Ladies and Gentlemen, I offer for your consideration the oft-misquoted, and more often misunderstood, William Blake:
Auguries of Innocence
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
When I referred to Blake as oft-misquoted, I had in mind a specific instance of misuse. This instance occurred within the opening of an essay on the ethics of Human Cloning written by Leon Kass (then Chair of the President’s Council on Bio-Ethics under George Bush). The quote in question, is from Blake’s ‘The Lamb’ from his collection Songs of Innocence:
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
I consider Kass’ quotation a misuse, thus a misquotation, because it served in no way to strengthen his argument, or to detract from it and therefore warrant a rebuttal. Instead, Kass seemed merely to be attempting to aggrandize himself and his opinion by aligning himself with a well-known, and well-loved poet.
When I referred to that poet as more often misunderstood, I meant in the sense expressed within this impromptu analysis someone posted on a website about poetry (please note statements that I have made bold):
I cannot help but offer commentary on this poem that has often given me inspiration. As mentioned in the previous post, the first stanza is very descriptive and "pretty". One should recognize that these four lines are the only ones that stand apart from the lengthy body of the poem. They are also near the only lines that Blake chose to leave free of paradox and conflict. Auguries of Innocence is a long assembly of conflicted situations laden with warnings and omens of judgement[sic] (The word "auguries" means omen) The poem draws a line pitting the innocent or underprivileged against those blessed and elite. It calls for the audience to take note of so many subtle beauties and to recognize the fragile balance that allows such things to thrive. Blake was of coarse ultra religious and is righteous in his determination of justice and protection of innocence. The poem is purposely long and trying including portions of rough rhyme scheme. This may be an attempt by the poet to mimic our lives so full of bumps and challenges. In the end of the poem as at the end of Blake's perception of life comes judgement. Those who experienced darkness (endless night) and were not blessed or elite will find god in all his promised splendor. Those who were elite and "clothed in light" will see god as well but he will come to them as an abstraction of himself. The accompanying painting that Blake created shows a great dragon standing over a beautiful woman. As warned throughout the poem she will be punished for her ignorance and bliss. Like any ultra religious person, Blake is highly alarmed by sin but this poem goes further to specify that the theft of innocence is one sin that stands above all others and will encounter the most severe consequence. Be a protector of the weak and innocent and you shall be rewarded; if only in the very end of days. This poem is the inspiration behind the painting: "the great red dragon and the woman clothed in sun" which in turn is the inspiration behind "red dragon" the recent movie and book.
Many people read the poem in such a way, and Blake is often considered to be a very religious person, but I think both of these perceptions are incorrect. Thus, what follows addresses those emboldened statements above:
First of all, auguries does not mean omen. An augury is the art or practice of an augur, that is, an act of divination. Divination is the practice of attempting to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge by occult or supernatural means (both of these definitions are taken from dictionary.com and are listed as each words primary definition; I feel I should mention that omen is listed as a definition of augury, albeit a tertiary definition, which at best makes it a bad connotation of the word). So, Auguries of Innocence, literally, means something like, the attempts of the innocent to see and understand the supernatural, within nature.
Second, the perception that the poem draws a line pitting the innocent or underprivileged against those blessed and elite is utterly false, and in no way in keeping with the title of the poem – we must bear in mind that Blake is a master poet, which means he does not use words with blithe indifference to their meaning, nor is he likely to waste them. I will further support this assertion in the analysis that follows.
Third, it is a common assumption that Blake was a very religious person, given his regular references to god, and the general subject matter of his poems, but this assumption reveals a myopic outlook and a tendency not to look past the surface. The poems collected in Songs of Innocence all ring very religious, but many of them were directly addressed in a later collection entitled Songs of Experience – as an example of this contrast ‘The Lamb,’ from Songs of Innocence, with ‘The Tiger,’ from Songs of Experience. In ‘The Lamb’, Innocence is astounded by a creature and the notion of a creator. In ‘The Tiger’, Experience questions how the same entity responsible for a creature like the lamb could also be responsible for the creation of the tiger – that is, if god is omnipotent, and omniscient, then why does he allow evil to exist? Furthermore, three of his closest friends, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (author of Frankenstein or; The Modern Prometheus – strange that the subtitle so often get overlooked), her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley (an accomplished poet in his own right, whose poem Ozymandias almost beat out Auguries in my mind), and Thomas Paine (author of Common Sense), were some of History’s greatest Doubters. In my experience, ‘ultra-religious people’ rarely have much of a tolerance for those who do not adhere to their world-view.
