the average consumer with no prior literary education. It is a
significant and characteristic aspect of Modernist poetry, fiction, and art.
Consequently,
despite its sophistication and humanitarian idealism, the Modernist style
divided the institution of art from the public consciousness. It effectively
(whether intentional or not, is a matter for another essay) elevated art up and
away from the public’s grasp. This had the effect of incurring the wrath of the
avant-garde who basically held the same principles, yet were slightly more
politically correct and vocal in their anthropological concerns, about the
place of art in society. Therefore, the avant-gardes protected themselves from
claims of ‘elitism’ by critics and the public, that otherwise affixed and generalized the project of Modernist art.
After
everything said, Eliot shall always have the last word on his poetry and on the
style that others referred to as
Modernism. Unlike the effect of Modernism and The Waste Land and its imposition of deep analysis and indefinable
conclusions, Eliot achieves a retrospective summation of the characteristics of
modern poetry and what good poetry should achieve, in rather simple and
rarefied terms:
Poetry
is of course not to be defined by its uses. If it commemorates a public
occasion, or celebrates a festival, or decorates a religious rite, or amuses a
crowd, so much the better. It may effect revolutions in sensibility such as are
periodically needed; may help to break up the conventional modes of perception
and valuation which are perpetually forming, and make people see the world
afresh, or some new part of it. It may make us from time to time a little more
aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being,
to which we
rarely
penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves, and an
evasion of the visible and sensible world.[vii]
In this,
one of his final lectures (‘The Modern Mind’), Eliot concludes with the essence
of his, and ‘Modernism’s’, ideology; that there is a need for cultural and
individual experience that transcends the ‘unreal’ to achieve a ‘real’
redemption of culture and the self. It is as much redemption of learning and
literature as it is of spirituality that The
Waste Land proposes. Culture appears to need a kind of religious haut monde
in order to create art that is divine in nature, yet the religious ideal is
seen as a redemptive feature applicable also to the degraded society. It is as
if before worshiping art, there needs to be a re-installation of fundamental
principles of faith, in order to see the divine in the aesthetic. The Modernist
style encourages conclusions such as this. As can be seen, it is not
necessarily a negative response to the intellectual idealism of writers like
T.S. Eliot, whose quest for absolutes dictates a characteristically deep
analysis of the ideas and concerns expressed within the text.
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| http://www.sinisterfonts.com/ |
NOTES/BIBLIOGRAPHY
[i] Which
is more of an American Modernist ideal than English, as seen in the works of
writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald Scott, and Hart Crane.
[ii] A
very ‘orientalised’ notion that Edward Said investigates in Orientalism (New York: Random House,
1978), which is also apparent in the ideologies of the Modernist avant-garde
movement, especially the ‘Primitivists’.
[iii] The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, T.S. Eliot (London: Faber &
Faber Ltd, 1964), p. 155.
[iv] See The
Wordsworth Dictionary of Classical & Literary Allusion, ed., by A.H.
Lass, D. Kiremidjian, & R.M. Goldstein (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions
Ltd., 1987), p. 228.
[v]
Selected Essays, by T.S. Eliot
(London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1972), p.145.
[vi] From After the
Great Divide, by Andreas Huyssen, in ‘Introduction’ (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1984), p. vii.
[vii]The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, T.S. Eliot (London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 1964),
p. 155.
Meet Suzanne Robb -
 |
| Suzanne Robb |
Suzanne Robb
is the author of Z-Boat, a zombie novel of a different kind published by
Twisted Library Press. The zombies are smart, strong, and come from the least
likely source.
She is
currently working on several projects, including a non-fiction collection for
Hidden Thoughts Press on Anxiety Disorders, and an apocalyptic fiction
collection for Wicked East Press.
Suzanne
also has over fifty short stories in current and upcoming anthologies with
publishers such as Coscom Entertainment, Post Mortem Press, Library of the
Living Dead, Wicked East Press, Norgus Press, Collaboration of the Dead, Living
Dead Press, Open Casket Press, Hidden Thoughts Press, Pill Hill Press, May
December Publications, Rhymfire - Ebooks, Static Movement, Cruentis Libri, and
Panic Press.
I first met Suzanne by way of her interesting blog, Ramblings of an Anxiety Ridden Mind. Be sure to stop by and check it out, there's always something going on there.
I have just bought Suzanne's great new novel, Z-Boat and I highly recommend that you do also. You can buy it here on Amazon as a paperback or for kindle/e-book. Well worth the small cost for a quality read over the holidays (or anytime - but you may want to read it during the daylight hours!!!).
Here's a bit more information about this great book:
Z-BOAT by Suzanne Robb
The Earth has been pillaged and polluted; the sun has not broken through the
smog for over a decade. The oceans and rivers have all turned toxic. Man’s last hope for survival is to search the ocean depths for alternative
fuel, food, and clean water sources. If they fail, mankind will die.
The Betty Loo, a search and rescue submarine, captained by Iain Kingston, is
hired at for a price no one could refuse. The crew must deal with distrust,
sabotage, and spies willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want.
