Johns Hopkins University Press Rice University

Blake's Other Tigers, and "" Author(s): Rodney M. Baine and Mary R. Baine Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 15, No. 4, Nineteenth Century (Autumn, 1975), pp. 563-578 Published by: Rice University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/450011 Accessed: 27-10-2015 07:27 UTC

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This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 's Other Tigers, and "The Tyger"

MARY R. and RODNEY M. BAINE

Although 's best-known tiger,the Tyger of Songs ofExperience, has been viewedas a salutary force, like revolutionaryenergy or even Christ militant, such misrepresentationsdistort or even radically misinterpretBlake's beast. They ignore the visual design of the animal, its traditional symbolism,and the symbolismof its opposite, . Most important,they ignore the symbolism suggested by Blake's numerous othertigers. As Blake scholars have now firmlyestablished, Blake's illum- inatedpoems are a compositeart;' butmost critics have written about "The Tyger" as if theywere studyingit in some recentedition of Blake's complete works,without the benefitof his visual design. Some who have examined this design have found the Tyger an "artistic failure." 2 Others have felt impelled to discover there redemptivequalities which theyevidently thought implied in the verses.3Most, however, see Blake's Tygeras a foolishand uglybeast. The brutalmuzzle, with vestigial nose and tinyears, is tightlyjoined to a thick-setbody and placed within a settingof rank or dead vegetation:a single treeat the righthas put forththree branches which,now dead, punctuatethe poem; thistree is joined at thetop of thedesign by weeds sprouting up fromthe bottom left. As JohnGrant has suggested,"The factthat the treeis distinctlystriped in some versionsshows that it is the vegetableequivalent of the Tyger."4 Indeed in one copy (BritishMuseum Copy T) theTyger's right hind leg is indistinguishablefrom the vegetationof the tree. The temptationto ignore this design is understandable.Having come to know thepoem throughthe verses alone, we have imagined "fearfulsymmetry." However, Blake did not show us herethe tiger's frighteningfangs and claws; he obviouslywanted us to see his Tyger

'See especiallyNorthrop Frye, "Poetry and Design in William Blake," Discussions of William Blake, ed. John E. Grant(Boston, 1961),pp. 44-49,and Blake's Visionary FormsDramatic, ed. David V. Erdmanand JohnE. Grant,(Princeton, 1970), passim. 2For example, Coleman 0. Parsons, "Blake's 'Tyger' and Eighteenth-Century Animal Pictures," The Art Quarterly,31 (1968), 310. 3See John E. Grant's able rebuttalof Wicksteed'sand Erdman'sviews in "The Art and Argumentof 'The Tyger,' " Discussions of William Blake, pp. 76-81. 4Grant,p. 79.

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 564 BLAKE'S TIGERS not only as fearfulbut as ugly and stupid. A similarconflation of verseand design occurs in Jerusalem6: here the lines suggestthat 's Spectreis wolf-like;in theillumination we see insteada bat-like figure.As David Erdmanremarks, "Whether the is bat,wolf, or man . . . dependson how themind sees it or him.''1The Tygeris an alternativeimage of the Spectre. Blake could have made the image of his Tyger one of .He did in factendow with baredfangs the tigerwhich in 1802 he drewand engravedfor William Hayley's "The Elephant"; but this tigeris partlyHayley's creation,and it is a physical tiger, lackingany symbolicvalue.6 Even so, it has thesame stupidand ugly profileas theTyger. In 1807Blake evencreated a terrifyingStubbsian tigerin a watercolorillustration for the expulsion scene in Paradise Lost, Book XI. 184-189:

The Bird of Jove,stoopt fromhis aerie tour, Two Birds of gayestplume beforehim drove: Down froma Hill the Beast thatreigns in Woods, FirstHunter then,pursu'd a gentlebrace, Goodliest of all the Forrest,Hart and Hinde;7

Blake annotatedhis versionof thisexpulsion: "SATAN now awakes Sin, Death, & Hell, to celebratewith him thebirth of War & Misery: while the Lion seizes theBull, theTiger theHorse, theVulture and the Eagle contend for the Lamb."8 Although Milton himselfmay have intendedthe change in the animals to signal merelynature fallenbecause of man's fall,Blake had long before1807 developed his mythin which the fallenor brutalizedanimals symbolizeprimarily the fallenstate of man himself.Since Milton's lion and eagle alone were too noble in Blake's symbolismto exemplifyman's, or even Nature's degeneration,Blake added the unambiguous, bestial tiger and vultureso thatthe degenerationwould be unmistakable. Like Lavater and Swedenborg,Blake saw the tigeras cruel and visionless,with a retractednose indicatingspiritual insensitivity. As Lavater remarkedconcerning the tiger,"The fiery,sharp-angled, eyes, the broad flat nose, or what is analogous to the nose, and,

