Revision:Blake - Experience

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London

• Spoken in the first person.
• Very scientific at the start. We know from Blake's painting of Newton that he despised science for ruining nature (just Google 'Blake' and 'Newton' and you'll find it )
• Repetition of "chartered" makes the world seem very industrial, controlled - link to science.
• "In every face I meet/Marks of weakness, marks of woe" - everyone is weak, destroyed.
• "The mind-forged manacles I hear" - very important quote!! My teacher's even started applying this to *The Winter's Tale too....
• The manacles that hold these people down are in the mind, showing how they need to break free from being chained by society.
• "Every blackening church appalls" - Church is literally black due to soot, but also spiritually black due to corruption and controlling orphans.
• "How the youthful harlot's curse/Blasts the new-born infant's tear". Again, a key quote. The youthful harlot is young, showing how innocent children are thrust into experience too early. Similarly, the way she curses her child (as it means she can't work) shows how any feeling or innocence has been destroyed by society (the mind-forged manacles! ).
• Also shows syphilis - The "curse" that also "blights with plagues the marriage hearse". The child is crying as syphilis affects the newborn babies: born without noses etc.

A poison tree

• Shows how wrath can be controlled, "my wrath did end" or left to grow, "I told it not; my wrath did grow"
• An idea here is that perhaps the narrator is God, his foe is humanity, and he deliberately set the apple to force humanity out of the Garden of Eden and smite them.
• Lots of references to Eden in here, even if you don't agree with the above point.

The Human Abstract

• Oh. My least favourite poem, namely because I can't remember any quotes ever!!
• Opposite to The Divine Image.
• The first stanza denounces the ideas in TDI, ""And mercy no more could be" - shows them (MPPL) as feelings rather than ideals
• "Caterpillar and the fly". According to the bible, the caterpillar is the lowest form of life, eating what the "cankerworm" doesn't want (don't ask me what a cankerworm is, I'm as in the dark as you are!). Here the caterpillars and flies are priests, feeding on the mystery of God - they talk about God, but use him to earn money and live in decadence.
• "Fruit of deceit" - blah blah, Eden blah blah, etc. etc.
• Final Stanza - this can be interpreted in a variety of different ways. Perhaps the tree is MPPL, showing them all as ephemeral ideas in the human brain? Or is it the poison tree, poisoning humanity and making them experienced? Perhaps it shows how humanity controls nature and destroys it?
• The trees here are an opposite to those in TEG and the Little Black Boy, where they provide shelter - here they are dank, evil and dark.

The Tiger

• Lots of questions, especially the ultimate one, "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" This is important, as it is comparing the two creatures and asking if the same God made these two opposites. Also asking if, "If a tiger is bad how bad is the thing that made it?"
• Why would God create such an evil creature?
• French revolutionaries were also called "tigers". Blake was a big fan of the revolution, and so perhaps this poem is about the revolution??
• Burning imagery - hellish
• "Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" - like the first stanza, but different in the one word, "dare". Much more ominous and powerful.

The Chimney-sweeper

• Opposite of ... The Chimney-sweeper!!
• Again attacks church
• Contrast between innocence and experience, "they clothe me in the clothes of death". Naked is innocent, and since they clothed him they are forcing him into experience.
• "Who make up a heaven of our misery" - again attacks church as making themselves a heaven out of the misery of little boys.
• "Taught me to sing the notes of woe" - normally a song is happy, but not here. Possibly a reference to the "'weep" that chimney sweepers used to call - short for 'sweep'.
• "gone up to church to pray" - parents want to save their own souls, but don't care about damning their child to a short life of misery.

Holy Thursday

• "Is that trembling cry a song?" - contrast to song in Holy Thursday (Innocence), "Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song"
• "It is a land of poverty!" - poverty forces these children into this
• "And their ways are filled with thorns" - like in The Garden of Love, thorns bind and hurt people
• "It is eternal winter there!" - kinda like Narnia . Winter is cold, evil, etc., so their lives are nasty.

The Garden of Love

• Contrast to TEG
• Here the green has been despoiled by the church.
• "Where I used to play on the green" - church destroys innocence.
• "Thou shalt not" - religious connotations, imperative. Menacing, commanding - shows how church controls people's lives.
• "filled with graves" - death overtakes beauty due to the church
• "And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds/And binding with briers my joys and desires" - mind-forged manacles, tying people up in torment. Black robes connote menace and evil.
• Yeah, it's another attack on the church.

Comments

These notes are aimed at A Level English Literature students at A2 level.

Originally written by Forgotmytea on TSR Forums.