From Innocence to Experience: William Blake's 'The Tyger'

In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Joe and Maya explore William Blake’s 1794 poem, 'The Tyger,' from his collection 'Songs of Innocence and of Experience.' They dive deep into the complex symbolism of the tiger, discussing its contrast with 'The Lamb,' another of Blake’s celebrated works, and exploring the moral questions posed by its creation.

Maya and Joe reflect on Blake’s fascination with the tension between innocence and experience, the Industrial Revolution’s impact on his worldview, and his unique portrayal of creation and divine mystery. Together, they unravel Blake’s nuanced perspective on power, the Promethean myth, and humanity’s ability to create both beauty and terror. The episode also highlights Blake’s radical views, his artistry, and his influential collection, 'Songs of Innocence and Experience.'

Get exclusive PDFs on 'The Tyger' available to Poetry+ users:

• ​Full PDF Guide​
• ​PDF Snapshot Guide​
• ​Poem Printable PDF​
  • ​with Rhyme Scheme​
  • ​with Meter Syllables​
  • ​with both Rhyme and Meter​
  • ​William Blake PDF Guide

Tune in and discover:

• The symbolic meaning of the tiger in Blake’s work
• Blake’s radical views on innocence and experience
• Promethean mythology and its relevance to 'The Tyger'
• Why Blake’s themes resonate in today’s world

Transcript

From Innocence to Experience: William Blake's 'The Tyger' (Transcript)
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Maiya: [00:00:00] Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand, and what dread feet? What the hammer, what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil, what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee, Tiger, tiger, burning bright, In the forests of the night, [00:01:00] What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Joe: Welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by the team at Poemanalysis.com in association with Poetry+. Now today, Maiya and I are going to be discussing William Blake's poem, The Tyger, which Maiya just read beautifully for us.

And we're going to be touching on a variety of themes, including the relationship between innocence and experience, symbols of a changing world and the moral implications of creation. But Maiya, I'd like to start with Blake's career more broadly. Who was he and where was he at the point where this poem was first published in 1794?

Maiya: Thanks, Joe. So at the time of this poem's publication, William Blake was actually 37 years old. It was published in a joint collection called Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Now the whole central theme of this collection is the contrast between the two, William Blake was born in London, lived in London and died in London. He was born in Soho in 1757 [00:02:00] and he died in 1827 at the age of 70 years old. So a lot of his worldview was very much framed by growing up in London, deep in the Industrial Revolution.

You're looking at a period of huge industrial change, The increase of factory life, pollution, class division. This is a period of UK history that is absolutely littered with monumental moments. Now, Blake does an incredible job throughout this collection of exploring particularly what it's like to transition from childhood innocence to a more adult and fully formed version of experience.

Now these two words are key because experience isn't always negative. And in The Tyger we see this very clearly in how The Tyger is juxtaposed between the beauty of its looks and the slightly more volatile nature of the violence that can accompany the symbol of The Tyger.

Now Joe, where would you like to start with this poem? Because it is rich with choice

Joe: Thanks, Maiya. So I think I'd like to begin with the [00:03:00] title. And I think just to tidy up any concerns some of our listeners or readers might have that you and I can't spell, the poem is titled The Tyger, and Tiger is spelled T Y G E R.

That's just because there was an archaic spelling of the word tiger, the I version was also common, but the Y version that Blake uses grew less common with time. So it's not a spelling mistake either on our part or on Blake's part, but I think That spelling actually is a really interesting jumping off point because it's a reminder of how exotic and unusual this animal was. Especially when we consider the fact that The Tyger is actually a sister poem of Blake's earlier work The Lamb

which was originally published in 1789 in the collection Songs of Experience. And as Maiya mentioned, this book, 1794 is a joint publication. So it takes poems from the earlier collection and republishes them in the joint collection. And that relationship is gonna be something we're gonna talk about at great length.

