Sunday, 8 June 2014
Ackroyd Quotes
"The last great religious poet in England."
"The very curve and cadence of his sentences are derived from the Bible."
"The very curve and cadence of his sentences are derived from the Bible."
Wednesday, 4 June 2014
Essay: Landscapes/Nature
Explore some of the ways poets have made use of landscapes and/or the natural world in their writing with reference to Daffodils and Blake's poems
The Romantic poets, particularly Blake and Wordsworth, were fascinated by the natural world. Both authors used pastoral landscapes to evoke joy, to create idyllic prelapsarian scenes only darkened by the coming Fall - the threat of urbanisation and the Industrial Revolution. As in Daffodils, Blake explores nature with extensive use of pathetic fallacy (specifically in poems such as Laughing Song and The Ecchoing Green) but the Londoner also depicts it with more nuance and ambiguity than Wordsworth. For the former, it sometimes seems that nature is completely shaped by the narrator, whose imagination projects onto the environment anything from desire to jealousy.
Perhaps the stereotypical Romantic portrayal of the natural world is shown in The Ecchoing Green. Simplicity often points to innocence and happiness in Blake's work, and in this poem simplicity is suggested by rhyming couplets, while its musicality stems from iambs and anapests. The skies are 'happy' and the 'birds of the bush/ Sing', anthropomorphic elements suggesting that nature is at one with humankind. Of course, in Daffodils the personification of nature is even more apparent, with a 'crowd' of daffodils 'dancing', Not only does the countryside seem alive but the poet seems to be part of the natural world too, the first simile comparing him to a cloud floating over vales and hills. Another similarity between Wordsworth and Blake is their use of the first-person, a typical feature of Romantic poetry, stressing individuality. Yet the plural pronoun - 'our' - is used in The Ecchoing Green to suggest community and harmony between nature and the young and the old. Clearly both poets are celebrating the rural lifestyle, therefore, although in slightly different ways, and even if Wordsworth was the only one with the financial means to live there.
However, the 'immense compression of meaning' (Harding) of Blake's work also suggests a threat to this way of life. When the sports come to an end is it a natural concession to the 'darkening' day, or does the present continuous verb suggest the impending threat of the Industrial Revolution? Is the green 'ecchoing' with the sounds of children's play, or reverberating with the noise of something lost? Blake probably intended both meanings, but part of the answer can perhaps be seen in London, the poem often paired with The Ecchoing Green.
This poem depicts the urban landscape which Blake knew so well. The opposite to Daffodils in many ways, it starts in exactly the same way: 'I wander'. However, it has a totally different meaning. For Wordsworth, the first-person pronoun brings individuality; in London it implies isolation, contrasting with The Ecchoing Green. For Wordsworth, wandering is a symbol of freedom; for Blake it shows that the narrator is not seeking to find injustice. But injustice is all the poet can hear, 'In every' being highlighted by the use of anaphora, while itself highlighting (through hyperbole) the ills of urban life. In contrast to the countryside, the city seems to shackle imagination and what little nature exists. For example, the 'chart'd street' is accompanied by the 'chart'd Thames' - even the river is constrained, perhaps in an allusion to Thomas Paine, Blake's contemporary, who wrote that 'Every chartered town is an aristocratic monopoly in itself'. Wordsworth actually wrote a similar poem - London, 1802 - which also cites Milton, a shared literary influence. 'It is common', G.K. Chesterton wrote, 'to connect Blake and Wordsworth because of their ballads about babies and sheep.'
However, he continued. 'They were utterly opposite. If Wordsworth were the Poet of Nature, Blake was specially the Poet of Anti Nature,' proceeding to argue that Blake set imagination against nature, and by imagination he meant the external images of things. This theory is supported by Blake's own annotations of Wordsworth's poetry, in which he wrote that 'Natural objects always did, and now do, weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination.' This may be hard to reconcile with the same poet claiming that 'nature is imagination itself', but it does demonstrate that Blake's use of landscapes and the natural world is more complex - perhaps also less positive - than it initially seems.
A Poison Tree illustrates a darker side of nature, and how the narrator can project their own feelings onto the environment. The Bard's wrath grows into a tree bearing poison fruit, an inversion of the Tree of Knowledge and the cross (as the illustration depicts).
