The Year of the 'Tyger'

Looking good for his age: Blake's 250th Birthday

As a second year English student, it is slightly embarrassing to admit that I encountered William Blake for the first time only last term. Unlike many of my fellow English-ites, I hadn’t studied him at A level, and for one reason or another, I have never quite found the time to read his poems, busying myself instead with frittering away my mornings (and afternoons) in front of tacky day time TV shows. The theme tune to ‘60 Minute Makeover’ still sends chills down my spine as memories of putting work off flood my mind. However, like many of us, I was familiar with that oft quoted phrase, “Tyger tyger burning bright”. But until now, I had simply questioned the rather odd spelling (something which baffles me to this day), knowing very little about the man himself.

Then came the fateful summer term of last year. Not only did Blake feature heavily on my reading list, but a trip home one weekend turned into a Blakean lecture fest at my local arts centre. As thrilled as I was that my mother had purchased tickets for such an event (not least because it turned into quite the English reunion with a fellow Yorker), pessimism soon kicked in. Wasn’t Blake a children’s poet? Didn’t he write cutesy poems about babies and animals and flowers? The collection is called Songs of Innocence after all. And the answer to these questions is, at least in part, a resounding “yes”. But this is simply part of Blake’s charm.

This is all well and good, but you may be questioning why, with Christmas fast approaching, providing plenty of festive fuel for the blogger’s flame, I am writing about an eighteenth century poet. Blake’s 250th birthday was last week (28th November), and in the light of recent studies of his poetry, much debate has kicked off about his work. Indeed, my own experience of previously-stated-Blake-lecture-of-last-summer was sprinkled with comments about Blake’s creation of gay female figures in the illustrations accompanying his most famous collection, Songs of Innocence and Experience – something of which I am rather doubtful. It seems a little tenuous to jump to such a conclusion just from illustrations of androgynous figures. Admittedly the reader is left unsure whether many figures are male or female (as they lack the bodily traits of either sex), but it seems ridiculous that this should lead to speculation about the sexual persuasion of characters from Blake’s pen. Overstepping the mark, much?

Another of his most renowned poetic achievements is the poem, ‘Jerusalem’. But for me, this is just another example of our miscomprehension of Blake – it is surely rather odd that a poem about the “dark Satanic mills” of Industrial Britain (which encapsulate ideas of moral, social and religious corruption during the social upheaval of the Industrial Revolution) has provided the lyrics for one of our best-loved hymns, featuring at weddings, christenings and the like. Is this really what Blake intended for such a revolutionary poem? Perhaps not. Yet our understanding of Blake seems to be filled with such contradictions and misrepresentations.

The recent Tate Britain exhibition of previously un-exhibited drawings by Blake has been extremely exciting for all Blake enthusiasts out there (and there are many, trust me), revealing 13 new lines of verse. This discovery has given rise to more insistence of Blake’s wish to urge contemporary readers to realise the malignant influence of lax morality and a consumerist society. And yes, Blake is a deeply moral and political poet, ruminating industrial capitalism and the sins, or “mind forged manacles” (‘London’), of contemporary society. But does this have to be all Blake is famed for? I seem to have done a U-turn - what about those cutesy babies and flowers, I suddenly find myself crying?

Blake is undoubtedly a figure surrounded by speculation: sexual, religious, political and philosophical. Indeed, read one of my essays from last term and even I bought into the idea of Blake’s commentary on these things. But reading Songs of Innocence again, away from the glare of the lecture theatre and fear of lacking a “clever” interpretation of the text, the thing that stands out the most is Blake’s powerful and at times, moving, evocation of the innocent pleasures of childhood. In a world where teachers can be punished for naming a teddy bear wrongly in a country not their own, and almost every play shown in the Drama Barn and elsewhere seems to tackle drugs, sex or other unsavoury topics, I for one could do with reading about the simple pleasures of youth.

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