Journey from Innocence to Experience

By J.J. Andrews, Eng. 741, Dec. 10, 2008

J.J. Andrews Eng. 741x [email protected] Dec. 10, 2008 Prof. R. Brownstein

What Happened Between Blake’s Innocence and His Experience? A little more than two months ago a revelation happened while I sat at a Brooklyn College library computer terminal rummaging through articles about the poet William Blake. His collection of writings, Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, were not created together; the poems were written during two completely different periods of his life, published at two different times, and then republished together in the form most have discovered the poems for nearly 200 years. While it is impossible to ever know Blake’s true intentions, I wanted to know: Why and when did he shift from the subtle, child-like approach of promoting social change in Songs of Innocence to the baseball-bat-hitting-you-overthe-head approach found in the Songs of Experience? A review of the author’s biographical history and surrounding cultural issues hint that this change may have been caused by a combination of Blake’s developing artistic talent – both as a poet and visual artist – and the evolution of his social commentary from the pleasantly critical to the angrily cynical as he crosses over from his 20s into his mid-30s.

PUBLICATIO BACKGROU D The collection of poems Songs of Innocence, written 1784-89 then engraved and published in 1789, are “(d)eceptively simple at first reading” and have “affinities with eighteenth-century children’s literature but go beyond the traditional children’s book to question

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some of the unexamined assumptions of adult society” (Blake Archive). The editors of The William Blake Archive state that, despite its child-like feeling, some adults in Blake’s audience might well have been uncomfortable with the social critique implicit in poems such as “The Chimney Sweeper,” “Holy Thursday,” or “Night.” Because of his publishing skills, Blake and his wife, Catherine, who assisted with the printing and hand coloring, maintained total control over the printing process and marketing of the book – a rare feat for artists in the 18th century (Blake Archive). Songs of Innocence also was the first publication using Blake’s printing press invention called relief etching. Blake had been searching for some time for a better way to print and publish his own work. About 1788, he invented the relief etching process that was both more efficient and potentially more expressive and autographic than traditional intaglio etching (Blake Archive). In relief etching, the design is painted directly onto the copperplate using an acidresistant varnish causing the plate’s unpainted surface, rather than the design itself, to be eaten away leaving the design behind to “in relief to be inked and printed” (Blake Archive). Poems for Songs of Experience were written in 1791-92 and engraved in 1794 as a companion volume for Songs of Innocence (Blake Archive). The printing history of the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience is complicated because Blake printed it while also continuing to print Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience separately. The editors of The William Blake Archive do not state definitively why Blake does this, but they speculate the reason could be more economic-based than art-based. The first copies of the combined collection appeared in 1795 alongside continued printings of the separated collections. By 1818, Blake no longer separated the collections and only printed them as one work: Songs of Innocence and of

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Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States, which included a total of 54 plates that captured all artwork and poetry (Blake Archive).

POEM A ALYSIS As a collection, Songs of Innocence and of Experience appear to embrace similar goals, which is to cast a light on social issues that have either been ignored by individuals or propagandized by religion and government – all while attracting readers and appreciators of his art. One must not lose sight of the fact Blake was an artist who wanted his work read. According to Blake scholar David Erdman, Blake’s first published work, Poetic Sketches, foreshadows his shifting attitude that is confirmed later with works such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Songs of Experience. “The contrast between iron pens and timorous hand is to be noted, for it epitomizes the conflict between bardic duty and personal caution that will emerge later as an important symptom of Blake’s frustration as a prophet without an audience” (Erdman 18). This frustration comes about as a result of failing to reach his audience, and for many of the ones he does reach, having them misunderstand the satire, irony, and message of his works. Whether or not Blake always intended to write Songs of Experience, these experiences did influence “how” he wrote the poetry with all the subtlety of a blacksmith pounding hot metal into polished steel. In this light Blake’s shift in Songs of Experience becomes even more pronounced and drastic “for unlike innocence, experience is a ravening world of the devourer; an adult world of responsibility, decisions, sex, and disease; a dark, confined, dirty, urban world of palpable, not evanescent, blackness; a world of wandering and lostness, alehouses and churches” (Gleckner 373). Songs of Innocence is written for children as a “winter’s garment of True Christian philosophy” to protect children; “adults are reproached only indirectly” except in “Holy

