Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake
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Even more significant is the role of these adolescents as prophets and ministers of truth in a world grown horribly corrupt. Without the critical, rebellious voices of LONDON or of The GARDEN of LOVE how could things ever improve? Only the voice of experience can ‘hear’ the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ and reveal their insidious presence to others. The vision of innocence simply ignores suffering and abuse, or attempts, unconvincingly, to hide them under the veneer of love and religious faith, as in The Chimney Sweeper poem of the Songs of Innocence .
It is undeniable that there is a darkness in experience that is only glimpsed in the vision of innocence . That is no surprise: in fact, it is an inevitable consequence of the freedom that experience bestows. Just as Adam’s Tree in the Garden of Eden bestowed knowledge of evil as well as knowledge of good, so experience gives human beings the ability to scheme and plot and create whole religions of falsity and distortion. Intuitively , the human mind believes in divine goodness (‘Love Mercy Pity Peace’); as an abstraction , however, it can easily argue away all the good qualities of the ‘human form divine’ leaving only a cruel, selfish tyrant of a ‘God,’ made in the image of the lowest of men. And yet only through experience can a man or woman see the falsity and cruelty of this ‘Tree of Mystery’ which grows in the ‘human brain.’
To enter the world of experience for Blake, therefore, is not to abandon the world of innocence but rather to see it afresh, and understand it anew. Innocence contains the answer to our renewal and happiness, our return to the locked Eden, but without experience – its energies, sufferings and anger at injustice – there would be no forcing of the lock, no desire to ask the necessary questions again and again until people finally begin to accept the truth about their society and their false beliefs. This was Blake’s message for his own turbulent time. It would be a brave man or woman who suggested that his words have little relevance for our own society today.
Shepherd Illustration
Blake’s response to the Shepherd-Piper illustration for the Songs of Innocence sees his figure stepping out into more open ground, though a huge tree of experience is close by. Most significant, however, is the figure’s relationship to the inspirational cherub.
It is undeniable that there is a darkness in experience that is only glimpsed in the vision of innocence . That is no surprise: in fact, it is an inevitable consequence of the freedom that experience bestows. Just as Adam’s Tree in the Garden of Eden bestowed knowledge of evil as well as knowledge of good, so experience gives human beings the ability to scheme and plot and create whole religions of falsity and distortion. Intuitively , the human mind believes in divine goodness (‘Love Mercy Pity Peace’); as an abstraction , however, it can easily argue away all the good qualities of the ‘human form divine’ leaving only a cruel, selfish tyrant of a ‘God,’ made in the image of the lowest of men. And yet only through experience can a man or woman see the falsity and cruelty of this ‘Tree of Mystery’ which grows in the ‘human brain.’
To enter the world of experience for Blake, therefore, is not to abandon the world of innocence but rather to see it afresh, and understand it anew. Innocence contains the answer to our renewal and happiness, our return to the locked Eden, but without experience – its energies, sufferings and anger at injustice – there would be no forcing of the lock, no desire to ask the necessary questions again and again until people finally begin to accept the truth about their society and their false beliefs. This was Blake’s message for his own turbulent time. It would be a brave man or woman who suggested that his words have little relevance for our own society today.
Shepherd Illustration
Blake’s response to the Shepherd-Piper illustration for the Songs of Innocence sees his figure stepping out into more open ground, though a huge tree of experience is close by. Most significant, however, is the figure’s relationship to the inspirational cherub.
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