But The Tyger as a symbol is a really important one for us to get to grips with. Innate within our conception of The Tyger is that sense of ferocity that sense of danger But as Maiya [00:04:00] mentioned also that sense of beauty and exoticism That's going to be absolutely central to this poem now Blake was also a visual artist and he actually illustrated this collection We'll put a link in the show notes to the illustration and listeners can go and check it out but It's important to know that the quality and the accuracy of Blake's depiction of this animal suggests that it is likely he did actually see one.

We can't verify that for sure, but he either saw a real life tiger, perhaps in one of the many exhibits there were in London at the time, or at the very least he saw a very accurate portrayal of a tiger produced by somebody who had seen one. So the image of the central animal is going to be crucial and there is so much depth in that single word in the title.

Maiya: Well, it's a fascinating point you raised, though, actually. When you discuss whether Blake had actually seen this tiger or not, whether it was in real life, whether it's a depiction, given what this first stanza tells us, Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forest of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

This [00:05:00] is a discussion of how a poet, an artist could physically frame this incredible animal within a space, within a canvas. I've always found it really interesting that, especially with this poem, when you have the visual medium of the art that Blake created to accompany it, and also the poem, When you meld the two, it almost takes away from that imaginative power that a poem usually affords a reader because you're immediately presented with an image that you might have otherwise created in your own mind. Now, what effect do you think that has?

Joe: That's a really good question. I guess one of the things it allows Blake to do is not linger so much on purely physical description of The Tyger. It allows him to assume that the reader can visually picture The Tyger because he's handed it to them visually. So what that allows him to do is therefore focus on kind of the symbolic resonance of this animal.

And again, I think it's a really fascinating decision. to use an animal that so few of his readers would have seen in real life. I mean, it's important for us to remember tigers are [00:06:00] not native to Europe.

They're animals that live in Southeast Asia, Eastern Russia, you know, a very, very long way from Blake. And I know we're going to talk a little about the historical context here, but it's important to remember again, that British influence in India was really ramping up around this time.

So there would have been British people who had found tigers, brought tigers back. So like we said, Blake may well have seen this animal, but most of his readers, we can assume, did not ever see a tiger in their lifetime. I mean, there were kind of rumours and Exaggerated stories about this kind of wild beast from the jungle, you know So for example

Just two years before this poem was published in 1792 the child of a prominent British army officer Sir Hector Monroe was actually killed by a tiger and this made headlines in the UK So this kind of almost mythic beast, I think is a really odd decision, especially, and we're going to talk about this later on, in contrast to the lamb of the earlier poem, which obviously for readers in the UK would have been an animal they were incredibly familiar with, an incredibly mundane animal, and that, that contrast I think is really interesting.

What do you think, Maiya, what do you think lay behind that decision to choose this [00:07:00] deliberately exotic animal without a huge amount of prior writing about it? Why does he make that decision? 

Maiya: Well, it's a really interesting way to be able to build a mythology around a creature that's not very well known, right? I mean, if you look at this opening stanza, the way that Blake plays with light here is particularly interesting.

, I think that this poem is very, very multifaceted, And I really enjoy the way that Blake almost layers a Promethean element into this poem. I'd really like to pick up on those first two lines. Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night.

Now, aside from being some very well written lines, you really understand that from the moment this poem starts, This is a multi faceted creature, burning bright, immediately you're having assumptions of fire, something destructive, perhaps something dangerous, however, by Blake situating that burning fire in the forest of the night, something that in most situations would be interpreted as something quite negative, something quite entrapping, 

The Tyger being the [00:08:00] light within that space, it also becomes a guide, something that may represent more of a saviour in that space. So I really love the way that actually the fact that this creature is so removed from what You know, your standard British reader would understand or be familiar with, allows him to really delve into these quite complex questions and themes about, you know, creation and mortality and danger, while still almost feeling quite abstract in a way.

Joe: I love that point and that opening line in particular does so much to establish the contrasts that are going to run through this poem, but also the collection, Songs of Innocence and Experience more broadly, because those two words, burning bright, I mean, obviously, first of all, you're drawn to those immediately by the use of the plosive alliteration, but burning immediately, we have connotations of destruction, this idea of this creature as something that's going to wreak havoc.