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Thursday” when Blake writes “the admonition, ‘Then cherish pity,’ ” as the words from the “enslaved child” speaking to the adult (Erdman 129). The collection is too extensive for an analysis of every pair of corresponding poems in this paper, so Blake’s poems Holy Thursday have been selected as the sampling to be used because of their “direct perversion” to one another. “Where the titles are identical with those in Songs of Innocence Blake clearly intended the song of experience to be a parody of its counterpart in Innocence (‘Nurse’s Song’ and ‘A Cradle Song’) or to be a direct perversion (‘Holy Thursday’ and ‘The Chimney Sweeper’)” (Gleckner 373). Even though it was not published until 1789, the Songs of Innocence version of “Holy Thursday” was written in 1784; the Songs of Experience was written in 1791-92 (Wordsworth 361, 371). Blake’s innocent turn in “Holy Thursday” satirically accepts the “annual regimented singing of London charity-school children as evidence that the flogged and uniformed boys and girls are angelically happy” (Erdman 121). Erdman retells stories from London newspapers, specifically The Times of 1788 and 1789, propagandizing the holiness of the event, writing that church services were disturbed every now and then by adults attempting to see their children who “had been benevolently ‘removed from their wicked parents’ and thus ‘snatched from perdition’ to be trained to useful servitude” (Erdman 121). When the children enter the church, according to line 3, “Grey-headed beadles” direct the children to their proper spots as “they like the Thames waters flow” with energy as vibrant as the river (Wordsworth 361). The simile comparing the children to a river also is a representation of the large numbers of poor, orphaned children in London at the time; there are so many, the line leading into church reminds the narrator of a river. And like the real-life Thames River that has been controlled and directed by

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humankind’s technology and city engineering, so is the children’s energy diverted into the church and harnessed for the celebration. The innocent version of “Holy Thursday” represents a celebration of youth and the importance of protecting those in need of protection. The narrator consistently creates Christ-like comparisons with the children. In line 1 they are innocent, just as the Bible states that Christ never committed a sin; in line 7 they are a “multitude of lambs,” much as Christ was the lamb of God; and in line 12 they are angels representing God on Earth, as Jesus was the representation of God on Earth. The “wise guardians of the poor” are responsible for protecting the innocents, and at least on the surface, Blake’s poem suggests this is happening. The children are able to clean themselves; the children have decent clothes to wear for the church service; the children are able to attend the church service; the children have the experienced adults watching over them and acknowledging their songs of praise to God. The seedy underbelly exists in each of those “positive” attributes of the establishment. One should ask if the children’s faces are only cleaned for this public religious spectacle and left covered in filth every other day. Are all of the children’s other clothes nothing more than rags? What are the children doing when there is no religious service; are they being ignored or used or exploited? How much are the gray-headed beadles and their “wands as white as snow” educating and protecting the children compared to abusing them? The subtlety of Blake appeared lost on those such as the previously mentioned reporter, so when Blake returned to “Holy Thursday” in his Songs of Experience, the newspaper’s “obtuse, roseate view is refuted point by point” and leaves little interpretive room that favors the charity-school administrators (Erdman 122). Erdman states that it is difficult for a person to “deny the latent satire” present in the first “Holy Thursday” (122). However, the public – as

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newspapers demonstrated – did miss the satire, forcing Blake to revisit the topic. With its very first stanza, the experience version leaves little room for misinterpretation: “Is this a holy thing to see, / In a rich and fruitful land, / Babes reduced to misery, / Fed with cold and usurous hand?” (Wordsworth 371). The title of the poem – named after the Ascension Day religious event – is immediately challenged, and the poet’s accusatory finger is pointing directly at the charityschool administrators – “Fed with cold and usurous hand” – responsible for taking care of the poor children. Blake contrasts “the actual ‘eternal winter’ of the children’s existence with the promissory ‘eternal spring’ ” that has yet to arrive (Erdman 125). A study of Blake’s Lavater notes reveal the author “had both contraries in mind all along” (Erdman 129). However, the public failing to see the satire of Blake’s “innocence” may have increased the forcefulness of this expression.

BLAKES’S ‘EXPERIE CES’ BETWEE PUBLICATIO S Literary theories of the 20th and now 21st centuries, such as New Criticism and Post Colonial theories, have shifted away from biographical analysis of authors and toward the writing itself as a cultural document (Bayoumi). Blake’s poetry does serve as a powerful cultural document concerning the era in which he lived. However, one should also review the biographical information in order to pursue the elusive question as to why did Blake make such a drastic shift between his “innocence” and his “experience.” The period in which Blake (1757-1827) lived is noted as a time of wars and revolutions involving politics, industrialism, and intellectualism, but one must not forget that “he grew up in a time of peace and never lost the feeling that England was a green and pleasant land,” especially between the ages of 5 and 17 years old (Erdman 3). The end of the Great War in 1962 is credited

