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William Blake and the Human Abstract

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert F. Gleckner
Robert F. Gleckner*
Affiliation:
Wayne State University, Detroit 2, Mich
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Extract

It is well-known that in Songs of Experience several of the poems are direct contraries to some of the Songs of Innocence, the precise nature of this opposition being reflected in the subtitle of the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience: “Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” And Blake emphasized this essential organic unity of the contraries by giving four of the opposing poems identical titles: “Holy Thursday,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “Nurse's Song,” and “A Cradle Song.” Occasionally he changed the title almost imperceptibly: “The Little Boy Lost” becomes “A Little Boy Lost,” “The Little Girl Lost” becomes “A Little Girl Lost,” and “The Divine Image” becames “A Divine Image.” The great majority of Songs of Experience, however, have either totally new titles or changes of the Songs of Innocence titles which make more explicit the nature of the opposition between the two states. Thus in the two introductory poems the piper yields to the bard, in others “The Lamb” becomes “The Tyger,” “The Blossom” becomes “The Sick Rose,” “The Ecchoing Green” becomes “The Garden of Love” or “London,” “The School Boy” becomes “The Little Vagabond,” and “The Divine Image” becomes “The Human Abstract.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1961 , pp. 373 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 373 “A Cradle Song” appears in Blake's notebook along with drafts of other songs of experience, but he never etched or included it among the Songs of Experience.

Note 2 in page 373 “A Divine Image” was etched by Blake but never included among Songs of Experience.

Note 3 in page 373 See Martin K. Nurmi, “Blake's Revisions of ”The Tyger',“ PMLA, LXXI (1956), 669–685.

Note 4 in page 374 Similarly in his Annotations to Dr. Thornton's “New Translation of the Lord's Prayer” (1827) Blake wrote: “The Greek & Roman Classics is the Antichrist. I say Is & not Are as most expressive & correct too” (Geoffrey Keynes, ed., The Complete Writings of William Blake, London and New York, 19S7, p. 786). All subsequent page references in my text and notes will be to Keynes's 1957 edition. Except for The Everlasting Gospel (the manuscript of which I have not seen), however, throughout this paper I have used Blake's punctuation (in manuscript or etched poems) rather than Keynes's misleading emendations.

Note 5 in page 374 “An Interpretation of Blake's ‘A Divine Image’,” MLN, XLVII (1932), 30S-308.

Note 6 in page 374 It should be noted, however, that many of the notebook poems seem to be fair copies; but no earlier manuscripts have come to light.

Note 7 in page 376 Blake changed the early- version of the line, “If there was nobody poor,” to introduce the important element of human will.

Note 8 in page 378 In stanza two Blake originally had Cruelty spreading his “nets” to enslave man. This idea, in conjunction with the “holiness” inculcated by religion as the supreme good, looks forward to a striking passage in The Book of Urizen, in which Urizen, fallen, wanders in his monster-ridden world :

Till a Web dark & cold, throughout all

The tormented element stretch'd

From the sorrows of Urizens soul.

And the Web is a Female in embrio.

None could break the Web, no wings of fire

So twisted the cords & so knotted

The meshes: twisted like to the human brain

And all calld it The Net of Religion (235)

Note 9 in page 378 Again Blake's later development of the idea of humility is helpful here. Man accepts humility as a prime virtue because it implies his similarity to the meek and mild Christ. Again it is a result of man's fragmented nature, his acceptance of his finiteness, his relegation of himself to a lower order of things. Blake's attack upon this mistaken notion is implicit in many of the Songs of Experience, but is nowhere so clear as it is in The Everlasting Gospel.

Note 10 in page 378 Blake introduces these key terms, prolific and devourer, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Note 11 in page 378 I refer here to Blake's manuscript poem “Eternity”:

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternitys sun rise (179)

Although Keynes reads “bends” for “binds” Blake clearly intended the latter as the manuscript reveals.

Note 12 in page 379 Cf. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, plate 11 (153).