But then we have that use of the word bright, and suddenly we have that idea of fire as something illuminatory, something that can guide us, [00:09:00] something that we should almost be following. And the thing I love about this, and we're going to talk a lot about religion later on, the way in which. This poem engages with christian ideas, but What I love here is we almost have the image of The Tyger is on the one hand a kind of evil satanic thing that comes Out of the darkness burning.

I mean if you think about the word lucifer another name for the devil Which literally translates to light bringer this idea of something that brings Fire with it And yet we also have the allusion to a kind of christ like figure the idea that something is burning bright So that we may follow it so that it may provide a source of hope in the darkness I find that brilliant because what blake is doing is he's neither confirming nor denying our initial Expectations of this tiger.

Is it a beast that is going to bring havoc and destruction or is it something actually that's going to provide? Light and hope? And ultimately, as we're going to discuss, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

And that's so much of what Blake is doing in this poem, is he's taking extremes and finding the commonalities, even where other people cannot see them.

Maiya: Absolutely. And this is one of the [00:10:00] critical stanzas in which I think you can really read into his commentary on industrialization and the fear that surrounds a lot of these kind of factory workers and machinery that's been created, right? But you're looking at something that is new and something that's unfamiliar, as The Tyger is to many of the people who will have been reading this poem, something that seems to offer, This quite mystical, magical, new way of doing things.

Something that is scary because it is new. And yet he's also addressing the destructive power of that. You know, those second two lines. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? I've always thought that was a comment on that kind of fear of mechanization and industrialization, especially in the way that he almost critiques that power, the power that someone has to create something, you know, , in this poem, he's talking about religious creation.

He's talking about God creating a creature so beautiful, but also so dangerous. [00:11:00] But when you parallel it with the era in which Blake grew up in and endured, you as we said at the start of this, he was 37 years old. He was an adult living in the depths of the industrial revolution. If you compare the two, there's so much to be said for what he thinks about human creation as well. 

Joe: 100%. And I think the mention of the immortal eye in those lines gives that sense that what Blake is engaging with is some kind of divine creator. But I think you're absolutely right to zoom in on the fact that his challenges about creation, his challenges about the decisions we make are just as applicable to humans because we also make decisions, but the difference between us and divine creators, of course, that we are fallible and our fallibilities often lead to disastrous consequences.

I think you mentioned Prometheus earlier on, For any listeners who aren't aware, Prometheus was a titan in Greek mythology, and he was punished for bringing fire to mankind. And obviously the moment he brought fire to mankind, mankind could begin to cook their own food, to smelt metal, and ultimately that decision, [00:12:00] in the way it's presented in Greek mythology, is the kind of catalyst for mankind's development.

You can almost view that retrospectively thousands of years later as kind of the moment that set humanity on a path towards secularism the thing I love about that Promethean story. Is it presents fire as something that is largely good when as of course We know that fire is simply a tool and the thing about this opening is it really plays with that idea of fire?

By emphasizing its utility it can be used to guide it can be used to destroy and ultimately when you put a tool like that in the hands of somebody who is fallible like a mortal being and not somebody who Is divine and not somebody who is blessed with wisdom You're going to get people who use it for good and for bad, and I think that ultimately is one of the things that Blake is looking at in this poem, the relationship between something that is on the one hand used for such positive means and on the other hand used for such destructive ones.

Maiya: I mean, just to push forward very slightly, to support the point you were making there, Joe, you look at that final line of the second [00:13:00] stanza, What the hand dare seize the fire. The active and the passive in that is so worth looking at, because it is the hand that is taking control of the tool. The fire is very much passive in this.

