BLAKE

THE TYGER

SONGS OF EXPERIENCE
INTRODUCTION
Hear the voice of the Bard,
Who present, past, and future, sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walked among the ancient tree;
Calling the lapsed soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might control
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!
‘‘O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass!
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumbrous mass.
‘‘Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The watery shore,
Are given thee till the break of day.’’

THE TYGER

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forest 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 and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and 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 watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Blake: ‘the Poetic Genius … is the Lord

In all the Heavens there is no other Idea of God than

TXTSwedDLDW11; E603| that of a Man: . . .

‘The Tyger’ too is symmetrically designed, but here the rhetorical questions go unanswered and
generate ambiguity instead of affirmation.

The style, unlike The Lamb, is dramatic rather than lyric

Note the varied framing refrain with a movement from ‘could’ (how?)to ‘dare’ (Who?)

The persona or the speaking voice who asks the questions is no longer a child but an adult, probably the
voice of the Bard, as indicated in the ‘Introduction’ to The Songs of Experience

Note that the archaic spelling indicates that the Tyger is a mythical creature, like the Biblical Leviathan

In Blake’s symbolism Urizen stands for Repressive Reason and Los for Prophetic Imagination

Imagery and Symbolism:—

Fire has symbolic value in alchemy, the Old Testament and mysticism:

Blake: God out of Christ is a consuming fire’

Blake: in Urizen writes of ‘flames of eternal fury’

Book of Ahania: ‘…Fuzon his tygers unloosing

Thought Urizen slain by his wrath.’

Blake: Proverbs of Hell: The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the

stormy sea, and the destructive sword. are portions of
eternity too great for the eye of man.

The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction

Paracelsus: Destruction perfects that which is good.…By the element of fire all that is imperfect is
destroyed or taken away.

Fire and Predatory beasts figure as expressions of God’s wrath in the Old Testament

In the writings of the mystic Jakob Boehme (translated by William Law) the heat from fire is associated
with the wrath of God the Father and the light from fire is associated with the love of the Son of God,
i.e. Jesus. Boehme in Epistle IV wrote of ‘the mystery of the wrath, or fire of God’s anger.’

Spenser (Faerie Queene) ‘wrath is a fire’

Milton (Paradise Lost) ‘…flames, the sign of wrath awaked…’

But fire is also a metaphor for creative inspiration and energy

Forests: In Blake forests signify the world of Experience and Error.

In Eurpoe: A Prophecy the ascent of reason spreads darkness and forests of error

Vala,or The Four Zoas (Night 7): Urizens ‘tygers roam ill the redounding smoke
In forests of affliction.’

Dante(Inferno): Selva oscura

Spenser(Faerie Queene): Wood of error

OT Prophets: woods = corrupt social order God will burn

Thomas Taylor (Neoplatonist) woods = material culture

Revelation 6 talks of the wrath of the Lamb: 16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide
us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

Revelation 12, 4 dscribes stars as Satan’s legion:  And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven,
and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be
delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

Stars: In Blake stars signify an inferior order of the created world ruled by Urizen/Reason

Literal image: starlight & dew

Are the tears of rage/terror or pity/mercy?

Revelation 6,13:
 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when
she is shaken of a mighty wind.

Stars associated with Urizen/Reason: The Four Zoas Night 5: I well remember for I heard the mild & holy
voice
| Saying O light spring up & shine & I sprang up from the deep t726
He gave to me a silver scepter & crownd me with a golden crown
& said Go forth & guide my Son who wanders on the ocean t727
I went not forth. I hid myself in black clouds of my wrath
I calld the stars around my feet in the night of councils dark
The stars threw down their spears & fled naked away
We fell.

Urizen, a Prince of Light, was asked by God to ‘go forth and guide’ men. He did not because he wanted
to rule, and hence fell

Repressive and self-absorbed reason turns God from an object of love to an object of terror

Blake: Europe, A Prophecy: Thought chang'd the infinite to a serpent; that which pitieth:
In forests of night; then

Stars associated with oppression in various guises:

The instrumentality of faith

Newtonian mechanistic universe ruled by restrictive reason

Political oppression and tyranny: Blake: ‘Prologue to King John’: The stars of heaven
tremble: the roaring voice of war, the trumpet, calls to battle!

The 2nd stanza alludes to the primordial scene of Creation: Genesis1.2 ‘darkness was upon the face of
the deep’

Allusion to myths of—

Icarus

Prometheus

Metalworking:

Los is the Eternal Prophet and symbolizes Visionary Imagination in Blake’s symbolic scheme/universe

The instruments of creation–hammer, chain, furnace, anvil–are assigned to Los. He is pictured with all
four instruments in Plate 6 of Jerusalem. In The Book of Los he forges the sun with them.

The creative agency, whether God or Poet, is figured as a blacksmith

The destructive fire of wrath also purifies and creates

Jerusalem, plate 73: all things including ‘the tyger’ and ‘the wooly lamb’ are created in Los’s furnace

In The Book of Los ‘Los smiled with joy’ after creating the sun.
The Contraries:

Blake in his illustration to James Harvey’s Meditations among the Tombs wrote ‘wrath’ at one corner of
the painting to the left of God the Father and ‘Mercy’ in the other corner.

Did he who made the lamb make thee?:

The question is, did Urizen make the Tyger or Los? Is the Tyger good or evil?

1) ‘No’ the Tyger is created by Urizen in a fallen world of Repressive Reason ruled by mechanical
laws
2) ‘Yes’ the Tyger is created by Los, representative of visionary/prophetic imagination, and is the
spiritual expression of the creator itself. The vision leads beyond experience to higher
innocence.
3) Unanswerable mystery

Blake as Composite Artist: Blake’s art is intertextual: note that the Tyger in the illustration looks ‘meek
and mild’

Lamb:Tyger—Comparison:

Imagery: Light/Dark

Setting: Pastoral(habitable)/ Sublime(sea, forest=inhabitable)

Style: Lyric/Dramatic

Speaker: child/bard?

Psychology: faith/doubt

Vision: beatific/apocalyptic

Aesthetic: beautiful/sublime

Symbolism: determinate/indeterminate

Questions: answered/suspended

Message: God’s love/God’s wrath?

State of Being: Pre-lapsarian/Post-lapsarian

Innocence/Experience and beyond

Blake: Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.

You say that I want somebody to Elucidate my Ideas. But

L5.1Trustler8'99; E702| you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to
L5.1Trustler8'99; E702| Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not
L5.1Trustler8'99; E702| worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients considerd what is not
L5.1Trustler8'99; E702| too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction because it rouzes the
L5.1Trustler8'99; E702| faculties to act.

Anik Samanta
WBES