Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Michaela Dragounová

Mind-forg’d Manacles: Freedom and Authority in ’s Poetry Bachelor ’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Ph. Dr., Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt.

2009

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

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Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, PhDr. Lydia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt for useful advice, patience, kindness and for her astonishing belief in my potential. I would also like to thank her for giving me the idea that and his poetry was the right topic for my thesis. I would also like to thank Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph.D. for introducing me into the amazing world of William Blake in the first place. Since that, my views on poetry have never been the same.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………………..... 3 Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………... 4 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………5 1 William Blake—“A book that all may read”……………………………………….. 7 2 Freedom Chained………………………………………………………………….....9 2.1 Child-labour………………………………………………………………...9 2.2 Slavery……………………………………………………………………...13 2.3 Urban Poverty and Misery……………………………………………….....18 3 Authority Unleashed…………………………………………………………………23 3.1 Parents……………………………………………………………………...23 3.2 The Church…………………………………………………………………32 4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………....37 5 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….40

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Introduction

As the title suggests, this major B. A. thesis deals with the notions of authority and freedom in the poetry of William Blake, or to be more precise with these notions in his collection of poetry named Songs of Innocence and of Experience . The collection is subtitled Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul , and this thesis operates on a similar basis. It attempts to show the two contrary states of human soul, or rather of human experience in England during the eighteenth century, as portrayed by one of the most prolific and piercing minds of the century. Both the ones at the bottom of the society (children, slaves and the urban poor), and the ones at the lead (parents and the

Church) are discussed. Connections are sought and drawn between poetical images in chosen poems and actual historical facts, and relations of Blake´s worldview (as filtered through the characters of his poetical narrators) to the portrayed phenomena are explored as well.

The first chapter serves as a brief introduction to the the , his work, and the period he lived in. The second chapter deals with a specific English phenomenon, which is the infamous practice of using (and exploiting) small children as cheap but skilful chimneysweeps. The issue was widely overlooked, almost as widely as it was spread, however Blake documented the matter with striking accuracy and empathy. Focusing on slavery and racism, the third chapter is to some extent related to the first one, as it also deals with an exploitation of an oppressed segment of population.

The chapter also discusses the role of Christian doctrine as of a means of subjugation of black African slaves. The fourth chapter abandons the theme of helpless, unnoticed victims, and explores the situation of the masses of population that lived in the city slums. It is also in this chapter that the attention is drawn towards an important narrative

5 technique, used by Blake in his Songs , and that is the figure of the Piper/Bard, the Bard being an effective means by which Blake could convey his own opinions, as well as a potent metaphorical device. The fifth and the sixth chapters do not primarily deal with themes of social problems, but rather with those phenomena in which Blake saw causes of said problems. The fifth chapter is devoted to parents and families, a motif that predominates a large portion of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience . The last (but not least) chapter is focused on the Church and its role as a spiritual oppressor of the masses as well as individuals. However, the aim of the thesis is not a detailed historical survey of the eighteenth century and its social conditions. Rather than that, it lies in an interpretative, literary analysis of Blake´s texts and illustrations, and in finding plausible connecting links and transitions between the text and the portrayed reality.

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1 William Blake—“A book that all may read”

William Blake—engraver, poet, and visionary—known for his artistic skills as well as for his personal peculiarities. A man so thoroughly individualistic that his time, the society he lived in, seemed incapable of containing him. Ever since he saw the “tree filled with angels” (Burdett 5) as a boy, the people around him must have been aware of the fact that young William was not an entirely ordinary person. He had been whipped for his visions and his way of “impulsive expression of feeling” (Burdett 5), but soon his parents gave up trying to accomodate him among his peers and he was taught at home instead. It is not easy, and for the purposes of this work not even necessary, to take into consideration to what extent these early memories affected Blake’s later life, views and work, however it should be observed that his individualism continued to be a prominent part of his character.

“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man´s,“ Blake wrote in his

Jerusalem , and to this principle he stuck. Not only that he really invented his own method of etching, he never let himself be “enslaved”. He did not attend any other school but a practical one that was designed to make him an engraver, rather than a poet, rejected all forms of organized worship, though he was „for a short time…an active member of the New Church,“ (Davies 31), and (very atypicaly for a middle-class person, living in the century of rising policy of commercialism) was put off by the very institution of money. And as to his membership in the so-called “Romantic School”, this term has been first coined in the twentieth century, long after Blake’s death. Nowadays, he is associated with the likes of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Bysshe-Shelley or Byron. But in his time, Blake remained a solitary thinker for most of his life, his genius unrecognized by his peers, save for his closest friends. It was only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that his literary works started to draw attention of scholars

7 as well as of ordinary readers. But however lonely he felt, and however much he as aware of his own isolation, he “…did not enjoy neglect, and he had… an intense desire to communicate,” (Frye 4). Thus, being an artist, he chose a different way of communication—he chose to be a prophet, and spoke through his poems and pictorial art. Paradoxically, this way he was able to communicate with huge masses, with the whole readership of the future, with men that were yet to be born.

