William Blake

Innocence-Experience- complementarity & Institutionalised Morality/

Institutionalised Religion:

 The political background of English Romantic poetry is darkened by French

Revolution and English reaction against that revolution. Out of ferment that
failed to produce a national renewal there came instead a major English
contribution to world literature, the resurrection of Romanticism. Known to
be one of the earliest poet of the Romantic Revival, painter, engraver, and
visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social
order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely
neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of
English poetry, and his work has only grown in popularity.

 Blake’s upbringing in an unconventional and radical environment, among

Libertarian Protestantism contributed to his unconventionality and
humanism the most. As Rousseau concerned himself with a critique of
science and of the industrial worldview in order to appraise the alienation,
reification, and dehumanization of modern everyday life of his time,
similarly Blake shared the same critical mind against the manipulative and
destructive features of the growing industrialization. Blake has been called
Britain’s greatest revolutionary artist. Though he has been described by
many critics as a visionary or mystic, a man more concerned with spiritual
than political matters. But a close examination reveals that Blake was always
a deeply political writer, he was one who viewed the distinction between
spiritual and political matters as the product of a fallen human
consciousness. Blake’s lifetime saw both English and French republican
traditions struggling to come to terms with the advent of a commercial
society. He was opposed to the reduction of human beings to socioeconomic
units by scientific advancements.
 Religion and politics were certainly seen as intimately connected in Blake’s
time. Religious Dissent was typical of the social and geographical milieu
into which he was born. Throughout his life Blake seems to have been
committed to the idea that every man may converse with God and can be a
King and Priest in his own house. But as with many other Dissenters, this
sturdy independence was combined with a communitarian vision in which
the people were gathered together in a struggle against the ‘Beast of
Revelation’ embodied in Blake’s concept of ‘State Religion’. The kind of
mystical tradition that Blake identified himself with was highly influenced
by the writings of Swedish prophet Emmanuel Swedenborg. The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell which seems to echo the writings of Swedenborg gave
Blake’s dissenting mind a new revolutionary zeal.

 Blake’s religious posture was not submission but protest; his poetry is a
sustained prophetic denunciation of the cruelties, mental and corporeal,
everywhere perpetrated in the name of God by those who claim to be doing
his will. It is a detailed indictment of the collaboration of all the churches in
the exploitation of the poor, the degradation of labor, the subordination of
women, the abridgment of political liberty, the repression of sexual energy,
and the discouragement of originality in the fine arts. In a time of intense
political agitation, he came to believe that a radical transformation of the
nation’s religious consciousness was the first prerequisite to serious political
or economic reform.

 Blake principles of humanism, libertarianism and his stance against any kind
of institutionalization is reflected in his most acclaimed work Songs of
Innocence and of Experience. Songs of Innocence, published in 1789 and
then produced in a combined version of Songs of Innocence and of
Experience in 1794, reflect Blake’s views on religion and moralism, and his
somewhat complex understanding of innocence and experience. This is a
collection of a number of short lyric poem where Blake juxtaposes the two
states of human soul. Interestingly, in Songs of Experience several of the
poems are direct contraries to some of the poems in Songs of Innocence, the
precise nature of this opposition is also reflected in the subtitle of the work::
Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
 Innocence and experience, though the simplistic meaning of these two states
has been that of goodness and evil, have a deeper connection in Blake’s
 poems. Sort of a symbiotic relationship. In many of his poems experience
appear to be the guarding g power that protects innocence. Innocence, on the
other hand, appears to be the inspiring force, without which experience
would have sunk into the darkness of evil. Innocence and experience should
not be seen as two separate discreet status of human soul, rather Blake seems
to be presenting them as two sides of the same coin. While most of the
poems in Songs of Innocence speak of purity, joy and childlike innocence;
there can be found a distant echo of misery lurking around in these poems.
Blake’s idea if experience have layers that appears to be a bit obscure, it
does not always stand for evil, misery, suffering and all such negative
experiences.

