William Blake: From Innocence To Experience

With his individual visions William Blake created new symbols and myths in the British literature. The purpose of his poetry was to wake up our imagination and to present the reality between a heavenly place and a dark hell. In his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience he manages to do this with simplicity. These two types of poetry were written in two different stages of his life, consequently there could be seen a move from his innocence towards experience.


But who is William Blake?
He was born on November 28, 1757 in London (at 28 Broad Street, Golden Square), to James Blake, a hosier, and his wife Catherine Wright Armitage Blake. He was educated by his mother at home, instead of formal school while his father encouraged his artistic talents. Blake said that he experienced visions of angels and ghostly monks. He claimed his 'first vision' came when he was about ten, while sauntering along in London, and saw a tree filled with angels. These visions had great influence on his literary and artistic development, too. At the same age he was sent to Mr Pars' drawing school where he copied plaster-casts of ancient sculptures. Later on, his father sent him to an engraver James Basire then he was sent to Westminster Abbey to make drawings of tombs and monuments. As a result he became not only a renowned poet, but a good print-seller as well.
Blake started combining poems with pictures. This way he managed to brake with the traditional rules of art and poetry, rejecting the values of the 18th century. Among his contemporaries were Wordsworth and Coleridge, all of them were interested in imagination and nature, and reflected these ideas throughout their poetry. They created the romantic era in English literature, by bringing something new in the face of (English) poetry.
While Wordsworth gave a supernatural charm to his daffodils, with the help of his vivid imagination, Coleridge removed the film of familiarity, and converted the supernatural into natural things. Blake, in order to protect his own visions, created new symbols and myths with the help of his poems.


One of the new things he brought, as I have already mentioned, is the bridge that he made between poetry and art. I think, he did it very well and extended, in a way, the reader's imagination. The reader can hear and see the poem at the same time. The picture created in our mind is transformed into a visual image. Here are, for example, the illustrations of Blake's well known poems "The Chimney Sweeper" from the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Eperience. We could observe the difference between the presentation of innocence and the one of experience.
The first volume of the Songs of Innocence was published in 1789, while the Songs of Experience in 1794. There is obviously, a period of 5 years between the two, a period, which is reflected in the included poems, as well. As, it is mentioned in the title, the Songs of Innocence are presented from a more innocent point of view, celebrating childhood and joy. The Songs of Experience introduces the reader in a deeper study of maturity, and deals with corruption and social injustice. The best example, that contrasts the differences between the two books, and these two points of view mentioned above, is his well-known poem, "The Chimney Sweeper".
"The Chimney Sweeper" is present in both of the Songs of Innocence and Experience. The subject of these poems is similar. Both of them emphasize the miserable life of the chimney sweeps in England at that time. Blake criticizes child labor and the society that allowed these little boys to do such a dangerous work. The rhythm of the poems is also the same producing the effect of children's song. Its rhyme scheme is aabb, abab. Another important similarity is that both of them are told from a child's point of view. Opposed to this, a major difference between the poems is that in the 'innocence' poem the child's view is more innocent, unaware of the dangers of such a job. The young chimney sweep, which seems to be more experienced in this business than his friends, tries to give an advice to the new chimneysweeper named Tom Dacre. Tom cries when his hair is shaved. The experienced little boy tries to teach him and make him familiar with this new job. He says: "Hush, Tom! Never mind it, for when your head's bore". He also explains, that this is part of the job, and will cause no harm, because if he is shaved "the soot cannot spoil" his "white hair." Later that very night Tom had a dream. He saw his friends, the other young chimneysweepers, locked up in a black coffin. Here the coffin could symbolize the chimney itself where the children have to slide in while doing their works. Then came an angel, who rescued all of them: "And by came an angel who had a bright key,/ And he open'd the coffins and set them all free." The angel, who came to save them, is the angel of death itself. The angel is setting them free because he is going to take the boys to heaven. The angel also says that if "he'd be a good boy/ He'd have God for his father," fact that is good for him, and makes him feel better. Later on, Blake extends this statement and writes: "if all do their duty they need not fear harm." As a consequence, we can feel the irony of this last line, according to which, there is no other escape from this job, than going to heaven, however the children do not know that they will die young because of a disease caused by this job.