Apart from the two collections of short verse in the focus, The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, he wrote (and also illustrated) long poems such as or Marriage of Heaven and Hell , but his most extensive and complicated body of work lies in the “Prophetic Books”, including the titles , , or The Four

Zoas . In these, Blake´s whole unique cosmogony, mythology and theology is incorporated. But one must still bear in mind that Blake (as a prophet) was not totally immersed in the future, thus cutting himself off of the present. Quite the contrary, as will be explored later, for Blake was oblivious neither to the injustices nor to the changes that swept across the face of English society in the turbulent eighteenth century. It should be remembered that he was a part of the events happening in the

English society, but somehow he also had the viewpoint of a distant observer, an outsider, thus seeing the events more clearly, in all their wide context.

Indeed, the eighteenth century was a time of radical ideas and radical measures, as well as of radical disproportions. On the one hand, humanism and a crusade for equality and rights of men were well on their way, the French Revolution was to show the world that the unheard masses know how to raise their voice, and the spirit of enterprise and of personal achievement dictated the beat of pulse of the age. On the other hand, war with

Napoleonic France broke out at the end of the century, and wars were also lead at home, as riots were always ready to appear in the streets of the towns of restless England. The

8 onset of the Industrial Revolution created a vast gap betweeen the rich and the poorer classes, reducing the landless masses to poverty and misery in the slums of London and other larger cities and towns, and also created the need for more raw material and workforce, thus promoting the slave-trade.

As Trevelyan observes: “…the eighteenth century fault, carried over into the education of the early years of the nineteenth, was excesive emphasis on the difference of classes and the need for ‘due subordination in the lower orders’,” (379). This is then only one form of those “mind-forg’d manacles” that Blake heard and saw all around him.

And it is in The Songs of Innocence and of Experience where the poet-prophet vents his growing disillusionment at the state of society and of all humankind. The first book,

Innocene , was issued in 1789, its companion, Experience , saw the light of day in 1794.

On the outside, these collections of verse and pictorial art paint vivid images of and urban England, of joys as well as sorrows of childhood, of innocent lambs and experienced tigers. But underneath the surface of this carefuly constructed structure, sharp needles of resistance against all oppressive authorities, of disagreement with the course in which the contemporary world was steered, and sadness about the way Youth was mutilated during its metamorphosis into Old Age can be felt. The happy Piper inevitably changes into the knowing Bard, and the reader is given an equal chance— either to stay the same, innocent and oblivious of the pain in the world, or change, embrace experience, and never be qiute the same.

2.1 Child-labour

The conditions of labourers either on land or in the factories in England throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were generally very poor, but life conditions of the children that had to work in order to improve their family income were appalling.

Underpaid and overworked, these children had to toil for long hours in dangerous

9 environment. Their life expectations were far from favourable most of the children did not, owing to severe injuries or diseases, survive their fifteenth birthday. Not that there would be anyone to celebrate their birthday, because many of the children were sold to their masters by their struggling, undernourished and frequently crippled parents. One of the most exploited children workers were the chimneysweepers. This job was in fact done only (or mainly) by the youngest children, because older and bigger boys would not have been able to fit into the narrow space of a chimney.

Both of the parts of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience contain a poem entitled simply . The first, the “innocent” version is the first person account of a life of a child chimneysweeper, the “experienced” one is a brief dialogue between the poet and another (presumably older) chimneysweep. But both of the portrayals of the harsh life of the children are valuable, as they differ only in the attitude of the narrator and not in the facts presented. Let us start with the Chimney

Sweeper from the Songs of Innocence .

The early age of the chimneysweep is revealed in the very first stanza of the poem, the part of which also serves as a title of this essay: “...my father sold me while yet my tongue/ Could scarcely cry ‛ ‛weep! ‛weep! ‛weep! ‛weep! ‛” (Blake 74). The passage implies that the child was so young (not older than 5 years of age), that it was yet not capable of pronouncing the offer of his services (“sweep!”) correctly, but with a children’s lisp. It also reveals that the family life as portrayed in the poem was very different from the one today, and the family bonds were also looser (weakened even more by the wide-spread poverty and increasing immorality of the lower classes). The boy was sold by his own father (after the death of the mother) and probably never saw him again.