It is, as you said, a tool that can be used for good or evil, for progress or simply for staying warm. You know, at its root, it's a very, very simple thing. But Blake is questioning what hand dare grab that? What hand has the right to? And I'd love to sink my teeth into this a little bit, as you move through this poem with the poet, he starts to bring in more and more mechanical terms. He talks about the hammer, the furnace, the anvil, these things that are very much, associated with the factories, with industrialization, with mechanization.

, now the effect that this has in the poem is that it begins to shut out the natural world a little bit and the beauty that we find in The Tyger at the opening part of this poem starts to be diminished a little bit by the fact that you have this kind of [00:14:00] ongoing violence and not only that, but the person who is using those tools, in this case, the human that uses the hammer, the furnace, the anvil, begins to become more and more prevalent and I always wonder whether the separation between the natural world and the industrial world in this case is very much intentional, but I'd love to know what you think, Joe.

Joe: I mean the thing I think Blake does almost as well as any other poet I've ever read is he, uh, strips away what we perceive to be binary opposites, what we perceive to be absolute, and he finds the space between them. So again, you talk about the anvil, we talk about fire. These things were kind of symbols of progress in many respects.

I mean, think of the Industrial Revolution as being something that, broadly speaking, moved civilization forwards. And yet what Blake does is he is able to find the common ground between those who regarded these moments of progress as exactly that, progress, but also acknowledging the people who felt left behind by them.

And again, he does [00:15:00] exactly the same thing with this image of the animal. There are people who want to regard this animal as something to be feared and destroyed. There are others who want to see it as as a sort of decorative symbol, whether it's alive or dead, you want to bring it home, and sort of use it as a status symbol, what Blake is able to do is take those opposing views, take those contrasts, and somehow find the space that lies between them. And I think it's the nuance of his depiction. And we're talking here about The Tyger itself, but also about the kind of symbols of the changing world that we mentioned earlier on about the symbols of an increasingly industrialized world. He is able to find within that the nuance.

And I think a really interesting kind of counterexample, and it's interesting because it's a hundred years exactly after 1794, in 1894, you have the publication of the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and Maiya and I did an episode on Rudyard Kipling's poem, If, a few months ago. And. If any listeners haven't checked that one out yet, I suggest you go and do so.

And obviously in the Jungle Book, you have a very, very iconic depiction of a tiger in the form of Shere Khan.

And I think what's really interesting is Because Blake's depiction of The Tyger [00:16:00] is written at a time where there really aren't many iterations of this character, I mean, for example, he doesn't choose a lion, which in many ways would be a kind of more traditional symbol you might expect to find in the poem, especially given that the sister poem is the lamb.

That's a kind of relationship, symbolically, that goes right back to the Bible, and we can talk about that later, but his decision to choose an animal we know so little about allows him to be the one to almost project the nuances onto that, and those that seem to get kind of stripped away in the hundred years between this.

Poems publication the publication of the jungle book because sheer khan is comparatively a fairly sort of one dimensional character, and I just find that Ability to see depth and see layers both in the animal But also in the historiography that he's engaging with to be one of Blake's greatest gifts. 

Maiya: I mean, I'd really love to pick up on that idea of nuance, as you just mentioned, Joe, because what this poem does so incredibly is not just speak to, you know, the slightly more poetic metaphors that accompany The Tyger and the lamb and industrialization, all of these slightly [00:17:00] larger themes.

But, you know, we were talking before the podcast on how William Blake was actually pretty forward thinking for a man of his time. One of the things that he wrote about quite extensively being these creatures, these creatures of God as he considered them.

And in many ways he pays the same respect and time and attention and care The Tyger as he does to something like the lamb, which is, something that throughout, you know, biblical texts has been revered. Jesus being the lamb of God.

You have this really reverent figure and The Tyger is very much owed the same respect. So when you talk about nuance, I think it's also worth taking this back to the bare bones. When Blake writes, what the hand dare seize fire, the fire and The Tyger are one and the same.

He is questioning why, how, and how brave of humans to actually capture an animal. You know? I was doing my research before this podcast and the first tiger that was showcased to the public in the UK was as early as the 1100s. [00:18:00] Now, as much as they were very rare, there may have been potentially one zoo in the UK at this time, don't quote me on that.