5David V. Erdman, "America:New Expanses," Blake's VisionaryForms, p. 92. 6In The Note-Bookof WilliamBlake Called theRossetti Manuscript (1935, rpt. New York, 1970). 7The Student'sMilton, ed. FrankAllen Patterson,revised ed. (New York, 1936),p. 337. 8The Poetryand Prose of WilliamBlake, ed. David V. Erdman(Garden City,1970), p. 662. Subsequentquotations fromBlake will be based upon thisedition; but forease of reference,citations will preferplate and line numbersto page numbers.

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MARY R. AND RODNEY M. BAINE 565 expecially,the line of themouth, all betokenthe fearfully brutal and cruel."9Even moreappositely, Emanuel Swedenborgpointed out the correspondencebetween the brutal, animal sensesand thoseof fallen man: "The natural Man, who is become sensual by Evils and consequentFalses, in thespiritual World in theLight of Heaven does not appear as a Man, but as a Monster, also with a Nose re- tracted... because theNose correspondsto thePerception of Truth: He also cannotbear a Ray of heavenlyLight, but what is like thatof a Coal-fire."'0 If many Blake criticshave ignored the visual design for "The Tyger," they have also ignored the traditionalsymbolism of the animal. In thepoetic and artistictradition of theWestern World the tigerhas consistentlysymbolized bloodthirsty cruelty." Although occasionally poets like Shakespeareor Milton utilized the beast to suggestonly untamable fierceness, they generally used him tosuggest savagecruelty, never to connotesuch noble qualities as thelion often symbolized.For Shakespeare the tigerwas a favoritesymbol for human depravity.Thus Regan and Goneril were "Tigers, not daughters."'12In Paradise Lost as Satan descendsfrom archangel to serpent,he brieflyassumes the guise of a lion, but then quickly degeneratesto the bloodthirstytiger and the venomous toad. Blake critics who see redemptivequalities in the Tyger have, however,done worse than confound the tigerwith the lion. They have confusedthe tiger with the lamb. Thus theyhave ignoredin the Ars Poetica, the most frequentlyquoted artisticauthority of the eighteenthcentury, Horace's warningagainst thepoet's mixinghis animals so that,in ChristopherSmart's translation (1767), "the tame should associatewith the savage: nor thatserpents should be coupled withbirds, lambs withtigers."'3 Henry Fuseli, who probablyhad his friendBlake's "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" in mind,insisted even morestrongly that artists must not confuse their different symbolism: "Wereman and man as easilydiscriminated as thelamb and thetiger, thePhysiognomist's would be a useless science;but since bothlamb

9JohnCaspar Lavater,Essays on Physiognomy,designed to Promotethe Knowledge and the Love of Mankind, trans,Henry Hunter (London, 1789-1798),II, 172. '?Emanuel Swedenborg,The Wisdomof the Angels concerningDivine Love and Divine Wisdom(London, 1788),p. 216. "See RodneyM. Baine, "Blake's 'Tyger':the Nature of the Beast," PQ, 46 (1967),488- 498. A more completeexamination of the naturalists'views is Coleman 0. Parsons, "Tygersbefore Blake," SEL, 8 (1968), 572-592. '2KingLear, IV, ii. 40. 13 The Worksof Horace, tran.C. Smart(New York,1800), III,379. See Caroline Goad, Horace in the English Literatureof the EighteenthCentury (1918; rpt. New York, 1967),p. 10.