What they find on board The Widowmaker the submarine they have been dispatched
to help will test each person’s will to survive and force enemies to work
together. If they don’t they will all die, and what rises to the surface will bring hell
to Earth
The very cool Z-Boat cover:
 |
| By David Naughton-Shires. http://www.theimagedesigns.com/index.html |
Suzanne can be found on Facebook, Goodreads and, of course, be sure to check out her Amazon author's page to see all the very cool anthologies and work she has contributed thus far.
Here are some links to interviews Suzanne has given. As you will see she has many favorable reviews and has established herself as 'one to watch.' Keep up the good work Suzanne, I want to read as much of your work as I can, as I suggest you good readers should do also.
Interviews:
A bit bored tonight, so resurrected/exhumed a relic from my Uni years. A bit wordy in my opinion but there you go! Have a great week.
The Use of Imagery in Blake's Visual Poetry
In relation to the function of imagery, in the Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake's intentions are difficult to define. His subtitle to the Songs offers some direction, suggesting that the Songs show “Two Contrary States of the Human Soul”. ‘Innocence’ and ‘Experience’ are not mere concepts, but entities of energy and reality that are represented by the characters, geography, symbols, archetypes, and imagery, showing contrary states yet also depicting a coexistent unity and dependence. The function of Blake's vision and imagery in the Songs appears to be to relate preconceived conventional notions of human imagination, spirituality, morality, and physical experience, to the conceptual realms of the reader in order to provoke imaginative response and query of these notions.
What becomes evident from the Songs of Innocence as a sequence, is that it is a depiction of innocence in its different forms, and that it acts as the symmetrical foil to the varied Songs of Experience. In ‘The Blossom’, connotations in the imagery of this lyric function as symbols of the innocent apprehension of sexual maturity (in the first stanza) and experience, with its image of the blossom anticipating the Sparrow's and Robin's embraces:
Merry, Merry Sparrow!
Under Leaves so green,
A happy Blossom
Sees you, swift as arrow,
Seek your cradle narrow
Near my Bosom. (1-6)
Under Leaves so green,
A happy Blossom
Sees you, swift as arrow,
Seek your cradle narrow
Near my Bosom. (1-6)
The first stanza is masculine in the aggressive searching nature of its language, yet it conveys an androgyny, both male and female in its pre-experiential state of innocence and immature desire. The second stanza’s imagery and language conveys a fragility and femininity in the emotional representation of pain and experience, subtly suggesting that the more emotional and feminine nature, is closer to nature and the heart (of God). These symbolic associations are evident, but not definitive; the poem can also be seen as a depiction of innocent love, merriment, sadness and growth, within nature.
The second stanza’s imagery shows the more experienced and sexually desirably Robin, (red breast) emotionally upset at the loss of innocence and the experience that places it nearer the ‘bosom’ (of Abraham? Luke 16:22). The ‘happy blossom’ of the first stanza, symbolises nature and the flowering transition from innocence into experience. It is ever present, watching and listening to the contrary states of emotion that characterise binaries of human existence and development:
Pretty, Pretty Robin!
Under leaves so green,
A happy Blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Under leaves so green,
A happy Blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Pretty, pretty robin,
Near my Bosom. (7-12)
The personification of birds makes the reader associate the human-like characters of ‘sparrow’ and ‘robin’ with their natural. The sparrow is an innocuous bird, skittish and childlike in character (both vocally and playfully) and size. The robin is a larger bird, whose redbreast and singing voice gives it prettiness and cosmetic maturity. The ‘redbreast’ could symbolise the distinction of sex and the blush of sexual experience and shame.
This Freudian interpretation seems justified in context with the illustration, which accompanies the poem, which suggests an awakening of sexual innocence and experience. Naked angels frolic on the flame-like limbs of a strange tree (of life?), in the top branch sits two winged figures locked in an embrace. No birds are depicted and no apparent ‘blossom’. The verse alone could be a simple nursery rhyme (without the illustration a simpler, reading could be justified), but why choose specific species of birds and have the position of the speaker in an abstract state? Is the narrator the tree, or God, or someone who just cares for birds? The function of the imagery in this instance is to make the reader question that which seems straightforward and search for depth by using imagination.
In Songs of Experience we find poems like “Ah! Sunflower”, that convey a state of experience that yearns for other experience of a freer, more spiritual, nature. The flower which traditionally looks like the sun and always turns its face to the sun, yearns to escape, partly from the sun and from what the sun represents: time and possibly the great timekeeper, God:
Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime,
Where the traveller’s journey is done. (1-4)
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime,
Where the traveller’s journey is done. (1-4)
Where the sunflower seeks to go is a region beyond time, a place of rest and completion, of exhausted desire, of spiritual ecstasy and experience rather than deathly chastity. The destination aimed for is perhaps less important than the fact that the sunflower, rather than joyously rejoicing in life, is weary of physical experience and the constant looking (a sort of forced devotion) to “the sun”:
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go. (5-8)
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go. (5-8)
What has been confined is released (e.g. innocence, the imagination) from the position of supplication, by the wisdom of experience, and by the contemplation of that beyond the conventional and physical realities of everyday life. The poems, in effect, resurrect the child in the adult through the association of imagery and emotion, and the encouragement of individual creative thought.