But to cage a creature who, as Joe said earlier, is so, distant and not well known and definitely not understood. It calls into question human morality as well, and I really think that it is Blake at his best being able to showcase something so simple and moralistic as compared to those slightly larger, metaphorical, big themes.

Joe: definitely. And it's another example of him finding commonality, finding middle ground. Because if we think about the fact that this is a sister poem to the lamb, and you're absolutely right, you mentioned the association with the lamb, with innocence and with God, what we therefore might assume, just because we're so used to these kind of.

Contrarian opposites is that his decision to frame The Tyger this mysterious far away creature of violence And to portray that in opposition to the lamb is that The reader is sort of ready to find this creature something monstrous [00:19:00] something aggressive but he finds in The Tyger something beautiful, something resonant, something god like, even though he almost positions it as though it is going to be some kind of devilish figure simply because it's the opposite of the animal he mentioned earlier, the lamb.

Maiya: And he definitely finds The Tyger a reflection of the more negative portrayals of humanity. When he looks at the creation itself, he asks, What shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart? Yes, the sinews of the heart are twisted, but by who? And to what end? I, I just, I think he does such a fantastic job of really reflecting this tiger's more negative connotations back to the reader or back to the audience.

Because when you explore a poem like this, it will be very easy to take that simple route and assume that he's disparaging the violence of this tiger, something that isn't well known. But actually I find this a very sympathetic portrayal.

I don't know about you.

Joe: [00:20:00] And as we mentioned earlier on, Blake's ability to identify characteristics of something without reducing those characteristics to creating some kind of archetype is one of the things that makes him so impressive.

I mean, this poem, despite its apparent focus on the animal, despite its apparent focus on the divine creator, as Maia mentioned, it's really actually rooted in human decisions and human fallibility. And he doesn't take a bad human decision or a good one and therefore extrapolate that all human decisions are good or bad.

He really acknowledges the sort of moral obscurity that is the story of the human race. We make good decisions and bad ones, but neither of those things make us entirely good or bad. And I think, you know, Just to zoom out slightly and think about the relationship this poem has to the collection more broadly, so just as a quick recap, the original collection that he published in 1789 was titled Songs of Innocence, from which the Lamb is taken alongside others.

This collection is published some five years later, and which includes those poems but also the songs experience [00:21:00] that we've mentioned and I just think those dates are really important for a simple reason which is that in 1789 to the year the original poem was published the French Revolution began in earnest and Blake was a political radical he was very influenced and very sympathetic to a lot of the ideas that were permeating in France around this time.

And again, for listeners who aren't aware, the French Revolution remains hugely influential, not only in France, but around the world today. It was hugely influential in the American War of Independence and the way in which democracies have gone on to flourish around the world. So he had enormous sympathy with sort of the beginnings of that movement.

And it's not a coincidence that his Songs of Experience are published in the same year. By the time this collection is published, I think it's fair to say that even somebody like Blake, who was sympathetic to those ideas, was aware of the fact that they had largely gone sour. So, King Louis XVI was executed in 1793, and actually, the following year, two of the architects of the revolution itself, Danton and Ropespierre, were also executed. So what he's able to do in this poem, and I think in [00:22:00] this collection more broadly, is find the relationship between the innocent belief in the idea and the acknowledgement that the application has failed.

