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Here's a shabby first draft of my paper:
I don't know if I'm allowed to post such a long paper, but if anyone wants to.. here you go =]
Mapping the Soul
-------With the freedom of poetic language, William Blake expressed his
abhorrence of the Church's deep-rooted stance on faith; such a stance on
Christianity was considered blasphemous, but he could not be charged with a
crime. He believed that with true spirituality, the individual could fully
engage in their faith and attain eternal salvation without the intrusion of
organized religion—for the Church is solely concerned with subduing
Christians with an orthodox emphasis on reason. Its rigid practice of
faith, Blake denounced, actually is a restrictive barrier to the stairway
to heaven. He, instead, viewed imagination as the foundation to
spirituality, the bridge between the worldly body and the divine soul;
creative energy, thus, is the simplest yet most direct connection to God.
Readers may initially annotate Blake's set of poems called the Songs of
Innocence and the Songs of Experience as an ironic juxtaposition of the
innocent, pastoral world of childhood against the experienced, adult world
of corruption and repression, but Blake is reflecting something deeper in
meaning. In these oppositely related volumes of Songs, William Blake is not
simply evoking an ironic contrast of good and evil, but subtly reflecting
on the nature of Christianity, ultimately arguing that, whereas organized
religion tends to suppress the power of energy and imagination with the
arrogance of reason, true spirituality comes from such qualities.
----------Through the eyes of children, Blake offers a skeptical look at
contemporary Christianity by examining a docile society that mindlessly
conforms to the practices of religious zealotry. He reveals the
contradictory reality of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity when he
captures the premature thoughts of both innocent, obedient children, and
witty, mischievous children. In the Songs of Innocence, Blake proposes
children as naïve and submissive to the practices of Christianity. When the
narrator in "The Lamb," whom can be perceived as a child, asks, "Little
Lamb, who made thee?", he gives his straightforward answer to the question:
"Little Lamb, I'll tell thee: / He is called by thy name, / For he calls
himself a Lamb" (l.9, 12-14). However, in the Songs of Experience, Blake
depicts children as, essentially, too witty for their own good; In "A
Little Boy Lost," a child offers his premature view on Christianity by
questioning the two greatest commandments in the Law of God: "And Father,
how can I love you / Or any of my brothers more [than myself]?" (l.5-6).
Blake emphasizes this ironic connection between both naïve and mischievous
children with the use of heavenly, joyful images versus dark, morbid
images. For example, in "The Chimney Sweeper," from the Songs of Innocence,
Blake describes a boy with hair that even "the soot cannot spoil" as having
a dream that his friends were locked inside the chimney, but "an Angel who
had a bright key, / ... opened the coffins & set them all free" (l.8, 13-14).
However, from the Songs of Experience counterpart, Blake does not capture
the purity and whiteness of youth but portrays a child as "[a] little black
thing among the snow" ("The Chimney Sweeper (Experience)" l.1). Through the
eyes of children, Blake does not convey parents as a part of a family that
raises their children with love and care, but as a group of individuals who
mindlessly partake in their religious chauvinism. A child in opposition to
attending service in Church weeps, "Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is
cold" ("The Little Vagabond" l.1). When another child is asked: "Where are
they father & mother? Say?", he replies: "They are both gone up to the
church to pray" ("The Chimney Sweeper (Experience)" l.3-4). With such a
skeptical outlook of Christianity, some may perceive Blake's perspective as
a form of his own "religion."
-------Though Blake questions contemporary the values of Christianity, he
also reveals his condemning attitude toward the Church by creating an
ominous and melancholic atmosphere, ultimately asserting that the Church,
supposedly a symbol of purity, is corrupt. He portrays the Church as overly
restrictive and authoritative using physical images of constraint and
limitation. For example, in "The Garden of Love," the narrator sees a
chapel that was built where he used to play, and the gates of this Chapel
were "shut, / [a]nd 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door" (l.5-6). Blake
also captures this sense of restriction in describing the voices of people:
"In every voice, in every ban, / The mind-forg'd manacles I hear" ("London"
l.7-8). By illustrating the "pure" Church with a physically dark hue, Blake
reveals his disposition on the seemingly "white" Church—asserting that in
reality, it is corrupt. In both "The Garden of Love" and "Holy Thursday
(Innocence)" Blake boldly depicts church officials as fraudulent. While the
"[p]riests in black gowns" "[walk] their rounds," Blake believes that these
authorities are responsible for "... binding with briars ... my joys and
desires" ("The Garden of Love" l.11-12). He describes the Church officials
in "Holy Thursday (Innocence)" as "[g]rey-headed beadles" who "[walk] ...
with wands as white as snow"— such a description hints at the irony of the
supposedly holy, but actually wicked and "[g]rey-headed" authorities ("Holy
Thursday" l.3). Although Blake attacked the Church for imposing its
authority over people, he did not attempt to reestablish its principles and
values, but partook in his own form of Christianity.