A dominant feature of the Songs of Innocence and Experience (especially the Songs of Innocence) is the unifying and thematic direction toward simplicity and harmony, through spiritual, imaginative, and conceptual enlightenment and self-realisation. However, the simplicity of the verse is superficial and belies a complexity, which is profound and conceptually challenging. The opening stanza from “The Tyger”, in the Songs of Experience sequence, closely resembles the common children’s song “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, yet it poses questions traditionally intended for theologians and art critics:
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? (1-4)
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? (1-4)
The speaker questions the vision rhetorically, as if from a safe distance (because he is not directly addressing a physical entity), with enough time to pose some profound questions. The main question seems to be of an aesthetic nature: who could aspire to immortality, by attempting to render a vision of the original unified (‘symmetrical’) entity who represents the energy of creation and artifice. “The Tyger”, in this respect, seems to be a discourse on aesthetic (and ethical) responsibility in issues of divine and spiritual representation
The animal and symbolic nature of the image of the tiger, functions as a unified embodiment of good and evil, transcendent in its spiritual and instinctively natural energy and character. This image of a spiritually and physically justified (because of its existence and creation) sublime being creates a paradox between existentialism and creationism. The tiger is the symbolic representation of innocence and experience combined and forged in a flux of sublime energy, capable of invoking fear and awe. In combining tones of terror and awe at a being that could create the tiger as well as the lamb, the poet celebrates creation and its transcendence of human good and evil. This realisation of the strength and power of creation, is an aesthetic realisation as well as a spiritual one, for the narrator it is the moment of visionary truth and epiphany. For the reader it is the beginning of doubt and the search for answers to the questions provoked. The “Tyger” does not afford us an image of illumination or revelation like it does to the speaker, yet it does serve to function as the symbolic antithesis that drives the speaker to seek a deeper truth of vision:
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? (20-24)
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? (20-24)
The function of the imagery of “The Tyger” is once again to provoke query in the mind of the reader: how could the creator make something as terrifyingly sublime as the Tiger? Is the Tiger not created in God's own image, and is not the Tiger also a symbol of evil energy? These questions lead to speculation about the wisdom of a God who can create such a terrifyingly destructive creation (e.g. a Tiger), contrary to other creations of beauty and peace (e.g. ‘The Lamb’ in Songs of Innocence). They are essentially questions of creation and theological authority on first reading, but when read alongside the illustration, this reading becomes not as strongly critical of a God that creates ferocious beasts: the tiger looks like a friendly pussycat!
In the final stanza of the poem, the transition from the word “could” in the first stanza to the word “dare” in the sixth, suggests a transcendence of mere innocent lament and wonder to the position and mutinous contemplation of proposal and challenging experience and divine authority. There is a sense of the predator in the speaker (which is ironic as the subject of question is a tiger); a sense that this overbearing creation of oppressive energy can be harnessed and ‘framed’. There is a sense of the limitations of the power of such a representation, ramifications if such a possibility exist are on the largest of spiritual and imaginative planes, burning constantly in the mind (imagination) of the speaker: “in the forests of the night”. The “forests of night” also suggest that this discourse and vision appears in the context of a dream; whether ideological or aspiration, or merely a fantastical thought, it is left up to the reader to decide.
In Songs of Experience, we are led to question the justification of oppressive disciplinary idealism and subjugation, present both in the separate cultural and natural archetypes that confine the human form to insignificance and spiritual decay. Blake’s use of imagery, that symbolises cultural and natural oppression, functions to show inadequacy and inhumanity as such. It then unites the experience with energy that fuels the imaginative vision to new invention and hope, as the boundaries of physical confinement collapse, with the freedom of the expanded imagination.
The Songs of Innocence and of Experience contain poems, which combine to offer profound insights into humanity. The images, emotions, and language of the poetry give vent to “the voice of one crying in the wilderness”, naked and alone in the decision to challenge the structure of society and belief epitomised by Urizen (your – reason). The function of the imagery in Blake’s poems is to create new experience, both visually and conceptually. There is an element of individual relativism and truth in the poems, generated both from the speaker’s experience and vision and the reader’s subsequent subjective experience of the imagery and verse.
The function of the imagery, in the majority of William Blake’s verse and illustrations, serves to provoke contemplative thought and imaginative perception. The imagery is profound and descriptive of a lavishly structured order of being, placing the creative imagination as a fundamental basis for human experience and reality. Blake’s imagery emphasises unity between heaven and earth, and it is in this binary dependence where images abound and meet, fluxing in a multiplicity of symbolic vision. This unity also represents the physical and the spiritual (or mental plane) combination of imaginative understanding. This intermediary position is the aesthetically creative centre of Blake’s world, and it is this place that generates the essential reality and function of the imagery of his poetry.
REFERENCES USED:
Romanticism, An Anthology, second edition, ed. Duncan Wu (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, pp. 60-84.
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