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 566 BLAKE'S TIGERS and tigermay dwell in human frames,he surelydeserved our thanks, who points themout to us beforewe wound theone or sinkbeneath the other."'4 This confusion of lamb and tiger is difficultto understand,for the lamb is opposed to the tigerwithin the poem itself:"Did he who made theLamb make thee?"(E, p. 25). Of course thelamb symbolizeshuman innocenceand Christ,the Lamb ofGod. Such a symbolhad beenuniversal within the Christian tradition from the timeof Revelation.The lamb symnbolizedfor Blake not only all thatis sacrificialor innocentin nature;it also embodiedthe quality of divinitywhich man can attain as well as emulate.The identityof child, lamb, and Christin "The Lamb" he dramaticallyestablished: "I a child, 8c thou a lamb,/ We are called by his name" (E, p. 9). Elsewhere in Songs of Innocence he identifiedGod with Christ: whereverGod is mentionedin theverse, Christ is shownin thedesign. For theonly human God is Christ.In his 140uses of thelamb image Blake consistentlyutilized the lamb as a symbolof all thatis divinein man. On the other hand, nowhere did he create a tiger which reinforcesthe suggestionthat the Tyger symbolizessome aspect of Christ,or of any otherbenign force. Even if we ignore the design and the continuing sweep of this traditionalsymbolism of the tiger and thelamb, then familiar to every poetand reader,we findthe same tigersymbolism throughout Blake's work.Somehow in theexegesis of Blake's Tyger,Blake's othertigers have eitherbeen completely overlooked or veryexclusively examined. Evidentlyno one has ever carefullysurveyed and analyzed them. Tigers appear in Blake's writingsno less than thirty-sixtimes, or forty-sevenifone countseach incidenceof theword in "The Tyger" in its etchedand manuscriptforms.'5 Examination of these tigers reveals that Blake employed the symbol in traditionalmanner. Occasionallythey represent the fiercest wild beastsor, specifically, are tigersof wrath.16 But generallyin this fallen world of experience Blake's tigers symbolize cruel rapacity. Nowhere short of the Apocalypsedo they,like all theother redeemed animals, suggest the noble or divinequalities whichsome criticssee in theTyger of Songs of Experience.

14"Advertisement," in Lavater,Essays on Physiognomy,I, Sig. A [2] recto.Blake en- gravedsome of theplates forthis edition. Fuseli's insertedadvertisement was probably writtenabout the same timeas Hunter's Preface,which is dated 24 December 1798. '5A Concordanceto the Writingsof William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman (Ithaca, 1967), II, 1922, 1978. '61n , when leads her fatherinto the forests,"where wild beastsresort," "fromher cries the tygers fled" (E, p. 281). The tigeris in fearlesscompanyin NightIX of The Four Zoas: "Whereverthe Eagle has Explord or Lion or Tygertrod" (E, p. 372).

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MARY R. AND RODNEY M. BAINE 567

The tigersso far selectedfor notice by Blake criticshave been a special group,Blake's tigersof wrath. Thus in his articleon theTyger in his Blake Dictionary, S. Foster Damon oversimplified,"The TYGER is Wrath." "He is thefallen ," he suggested,"when Love has turnedto Hate; he is (revolution).'' 7 It is upon these tigersof wraththat Paley and othershave concentrated,'"especially upon theirassociation with Orc and revolution.These tigersof wrath have caused most of the confusion about Blake's symbol. In the paradoxical "Proverbsof Hell" in The Marriageof Heaven and Hell, Blake wrote: "The tygersof wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction"(E, p. 36). Obviously thewrath symbolized here by the tigercontrasts an extremeof energyor passion withsheer reason em- bodied in thehorse of instruction,which Blake evidentlyassociated with Swift'scontrolled and rationalHouyhnhnms. Blake's coiltrast of the tigersof wrathwith the horses of instructionhas misledmany critics to interpretBlake's tigers-not only ill The Marriage of Heaven and Hell butelsewhere-as salutaryor evenheroic because in The Marriage the tigeris identifiedwith energy,or the passions, which Blake,being here"of theDevil's party,"praised. Throughout The Marriage Blake was indeed defendingthe passions fromthe attacksof extremerationalists and championing themas necessary forfull life and vision.Though he paradoxicallyoveremphasized this comparativelydisparaged aspect of man's personality,he did not advocate the abdication of reason in favor of man's complete dominationby thepassions, certainlynot bywrath. Moreover Blake herecarefully specified only one quality of the tiger:he therebydi- vestedhim of the pejorativequalities traditionallyevoked by the image. In The Marriageof Heaven and Hell Blake reliedindeed upon animal examples to suggestor reinforcemany of his ideas and their implications;but manyof theseanimals lack fullsymbolic value. By theirvariety they seem to exemplifyvariations in men's natures. The tigersof wrathare furtherdeveloped in Europe and The Book ofAhania. In bothpoems thetiger symbolizes not merelyenergy, but the passions which, when uncontrolled,become cruel and malevo- lent. In Europe thevisionless " of ,"in which the femalewill and rationalforces dominate, compels thepassions into their uncontrolledform-the raging violence of Orc. When Orc

17S. FosterDamon, A Blake Dictionary(Providence, 1965), p. 413. '8MortonPaley, Energy and theImagination: a Studyin theDevelopment of Blake's Thought (Oxford,1970), pp. 30-60and passim; Hazard Adamsrefers also to one tiger (from Visions of the Daughtersof ) in his William Blake: A Reading of the ShorterPoems (Seattle,1963), p. 73.