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Yet the child does not view his situation with bitterness or fright, but with enthusiasm and innocence, which is almost unbelievable. When his friend Tom (who is also a chimneysweep) cries while being shaven, the little boy comforts him that it is alright, because that way “...soot cannot spoil your white hair,” (Blake 74). The key to the child’s optimism lies in the Christian doctrine that taught him that “...if all do their duty they need not fear harm” (Blake 74). The Christian theme is also alluded, when

Tom’s curly head is likened to that of a lamb, being a common metaphor for

Christ (Holy Lamb of God) not only in Blakean context ( see his poem The Lamb in the same collection of poetry). The Christian doctrine thus served as an easy way of transforming the children into submissive, loyal and obedient workforce that was also cheap and easily provided. Maybe it also served as a tool to dull the stab of their master’s conscience.

The poem also refers to “thousands of sweepers” (Blake 74), who (in Tom’s dream) slept in black coffins. This number was not overestimated, even though the Regulation

Act was passed the year before the Songs of Innocence were published. As one of the masters admitted in 1863: “The law against the climbing boys is a dead letter here”

(Hibbert 596). The children were really treated only as trade commodity (sleeping in soot and getting up to work in the dark), as those who died could be replaced quite easily. No wonder that many of them fell ill with the so called “sooty cancer” (the risk of this terrible disease only increased by the sweepers´ insufficient hygiene “Formerly the sweeps... had three washes a year...” [Hibbert 596 ] ), which was brought about by the constant contact of their skin with the soot. In most cases, the cancer destroyed the young boys testicles, so that they were infertile and physically as well as spiritually broken, had they the luck to survive (which most of them did not, as cancer is treatable only with great difficulties even in our time). The cancer was also called the

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“chimneysweep’s cancer”, as the disease was typical of this occupation (it was described as an occupational cancer in 1775 by Sir Percival Pott).

Through the image of the dream vision of dead and then uplifted chimneysweeps the poem comes back to the Christian theme. An Angel lets their souls into Heaven to

“...have God for... father, and never want joy,” (Blake 74). As the vision of the afterlife in Heaven ―depicted on the illustration at the very bottom of the plate ―is the only hope of some kind of redemption in their dreary life, the little chimneysweeps go obediently to work, waiting for their lives and their misery to be over. The illustration, or the “vision” gives the poem a very important final note, an after-flavour of compassion. The reader is left with the very same image that occupies the minds of the poor children ―the image of some better place, the image of hope.

The Chimney-sweeper from the Songs of Experience shows us another, quite different view of a sweeper’s life. The meek lamb from the first poem is gone, replaced with a “...little black thing among the snow,” (Blake, 104), a lonely child wandering in the murky streets of a nameless city. The little labourer is now not even an animal, but a mere thing, incapable of making an appeal to anybody’s sentiment. Yet the poet’s

“poetical self” has enough interest to ask the boy of the whereabouts of his parents.

“...gone up to the Church to pray,” replies the young chimneysweep adding “...to praise

God and His Priest and King,” (Blake 104). Now the poem ceases to be a mere lyrical sketch, but turns into a provoking social critique. Through the words of the sweeper, the poet accuses not only the Church, but also the King of England of being responsible for the poor children’s situation. In his view, they either overlook or deliberately thrive on the child work. They are the ones “Who make up a Heaven of our [the sweepers’ ] misery,” (Blake 104). The only way that could solve the chimneysweepers problem was through the change of legislation and also a shift of the peoples’ indifferent attitude

12 towards it. The situation was indeed a grave, yet widely ignored matter. Some people said that it was “...as bad as the Negro Slavery... only... not so known,” (Hibbert 595) and it is therefore an interesting fact, that Blake’s poem was according to Sampson originally supposed to include a fourth stanza, part of which goes: “There souls of men are bought and sold... And Youth to slaughter-houses led,” (Blake, ed. Sampson 194).

Be it the slave-market or the slaughter-house, the connotations of the chimneysweepers’ problem were in no way exaggerated, and the likening of the children to slaves or animals were in fact appropriate attempts at raising a necessary discussion on the matter. The problem was mostly ignored by the public as well as by the competent authorities instead of anyone making an effort to solve it, as if the “mind- forg’d manacles” spread their chains over the whole population of the United Kingdom.

This brutal and inhumane way of treating the (if poor and sometimes unwanted) children resembling the way the slaves or animals were treated by their owners was a stain on the reputation of the nation that boasted its world supremacy and claimed a superiority over other races. And as we are at the notion of superiority and inferiority, let us remain there for a little while, as our poet has something to say to this matter as well. The next chapter shall be devoted to slavery and racism.

