Term Paper on "William Blake, the Poet"

Term Paper 4 pages (1252 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

William Blake, the poet, was also William Blake the artist and William Blake the religious mystic. In his view of the world, it was the things that seem to oppose us that help define us. Trained in drawing and engraving, Blake had to use writing instrument and paper, or acid and metal, to create a contrast. It was that contrast that illustrated. There was no picture if he applied either no ink or covered the entire page in ink, and there was no engraving if he applied either no acid or bathed the entire surface, evenly and completely, in etching acid. The picture appeared where dark met light. Many of Blake's poems reflect this concept of opposites, often visually. In this way, Blake used words to emphasize what he saw in his art, that without the opposites of ink vs. no ink, there was nothing revealed.

Blake held some interesting theological beliefs. According to his religious beliefs, since it is opposites that define us, God had to have Satan in order to exist. An important part of Man's understanding of God was the struggle between good and evil. This view of the importance of opposites, with clear differences between them, could be viewed as crucial to both drawing and engraving. In a way, drawing anything on a piece of paper, no matter how simple, divides the space into "art" and "space." Even in a simple drawing of a tree, the lines drawn by the artist divide the space on the page into opposites: tree, and "not tree."

It should not be surprising that an artist would use strong visual imagery when writing poems, and this was often true of Blake. Two examples in particular demonstrate the connection he saw between drawing and poetry: his two poems "The Lamb" and 'The Tiger." These poems also reflect his belief that both evil and good must exist for either to exist. In his poem "The Lamb," Bake evokes many visual images. He uses simple language to describe the lamb in words that produce a strong image of what the animal looks like: "clothing of delight, softest clothing, wooly, bright...." Then, in "The Tiger," he evokes a very different visual image: "fearful symmetry," "the fire of thine eyes," "dread feet." The reader can see in the mind a great difference between the two.

It would be easy to look at these poems simplistically, as words evoking an image and that happen to rhyme, but in both poems, the author also evokes the image of the God who made them. He sees the lamb simplistically: can the lamb comprehend the similarities between him and his maker? But then, in the tiger poem, Blake presents an entirely different image of God, one whose "dread hand" forged the tiger's "dread feet." Again, Blake thinks in contrasts, balancing extremes against each other. It is the fine skill of a master engraver, to divide the space into perfect balance. Blake's artistic medium reflects his theology and his poetry: the tiger and the lamb are opposites, and the God who made them both has traits that oppose each other: God the gentle lamb, or God the fearful avenger.

He shows this ability to divide the world into opposites, as if it were a line drawing on paper, in other ways as well, such as in his poems "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience," which he himself calls "Poetical Sketches." When considering poems that so clearly deal with opposites, it is useful again to think of the art of engraving. Blake held that neither innocence nor experience were superior to the other and that in fact the two states were inter-dependent. Once again he had divided the world into opposites, but instead of making the judgments… READ MORE

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