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 568 BLAKE'S TIGERS finallybursts out in all his furyin France as the Revolution, his passions do not reawakento vision,but begin corporealwar charac- terizedby wrath,cruelty, and bloodshed:

The furiousterrors flew around! On golden chariotsraging, with wheels dropping with blood; The Lions lash theirwrathful tails! The Tigers couch upon the prey& suck theruddy tide.... (15:4-8)

Similarly,in The Book of , published afterthe Reign of Terrorand therise and fallof Robespierre, Blake dramatizedthrough the fate of thwartedpassions and employed the tigeras a symbol of tyrannizingemotions. Here Fuzon appears as a Moses figureoffering to lead his people fromthe domination of repressive reason;but like his Biblical and Frenchcounterparts,19 he degenerates as soon as he attemptsto set up his own tyrannyof thepassions devoid of reason:

While Fuzon his tygersunloosing Thought slain by his wrath. I am God! said he, eldestof things!(3:36-39)

The tigershere released represent the visionless cruelty of the passions isolated into sheerwrath such as Blake evidentlysaw in theTerror and thefollowers of Robespierre.As theimmediate death of Fuzon at thehands of Urizen suggests,isolated wrath brings not thereturn of vision but thecruelty of the tigerand eventuallymakes way fora far morerepressive tyranny. One recallsfrom The PreludeWordsworth's view of Paris afterthe September massacres: "defenseless/ As a fear- hauntedwood whereTygers roam."20 The transitionfrom the tigersof wrathto the tigersof malicious crueltyis in Blake naturaland inevitable:isolated passions, working reasonless,naturally become furious and cruel.This tigerof cruelty is Blake's usual, bestial tiger,as it is the conventionaltiger from the earliesttraditions of Westernliterature. Thus Blake's firsttiger, in

19SeeDavid V. Erdman,Blake: Prophet against Empire,revised ed. (Garden City, 1969),pp. 314-315. 20ThePrelude, or Growthof a Poet's Mind,ed. Ernestde Selincourt,2d ed.,revised by Helen Darbishire(1959; rpt.Oxford, 1965), p. 371,n. The JohnCarter transcription of c. 1817-1819here cited is even more interestingthan the standardversion used by Erdman,Blake: Prophet,p. 197, n. 43.

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"Samson," from , is linked with the wolf and suggestscruelty. Dalila, in an effortto elicitSamson's secret,accuses him of being morecruel than thewild beasts,as "worse thanwolves and tygers"(E, p. 435). In 1789,in his Songs ofInnocence, Blake again employedthe tiger as a symbol of violence and bloodthirstiness.In "Night," as in "Samson," the tigerand the wolf are predacious, noxious beasts. Their destructivenessis emphasized by their opposition to the innocent,defenseless sheep which theykill forprey-symbolically, the life-givingqualities which are their opposite. Here Blake carefullydiscriminated between the vicious wolfand tigerand there- deemedlion whichin "New worlds"guards "o'er thefold" (E, p. 14). If Blake wanted to ennoble the passions with the image of a wild animal, he ordinarilyused the King of Beasts to do so. Like thetigers of "Night," Blake's subsequenttigers are, except for the apocalyptictigers of the major propheticbooks, predatoryand cruel.Particularly vicious are a special groupof these tigers-Blake's tigersof selfhood.These tigersappear firstin Tiriel. Ijim sees his brotherTiriel successivelyas a "dreadful lion," a tiger,a cloud "fraughtwith swords of lightning," a brightserpent, a toador newt,a rock,and a "poisnous shrub" (E, p. 278). Doubtless Blake had in mind herethe metamorphosis of Proteusin theOdyssey and Satan's similarseries of disguises in Paradise Lost, IV. 396-408,800. But as NorthropFrye has pointedout,2' the passage certainlyderives in part fromSwedenborg's True ChristianReligion. There a remarkably similarlist of noxious animals suggeststhe disguises of selfhood: "In thatregion of hell whereit reignsthis love [of self]causes its luststo appear froma distancelike various kinds of wild beasts,some as foxes and leopards, some as crocodiles and poisonous serpents.It also causes thedeserts where they live toconsist solely of heaps ofstones or barrengravel, interspersed with bogs wherefrogs croak, while over theirmiserable hovels fly birds, dolefully screeching. These creatures are whatare meantby theOchim, Tziim, and Ijim, mentionedin the Prophetical Books of the Word where the subject is the love of dominion arising fromthe love of self."22Tiriel's encounterwith Ijim, read in Swedenborgianterms, would be the encounterof one formof selfhoodwith another.Ijim's identificationof himselfwith

2'NorthropFrye, Fearful Symmetry: a Studyof William Blake (Princeton,1947), pp. 242-243.See also Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition,Bollingen Series XXXV. 11 (Princeton,1968), I, 60-65. 22EmanuelSwedenborg, The True Christian Religion, trans. William C. Dick (London, 1950), sec. 45, I, 59-60.