2.2 Slavery

The children were not the only ones to suffer for the well-being of the whole society, or at least of the part of it that could afford a life of luxury. Another widely exploited group were the black African slaves who ―if they survived the dangers of the “middle passage” ―were made to work on the plantations of the West Indies and elsewhere in the whole wide world. The people were torn away from their natural environment, families were separated, human beings were reduced to the status of livestock. As

Trevelyan observes, the slave-trade was a vast enterprise, and the numbers were

13 horrifying: “In 1771 as many as fifty-eight ‘slavers’ sailed from London… They transported 50,000 slaves that year,” (404). Not that the English were completely ignorant of the fact that slave-trade was (especially as seen from the viewpoint of the ones who heard and uttered the cries calling for freedom, equality and fraternity of the mankind) morally a very tricky bussiness. Trevelyan (again) cites from the letter written by Horace Walpole in 1750: „We have been sitting this fortnight on the African

Company: we, the British Senate… have this fortnight been pondering methods to make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes,“ (404). There is a certain tone of somebody’s conscience stirring in these words, yet the voice that pronounces them is still the voice of a White, the voice of a person who never was and never will be in the position of a slave (remember the popular British air ―“Britons never will be slaves”!).

But what the issue really needed was somebody who knew how it felt to be powerless and abused, somebody who was able “…speak not to the condition of innocence, but from it and of it,“ (Lucas 77). And such a voice can be heard in the Songs of

Innocence ―there, where space is given to the children (the innocent) to speak up, and to be heard.

The child in question, the one that is entitled to speak from the position of an enslaved innocence, is , the one we find sitting under the protective shade of a tree, in the equally protective embrace of his mother. The picture of the pair precedes the whole text as a sort of a prologue, illustrating the innitial state of innocence of the boy, growing on the wide savannahs of Africa. When pondering over this illustration, a special attention has to be paid to the setting and the surrounding scenery, as these hold the key to a substantial part of the meaning. 1 The poem takes place “in the

1 At this point it should be pointed out that the author of this thesis never received any special education in history of Fine Arts. But let us also state that Blake’s illustrations are so inspiring and so communicative that even a layperson is able to receive a substantial portion of the underlying meaning. 14 southern wild” (Blake 24), instead of peaceful meadows, groves and cottages of pastoral

Albion, where most of the Songs of Innocence are situated. Blake takes the reader into a foreign, exotic climate, at the same time presenting him with a very familiar scene ―with a parent teaching his little child. The connection between the recipient and the narrator ―although these two may be widely separated by time, place, race, or life experience ―is already established, and the theme, the argument of the poem, may develop on.

Just as the sun is rising and the “heat of the day” (Blake 24) must come, so is the end to all the plays of childhood drawing ever so near for the little boy. “The rising sun… is associated with God… but it can also be viewed as a sign of the passing of time,”

(Leader 112). The child may already be old enough to be taken away aboard of one of the slave-ships, and his mother has only few precious moments left to teach her son, how to bear the painful life of experience, how to “bear the beams of love” (Blake 24) of the sun-god that should smile on all the living things alike. But, and there is a “but”, as any experienced, worldly, or cynical reader must expect, the boy is in his own words

“black as if bereav’d of light” (Blake 24), as if not worthy of the Creator’s love. A question, none too different from the one in the penultimate stanza of (“Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”, [Blake 51]), arises at this point. Does the sun-god

(or God) really smile on all his creation in the same loving and caring way, as the words of the mother suggest? Is the Angel who should free all the chimneysweepers from their coffins the one to deliver the little black boy into the realm of God? Both the mother and the son have a very different point of view, as the matter of faith, life and eternity appears again.

The mother ―either because she trully believes the things she has been taught herself, or in the intention of giving her son at least a little hope in the dreary life of a

15 slave that awaits him as soon as the “noon” (and adulthood) comes ―uses an example of the (frequently used by parents of any historic period or any nationality) “lies-to- children”, and gives her offspring a lesson in the common Christian doctrine. In her vision, God is identified with the Sun, which distributes its rays equally on anything on the Earth’s surface. Also, the emphasis is put upon the joys of the afterlife, rather than on the mortal existence which is emphemeral, because humans are only “put on earth a little space,” (Blake 24), and then they vanish in a blink of an eye. All this creates an impression of a White missionary (perhaps hired by one of the slave-trading companies) speaking through the mouth of the black mother. Indeed, the words of the Bible have imprinted themselves deeply into the minds of the people to be bought and sold like animals. But the image of a body as a cloud ―according to Leader „hardly original…

[as it] appears in both Plato and Dante,“ (109) ―goes beyond the missionary-talk. It is very similar to the Romantic notion of „eternity in the palm of your hand“, or the desire of the Romantics to gain immortality by preserving a part of themselves in their own work. When the right time comes, the mother says, “The cloud will vanish, we shall hear his voice,“ (Blake 25), i.e. the person shall die and be directly exposed to God.

Though not seen as original (if we are to stick to Leader’s view), this metaphorical concept of a body-cloud ―both being a temporary amalgamation of particles that disintegrates at the end of its life-cycle, but does not disappear completely, as it reassembles again in a different form, ready to begin a new cycle—this promise of continuation beyond death, appeals to the little black boy. So much that he remembers this concept and repeats it to the white boy.