It's not necessarily saying that either one was wrong to begin with and maybe we'll talk about this in the second half of today's episode But when blake talks about experience, it is not so much the eradication of innocence But the merging of the innocent ideals with a more worldly perspective It's not as simple as to say that his experience worldview replaces his innocent one

so if any listeners are interested in learning more about William Blake, whether this poem or any of his others, there are over 50 of his poems currently analysed on Poemanalysis.com, and don't forget that if you are a PoetryPlus subscriber, you can get exclusive access to bespoke William Blake materials, including poem printable PDFs for all 50 of those poems,

not to [00:23:00] mention a PDF specifically on William Blake's life and his career in the PDF learning library So there are loads of resources available for Anyone who wants to learn more about William Blake or indeed any of the other poets on our site So anyone who's interested in getting those bespoke materials should sign up for a Poetry+ membership at Poemanalysis.

com today Back to the podcast

Maiya: Welcome back to the second half of the podcast. Now, in this second part, we are going to be talking a little bit about rhyme scheme, comparisons of The Tyger with the lamb. and the nature of experience. Now, to start with the first, let's talk about the rhyme scheme in this, Jo, because on a first look, it is incredibly simple.

It is A A B B all the way through. Now, Many interpretations of this suggest that it is built like that in order to replicate that mechanical [00:24:00] movement forward. So you have skies, eyes, aspire, fire. There is a real regularity to it. Now, do you have an alternate version of what you think that could be? What it could represent?

Joe: Well, I think you're right and it definitely lends a sense of inevitability towards that kind of path to progress. And I'm using that word in inverted commas because as I mentioned earlier on, Blake is never fully endorsing an absolute opinion.

He always finds the nuances in between them. But I think. My interpretation of that, aside from the one you've mentioned, I think is the position of the A's and the B's next to each other in kind of block form as we get them in pairs, speaks to this clash of ideology. This clash between the idea of The Tyger as something dangerous versus something beautiful, the idea of the clash between the ideas within the French Revolution, the ideas, the clash between the old world and the new that Blake is exploring with regard to the Industrial Revolution.

So I've always kind of viewed it in that way, especially when we compare it to kind of other, you know, Poems of Blake's such as, I don't know, London, where you have that kind of [00:25:00] alternative rhyme scheme which speaks to a conflation of rich and poor people in the same physical space. I've always viewed this as kind of almost opposing pairs stacking up against one another.

Maiya: I think there's some really interesting examples of that as well. I mean, take that opening stanza, bright and night, those are two very contrasting ideas that, when next to each other, make the other that much stronger. You look at the fourth stanza, chain and brain, the brain being something that can afford someone so much creativity and freedom, and the chain being something that is restrictive. 

Joe: Definitely, and I think it allows us to greater focus on certain words. So that word symmetry in particular that ends the first and final stanza, I think is a brilliant one, because obviously what that speaks to is balance.

And the AABB rhyme scheme creates that sense of balance further. And what I think that is doing is that Blake is trying to suggest there is if you take two deeply opposing views that are far apart from each other on a spectrum and you situate yourself in the middle, you are likely to reach a position of balance.

Maiya: And you can definitely see that in this poem when you compare the first and [00:26:00] final stanzas. Obviously, in many respects, they are pretty much identical, bar one word. That final line, ‘What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? And then in the final stanza instead it switches out could for dare.

Now this shows not only a development in the speaker's understanding but it also asks a very different question of the reader When we first open this poem, it's about possibility. It's about chance.

It's about something slightly more abstract as we get to the end of this poem instead. It's about fear. Now. This has a really serious effect on the poem because after the rhyme scheme has really lulled us into a sense of comfort, you know what's coming next. This simple change really changes the atmosphere. So I'd, I'd love to explore a little bit about the intention and the impact of that for you as a reader, Joe.

Joe: Well, it kind of strikes upon one of the things I find enduringly fascinating about Blake, which is that mix of somebody who is on the one hand [00:27:00] always looking for the center ground, always looking to sort of triangulate opposing ideas, with somebody who is fundamentally a radical. So if we view those lines as being directed to a divine creator, as I think they are kind of initially being presented to be, this is a really strong kind of almost accusatory ending to the poem.

He's challenging God. He's, you know, not asking who could have done this, but why did somebody dare or who would dare do this? That's quite radical. And again, for listeners who aren't aware, Blake was a Christian, but was very non conformist in his views, regularly challenged the Church of England, and was kind of viewed as heretical in some circles at the time.