-------Based on Blake's prospect of true spirituality, the human soul's power
to captivate imagination and energy serves a more critical part to
connecting with God than the body's ability to reason and rationalize. In
his Songs of Innocence, Blake almost worships the childlike state in which
imagination is free to roam and cannot be dulled by the reasoning of the
outside world. For example, in "The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)," he
portrays a child as capable of interpreting his own dreams, from which he
gains a form of spiritual knowledge: "And the Angel told Tom if he'd be a
good boy, / He'd have God for his father & never want joy / ... / So if all
do their duty, they need not fear harm" (l.19-20, 24). In both the Songs of
Innocence and the Songs of Experience, Blake reflects the significance that
energy has on his spirituality. Evidence in "The Tyger" suggests that Blake
may be capturing a series of furnace metaphors to ultimately create a sense
of energy with the illustration of a tiger:
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? (l.13-16)
In "The Lamb," the question proposed, "... who made thee?" is simple and
rhetorical, leaving the reader the image that God did indeed give the lamb
its "clothing of delight, / Softest clothing, wooly, bright" (l.5-6). But
in "The Tyger," the question is not "... who made thee?" but "What immortal
hand or eye, / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"—the movement and energy
stirred in this poem suggest a more complex and "experienced" connection
with God's divine mystery of creation (l.23-24). Blake's perception of
spirituality can further be explained with an analysis of its direct impact
on the human soul.
------To Blake, imagination is not only the simplest and most efficient
connection to God, but also the force that connects the gap between the
soul's human and divine natures. The outside, sensory world may initially
seem to have no inherent meaning, but it becomes meaningful through the
contributions of the human imagination. In "To Tirzah," for example, the
"commonplace" is found "contemptible and human affections inadequate or
distasteful, and this may be even when there is a preoccupation with the
divine." The "commonplace" that Blake criticizes is the dishonor of the
human, worldly body that the narrator expresses versus his favor of the
spiritual, divine soul (Gilham 101). The question, "Then what have I to do
with thee?" addresses the material part of him which "[m]ust be consumed
with the earth" ("To Tirzah" l.2, 4). However, with the power of
imagination, he may finally propose this final statement: "The Death of
Jesus set me free" (l.15). Although Blake portrays imagination as a
prevailing quality, he recognizes the social and intellectual restrictions
that exist in reality, which mentally obstruct and limit the mind from
employing its power. In "Holy Thursday (Experience)," Blake puts forward a
subject that relates society to this restraint of imagination. The narrator
clearly describes his "land," where the "sun does never shine, / And their
fields are bleak and bare, / And their ways are filled with thorns"—in
short, "It is eternal winter there" (l.9-12). However, according to Blake,
once the power of imagination is used effectively, the individual gains
freedom from the restrictive bonds of unimaginative thought and ultimately,
realizes the connection between both human and divine natures. In "The
Divine Image," the narrator subtly asserts that "... Mercy, Pity, Peace, and
Love" are not God's characteristics but his substance: qualities embodied
by God Himself (l.1). While most may perceive these as "virtues of delight"
that are unattainable by humans, Blake asserts that with imagination, man
can finally discern such qualities from deep within the soul (l.1, 3). He
claims that these qualities are those that are embodied in humans, and are
recognizable because "Mercy has a human heart, / Pity, a human face; / And
Love, the human form divine, / And Peace, the human dress" (l.9-12). In
"Earth's Answer," Blake also approaches a similar breakthrough of the
soul's confined imagination; "Break this heavy chain / That does freeze my
bones around" (l.21-22). Thus, the soul and body, according to Blake, are
not of separate natures but are directly related.