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 570 BLAKE'S TIGERS the lion ("Who art thou Eyelesswretch that thus obstructst the lions path" [E, p. 277]) establisheshim as a higherform of selfhoodthan Tiriel, who has almost completelydegenerated. Although Ijim is fallen, he still retains enough honest indignation to recognize hypocrisy,"the corruptionby which visionlessself assumes masks of ever-increasingmeanness and ends as a rockor poisonous shrub."23 Thus the tiger symbolizesnot only crueltyin general, but more specificallythe crueltycaused fromdomination by the fallen,de- graded self, of which Tiriel, blind and visionless, is a striking embodimentin human form. In Visionsof theDaughters of A lbionBlake again equated thetiger with crueltyand self-love.Early in the poem Oothoon, the en- lightenedadvocate of freeand selflesslove, establishedthe tigeras a representativeof inhuman ferocity:

Ask thewild ass whyhe refusesburdens: and themeek camel Why he loves man: is it because of eye ear mouth or skin Or breathingnostrils? No. forthese the wolf and tygerhave. (3:7-9)

If man's senseswere all thatattracted the camel, it could just as easily love its enemies, the bloodthirstywolf and tiger.But the "meek camel" finds in man something which directly opposes the savageness of the tiger and to which his meeknessresponds: the unselfishcapacity for love and gentleness.At theclose of the poem Oothoon again uses the tigeras a symbol,this timelinked with the bat and the owl as threerepresentatives of the dark and visionless existencesin which miserlyself-love thrives:

Does the sun walk in glorious raimenton the secretfloor Wherethe cold miserspreads his gold? or does the bright cloud drop On his stone threshold?does his eye behold the beam that brings Expansion to the eye of ?or will he bind himself Beside the ox to thyhard furrow?does not thatmild beam blot The bat, the owl, the glowing tyger,and the king of night. (7:30-8:5)

Justas, in Jerusalem,Los's spectreis bat-winged,so herethe bat and theowl emphasizethe complete lack of vision in the fallenworld of

23JohnBeer, Blake's VisionaryUniverse (Manchester, 1969), p. 65.

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MARY R. AND RODNEY M. BAINE 571 self-loveand theglowing tigeremphasizes the cruelty of such love. In the day of selfless love the sun will bring "expansion" to the visionless, "lamplike" eyes of the bat and the owl; and the cruel ferocityof the tiger,now "burning bright,"will be replaced with selfless,resplendent benevolence. Blake's major and most comprehensiveuse of the tigersymbol appears in the major prophecies.Here he developed his most de- tailedsystem of animal imagery.According to his myth,when Albion the AncientMan fell,the state of visionary,prelapsarian Innocence changed into one of visionless,post-lapsarian Experience. This fall completelyreversed the unfallen values: "All love is lost Terror succeeds& Hatredinstead of love . . ." (E, p. 297). As selfhoodrises to power in man, the selfless and peculiarly "human" ideals of brotherhood,freedom, and forgivenessare abandoned in favorof the divisiveand inhumane forcesof law, war, hatred,and self-love. Anotherresult of the fall affordedBlake an apt set of symbolsto dramatize this change. According to Blake's myth,Albion in his unfallenstate contained within himself all nature,including all the animals. When he fell fromtotal vision, he objectifiedwhat is in imaginative reality only various portions of himself. Thus in observingnature, man is viewingaspects of his own personality:

... Man looks out in tree& herb & fish& bird & beast Collecting up the scatterdportions of his immortalbody Into theElemental forms of every thing that grows. (E, p. 370)

In Jerusalemand The Four Zoas even more than in his previous works, Blake relied upon this close correlation between man's personalityand theanimal kingdomto describethe fallen world and man's conditionin thatworld. In Jerusalem,when Albion falls,the loss ofthe gentle and selflessaffections in theSpectre suggests the rage of wild beasts.These Spectres

curse theirhuman kindness& affection They rage like wild beasts in the forestsof affliction In the dreamsof Ulro theyrepent of theirhuman kindness. (42:60-62)

And in Night II of The Four Zoas the perversionor inversionof prelapsarianvalues and affectionsis specificallyrepresented by the appearanceof warhorses, fierce tigers, and othernoxious beasts:"The Horse is ofmore value thanthe Man. The Tygerfierce/ Laughs at the Human form.the Lion mocks & thirstsfor blood" (E, p. 304). The