It is not established in the poem how much time has passed from the beginning to the moment when the two boys meet, but the reader is instantly aware of a change that the black boy underwent somewhere along the way. Now, he is no longer an inexperienced

16 and passive child, pointing at the sky and asking “why, why, why?”, who has to be taught by his mother. He becomes an active element, a transmitter (to use terms from the theory of communication) rather than a receiver —“And thus I say to little English boy…” (Blake 25). Leader states that the black boy “senses that the differences between himself and the English child have important and disturbing implications… and the word ‘bereav’d’ hint[s] at the child’s growing perception of his place in the world,”

(110). But in spite of his anxieties, in spite of his desire to be more like his superior

(“O! my soul is white,” [Blake 24]), and (because) of his growing experience, the black boy does approach the other child (the child that is in the position of a higher social status). This is his coming of age, his own fight for emancipation, a fight that will be eventually lost, but has to be fought anyway.

It is therefore of great importance to note that the argument the black boy uses to convince the white child of their equality—“When I from black and he from white cloud free,/ And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,” (Blake 25)—still comes from the same Christian doctrine that was taught to his mother to make her a more obedient and perhaps less desparate slave. It is the same teaching that gave hope to poor Tom

Dacre and his friends in London, only now it is supposed to console a Black boy in

Africa, a boy of an entirely different cultural background and ethnic history. The religion is that of a white child and a white God (if we are to take into account the traditional Christian imagery and icons), and the lambs that will joy round the golden tent will no doubt have white “clothing wooly bright,” (Blake 11). Are they going to accept the black boy, at least in the after-life, as he is led to believe, or are they going to cast him away as inferior, as a slave? The black boy’s last words—“And [I will] be like him and he will then love me,“ (Blake 25)—seem to confirm the belief in their final equality, but underneath they convey the black boy’s own feelings of inferiority, the

17 desire to be white like the English child rather than be himself. Furthermore, the word

“then” according to Leader suggests that the black boy is very well aware of the fact that the English child “…has not shown love for the black boy in the past,” (111), which only adds to the overall tragical impact of the poem. But the final blow, so to speak, is delivered by the second accompanying illustration, the one set at the very bottom of the second plate. Featuring the Christ-like figure and both the black and the white child in a pastoral setting—presumably in the future, after their “clouds” have disappeared—the illustration shows what the black boy knew, and what the reader must have suspected.

Christ and the white child are looking at each other intensively, absorbed in their own world, their own form of worship, while the little black boy stands separated from them, his hand on the other boy’s shoulder, as if trying to attract his attention, as if offering him his services once again (“I’ll shade him from the heat,” [Blake 25]). But the English child won’t turn his head, as if not aware (or ignorant) of the black boy. As Leader says:

“If anyone is ‘shading’, it is the white boy,” (111). His supremacy established, the white boy may turn his back on the black one the same way he did it when they were alive.

The “mind-forg’d manacles” are indeed forged out of the hardest of materials—out of faith.

2.3 Urban Poverty and Misery

The eighteenth century has seen one of the great paradoxes, which the history of humankind has always been full of. The Industrial Revolution gave rise not only to wholy new types of society structures, but also to entirely new problems. Leslie Stephen comments on this phenomenon:

The growth of commercial and manufacturing enterprise which had been going on quietly

and continuously had been suddenly accelerated. […] …the factory system was being

developed, profoundly modyfying the old relation of the industrial classes. England was

beginning to aim at commercial supremacy, and politics were… dominated by the interests

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of the ‘moneyed man’. […] The growth of the manufactory system and the accumulation of

masses of town population… forced attention to the problem of pauperism…

(179)

The cleavage between the poor and the rich grew ever wider. One side of the spectrum ―the landless masses ―was forced to live in overcrowded slums in terrible conditions (as depicted on Hogarth’s famous painting called “Gin Lane”) and sought the necessary comfort in new religious movements, or/and old labels of alcohol.

Meanwhile, the other side spoke of the new order of the world (as symbolised by the

French Revolution) and Deism. As Trevelyan aptly remarks: “…infidelity, like hair- powder, could only be worn by aristocracy,” (370). Thus the situation showed not only the dark side of the fast economic growth—which also brought about the fast growth of population among the poor classes—but also the dark side of human nature. Frye observes that Blake was well aware of the fact that an instinctive need to preserve one’s own life, even if it was at the expense of someone else’s life, was part of the human character: “Something is always suffering horribly somewhere, and we can only find pleasure by ignoring the fact. We must ignore it up to a point, or go mad,” (279). Thus the upper and middle classes widely ignored the matter (and probably kept their sanity), while the prophet that lay hidden in Blake’s mind, the one that was to become the Bard of The Songs of Experience , could not remain silent. And because the city, with its largest accumulation of the poor, was the seat of despair, the poem which deals with urban misery in greatest detail is called simply London . This poem is also the main focus of this chapter, although —another poem dealing with the life conditions in a larger town—shall be briefly discussed as well.

