C.U. English Honours Notes : William Blake: The Tyger -Critical Appreciation

C.U. English Honours Notes for the 'The Tyger' by William Blake.

“The Tyger”----Critical Appreciation/ Meaning/ Blessing of childlike innocence and adult wisdom/ Two Contrary States of Human Soul.

William Blake’s The Tyger has always remained a popular poem not only to the critics but also to the readers of different ages. Like most of Blake’s songs this poem can also be appreciated at different levels. At its simplest reading, the poem attracts us with its string rhythm and simple image are also compelling that we feel the presence of an awful power lurking in the dark. For many readers this physical sensation seems to be an adequate response and they do not wish to explore the poem’s deeper layers of meaning and symbolism.

Blake himself, however, wanted his readers not only to enjoy the series of “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” as mere songs, but also to understand their relevance as belonging to “two contrary states of human soul”. This contrast means much to Blake and we cannot ignore this contrast while we read his songs. Actually the two sections of innocence and experience are the two contrasted elements in a single design. The first part sets out an imaginative vision of the state of innocence, and second shows how life challenges, corrupts and destroys it innocence is brimming with joy and harmony, experience is dark and sinister. But in Blake’s scheme there is a further stage in which innocence may be wedded to experience, goodness to knowledge. Blake holds that innocence uncoupled with the experience is incomplete. He says, “The wrath of lion is the wisdom of God”. C.M. Bowra has pointed out. “ The wrath which Blake found in Christ, his symbol of the divine spirit which will not tolerate restrictions but asserts itself against established rules, was the means by which he hoped to unite innocence and experience in some tremendous synthesis”.  But such a synthesis is possible only through passion, power and energy. That is why Blake stressed the great forces hidden in life, terrifying but necessary for that synthesis. He chooses his symbols for the power in violet and destructive objects. It is in such elemental forces that Blake puts his trust for redemption of mankind.

If we are to get the full force of the poem The Tyger, we have to read it in this context. The poem is a symbol of Blake for the terrible forces in the human soul, which can ultimately break the bond of experience. The forest of the night in which the tiger roams is the darkness of ignorance, repression, superstition and depravity. This incarnation of terrible energy has been fashioned by unknown supernatural forces that beat out the living world with their hammers. The poet wonders and makes us ask such awe-struck queries:

“What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

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What dread hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?”

Through this relentless series of wonder-filled questions, Blake builds up the enormous store of force, energy and power of the tiger as a symbol of the hidden power in man to overcome corruption and privation. Then mention of the lamb as a symbol of innocence makes us aware of the contrast between the two states of human soul. It also intensifies our sense of awe at the stupendous act of divine creation. In fact, it comes almost as a challenge to the idea of the benign Creator. Blake asks almost with incredulous awe whether the Creator smiles with satisfaction in what He had done.

But what Blake really suggests is not really a change to the idea of the benign God, but he means to say that benignity is not the only attribute of God. Kindness and terror are both the attributes of the Divine Being and both are necessary for discovering the Divine in man. That is perhaps why T.S. Eliot in Gerontion refers to Christ the tiger. Thus gentleness and the tiger do not cancel each other; they can co-exist in God and are equally valid.

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