The titular plant in Ah! Sun-flower, on the other hand, is a metaphor for yearning, 'seeking after that sweet golden clime' with sibilance emphasising the desire. Most importantly, the possessive 'my' shows that the heliotropic sunflower mirrors the narrator's emotions. Nature's ability to represent innocence and experience simultaneously is best seen in My Pretty Rose Tree, in which the author's rose becomes jealous after the poet turns away a flower. Its allegorical meaning is barely veiled, 'her' thorns often interpreted as an autobiographical account of an argument with Catherine Boucher. Whether a true account or not, it shows how the natural world is capable of beauty (in the flowers) and bitterness (symbolised by the thorns).
Blake uses the same flower, with its connotations of love, purity and Englishness, in The Sick Rose. It is corrupted by an 'invisible worm' in a poem full of sexual imagery, with a 'bed/ Of crimson joy.' The use of crimson is perhaps significant as a darker shade of red, demonstrating how its 'dark secret love' is a jealous, possessive type of lust. The same colour is used in Blake's illustration for Infant Joy, and despite Punter calling any attempt to see a dark side to the poem as 'perverse' not even this natural world is completely innocent. Art critic Jennifer Waller suggests that the angular and strained lower leaves suggest a 'hint of impending experience', while Blake's repeated used of 'befall' might also imply that the scene is Edenic in its complete sense - with the threat of the fall of man.
In conclusion, Blake's poetry displays both sides of nature. Drawing heavily on religious symbolism Blake paints scenes full of innocence , but as Ackroyd notices the 'possible deficiencies of Innocence itself' in Blake's oeuvre, so too is nature not without its darkness. Unlike Wordsworth's bright depiction of the natural world, in which the countryside influences the author, Blake's worlds are shaped by their narrators. This heavy use of pathetic fallacy and personification can create the idyllic settings typical of the Romantic poets, but also the jealousy, wrath and lust of Experience.
The Romantic poets, particularly Blake and Wordsworth, were fascinated by the natural world. Both authors used pastoral landscapes to evoke joy, to create idyllic prelapsarian scenes only darkened by the coming Fall - the threat of urbanisation and the Industrial Revolution. As in Daffodils, Blake explores nature with extensive use of pathetic fallacy (specifically in poems such as Laughing Song and The Ecchoing Green) but the Londoner also depicts it with more nuance and ambiguity than Wordsworth. For the former, it sometimes seems that nature is completely shaped by the narrator, whose imagination projects onto the environment anything from desire to jealousy.
Perhaps the stereotypical Romantic portrayal of the natural world is shown in The Ecchoing Green. Simplicity often points to innocence and happiness in Blake's work, and in this poem simplicity is suggested by rhyming couplets, while its musicality stems from iambs and anapests. The skies are 'happy' and the 'birds of the bush/ Sing', anthropomorphic elements suggesting that nature is at one with humankind. Of course, in Daffodils the personification of nature is even more apparent, with a 'crowd' of daffodils 'dancing', Not only does the countryside seem alive but the poet seems to be part of the natural world too, the first simile comparing him to a cloud floating over vales and hills. Another similarity between Wordsworth and Blake is their use of the first-person, a typical feature of Romantic poetry, stressing individuality. Yet the plural pronoun - 'our' - is used in The Ecchoing Green to suggest community and harmony between nature and the young and the old. Clearly both poets are celebrating the rural lifestyle, therefore, although in slightly different ways, and even if Wordsworth was the only one with the financial means to live there.
However, the 'immense compression of meaning' (Harding) of Blake's work also suggests a threat to this way of life. When the sports come to an end is it a natural concession to the 'darkening' day, or does the present continuous verb suggest the impending threat of the Industrial Revolution? Is the green 'ecchoing' with the sounds of children's play, or reverberating with the noise of something lost? Blake probably intended both meanings, but part of the answer can perhaps be seen in London, the poem often paired with The Ecchoing Green.
This poem depicts the urban landscape which Blake knew so well. The opposite to Daffodils in many ways, it starts in exactly the same way: 'I wander'. However, it has a totally different meaning. For Wordsworth, the first-person pronoun brings individuality; in London it implies isolation, contrasting with The Ecchoing Green. For Wordsworth, wandering is a symbol of freedom; for Blake it shows that the narrator is not seeking to find injustice. But injustice is all the poet can hear, 'In every' being highlighted by the use of anaphora, while itself highlighting (through hyperbole) the ills of urban life. In contrast to the countryside, the city seems to shackle imagination and what little nature exists. For example, the 'chart'd street' is accompanied by the 'chart'd Thames' - even the river is constrained, perhaps in an allusion to Thomas Paine, Blake's contemporary, who wrote that 'Every chartered town is an aristocratic monopoly in itself'. Wordsworth actually wrote a similar poem - London, 1802 - which also cites Milton, a shared literary influence. 'It is common', G.K. Chesterton wrote, 'to connect Blake and Wordsworth because of their ballads about babies and sheep.'