When considering London , let us first shortly comment on the person of the narrator, or the voice uttering the words of the poem. The Character of the Piper that guides the reader through the Songs of Innocence is in the Songs of Experience transformed into

19 the (Ancient) Bard “Who Present, Past, & Future sees,” (Blake 34). Appart from being a wise, almost omniscient character that should lead the young on the long and dangerous path to Experience, the Bard “…having embraced the truths of Innocence, becomes the child’s helper and companion,” (Leader 132). He is there for the children of Blake’s present (we may for example see his image on one of the plates, consoling the little vagabond), but he has also the ability to address and perhaps warn the “Children of the future Age,” (Blake 42) of the faults of the past. But let us not think of him as of a cold, rationalistic usurper that herds the children and drives them like naive slambs into a slaughterhouse of adulthood. The way the Piper was inspired by the child on a cloud— something Greeks would call a genius , or some lesser type of a Muse—the Bard in the

Songs of Experience is seen on the frontispiece as being led by the child-genius —i.e. led by innocent, creative imagination . The readers are therefore metaphorically encouraged to follow his example and let themselves be guided by their own imagination and their own judgement, instead of letting somebody else do their thinking for them. Burdett’s words confirm this: “All forms of external control were to Blake the enemy of imagination… the dictates of wisdom even have little use for us until we have made them by personal experience our own,“ (47).

A somewhat similar scene is captured in the illustration that precedes the text of

London . A tall, bearded figure that may be identified as the Bard is being led by the hand by a small child into an open door of an urban dwelling. The Bard is bent forward, as if stooping to hear the child more clearly, or as if weary of walking through the streets of London, seeking for shelter with which the child provides him. Indeed, the

Bard has every reason to be weary, as he “…wander[s] thro’ each charter’d street,”

(Blake 50), listens to the sounds of the city and watches its many faces. The despair and the troubles of all its inhabitants pour from every pore of the cobbled streets and fall

20 heavy on the shoulders of the midnight wanderer. As if the Bard was not only a spokesman of London, but also its metonymical substitute, his state reflecting the miserable conditions of the city—he is barefoot, with long, unkempt hair and beard, dressed in rags and clearly not in the best state of health. The city writhes in mortal agony and the Bard feels its pain as his own. This then is the heart of the realm of

Experience, where the Bard has been leading the attentive reader, “…the summarized

‘contrary’ to the social reclamation of Innocence,” (Gardner 119). This time, all ignorance is impossible, because the images are so brutal that they appall the eye; and even if the eye is closed, the cries, the sighs and the curses cannot escape the ear unheard. Death it is that walks the streets of London—an idea only strengthened by a striking resemblance between the Bard of Experience and the portrayals of Death on

Blake’s paintings, such as The House of Death or Death on a Pale Horse .

But now let us turn our attention to the “charter’d streets” and all the sights that haunt them. First, it is necessary to establish the meaning of the word “charter’d”, as it is closely linked to—to this thesis crucial—the notion of the “mind-forg’d manacles”.

Dictionary.com defines the term “to charter” as follows: “to establish by charter; to lease or hire for exclusive use…”. According to this definition, rights are granted to the people by the law, but at the same time “charter’d” may also mean that the same rights are by the same law taken from the people who simply do not have the money to buy them, ergo —all people are equal, but some are more equal (and they do not even have to be Orwell’s hogs). Lucas says of these “less-equal” city-dwellers that “…liberties have been denied to the ‘marked’ citizens of London,” (79), and London gives us a clear picture of which liberties have been taken away from these people whose faces wear

“Marks of weakness, marks of woe,” (Blake 50). Most violated of them all is their very right to live—not even in luxury, or relative happines—but simply to survive.

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The tragic tone (that begins to creep into the poem in the second stanza) is marked by the second accompanying illustration—that of a boy warming his hands over a smoky fire, echoing the words of the Little Vagabond , who only wished for a “pleasant fire”

(Blake 47). The child crouching by the fire is paradoxically quite well-off in comparison with the adults and children, who are bound with the aforementioned manacles. The curls of the smoke rise high and encircle the words “flow” and “woe” in the first stanza, as if the woes of the Londoners were never to end, as long as the

Thames will flow through this city of despair. And nobody was spared. Neither the chimney-sweeper, crying the streets and dreaming of a better life in Heaven, nor the soldier whose “…sigh/ Runs in blood down Palace walls,” (Blake 50), and certainly not the “youthful Harlot”, whose curse “Blasts the new born Infants tear,” (Blake 50). The fate of her innocent, unwanted baby is perhaps the saddest af all, as it is affected by the common venereal disease, gonorrhoea, right at its birth—“The transfer [of the infection] to the conjuctives of a neonate during its birth, with a subsequent visual impairment, is also very dangerous,” (Vokurka 148) 2—giving it only bleak prospects of normal life.