Fourth, Fifth and Sixth, all of these assertions about Blake’s meaning in the poem ring false if we consider the poem as a whole. Perhaps it would help if we reformed its lyrical structure into that of prose. Thus:
To see a world in a grain of sand /And a heaven in a wild flower,/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/
And eternity in an hour. This is an advisory statement, hence the first word; if we are to see the world in a grain of sand, then we must… This is also a summation of Innocence, which is exceedingly capable of doing these very same things. Harken back to the days of your childhood, and recall how long those days would seem.
A robin redbreast in a cage/Puts all heaven in a rage./A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons/Shudders hell through all its regions. If this doesn’t seem obvious enough, Maya Angelou practically spell it out for you in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
A dog starved at his master's gate/Predicts the ruin of the state./A horse misused upon the road/
Calls to heaven for human blood. When we ignore the needs of those who come to depend on us, particularly in the sense of the governed upon the government, we set ourselves up for ruin. And when we abuse those we rely most upon, in the sense of the government upon the governed, we incite revolution. (It should be kept in mind that this poem was written shortly after the American Revolution, and Paine was a major contributor to the line of thinking that was ultimately used to justify American Independence.)
[Since I am already running exceedingly long on this post, I’m going to skip past some of the poem, but I highly encourage anyone who is even remotely interested in this analysis to step deeper themselves.]
The bat that flits at close of eve/Has left the brain that won't believe./The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright. This stanza has been cited before as evidence of Blake’s religiosity, but I would argue against this perception. For one, the poem is about the perceptions of Innocence, as opposed to experience. In addition to this fact, though many of those who believe in god may imagine the experience of unbelievers to be a frightful one, most unbelievers (as rationalists at heart) are highly unlikely to fear things like bats and owls in the night. Also, notice that the bat ‘has left’, as if spawned by, the brain that won’t believe, and the owl ‘speaks’ the unbeliever’s fright. The perceptions of an ‘Innocent’ mind.
A truth that's told with bad intent/Beats all the lies you can invent. What could that mean?
It is right it should be so:/Man was made for joy and woe;/And when this we rightly know/Through the world we safely go./Joy and woe are woven fine,/A clothing for the soul divine./Under every grief and pine/Runs a joy with silken twine. Though I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time, these eight verses probably had some influence upon the sentiments I expressed in my previous post.
He who mocks the infant's faith…/…Doth put the light of knowledge out. The sentiments expressed here, with regard to those who doubt, are not uncommon among the faithful.
Every night and every morn/Some to misery are born./Every morn and every night/Some are born to sweet delight./Some are born to sweet delight,/Some are born to endless night. Now, our above quoted commentator suggested that the point of these lines are, more succinctly than they chose to put it, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) They effectively link these verses with the final four verses of the poem: God appears, etc. But this, again, is a surface perception, that is, to say that it is a reality of the world that some are born to sweet delight, to a life free from cares or worries, with every imaginable need or desire easily filled (your princes of England say, or Paris Hilton), whilst others are born to endless night, no hope, no ease, no comfort, naught but struggle. Many of us in the ‘developed world’ find it disturbingly easy to look past this reality, particularly in our day-to-day.
But this is a poem. It is phrased exclusively in metaphor, only the first four lines even approach simile. These statements are not meant to address worldly condition, but universal perception. Perhaps ‘sweet delight’ refers to a feeling of oneness – of connection – to the world around us, as a part and agent of it, and an acceptance of the fact that we were ‘made for joy and woe’. Perhaps ‘endless night’ is the opposite of this, the fears that torment us as we lay awake in our beds, terrified by the absurdity of it all.
Taking these six verses in this way, a view that is reinforced by his repetition of the thought, we must re-evaluate those last four verses: God appears, and God is light/To those poor souls who dwell in night,/But does a human form display/To those who dwell in realms of day. God is the comfort of those who find themselves tormented by the absurd nature of existence. Who was it that said, “Religion is a balm for the soul”? For those who choose to dwell in realms of day (bear in mind that since the time of the Myth of Prometheus, light and knowledge/truth have been unequivocally equated), no such balm is needed.
But how do we justify this interpretation, why by the very four verses which proceed, and with the final four make up the ultimate message of the poem, Blake’s closing words to us: We are led to believe a lie/When we see not through the eye/Which was born in a night to perish in a night,/When the soul slept in beams of light. We are led to believe a lie, when we see not through the eye, which was born in a night to perish in a night… We are led to believe a lie when we look to find truth in things other than those we can perceive with our own perishable (but wait, doesn’t that make them flawed?) eyes. A very religious person encouraging us to trust only that which we can perceive with our own eyes, aka empirically? Suspect, to say the least.
As I stated at the beginning, oft-misquoted, most often misunderstood.
-dennis
No comments:
Post a Comment