Blake and Contraries PDF

**Critics on Blake's Contraries** **From: *William Blake VS The World*, by John Higgs** In the early 1790s, between writing *Songs of Innocence* and *Songs of Experience*, Blake composed *The Marriage of Heaven and Hell*. An important theme of this illustrated work is the necessity of contrary pos...

**Critics on Blake's Contraries** **From: *William Blake VS The World*, by John Higgs** In the early 1790s, between writing *Songs of Innocence* and *Songs of Experience*, Blake composed *The Marriage of Heaven and Hell*. An important theme of this illustrated work is the necessity of contrary positions. As he writes, 'Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and hate are necessary to Human existence.' So important to Blake is this dynamic that he makes a startling claim: 'Opposition is true friendship.' The contrasting positions he called reason and energy are, Blake explained, the root of good and evil. Passively obeying reason is good, which creates heaven, whilst activity springing from energy is evil, which creates hell. This sounds at first to be a simple dualist position, in which the world is divided into positive and negative things. But Blake also claimed that 'Energy is Eternal Delight.' The energy he had just defined as the source of evil is also portrayed as a lovely thing. Blake was uninterested in campaigning for one side or the other. Instead he argued for the necessity of both. Note that he is not trying to remain neutral. He is quite prepared to call out one side as good, and the other evil. Instead, his position is that both sides of the clash are necessary, because there is no such thing as light without dark or hot without cold. For Blake, the conflict between these divides is the fuel that moves the universe. Any view of the world must include them, because a universe without these dynamics simply couldn't exist. To try to solve problems by favouring one side and dismissing the other is to fail to understand how the world works. From Blake's perspective, a scenario like this would result in a static, unchanging world devoid of joy or surprise and without the energy of clashing perspectives. Blake did not think, however, that we were always trapped in a state of perpetual conflict. It was possible, he believed, to find respite in a state he called 'Beulah' (the 'threefold vision'), suggesting that 'There is a place where Contrarieties are equally True.' In such a state, there is no antagonism felt towards either extreme. They both exist, are recognised and are simply accepted. **From: *William Blake the Poems*, by Nicholas Marsh** **Contraries in *Songs of Innocence and Experience*** When we first face *Innocence* and *Experience* and try to grasp these two concepts, we are tempted to consider these in terms of antithesis, like antithetical pairs such as ignorance and knowledge, illusion and disillusion, nature and society, optimism and pessimism, and good and evil. Yet none of these conventional dualities fits what Blake has in mind. **Optimism and pessimism**: there is certainly something more positive in *Innocence*, and something negative in *Experience*. For example, the anticipation of pleasure in the Piper's songs which 'every child may joy to hear', and the security of the sheep who 'know that their Shepherd is nigh', point to trust in the future, in *Innocence*, which could be called optimism; while Earth's despair and her belief that she is unable to rise might be called pessimism. On the other hand, the limitations we discern in *Innocence*, with its exclusion of change and its vague awareness of the coming night, are not optimistic; and Earth in the world of *Experience* does not expect the worst like a conventional pessimist. Rather, she fears hope itself, while at the same time she knows that 'buds and blossoms grow'. When we bring into consideration ignorance and knowledge and illusion and disillusion, we find ourselves even more at a distance from what Blake portrays. Ignorance is not the right word to describe what we see in *Innocence*, where the child undergoes the extremes of emotions when he weeps 'with joy' to hear the Piper's songs, and the sheep are sensibly at peace because they 'know that their Shepherd is nigh'. Knowledge is even less accurate to describe the state of *Experience*: Earth will not 'rise' and is blindly covered with 'grey despair', while the bard castigates her ignorance, asserting, contrary to her denial, that 'Night is worn / And the morn Rises'. Clearly, the outlook of *Experience* is at least as ignorant as that of *Innocence*. In fact, both disillusion and our conventional assumption that 'experience' brings knowledge are portrayed as destructive illusions in these poems. Blake re-orders our concepts in these opening poems, then. Many of the assumptions we make about gaining knowledge and experience and growing up, simply do not fit his vision, and we must rethink our understanding of the 'contrary states' he has taken as his theme. Our concept of a dichotomy between **nature and society** suffers a similar fate. In the 'Introduction' to *Innocence*, there is a clear distinction between 'valleys wild' and 'songs of merry glee' at the start of the poem , and the 'rural' pen and 'stained' water near its end. A long pastoral tradition provokes us to associate sheep, meadows, woods and shepherds with nature; and pastoral contrasts with the world of courts, palaces and sophistication as well as cities and industries. Many of Blake's poems seem to support this assumption contrasting rural and urban settings. However, it would be wrong to confuse Blake's pastoral with nature itself. Nature is 'wild' and the pastoral world of the Shepherd and sheep is in contrast to this, supervised, protected and tamed. The more we think about *Innocence* and *Experience*, the more we are struck by the similarities between these two states rather than their differences. Both of the worlds Blake presents are societies: supervision and authority exist in both of them, in the persons of the Shepherd (*Innocence*), and the 'jealous selfish father of men' (*Experience*). Both worlds also have a population -- the flock of sheep in *Innocence* and the earth herself in *Experience.