However, he continued. 'They were utterly opposite. If Wordsworth were the Poet of Nature, Blake was specially the Poet of Anti Nature,' proceeding to argue that Blake set imagination against nature, and by imagination he meant the external images of things. This theory is supported by Blake's own annotations of Wordsworth's poetry, in which he wrote that 'Natural objects always did, and now do, weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination.' This may be hard to reconcile with the same poet claiming that 'nature is imagination itself', but it does demonstrate that Blake's use of landscapes and the natural world is more complex - perhaps also less positive - than it initially seems.
A Poison Tree illustrates a darker side of nature, and how the narrator can project their own feelings onto the environment. The Bard's wrath grows into a tree bearing poison fruit, an inversion of the Tree of Knowledge and the cross (as the illustration depicts).
The titular plant in Ah! Sun-flower, on the other hand, is a metaphor for yearning, 'seeking after that sweet golden clime' with sibilance emphasising the desire. Most importantly, the possessive 'my' shows that the heliotropic sunflower mirrors the narrator's emotions. Nature's ability to represent innocence and experience simultaneously is best seen in My Pretty Rose Tree, in which the author's rose becomes jealous after the poet turns away a flower. Its allegorical meaning is barely veiled, 'her' thorns often interpreted as an autobiographical account of an argument with Catherine Boucher. Whether a true account or not, it shows how the natural world is capable of beauty (in the flowers) and bitterness (symbolised by the thorns).
Blake uses the same flower, with its connotations of love, purity and Englishness, in The Sick Rose. It is corrupted by an 'invisible worm' in a poem full of sexual imagery, with a 'bed/ Of crimson joy.' The use of crimson is perhaps significant as a darker shade of red, demonstrating how its 'dark secret love' is a jealous, possessive type of lust. The same colour is used in Blake's illustration for Infant Joy, and despite Punter calling any attempt to see a dark side to the poem as 'perverse' not even this natural world is completely innocent. Art critic Jennifer Waller suggests that the angular and strained lower leaves suggest a 'hint of impending experience', while Blake's repeated used of 'befall' might also imply that the scene is Edenic in its complete sense - with the threat of the fall of man.
In conclusion, Blake's poetry displays both sides of nature. Drawing heavily on religious symbolism Blake paints scenes full of innocence , but as Ackroyd notices the 'possible deficiencies of Innocence itself' in Blake's oeuvre, so too is nature not without its darkness. Unlike Wordsworth's bright depiction of the natural world, in which the countryside influences the author, Blake's worlds are shaped by their narrators. This heavy use of pathetic fallacy and personification can create the idyllic settings typical of the Romantic poets, but also the jealousy, wrath and lust of Experience.
The School Boy Context
We should all appreciate the irony of rote learning Blake's poetry for an exam. He would have hated it!
There is some interesting context around The School Boy. Blake did not actually go to school as a boy, although W. B. Yeats tells of later study at Westminster Abbey:
As it was impossible to tell whether you were being observed, Bentham hoped that every inmate would be forced to behave - that he had discovered 'a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind'. Whether Blake was consciously referring to it or not, it seems a perfect example of the 'mind-forg'd manacles' which he hated so much.
Blake leant out from a scaffolding where he sat at work and flung a Westminster student from a cornice, whither he had climbed the better to tease him. The boy fell heavily upon the stone floor, and Blake went off and laid a formal complaint before the Dean.'Under a cruel eye outworn' could also be an allusion to Jeremy Bentham's panopticon. Panopticon, or the Inspection House was published in 1791, around the same time as Blake was writing his Songs of Experience. This was a design for a circular building in which one central watchman could observe everyone in the institution, and could be used for any type of institution: prisons, lazarettos, work-houses, factories and schools.
As it was impossible to tell whether you were being observed, Bentham hoped that every inmate would be forced to behave - that he had discovered 'a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind'. Whether Blake was consciously referring to it or not, it seems a perfect example of the 'mind-forg'd manacles' which he hated so much.
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