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 572 BLAKE'S TIGERS appearance of cruel,bloodthirsty tigers and lions in naturesignals theascendancy of savage, bestial affections in man himself.As soon as he denies his innate capacityfor selflessness, the quality which sets him above the tigerand the wolf in Visions of the Daughters of Albion, he acquires thecruelty which the tigersymbolizes. Like the tigerhe becomes a fierce,ravening beast whose proverbiallust for blood manifestsitself in corporealwar:

Troop by troop the beastial drovesrend one another sounding loud The instrumentsof sound & troopby troopin human forms theyurge The dire confusiontill the battlefaints those thatremain Returnin pangs & horribleconvulsions to theirbeastial state For themonsters of theElements Lions or Tygersor Wolves Sound loud the howling music ... terrificmen They seem to one anotherlaughing terribleamong the banners. (E, p. 360)

On a moreparticular level, in The Four Zoas Blake showedin two of thefallen Zoas thesame sortof transformation by means of imagery and symbolismdrawn fromwild beasts.When he falls,Luvah, the Zoa of the emotions,becomes Orc, the violent,raging figureof the minorprophecies. As he had done in Europe, Blake suggestedOrc's ragethrough tigers and otherwild animals,but here in The Four Zoas he supplied a more particulardramatization of Orc's degeneration. When Orc is firstbound down with theChain ofJealousy, he retains potentialitiesof creativeemotions as well as of blind wrath.Blake representedthis dual potentialitywith varied animal imagery:tame animals symbolize the creativepossibilities; the wild beasts, the destructiveones (E, p. 335). AfterOrc begins to vegetateupon his rock-afterhe falls even furtherfrom vision and degeneratesinto a Spectre-the innocentanimals disappear, and only the predacious beastsand the brutalizedwarhorses remain:

But Urizen silentdescended to the Caves of Orc & saw A Cavernd Universeof flamingfire the horsesof Urizen Here bound to fierymangers furious dash theirgolden hoofs Strikingfierce sparkles from their brazen fetters, fierce his lions Howl in theburning dens his tygersroam in theredounding smoke In forestsof affliction.... (E, p. 346)

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In the visionlesswrath of thespectrous Orc, Urizen'shorses, which originallydrew the plow of nations,have maddenedinto warhorses among the raging tigersand lions of Orc's den; and the bulls of Luvah, formerlysymbols of fertility,now appear as embodimentsof animal rage (E, p. 346). Justas in The Marriageof Heaven and Hell, Europe, and , love has been pervertedinto mad- dened,bestial wrath characterized by the destructive rage of tigers and lions: "Luvah King of Love thouart the King of rage& death" (E, p. 333). Paradoxically, fallen Urizen also is characterizedby tigersand other wild beasts. Mercy, which was justice in Eden, becomes vengeance, and the change is symbolizedby the appearance of Urizen's tigers:

They call thylions to thefields of blood, theyrowze thy tygers Out of thehalls of justice,till thesedens thywisdom framd Golden & beautiful)but0 how unlike sweetfields of bliss Whereliberty was justice & eternalscience was mercy. (E, p. 320)

As Urizen begins to constructthe fallenworld, his variousanimals appear around him:

The tygersof wrath called thehorses of instruction from their mangers They unloos'd them& put on theharness of gold & silver& ivory In human formsdistinct they stood around Urizenprince of Light, Petrifyingall the Human Imagination into rock & sand. (E, p. 310)

At thismoment Albion "gave his loud deathgroan" and "thestars of heaven Fled." Here Blake clearlyimplies thatreason, degraded and subordinatedto wrath,petrifies. When the tigersof wrathassume controlof theintellect, the human imaginationbecomes a spiritual wastelandwhere no vision can exist. In laterpassages Blake expanded thisassociation of the tigerand wrath with petrifiedor fallen imagination in order to representa secondaspect of man in a stateof selfhood:man imbrutedor bestial- ized in his fallensenses. As Albion degeneratesdeeper into selfhood and the bestial emotions take more control,he loses his visionary capabilityand becomesincreasingly like a mereanimal, lockedup in the cavernof the fallen senses. In the major prophecies,just as in

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Tiriel, Blake representedthis dehumanizingprocess with animal imagery.In NightVI of The Four Zoas, Urizen,exploring his densor cavernsof thefallen world, encounters men in theform of savage or noxious beasts:

Then he beheldthe forms of tygers& of Lions dishumanized men Many in serpents& in wormsstretched out enormouslength Over the sullen mould & slimytracks obstruct his way Drawn out fromdeep to deep woven by ribbd And scaled monstersor armd in iron shell or shell of brass