-------However, Blake asserts that the natural role of knowledge and reason
is trivial—and perhaps detrimental—to the human soul. He believes that the
Church and its role of reason serve to diminish the very nature of
spirituality; the body of the Church and the souls of individuals are
incompatible. In "A Little Boy Lost," Blake illustrates such a mismatched
pair; when a child, as mentioned earlier, questions the values of
Christianity, a priest "[i]n trembling zeal ... siez'[s] his hair" and says,
"'Lo! what a fiend is here! ... / One who sets reason up for judge' / Of our
most holy Mystery [of God]" (l.10, 14-16). Blake also constructs a similar
paradox when he juxtaposes the "healthy & pleasant & warm" "Ale-house" with
an uninteresting and perhaps, boring, Church ("The Little Vagabond" l.2).
With "some Ale, / And a pleasant fire our souls to regale," the narrator
would never "wish from the Church to stray" (l.8). Blake condemned orthodox
religion, in usurping its authority, for attempting to impose self-
limitation rather than giving form to creative imagination. In "Holy
Thursday (Innocence)," for example, Blake depicts the "[g]rey-headed
beadles" as "the aged men, wise guardians of the poor; / ... [who] drive an
angel from your door" (l.11-12). Such church officials seem to enforce
their austerity among any departure from their deep-rooted values—which
Blake proclaims to be the imagination—; "children walking two & two, in red
& blue & green," whom perhaps were ordered to do so (l.2). The soul,
therefore, cannot rely on reason but flourishes in the power of
imagination.
------Blake's ultimate motive in pairing the collections of poems of
"Innocence" and "Experience" is to heighten the reader's awareness of the
two contrary—and seemingly simple—states of human spirituality:
imagination, often expressed in the Songs of Innocence, and reason, often
found in the Songs of Experience. In such a manner, he is able to represent
the human soul as a complex source of spirituality. Many of the individual
poems in each collection show an awareness of the contrary state; while
some poems in the Songs of Innocence hint at the perils of experience, some
in the Songs of Experience resonate with a sense of the absence of
innocence. For example, in "The Echoing Green," a poem in the Songs of
Innocence, Blake captures a subject that would appear in the Songs of
Experience: that when "[t]he sun does descend / ... our sports have an end,"
and "[n]o more can be merry" (l.22-24). In "The Garden of Love," a poem in
the Songs of Experience, he portrays an alternative from "the gates of this
Chapel [that] were shut,": "So I turn'd to the Garden of Love / That so
many sweet flowers bore" (l.5, 7-8). Blake's use of repetition and
trochaic meter, both of which are standard in children's verse, may
initially imply a seemingly simplicity within his work (Price). In "The
Tyger," for example, he repeats the line composed of trochaic meter,
"Tyger, Tyger, burning bright / In the forests of the night," in the first
and last stanzas to emphasize the foreboding mood it creates (l.1, 21).
Alongside these simplistic techniques, however, Blake employs such poetic
devices as paradox and irony to denote the sophistication of his work. When
the speaker in the "Introduction" to the Songs of Innocence says, "And I
made a rural pen / And I stain'd the water clear / And I wrote my happy
songs / Every child may joy to hear," Blake may imply that he dips his pen
in ink, but also uses his writing to make matters, or his thoughts, clear.
Or, perhaps, he obscures the seeming clarity of the water with the pen's
ink. In "Earth's Answer," Blake proposes opposing events that further
create a complicated delineation of his ideas. "Does spring hide its joy /
When buds and blossoms grow?" and "Does the sower / Sow by night, / Or the
ploughman in darkness plough?" (l.16-17, 18-20). Such events are clearly
unnatural, but with their descriptions, Blake captures a rupture of
harmony. Both volumes of Songs denote a more complex examination of Blake's
look at spirituality, which evidently, is highly intricate and complex.
------True spirituality, according to Blake, cannot suffice in a world
where reason arrogates power over the human mind; the power of imagination
and creative energy must transpire beforehand. He accused the Christian
Church for taking advantage over its political power and propagating its
emphasis on reason—to Blake, such a progression is only detrimental to
achieving the state of true spirituality. In the Songs of Innocence and
Songs of Experience, Blake juxtaposes the contrary states of the human
soul, ultimately creating a paradox that captures his perspective of
religion, per se. Perhaps Blake himself had trouble mapping, or
understanding his soul, considering his premeditated execution of such a
complex work of poetry.
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