 Blake’s understanding of innocence and experience is inextricably

intertwined with his idea of religion. In The Divine Image (Innocence)
Blake set forth the four great virtues, mercy, pity, peace, and love; that he
believes in. More importantly, he identifies man and God and emphasized
the fundamental humanity of the virtues: “For Mercy has a human heart….
the human form divine”. Mercy is found in the human heart, Pity in the
human face; Peace is a garment that envelops humans, and Love exists in the
human “form” or body. Therefore, all prayers to Mercy, Pity, Peace, and
Love are directed not just to God but to “the human form divine,”. Blake
was against the manipulative tendency that human society has been reduced
to due to institutionalization and mechanization. Blake’s idea of the ability
of human beings to possess divine qualities are reflected in this poem. For
Blake, God could not be perceived but as immanent, dwelling not ‘up there
and out there’ in the remote space of the abysmal skies, but down to earth
and within every man. Wilkinson asserted: “it is a poem of innocence
because it stresses God’s goodness and the potentialities of man for
goodness”

 Robert F. Gleckner says that in the world of experience such a human-divine

imaginative unity is shattered. Experience, then, is fundamentally
hypocritical and acquisitive, rational and non-imaginative. In such a world
virtue cannot exist except as a rationally conceived opposite to vice. There
are no longer single entities participating harmoniously in one divine unity.
It seems that there are only, in effect, pairs, opposites, contraries, and they
 are at war. This is exactly what is seen in the poem A Divine Image
(Experience). A companion poem to The Divine Image, it seems to have
been engraved by Blake in the same manner as the rest, with a view to its
forming one of the ‘Songs of Experience’. It was not, however, included in
any authentic copy of the Songs issued during the author’s lifetime. The
vocabulary used in this poem, one is immediately tempted to contrast the
language of The Divine Image with that of A Divine Image. Unlike in the
The Divine Image in the Songs of Innocence all the eight lines of A Divine
Image in the Songs of Experience have negative connotations about human
life: “Terror the human form divine, And Secrecy the human dress.”

 The poem stands as a symbol of the very thing it condemns. Blake was
concerned with exposing such blindness via irony and at the same time
enlarging the capacity of his song to encompass the multivalent horror of the
state of experience. This poem reflects the standpoint of experience. It looks
at human beings when they have been corrupted by the “ind-forg’d
manacles” discussed in the poem London or are dominated by the growth in
the human brain as illustrated in The Human Abstract.

 Songs of Experience needs to be read by the light and in reference to Songs

of Innocence. Innocence do not themselves describe as an absolute state of
being or fashion as autonomous truth, the sequestered illumination of some
immaculate Eden. The finest poems of the Songs of Innocence are those in
which there is some admission of the hardships which actually face the
innocents of the world; but, in these poems the innocent view can be seen as
easily transcending adversity. The Chimney Sweeper is a twin poem. It is
both present in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Social
inequality and low wages forced children of the poor to begin work at a very
early age in Eighteenth century England. They were cheap labour, easily
replaceable and thus, readily exploited. Blake’s chimney sweepers are too
young to sat ‘sweep’ so they instead, in their voice of misery and childlike
innocence call “weep” “weep”. They are covered in the blackness of neglect
and marginalization.

 The innocent vision of this poem converts the harsh world into a world of
shepherds and sheep. Tom Dacre has white hair as do lambs, and it "curls
like a lamb's back". When this world cannot support the pastoral vision,
 Innocence transfers it into another life where chimney sweepers will sport
like lambs: "… down a green hill leaping, laughing they run”. But the Angel
of freedom did not present this vision out of sheer mercy, but a condition
was attached to it, that if Tom remains a good boy he will receive the divine
blessing of God. A father (God) loves his children unconditionally, but
Blake presents him as a kind of problematic figure. The thrust of Blake’s
writing was against institutionalized religion. Tom woke up the next day to
continue his life of misery, but with a happy heart, because institutionalized
religion has made him believe that he needs to carry on with the life of
harshness in order to receive the glory of God. Thus, Tom, like many others
remain trapped in the entrapment of the institution.

 While in The Chimney Sweeper of the Songs of Innocence the symbols and
the words that Blake uses like “if”, “soot”, “coffins of Black” needs to be
broken down to reveal the hidden dissent of Blake, in its twin counterpart,
The Chimney Sweeper of the Songs of Experience, he is explicitly attacking
the social system and the cultural authority which teach abstract moral laws
but in practice are immoral and inhuman in their relationships with others.
The true innocence sees that Father, God, Priest and King are set up as
guardians and saviours are, in fact, the causes of evil and human misery. For
Blake any figure of authority, even if it is a mother or father figure stands for
dominance, and therefore for explotation.