His voice to themwas but an inarticulatethunder for their Ears Whereheavy & dull theireyes & nostrilsclosed up. (E, pp. 340-341)

Urizen "knew theywere his Childrenruind in his ruind world." In contrastUrizen here appropriately recalls the lamb, perhapsthe very lambof Songs ofInnocence: "In Climesof happy Eternity/ Where the lamb replies to the infantvoice" (E, p. 341). These Spectres or selfhoodswith theircontracted senses appear later in Night VI as thosewho refuseto expand theirsenses and risefrom Ulro, theAbyss of the purelysensual:

The eyelidsexpansive as morning& the Ears As a golden ascentwinding round to theheaven of heavens Withinthe dark horrors of the Abyss lion or tygeror scorpion For everyone opend within into Eternityat will But they refusdbecause theiroutward formswere in the Abyss. (E, pp. 343-344)

Like Tiriel, thesemen are in theirSpectres or thestate of selfhood and have become so dominated by their bestial passions that they themselvesappear as beasts,some like cruel tigersand lions, others completelydegraded into serpents. Thus Blake establishedthe tiger as a symbolof fallenor brutalized man; only when man is regeneratedor redeemeddoes the tiger,like theother beasts, reassume his unfallen,creative vitality. In Eternityor Eden tigersdo not run rampant,because thosewho dwell in perfect vision know how to restraintheir selfhoods, their tigerishness. Thus the Eternals or the Council of God who appear to Albion in Jerusalemare representedas "Curbing theirTygers with golden bits

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& bridlesof silver& ivory"(55:35). If Albion is to rejoin theEternal Men who live as one in Jesusthe Imagination,he too mustlearn to subdue his bestial selfhood.In Night IV of The Four Zoas as the Apocalypsebegins and Albion'sZoas beginto reorganize, the Ancient Man begins to gatherup fromnature the scatteredportions of his fallenbeing (E, p. 377). When thesavage passions have beensubdued in man, the manifestationsof those passions in externalnature- lions and tigersand reptiles-lose theirferocity also. More specifically,as man risesagain intovision, the values which wereperverted or invertedwith the fall are reasserted in theiroriginal form. The love that became hatred returns to love, and the constructiveenergies which turnedinto martialpassions are again channelledtowards constructive ends. In The Four Zoas Blake repre- sentedthis change by the conversion of destructive beasts into creative animals:

The tygersfrom the forests & thelions fromthe sandy desarts They Sing theyseize the instruments of harmonythey throw away The spear the bow the gun the mortarthey level the fortifications. (E, p. 378)

Similarly,rehumanized tigers and lions drawthe wagons ofLuvah to the winepressesof the Apocalypse(E, p. 388). But perhaps Blake's mostvivid description of theredeemed animals occursat theclose of Jerusalem:

On Chariotsof gold & jewels withLiving Creaturesstarry & flaming With everyColour, Lion, Tyger,Horse, Elephant, Eagle, Dove, Fly, Worm, And the all wondrousSerpent clothed in gems & richarray Humanize In the Forgivenessof Sins.... (98:42-45)

When Albion accepts theideals of self-annihilationand forgiveness taughtby Jesus,all animals and the affectionsthey represent "Re- humanize,"become part of theDivine Human Formagain. In there- humanized state, tigersand lions can lie down with lambs and childrenbecause man is no longer the enemyof man. In thelight of thissymbolism, it is easierto understandthe animal symbolsin "" and "" of Songs of Innocence and Experience.Obviously Lyca, who maywell