The child, from the 'innocence' poem is unaware of the harsh story he tells. He does not feel its importance and the implications the story beholds. As opposed to this, in the 'experience' poem, the child is an older, mature boy. The whole poem has a different tone from "The Chimney Sweeper of the Songs of Innocence." The experienced boy has a desire for death, because he knows and experienced the dark side of the job. He blames his parents, for the whole situation in which he is.
There are two voices in this poem, the narrator's voice and the young boy's voice. The narrator is questioning the young boy. He says: "Where are thy father and mother? Say?" The chimneysweep answers that "they are both gone to the church to pray." Here we could feel that the boy puts the blame upon his parents and the whole society, who instead of taking care of his life and his health, went to church and abandoned him. The boy goes on, and continues to tell his complain. He claims: "they clothed me in the clothes of death, / And taught me to sing the notes of woe." We can feel the dark tone, created by sufferings of the child. The desire of the child for death grows deeper and deeper throughout the poem. He even starts to think about the idea of a suicide. He knows that suicide would be a sin, but he has no other clue escaping from the situation he was forced in.



In both of the poems Blake introduces the idea of church and God. Religion is also presented from different points of view along the poems. In the 'innocence' poem, the angel of death, is something heavenly. A divine help, that is above humankind and everything connected to society. In opposition with it, in the 'experience' poem religion is more artificial, is more a human institution. Because of this artificial feature of the church there could be an obstacle between the boy and God. This interpretation of the poem put the parents into a worse light because they turn blind eye through the suffering of the child searching for refugee among the fake priests and kings, instead of solving the bad situation of their own kid. The biggest problem occurs, when we find out that the child realizes what his parents are not capable to. They hide themselves between the walls of churches, rejecting the harsh reality.
Another two poems that reflect Blake's move from innocence to experience are "The Lamb" and "The Tyger". Both of the poems define childhood in order to create a contrast between the innocence of the youth and the experience of age. Blake uses The Lamb in the representation of the young purity. As opposed to The Lamb, The Tyger is represented as a higher, hard-featured creature.
The Lamb, consists of two stanzas, and could be divided into two parts. In the first part of the poem, the child is asking the lamb about his origin while the second part is a kind of answer provided from the same child. With his innocent voice the child says: "Little Lamb who made thee/ Dost thou know who made thee." He builds up a series of questions, also characterizes and praises the Lamb. He creates a bright and pure picture of it. There are images of the lamb that lifts this creature up into divine spheres: it has the clothing of delight, the softest wooly bright, and a tender voice. The closing lines of this stanza are the repetition of the first two lines, which tensifies the mood of the poem, emphasizing the unknown origin of the lamb. The second stanza starts with a kind of suggestion, a kind of hope concerning the creator of the lamb. The narrator talks as if he would know the answer for the child's questions: "Little lamb I'll tell thee,/ Little lamb I'll tell thee!" Blake then states that the lamb's creator is the lamb itself. In fact, this little mild creature could be no one than Jesus Christ, himself. As we go on reading the poem, Blake makes it clear that the poem's point of view is that of a child when he says "I a child and thou a lamb." It is a child's curiosity that raises the question in our minds, as well, about the creator of the lamb and about everything that is beautiful and divine. The poem ends with the blessing of the child, "Little lamb God bless thee," and the question remains unanswered.
The Lamb's total opposite is The Tyger. Instead of the innocent lamb we have now the frightening tiger. We could clearly sense the contrast between the innocence and the experience. The Tyger's experience is fearful as often reality is. William Blake's words have turned from heavenly to hellish in the transition from lamb to tiger. The narrator no longer asks questions about the origin of the lamb or the tiger, now he is questioning the possibility if he who made the innocent lamb was capable of making this devilish beast such as the tiger.
The poem consists of six, four line stanzas. It is a series of questions, almost each line ends with a question mark. Blake, through his visionary images, presents the tiger from tip to toe. He has immortal hand and eye, there is an awe-inspiring fire that burns in its eyes, he has huge shoulders, dread hand and feet. The reference to The Lamb is clearly presented in the penultimate stanza of the poem: "Did he smile his work to see?/ Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" Blake also reminds the reader that it is the same God that created both of them. This way, he again, contrasts the idea of 'innocence' and 'experience'.
Blake's tiger becomes a symbolic creature representing the presence of evil in the world. It is the kind of evil that is present in The Chimney Sweeper of the Songs of Experience, as well. The Lamb, such as the innocent child of The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence), is subordinated to a corrupt and decayed world.
Many of Blake's poems contain images of young children and depict children as innocent and naive. Blake sees the world through the eyes of a child, and he shows this throughout his poetry. With his collection of poems, the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, he managed to show two states of the human soul. Moreover, if we take a deeper look, we could feel and experience the progression between these two ways of existence.