By juxtaposing a child, a grown-up man and a young prostitute, all of them in the same plight (i.e. making their money by selling their bodies, freedom and life), the totality of the situation is shown—every person unlucky enough to have been born bellow the line of poverty was ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of the Industrial Revolution. “The modern English slum town grew up to meet the momentary needs of the new type of employer and jerry-builder,” (Trevelyan 476), and the children grew up to feed the ever- hungry maw of budding capitalism that devoured the bodies and souls of people, who stood at the bottom of the hierarchical order.

2 This passage has been translated from Czech original by the author of this thesis. 22

The ones who are responsible for this desperate situation have been already pointed out in the experienced Chimney-sweeper, the most prominent of them all being the

Government, whose Palace-walls are smeared with blood of soldiers, died in invasive wars all around the world. Not only the legislative was bad and the jurisdiction corrupted, but the largest problem was also the indifference of the executive powers:

“…the aristocratic rulling class… thought that town building, sanitation and factory conditions were no concern of government,” (Trevelyan 476). The government also turned a blind eye to such social issues as child-labour, child-prostitution, or wide dissemination of diseases. In this light, Blake’s term “mind-forg’d manacles” shows its other dimension—it does not include only the lower classes, who are in bondage of corrupt law, but it also points to the ruling classes, who are captured by even stronger fetters, the fetters of their own ignorance.

3.1 Parents

As the focus of this chapter moves away from innocence and shifts towards the realm of experience (beware—there be lions!), a question comes up. If the suffering Innocent are children, black slaves and the poorer, urban classes, then who are the ones that

“make up a heaven of our misery,” (Blake 52)? Who, according to the author (or at least the poetic narrator) of The Songs of Innocence and Experience , are the people of authority, the representatives of “…the old philosophical and religious or political systems,“ (Stephen 212), against whom the Romantics rebelled?

Surely, everyone would agree that the first authorities that a person encounters in his life are his parents. To a small, helpless child, parents that nurture him, take care of him, and protect him are almost equal to gods. They fill his whole world (not only metaphorically, because a small baby has a limited point of view and sometimes the only things it actually sees are the faces of its parents, leaning over its cradle), but later

23 they also introduce him to the larger world outside, through their own set of opinions, ideas, and also prejudices. Thus a child is like a blank page, and parents are at will to scribble their own design all over it. They form the child physically, mentally and intelectually. In the beginning, they have almost total control over what will become of the child in later years. And this is precisesly where it is possible to see the basic form of the thing Blake called “mind-forg’d manacles”, because an important word in a relationship between a parent and a child is “control”. Burdett’s words about Blake being a person that hated every form of control have already been quoted (47)—and it is very dangerous, and even irrelevant, to conclude out of this statement that Blake hated the very “institution” of parents. Even if he did, this would not have affected his work.

Blake wanted to give his readers the oportunity to decide for themselves, to judge according to their own interpretation of a given issue that they experienced—therefore he merely points out the state of affairs. The best way to teach someone is to give him a proper example and then let him figure the rest for himself, to find his own way into

Experience.

Nevertheless, not even the joyful world of the Songs of Innocence is entirely free of control over the imagination of children. Figures of authority—either those of parents, nurses, or other adults—are ever present in many of the texts or illustrations. In many ways, their presence in Innocence is made more sinister than in Experience by the fact that their control over children is excercised with a soft smile and an iron-hard determination. The relationship between children and their adult guardians is established right in the very beginning, in the illustration facing the frontispiece of

Innocence . A maternal figure sits upright in a chair, holding a book in her lap, hands outstretched as if offering the knowledge that the book contains. And the children, who would probably much rather be engaged in some game “On the Ecchoing Green” (Blake

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6), are intently staring into the open book, not paying the least bit of attention to their surroundings, not even to the “…forbidden fruit which dangles above them on the The

Tree of Knowledge” (Leader 67). So far, the theoretical knowledge imposed on them by the mother (or a nurse) has kept them away from the practical experience, from eating the forbidden fruit, and thus from entering the realm of self-awareness and sexuality.

This, after all, is still the place of Innocence, the state before Eve and Adam were expelled from Paradise, therefore the pleasures of carnal knowledge do not belong here.

And this is also why the nurse of the Nurse’s Song is quite composed, her “…heart is at rest within my breast” (Blake 14), for the games the children are playing are (at least for the time being) harmless. She will let them play until dark, but no longer, because God only knows what beasts (and what Tyger s) lurk in the darkness of the , or in the darkness of human mind.