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 576 BLAKE'S TIGERS be an antitypeof Thel, willinglyenters the stateof Experience.The embracingof the loverson the firstplate, the entwinedtrees of the last,and the thuspatent awakening to sexualityin "The LittleGirl Lost"-all suggest that Lyca journeysinto the sexualityof adult- hood, ofexperience. The wild animals hereevidently represent not so much selfhoodor thedebased sensesas theydo thepassions of adult life and experience, passions frighteningto Ona's father and momentarilyto Lyca's parents. But they can symbolize also, especially when they emerge from the caves of their debased sensuality,a higher innocence,where the lion becomes "A Spirit arm'd in Gold," where the lion lies down with the lamb, and all animals are humanized. If tigersappear in the poem, theydo not occupy thecenter of thestage. The lionessconveys Lyca to thelion's palace, and thelion reassuresher parents. In theplates we seeonly the lion and the lioness-togetherin thefinal plate, the lioness alone in the second plate, with her long nose liftedon her long neck to indicate, probably,her spiritual sensitivity.This is not the brutal snout of the tiger. Thus Blake consistentlyused the tigerin the fallen world as a symbolof cruelty,destructiveness, and bestiality.Nowhere does the tiger appear as righteousindignation or Christ militant.On the contrarythe tigerin his full tigerishnessis thecruelty of Tiriel, the bloodthirstinessof war, therage of visionlesspassions, thewrath of moral law, thebestiality of dishumanized man. He is thedevourer of lambs, the monsterof the Abyss,the cohortof the bat and theowl. Never is he associatedwith the propheticLos or with Christ.Even more important,never does the tigerrage against the evils around him. Withthis understanding of what thetiger symbol meant to Blake's readersand to the poet himself,we do not need the line by line expositionof "The Tyger" which seemsdemanded for contorted or paradoxical interpretationswhere the Tyger is ennobled into some salutaryor redemptiveforce. Symbolizing nature red in toothand claw, theTyger poses thequestion of theorigin of evil and thenature ofits Creator. The perennialproblem of believing in a benignCreator while viewinga malign universehas been the mostagonizing of all moral dilemmas-at least to imaginativepoets like Milton, Blake, Tennyson, and Hardy-and Blake returnedto it with a more ex- tendeddramatization in his engravingsfor Job. For theobserver in "The Tyger," already shocked repeatedlyas he realizes that evil permeatesthe world of experience,the Tygeris the ultimateterror, just as the Lamb is the final reassurancefor the child of Innocence that the universeand its Creatorare benign. Lacking the facileor

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Urizenicoptimism of Alexander Pope or Soames Jenyns,the observer in "The Tyger" feelscompelled to ask, "Who is responsible?"and to try to reconcile the malignant beast beforehim with a Creator conventionallycredited with the bestof intentions. The horrifiedreaction of thequestioner is paralleledby the despair of thestars, the guardian angels. Their sorrowis contrastedwith the Creator'sassumed satisfactionwith his monster,or in a draftof the poem, his possible glee ("And did he laugh his work to see?"):

When the starsthrew down theirspears And water'dheaven with theirtears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? (E, pp. 717, 25)

As Swinburne paraphrased, "the very stars, and all the armed childrenof heaven,the 'helmed cherubim'that guide the 'sworded seraphim'that guard theirseveral planets, wept forpity and fearat sightof thisnew forceof monstrousmatter seen in thedeepest night as a fireof menace to man."24In "To theEvening Star," of Poetical Sketches,Blake had alreadyinvoked the star, as "fair-hair'dangel," to protectthe flocksfrom the wolfand the lion which,like theTyger, glare "thro' thedun forest"(E, p. 402). Later,in "Night," ofSongs of Innocence,he assigned this same task to the guardian angels:

When wolves and tygershowl forprey They pityingstand and weep; Seeking to drive theirthirst away, And keep themfrom the sheep. (E, p. 14)

In some copies he even colored in threebrilliant stars, probably to implytheir identity with the angels. But in an evenmore apt parallel, thebenign stars in The Four Zoas lamentthe fall of man and assume theirduties as his protectors:

Thus were the starsof heaven createdlike a golden chain To bind the Body of Man to heaven fromfalling into the Abyss. Each took his station& his coursebegan withsorrow & care. (E, p. 315)

Here and in "The Tyger" the starsbewail a malignantuniverse,

24AlgernonCharles Swinburne,William Blake: a CriticalEssay (London, 1868),p. 120n.

This content downloaded from 128.210.126.199 on Tue, 27 Oct 2015 07:27:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 578 BLAKE'S TIGERS but even more, the beginningof nocence in mankind. Man in his potentialinnocence is establishedin Songs ofInnocence as Christthe Lamb, theDivine Humanity.In theTyger of Songs ofExperience we see his opposite, fallen man, dominatedby his spectrousselfhood. Blake posed thesame contrastin "" and its ironic counterpart"." These poems also contrastman's possible ideals, the realizationof his divine Humanityor thatof his selfhood.Similarly in "The Tyger" man, not some Nobodaddy,has invertedeternal values. For in Blake's mythman alone is Creator. Man himselfchooses to live in his bestialor spectrousstate and, likea tiger,to roam, predacious,the benightedforests of his own desires. Only bysuppressing his selfhoodand assertinghis Christlike,divine Humanitywill he, in Tennyson'slines, "Move upward,working out the beast/And let the ape and tigerdie."25

Universityof Georgia

25ThePoetic and Dramatic Worksof A lfredLord Tennyson,ed. W. J.Rolfe (Boston, 1898), p. 193.

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