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M. Krishna Rao
0409069
Mr Nikhil Yadav
Paper 6; Tutorial 1
November 2011

Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience is both a satire on contemporary English society
as well as an attempt to create a personal mythology.

William Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both poetry and
the visual arts of the Romantic Age, although he was largely unrecognised during his life
time. Blakes work Songs of Innocence was published in 1789, followed by Songs of
Experience in 1793 and the combined edition that was published the following year bearing
the title Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing the binary states of the human soul.
Blake published these in the form of poetic sketches that incorporated poetry as well as
artistry into one concise recitation of his thoughts. This paper shall try to explore the poets
view point on the English Society through the construction of his personal mythology.
It may be interesting to note that Blake had nothing but contempt for ritualistic
mystery and hidden knowledge. He recognised these two attributes as being the essential
features of priest craft and the repressive power of what he called State Religion, which he
associated with the notorious State tricksters. Against the closed texts and the careful
regulation of knowledge and power which he took to be essential to state trickery, Blake
offered a series of open texts. As Shernaz Cama further elaborates,
the facade of late eighteenth century Reason and stability hid an England in turmoil.
The early eighteenth century had believed that science could produce a blueprint of

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the universe and economic progress would end social problemsBlakes movement
away from the secular stream of thought to the sacred tradition was an attempt to find
synthesis in a fragmenting world.
His belief that Christianity advocated the repression of natural desires and inhibited earthly
joys led him to create his own personal mythology.
Blakes usual religious posture, then, is not submission but protest. His poetry is a
sustained denunciation of the cruelties, mental and corporeal, perpetuated in the name of God
by those who claim to be doing his will. This can be seen in the Garden of Love from The
Songs of Experience;
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
(Pg. 77; lines 1-4)
In the above lines, Blake critiques the interfering priesthood and the power that has robbed
the child of his innocent affections. To him the Church, much like the King and State, relies
on such powers to ensure obedience. He also utilises this mythology to explain his belief that
without contraries there is no progression. This is evident in The Songs of Innocence and
Experience through the dichotomy that he sets between the innocent thought of the child
versus the experienced reasoned thought of man.
The Introduction to both the collections utilises a type of invocation of the muse. In
The Songs of Innocence, the muse is a child on a cloud, who laughing said to me, pipe a
song about a Lamb. The muse figure in this poem is a carefree child wishing to be pleased

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by the piper. The child also relates to Christ, the Lamb of God. This seems to portray Blakes
belief that infants and children share in the divine,
everything around them is beautiful and true. This innocence is not the same as
ignorance, i.e. being too young to know that the world can be a dark, threatening
place.
(Pg. 1)
On the other hand, the muse in The Songs of Experience introduces a different mood.
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, and Future sees
Calling the lapsed Soul.
the first difference to be noted is that this invocation is not a request; rather it is more like a
command. The second distinction is that a person cannot be innocent who has seen the Past,
Present, and Future. Finally, a lapsed Soul refers to a soul that has fallen from the truth.
The Songs of Innocence and Experience sets up the two polar opposites of the human
condition. Blakes poetry is about human souls quest for truth and self-realisation. The effort
is mans, man must cultivate the imagination-the divine spark within- for during moments of
creativity or inspiration or poetry, truth and vision is revealed. The innocence of the child for
Blake is, then, the closest that a human can come to divinity. Songs of Innocence portrays
this, while on the other hand, Songs of Experience portrays the view of issues through the
restricting lens of rationality, hence, the loss of innocence.
It is interesting to note that Blakes personal mythology permeates even his critiquing
of English society. The poem Chimney sweeper from both the books shows this. While in
both Innocence and Experience, the Chimney Sweeper suffers the same fate, in Innocence

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there is still a belief in the divinity and a deep human sympathy available companionship of
all the little sweeps. The sufferings of the world are temporary, for if the human father sells
the child, the real Father or Christ is still there at hand to protect and remove to a perfect
world.
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opend the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
(Pg. 67; lines 13-16)
The above lines show the innocence that is reclaimed through divine intervention. In contrast
to the Chimney Sweeper in Innocence the Chimney Sweeper in Experience ironically has
both his parents living, but suffers from their exploitation instead of enjoying their care. He is
the only source of material profit for them and is fully aware of his tragedy. This child has
been abused by authority, and made a victim of cruelty and exploitation by a society whose
trinity is God, Priest and King. There is no recourse to faith and companionship, the
authoritarian divinity here is the opposite of Jesus the Saviour. The Chimney Sweeper in
Experience takes on a satirical quality when compared to the one in Innocence; it directly
implicates the family, church and King as the cause of oppression.
An interesting thing to note in order to understand Blakes critiquing of English
society, is through studying the pictures that accompany the poems. In The Songs of
Innocence the settings depicted in the pictures are shown to be pastoral, this presents an
image in direct contrast to that of the imagery of commerce and industrialisation, repressed
sexuality and fettered thought that are shown in The Songs of Experience. Pictorially the

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vegetation that decorates the pages of The Songs of Innocence, are shown to be decaying and
rotting, in turn signifying the loss of imagination due to the process of industrialisation. The
symbolism that forms a dominant part of The Songs of Innocence are The Child, The Father
and Christ while that in Experience is The Church, King and State. In Innocence the child
is surrounded by others who share his sorrows and joys while in Experience he is left alone.
To conclude, throughout The Songs of Innocence and Experience Blake uses the
opposing views to critique the loss of imagination due to the process of commerce driven
industrialisation. His views on religion, is that of pure faith rather than the ritualistic and
unquestioning following that was prevalent at the time in England. Blakes personal
mythology that believed that art and imagination was a way of being closer to god was
followed closely by him; indeed The Songs of Innocence and Experience were written, drawn
and finally printed in his backyard at a time when the print industry had picked up in
England. This in turn shows the intensity with which he believed in his own philosophy.

Bibliography:
1. Ed. Debajan Sengupta and Shernaz Cama; Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge;
Worldview Critical Edition 2008.
2.

The Cambridge Companion to Blake; Cambridge University Press 2000

3. Price, Martin; The Vision of Innocence.