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with achieving peace that lasted until 1774, just before the start of the American Revolution. Until 1774, the 17-year-old Blake had experienced a relatively bloodless challenging of authority figures; one could question the establishment – at least so far in his brief life – without fearing the ultimate cost. So when the American Colonies began their break from England, Blake “shared the common view … representing America as the land of liberty and virtue, England as that of corruption and slavery, and King George as a cruel and obstinate tyrant” (Erdman 6). Blake’s first published collection of poetry Poetical Sketches was released to mostly friends in 1783, known as the “year of the peace treaties” (Erdman 17). This would seem to promote optimism in a young, 26-year-old artist; he has successfully published his first collection of poetry – many of the items of an anti-war nature – and peace has been established in the land. “As long as his country was at peace he could write without much cynicism,” much like he did in Songs of Innocence; Blake “did not publish his Songs of Experience until Britain had once more gone to war and her commercial prosperity had plummeted” (Erdman 127). Blake’s trials and tribulations between 1783 and 1789 were balanced by optimistic success. Challenges include getting caught up in the 1783 anti-Catholic riots and burning of Newgate Prison; being accused with another artist of being a spy while they were on a sketching trip; failing to win enough financial support to study Renaissance art in Italy; and the death of his older brother (Blake Archive). Successes included artistic and society support by people like John Hawkins, who tried to raise money for Blake’s studies; commercial success of his engraving business; the invention of relief etching, which was inspired by his dieing brother; and the publication of Songs of Innocence using his newly invented engraving process (Blake Archive).

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And then these optimisms appear overwhelmed by the negatives. In addition to the public either missing or rejecting the subtleties of Songs of Innocence, Blake becomes disillusioned with Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish mystic in whose work he had begun to take an interest. Blake read and annotated at least three of Swedenborg’s books, and he and Catherine attended a meeting of the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church in April 1789 (Blake Archive). However, interest turned to opposition when, in 1790, Blake published the satire The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which began as a four-page anti-Swedenborgian pamphlet. This growing cynicism or radicalism – all depending on how one views Blake – may also have been encouraged through his engraving and printing work for Johnson publications during the early 1790s; Blake was able to meet some of the more prominent radical thinkers and writers in England. Blake became close friends with John Gabriel Stedman during the years it took to engrave the designs for Stedman’s &arrative, of a Five Years’ Expedition, Against the Revolted &egroes of Surinam (1796), a firsthand account of a slave rebellion; Blake both composed and engraved the six designs for Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life (1791), whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) attacked contemporary notions about women’s education and role in society; and Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man (179192), who fled England in 1792 to avoid arrest — tipped off, it was rumored, by Blake himself: “Blake advised him immediately to fly, for he said ‘if you are not now sought I am sure you soon will be.’ Paine took the hint directly and found he had just escaped in time” (Blake Archive). These are just a few of the influences that may have pushed Blake to forsake the subtleties of innocence for the bluntness of experience.

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READY FOR EXPERIE CE After a three-year absence, Blake returned to illuminated printing of his work in 1793. His new books appeared to share some themes prominent among the authors Blake was interacting. There is Oothoon, the victimized heroine of Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), who adds her eloquent lament to the discourse on slavery and the rights of women; America a Prophecy (1793), the first of Blake’s Continental Prophecies, treats the American Revolution as an event with mythological as well as historical dimensions; For Children: The Gates of Paradise (1793), an emblem book comprising eighteen small intaglio etchings accompanied by brief inscriptions on the human condition (Blake Archive). Blake’s subsequent creation – Songs of Experience in 1794 and the combined collection by 1795 – seems to be the result of his own experience. Much like many human experiences, Blake had evolved from a patient and optimistic artist expressing himself in his mid-20s to an impatient and determined one in his mid-30s who was going to leave no room for misinterpretation. Some people believe Blake’s longevity and continued popularity is because of “his ready reproducibility in simple forms as a cultural marker – memorable images to decorate dust jackets, startling proverbs to launch book chapters, catchy phrases to name rock bands” (Eaves 414). Perhaps it has more to do with his willingness to change his methods of expression – from subtle to blunt – in order to express his beliefs and evolve into something different based upon life’s experiences.

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Works Cited Bayoumi, Moustafa. Lecture: Postcolonial Literature and Theory. Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY. 29 Aug. 2007. Erdman, David V. Blake: Prophet Against Empire. 3rd ed. New York: Dover, 1991. Eaves, Morris. “On Blakes We Want and Blakes We Don’t.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1995): 413-39. JSTOR. Brooklyn College Lib., Brooklyn, NY. 22 Oct. 2008 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/3817576 >. Gleckner, Robert F. “William Blake and the Human Abstract.” PMLA 76 (Sept. 1961): 373-79. JSTOR. Brooklyn College Lib., Brooklyn, NY. 22 Oct. 2008 . The William Blake Archive. 13 November 1997. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 29 Oct. 2008 . Wordsworth, Jonathan, and Jessica Wordsworth, eds. The Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry. New York: Penguin, 2005.

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