So this accusatory ending is very much in keeping with those views, but As Maiya and I have mentioned all the way through, when he's talking about the divine creation, he's also talking about human creation. He's also talking about human fallibility as well as challenging God's infallibility.

And I think to end the poem on this note speaks to the fact that over the course of writing these poems and over the [00:28:00] course of the years between the Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Innocence and Experience, that five year spell, he is no longer simply aware of the ills and problems of society, but he is now beginning to work out that there is a deliberate fault behind those ills and injustices. 

Maiya: And look, for any reader who hasn't come across some of Blake's poems on innocence, I would massively, massively recommend going to Poemanalysis.com, looking some of them up, reading them on the site, because one of the things I find about the poems of innocence is that in many ways their view is quite black and white.

I'll quickly read a short few lines from The Lamb because I think it'll be relevant to our conversation, Jo. Little lamb who made thee, dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life and bid thee feed. By the stream and o'er the mead, Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly bright, Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the veils rejoice. Now, I don't have to say it, This is a much lighter, much [00:29:00] softer poem. And definitely doesn't delve into some of those more complex themes.

Now, the reason I bring this up is because when you explore The Tyger in the way Blake does, what it represents about experience is that it is no longer black and white. I find that his experience poems very much exist within that grey area. Now, it's definitely worth paying attention to as you move through his body of work. I would argue chronologically, because it is encapsulated in these two lines from The Tyger. Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Now, what Blake is questioning there how something that is so good and pure and generally regarded as being really the epitome of innocence can have been created, the same person that creates The Tyger which offers so much mystery and intrigue. As we've said multiple times throughout this episode, The Tyger in itself is not presented negatively throughout. It has nuance, it has [00:30:00] the aspects of violence that we would be very familiar with in a present day. But it also offers you that sense of beauty and awe. The grey area in this is the questioning of whether The Tyger also brought joy to its creator. It's very evident from the lamb and the way that the poem is constructed that the creature brings joy to those around it. I mean even the description of the coat and it's being woolly and fluffy is very soft and in keeping with an almost nursery rhyme like feeling.

The Tyger by contrast doesn't offer that same sense of softness But if it comes from the same creator, the question is, what does that say about the creator, as opposed to what does it say about the creature? And as we've said time and time again, this is a reflective poem. It actually holds a mirror up to society at the time, to human creation, to divine creation.

And I think that grey area is what makes these poems so, so intriguing.

Joe: I couldn't agree more and I think the allusion to the fact that the speaker feels as [00:31:00] though the creator might actually regret this decision, might have created something that has not brought them joy, I think is another example of the fact that Blake is quite sympathetic to mistakes, he's quite sympathetic to human error.

He doesn't necessarily think that a person who has made a mistake and regrets it should be defined by that decision. And I think we can apply that to all kinds of different things in his contemporary moment. I mean, we're talking about the Industrial Revolution and we're talking about it as this great symbol of progress.

Well, Blake was very, very sensitive to the people who were left behind by that experience. So he sometimes kind of represents that kind of slightly regretful, almost reproachful voice by saying that, Yes. There has been a movement forwards, but some people have been left behind and therefore should that constitute a step forward at all There's clearly something in the zeitgeist around this period, maybe it is those massive political changes or scientific steps forward, because it's important to remember this poem is really not long before the publication of the novel Frankenstein, which of course is basically a novel about somebody who [00:32:00] comes to regret the decision they've made, somebody who feels overcome with power, and yet doesn't have the wisdom that normally we associate with someone who has that power.

So, I mean, there's so many layers to what Blake is doing here, but I think I'd like just to touch on. the use of questions in the poem because you mentioned The lamb and some of the lines you read from the lamb included questions And I think it's really important that listeners get this subtlety because we tend to think of innocence as something that Fades with time and with age and with experiences The idea that experience is somehow something that wipes the slate clean.

