Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, the Songs, by William Blake, has many underlying themes, one of which is duality. Duality is the opposing of two sides of the same whole. In this case, the two sides are innocence and experience. Innocence does not necessarily mean ignorance. In the Songs, the first half is Songs of Innocence and these poems seem to be very uplifting. In each poem the subject or narrator is happy because they are childlike and experiencing everything for the first time, or have yet to experience the evil associated with it. They are in a state of purity or good. Innocence, in the sense of the text, is being like a newborn. It is a state of being where the experience is not spoiled by age and the negativity of the mind and world. The second half of the Songs, is Songs of Experience. In this half, the narrator or subject is experiencing similar things as in Songs of Innocence but their mind is spoiled by negativity and their expectations from previous experiences. They are in a state of darkness or evil. At a superficial glance, one will walk away with the impression that one can either have innocence or experience, but not both. However, this is not the case, when digging deeper into the text and meaning, the duality of the human soul is having both innocence and experience at the same time. The organization of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience proposes that there are two sides to the human soul, just as there are two sides to the text
As a forerunner to the free-love movement, late eighteenth century poet, engraver, and artist, William Blake (1757-1827), has clear sexual overtones in many of his poems, and he layers his work with sexual double entendres and symbolism. Within the discussion of sexuality in his work Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake seems to take a complicated view of women. His speakers use constructs of contraries, specifically innocence/ experience and male/female. Of the latter sex, he experiments with the passive (dependent, docile, virtuous) and active (independent, evil, a threat to the masculine) female subjects. Blake’s use of personification specifically of nature and botany suggest the use of nature to discuss human society. In Songs
The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of
William Blake was deeply aware of the great political and social issues during his time focusing his writing on the injustices going on in the world around him. He juxtaposed the state of human existence through his works Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), showing differentiating sides of humanity. The contrast between Songs of
The absence of the parents in both poems is noticeable. In Songs of Innocence “And my father sold me while yet my tongue” (line 2) and in Songs of Experience it stats “”Where are thy father and mother? Say! “They are both gone up to the church to pray.” (line 3-4). In Songs of Innocence the child’s mother died when he was young and his father had to sell him. However in Songs of Experience it does not stat much, but the reader knows, and can infer that both parents are
In the Neo-classical novel Candide by Voltaire the theme of innocence and experience is prevalent through the protagonist, Candide, especially through his journey of finding the prescription of how to live a useful life in the face of harsh reality. In William Blake’s collection of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience the two characters, tyger and lamb, show how we lose our innocence to gain experience. Although the innocence and experience are paradoxical terms, we can solve the paradox by analyzing these two works.
Church and Religion in the Songs of Innocence and Experience Throughout “Innocence” and “Experience,” many poems incorporate religious views and imagery. Blake presents many contradicting views on the Church and religion, the contrast being particularly clear between “Innocence” and “Experience.” Within the “Songs of Innocence” a child-like portrayal of Church and religion is portrayed.
Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and
William Blake thought the role of the child to be innocence. Witnessing two of his
The journal article Blake’s Infant Sorrow, by Ricks Carson, an english professor at Pace Academy, enlightens, “The child at the mother’s breast is an archetype of innocence, vulnerability, and spontaneous affection.” Even though Carson addresses the baby as innocent and finds the child to be a archetype relating to his mother, the infant also can be seen as suffering. In a way, this poem is laughing at the idea of Songs of Innocence. Blake, or the speaker, is harsh about the experience of being a child and refuses to be handled by his parents. Blake further states that the parents of the child treated him poorly throughout his childhood. The parents did not want the kid and was upset that they had a child. The father cried, the mother groaned, and the child was fussy. The poem is not very uplifting or positive, which means it fits perfectly with Blake’s collection, Songs of
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are collections of poems that utilize the imagery, instruction, and lives of children to make a larger social commentary. The use of child-centered themes in the two books allowed Blake to make a crucial commentary on his political and moral surroundings with deceptively simplistic and readable poetry. Utilizing these themes Blake criticized the church, attacking the hypocritical clergy and pointing out the ironies and cruelties found within the doctrines of organized religion. He wrote about the horrific working conditions of children as a means to magnify the inequality between the poor working class and
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are contrasting views of the same events. Each contains a collection of poems that profile an idea, figure, or event. In Songs of Innocence the world is viewed through the Eyes of someone like a child, who has little life experience. In Songs of Experience the same world is looked at only this time from the standpoint of someone who has experience in life, most likely an adult. The major difference between the two viewpoints is the understanding for life and
The works of William Blake cannot be entirely discussed, so my project particularly focuses on 'Songs of Innocence and Experience'.
William Blake was one of those 19th century figures who could have and should have been beatniks, along with Rimbaud, Verlaine, Manet, Cezanne and Whitman. He began his career as an engraver and artist, and was an apprentice to the highly original Romantic painter Henry Fuseli. In his own time he was valued as an artist, and created a set of watercolor illustrations for the Book of Job that were so wildly but subtly colored they would have looked perfectly at home in next month's issue of Wired.
In Songs of Innocence, the dominant symbol is the child. The poems are narrated from the standpoint of a child and represent the early stages of the human imagination. At this point in its life, the imagination is not fully formed and does not yet contain its own distinctive character. The innocent's world view is one of "Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love" where God the creator bestows meaning upon nature.
The first stanzas of both poems establish that the children have been forsaken by their parents and were left in the role of a chimney sweeper. The Innocence poem’s rhyme scheme consists of two couplets per quatrain. The couplets create a sound similar to nursery rhymes (which often mask dark events, like the Black plague). The Experience poem begins with rhyming couplets in a quatrain, but switches to ABAB rhymes in the second stanza. Some of the end rhymes are just barely off, which causes a slight feeling of uneasiness.