* The relationship between authority and the individual is fraught and ambiguous in both worlds. So are there really two separate, symmetrically opposed worlds around us? Of course not -- we share only the one world in which we live. This points firmly towards the insight that Blake's two 'contrary states' are not different worlds at all, but only different perceptions of the same world. Perhaps, therefore, the gentle caring Shepherd of Innocence and the cruel punishing tyrant of *Experience* are one and the same: the difference between them is how they are perceived. The Innocent are grateful for what they see as benevolent loving care. They willingly obey their Shepherd's commands because they believe that he had their well-being at heart. The Experienced believe that their tyrant enslaves and imprisons them, that his laws are cruel and selfish, and that his power deprives them of freedom and happiness. The idea that these two contrary states of *Innocence* and *Experience* are only different perceptions of the same world focuses our attention on the differing visions of Piper and Bard. These two figures, and the relationship between their two visions of the world, are complex and difficult to define. But we can notice, that as with the contrary states themselves, they have elements in common. Both Piper and Bard share the perceptions of the 'state' in which they exist. The Piper clearly shares feelings of 'glee' and 'joy' with the innocent world surrounding him, finds the Shepherd's life 'sweet' and full of 'praise' while the flock is innocent and tender. Similarly, the Bard shares Experience's perception: he hears the 'Holy Word', feels the power of the 'starry pole' and recognises the need to renew 'fallen fallen light'. We can notice, however, that both Piper and Bard are capable of a wider understanding than the limits of either *Innocence* or *Experience* would allow. The Piper begins by expressing the wild pleasure of untamed nature in music, so his imagination is capable of a freedom unknown to the protected world of *Innocence*. The Bard sees 'Present, Past, & Future', and his imagination is capable of a more prophetic range than that of Earth, who lives within the state of *Experience*. The Bard can see that 'morn / Rises from her slumberous mass'. He is aware of a coming 'break of day' while Earth sees only a continuing night. The functions of the two poetic figures differ, however. The Piper composes and then writes songs which will give 'joy' to the children living in the protected world of *Innocence*; the Bard calls impatiently for Earth to throw off her chains and arise. Which poetic role is appropriate depends on which version of 'truth' is perceived. If the world is protected by a benevolent Shepherd, then the poet celebrates with songs of 'joy'. If, on the other hand, the world is cruelly imprisoned and mercilessly punished by a selfish, jealous God, then the poet must become an agent of rebellion with a vision of freedom and a call to earth to rise and throw off her chains. **Brendan Cooper** A variety of associations hover around the world 'Innocence' and in the *Songs*, Blake is clearly exploiting some of its ambiguities. On one level, 'Innocence' has resonances specific to particular theological ideas and religious traditions; at the same time the word also has resonances which are more everyday. There is little doubt that Blake intended his readers to make associations between the world of innocence he depicts and humanity's original Edenic innocence as seen in the Book of Genesis. It is equally clear, however, that Blake has no intention of confining his concept of innocence to such a specifically religious dimension. Blake does, for instance, see 'innocence' not as lost so much as a component of humanity that is discoverable, in particular the unique qualities of childhood. Many of the *Songs of Innocence* either describe children or are spoken in the voice of a child; in these poems, there is a clear association of 'innocence' with naivety, inexperience, and uncorrupted goodness of early life. The meaning of 'innocence' is strongly linked to the Christian idea of original innocence, and also to another notion of childhood as a time of untainted goodness and spiritual purity. But 'innocence' is not a word that can so easily be categorised as positive, and in the poems, Blake is alive to this complexity. The sense of purity the word connotes -- of freedom from moral guilt, or corruption -- lends it a spiritual and optimistic air, but 'innocence' also connotes a lack of knowledge and understanding -- a fragile naivety, as well as a lack of vibrant energy, that makes it vulnerable and less than fully adequate. Throughout the poems, therefore, Blake develops a complex sense of the meaning of 'innocence' by playing on its limitations as well as celebrating its qualities of freedom and purity. In the title plate, a mother or nurse is displayed showing a book to a young boy and girl. Here, the relationship is a harmonious one between adult and child figures, with the former appearing to offer education to the children in her care. Some of the details of the image are mysterious, though. The girl is pointing at something, though in some copies it looks more like she is actually writing or drawing upon the page. The boy beside her is staring at the book from a sideways-on position -- as if regarding an image rather than reading the text. The mother/nurse is watching them, not the book, and is not speaking. The words of the title are written above them as sinuous and graceful branches, leaves and tendrils, many of which directly flow out of a tree. These features anticipate another key theme throughout *Innocence*, that of nature: poems like 'Laughing Song, 'The Ecchoing green', and 'Nurse's Song' all present the green pastures of nature as a landscape within which freedom and happiness are made possible, especially to children. The overall sense in this image is of children contentedly educating themselves in the presence of an adult, outside in the freedom and beauty of the natural world rather than confined within a schoolroom.