You become experience and therefore you are no longer innocent. That is not really Blake's conception of what experience means. And of course, the clue here is that these collections are published in a single volume, in fact, the full title of the collection was actually Songs of Innocent and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. So, again, he is looking to unify those two things rather than have one simply [00:33:00] succeed or eradicate the other. And you can see this theme all the way through his other work. And if you'll allow me, I'm no expert on this subject matter, but I'd just like to talk a little bit about a psychoanalytical interpretation of.

Blake's collection because some of the ideas of the renowned psychoanalyst Carl Jung I think are really really applicable here because Carl Jung talks about this process of individuation, the process of becoming the person you were meant to be in many ways. And Jung referred to this process of individuation as the integration of the immature psyche with life experience. And that word integration is crucial, not the removal, not the destruction of innocence, but the kind of Mediation of innocent ideas through a more worldly understanding of the world around you.

And again, if I just quote from Jung quickly, he said, wholeness is not achieved by cutting off of a portion of one's being, but by the integration of the contraries. And that word contrary, the same word that Blake use in the full title of this collection. So for me, and for listeners [00:34:00] who really want to sort of get into the bones of what Blake is doing here, what he's saying is that the process of growing older, the process of learning about the world around you is the marriage of your innocent ideas about the world with your experience of how the world actually functions.

Maiya: Absolutely. And what the lamb serves to do for The Tyger is to offer perspective for the speaker. Though they arrive as two contrast as opposed to what some people might assume, which is that the lamb makes The Tyger seem more fearful, more terrifying, more violent. It's actually the other way around. The lamb serves to soften the view of The Tyger , and the way in which Blake marries innocence with experience really offers a much more nuanced portrayal. I personally enjoy the poems of experience much more than I do the poems of because you can see that development.

And to add to that, and this is maybe more of just a general comment, I think it's really interesting that in the British education system, or at [00:35:00] least for me in the school that I went to, This collection is often taught to you, almost at the pivotal point at which you move from being a child to being a slightly more fully fledged adult.

I was taught it at 6th form, so that's really between the ages of 16 and 18. But I think it's really interesting that this comes at a point where Not only are you a child moving through forward to adulthood, but you're exploring poems that are very much about that process of growing up.

Joe: Yeah, I think absolutely. I mean, it's always interesting to see which texts really resonate with students of that age. I mean, I'm a tutor as well, and a lot of the times when we're, when I'm talking to students who are sort of 16, 17, 18, and they're engaging with texts that feature people who either could be their own age or certainly sort of are dealing with themes that are relevant to them.

They kind of feel more engaged in the material, unsurprisingly, of course, because it relates to their own lives, but in some ways they're almost at the worst age to deal with those things, because they don't have the benefit of retrospect, they can't look back on their [00:36:00] adolescent lives in their 20s, 30s or 40s and reflect upon those feelings, because those feelings are happening right there and then, I think it's a reminder that with texts that you didn't necessarily gel with as a teenager, especially from certain writers of renown, it's always worth giving them another go later in life because it could have been a you problem, not a them problem, I suppose I'll say.

Maiya: I could not agree more.

Joe: Now, unfortunately, Maiya, that's all we've got time for today. And as I've said earlier, we could talk about William Blake for many more hours, but if listeners want to continue learning about his poems and about his life, there are many, many resources available on the poemanalysis.com, especially Poetry+ subscribers who get bespoke and exclusive materials, such as the William Blake PDF in the PDF Learning Library.

Now, next week, we're going to be discussing Percy Shelley's poem, Ozymandias, and I cannot wait for that. Anyone who can't wait for that episode, we talked a little bit about the poem, In our earlier episode on William Butler Yeats The Second Coming. So if anyone wants to get a sneak peek of the conversation we're going to be having next week, I suggest they go and check out that episode.

In the meantime, we want to say thank you so much for the support on the podcast. And if [00:37:00] you haven't already done so, we would appreciate it if you could rate, review and recommend the podcast wherever you get them. But for now, it's goodbye from me.

Maiya: And goodbye from me and the team at Poemanalysis.com. Until next time!