WILLIAM BLAKE:

INNOCENCE, EXPERIENCE, ORGANIZED INNOCENCE

William Blake (1757-1827) was the first Romantic poet and painter and believed that significant change in societal institutions: government, church, education cannot occur until and unless man alters his perception. Reform occurs in the individual and not in institutions.

His most famous books of poetry The Songs of Innocence (1789) and The Songs of Experience (1794) are about to disparate perspectives of the world, of nature, of humans, of God, and of society.  He labeled these perspectives “the two contrary states of the human soul” through which we all pass.  He lamented that many adults go to their grave within and of the innocent or experienced perspective. 

“As a Man is, so he sees…As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers”

 "Without contraries, there is no progression."  -William Blake

“When reason denies the validity of intuitive or visionary knowledge or when moral obedience is fostered at the expense of the will, strength, or intelligence, the creative interplay of contraries is short-circuited and Man is alienated from Himself.”

The poems in the innocent perspective evoke a hopeful, reverent view of nature, humans, and society as unified, coherent, and balanced and closely influenced by a benevolent God. A providential universe.

The poems in the experienced perspective evoke an irreverent, cynical, disillusioned view of nature, humans, and society as imbalanced toward destruction, self-destruction, and evil- all influenced by a vindictive and unforgiving God. An improvidential universe.

While the poems in the Songs of Experience have more energy complexity and force, William Blake did not favor one view over another.  Rather, he hoped that readers would understand the construction and self-ironic deconstruction of both perspectives through both the poems themselves and the “call and response” relationship between the companion poems in both texts.  For example, “The Divine Image” Song of Innocence celebrates mercy, pity, peace, and love as embodying the virtue’s of God while “The Human Abstract” Song of Experience laments that pity and mercy would not exist without inequalities, injustice, and despair.  Both perspectives have their merits, but Blake wanted you to travel panoramically through both perspectives to what he refers to as “organized innocence.”

“Organized innocence” is a perspective that sees, values and revalues the innocent perspective of valuing unity, coherence, and benevolence in nature and man through the lens of the irreverent, experienced perspective.  It does not ignore the failings of humans and their institutions, nor the destructive powers of nature and nature’s God, but seeks to avoid any contribution to human / societal failings.  The "organized innocent perceiver avoids dwelling too long on the seeming imperfections in nature, humans, and God.  It is an informed innocence. 

The best examples of “organized innocence” in the poems themselves is the “nurse’s perspective” of the children playing at dusk in the “Nurse’s Song,” yet, more importantly, Blake wanted the perspective of organized innocence to rest within the perspective of the reader after” traveling” through both the Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience. 

Nurse's Song

by William Blake.

When the voices of children are heard on the green,

And laughing is heard on the hill,

My heart is at rest within my breast,

And everything else is still.

"Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,

And the dews of night arise;

Come, come, leave off play, and let us away,

Till the morning appears in the skies."

"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,

And we cannot go to sleep;

Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,

And the hills are all covered with sheep."

"Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,

And then go home to bed."

The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laughed,

And all the hills echoed.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

1800:  50,000 prostitutes in London  5% of the population

1802: CHILD LABOR ACT:  limited work for children under 12 to 12 and 1/2 hours a day with two hours for meals and education.  This law was poorly enforced.

Children were forced to sit alone in mine shafts for twelve hours a day to make sure a mineshaft door remained open.

Average life span of chimney sweepers is 23 due to cancer of scrotum contracted by cleaning chimneys with no clothes on.  Many sweepers developed deformed limbs from the tight spaces in which they spent hours. 

Sweep masters lit fires at bottom of chimneys. Promised plum pudding at the top, or beat uncooperative little sweepers.  It took sixth months of sweeping for children to develop hardened calluses on knees and elbows and hands, so they were driven hard in the first six months. 

1817:  Parliament required chimney sweeps to go to church on Sundays and masters found this to be an unacceptable for they had to then bathe and clothe the children in clean clothes. 

1827  William Blake is buried in a dissenter’s cemetery in Burnhill Fields. London.

William Blake : Ah! Sunflower

    Ah! sunflower, weary of time,

    Who countest the steps of the sun,

    Seeking after that sweet golden clime

    Where the traveler’s journey is done;

    Where the youth pined away with desire,

    And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,

    Arise from their graves and aspire;

    Where my sunflower wishes to go.

-William Blake

William Blake - 1757-1827

To those who Dwell in Realms of day.                      need experienced view to value divine  

“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”

“Without Contraries there is no Progression”

“Prisons are Built with the stones of Law, Brothels with Bricks of Religion”

“Alexander Pope’s God presided over a monstrous universe in which all the apparent evils were necessarily for the best (“partial evil serves a Universal Good…not understood”)…that all suffering was deserved punishment,”  but William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” and the Songs of Experience reject that his God could / would / should preside over  this “monstrous universe.”

William Blake believed that significant change cannot occur “by step by step improvements in man or his institutions within the existing order or by violent conversion to a new form of the present institutional thinking; rather, Blake believed that significant change can only occur through radical regeneration of each person’s own power to imagine” and perceive.  (Johnson and Grant xxiv)

“As a Man is, so he sees…As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers”

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          1.     Take one Song of Innocence and one “innocent moment” in Dangerous Lives and one Song of Experience and one experienced moment in Dangerous Lives and write about the two “contrary states / perspectives of the human soul” through which we all pass.  Articulate the “cleansed perspective” achieved by passing through each perspective of the world. Analyze how both the Innocent perspective and Experienced perspective are developed and criticized in order to support the assertion that “without contraries there is no progression.”

-quote from each poem and moment in the novel

-paraphrase moments from the film

1. Pair up three couplets (or thee individual excerpts) from Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man with three Proverbs of Hell from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell so that the pairings create a dialectic: an exchange of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation of perspective and knowledge. 

Write about the two opposing philosophies in the pairings and how they articulate a more complete view of things when read together.

         3.     By citing three passages from the novel The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys analyze how both the Innocent perspective and Experienced perspective are developed and criticized in order to support the assertion that “without contraries there is no progression.”

1. Select at least one scene from the novel and the correlative moment in the film and analyze the similarities and differences and answer why the director chose to keep the same dialogue, action, tone, and other elements while modifying, adding, and subtracting other dialogue, action, tone, and other elements.