Indeed, parents do everything to prevent their children from penetrating the depths of their subconscious too soon. The tigers of id have to stay bound by the “mind-forg’d manacles”, as long as it is possible to do so. But the night, the frightening and unknown blackness of subconscious, spreads its tentacles over the innocent meadows of Ecchoing

Green as well. As the night sets in, the children’s “sports have an end” (Blake 7), and the time of Innocence draws nearer to its conclusion. The illustration on the second plate of the poem confirms the anxieties of the nurse from the above-mentioned eponymous song. According to Leader, the vines surrounding the group of children and their adult guardians are “sexually active” and that they “suggest that innocence ―the child’s unselfconscious plays ―is but a passing thing” (84). And so it is, as one of the girls tarries behind the group, outstretching her arm to take a bunch of grapes ―forbidden fruit ―offered to her by one of the two boys, who is lying on the grapevine. Experience is within the grasp of her hand, but she will not yet have the

25 oportunity to reach it, not while the paternal figure (or Old John) is around. Pointing firmly towards the preceding plate, back towards the childish games of Innocence, the father excersises his authority, being more of a commander than a wise guardian, a

“Mister Parental Spoilsport” (Leader 86). It is not really certain whether the man will prevent the girl from taking the grapes, thus also symbolically preventing her from reaching sexual maturity. But there is another example of suppression of natural sexual needs and desires, and this can be found in the experienced .

The poem is introduced by the Bard, who addresses the people yet to come, but his prophecy does not use the typical, lofty, oracle-of-Delphi style of speech. Right from the very beginning, he is ironical. The “Age of Gold” of which he speaks is not a permanent state of Heaven on Earth, but an ephemeral period that must inevitably end at some point, because the “future Age” awaits. And even while it lasts, it is not imperfect.

One has to bear in mind that this age which is free of “winters cold”, free of despair, is also the time when “…Love! Was thought a crime” (Blake 42), and youth was severely punished for its curiousity and its urge to follow its instincts. It is Earth of Blakes time,

“…a world of manacles and chains, secret joys, selfish, cruel fathers, and thwarted virgins,” (Leader, 145). It is a place far behind the sports of Ecchoing Green. The little halo-hatted girl strayed behind the group, got lost and finally came to a “garden bright”, where “Strangers came not near” (Blake 42). The girl is so thoroughly concealed from the vision of others, so lost in a world of perfect intimacy, that not even the eyes of the readers are permitted to trace her. The illustration on the plate of A Little Girl Lost is devoid of any human figures, only a scatterd flock of exotic, long-tailed birds (perhaps birds of paradise) and a solitary tree occupy the scene. The reader has to turn his full attention to the text if he wishes to see what is happening behind the verdant bushes in the background. There, while the “Parents were afar” (Blake 42), the little girl is

26 without any outer control, free to take the grapes from the hand of a boy, free to do whatever she was innitialy afraid of. The kisses sure were sweet, and the “youthful pair/

[was] Fill’d with softest care” (Blake 42), but their season in the sun was about to end, their summer was to give way to the wintry welcome of the girl’s father. This terrible, god-like figure appeares only in the last two stanzas of the poem, but casts its frightful shadow over the whole episode. The girl comes to him, “bright” with innocent joy from the pleasure she has experienced, but is instantly frozen by his “loving look”. The kindly guardian—his “hoary hair” identifying him with Old John—that used to watch over her on the Ecchoing green is gone, his place taken by a puritan inquisitor, who at once smells the odour of sin. The moment his voice enters the poem, the whole tone of the text changes. Gone are the long, harmonious lines of the beginning. His speech is ful of “O”s and exclamation marks, brimming with anger and accusation. His child transgressed his laws, and an adequate punishment has to follow. This parental attitude never was and never will be entirely uncommon, but Blake was nevertheless very precise in observing the implications of such behaviour. As Frye remarks: “The notion that a child is a possesion of its parents is very hard to eradicate, especialy in loving parents; and this kind of love is denounced by Blake as a vicious appetite” (73). The father as the God-Creator thus turns into his exact opposite, God-Devourer. But he does not cannibalize his child the way Titan Chronos did. Instead, the little girl’s father feeds his own frustrations (“O the trembling fear!” [Blake 42]) of her own worries and shame.

Shame that probably sprang from her realization of the fact that her joys and pleasures are denounced as something filthy by her own father. But such is also the power of human ego over their id . Eventhough the instinctive beast howls and pulls at its chain, still the reason, or the part of oneself that obeys the laws of society created by adults, keeps it from running free. Nevertheless, the case is not entirely lost yet, for Blake

27 offers us a glimpse of a better world, a world where ones creative (both imaginary and generative) powers mays be realized to their full potential.

The Little Girl Lost is at once recognisable from its counterpart ( A Little Girl Lost ) by a prominent element appearing in the design of its first plate, and that is the presence of two semi-naked lovers. Here, at last, the girl is united with the boy uder the Tree of

Knowledge, her hand pointing up towards the sky, where another bird of paradise flies.

The text is filled with symbols of sexual awakening (song of a wild bird that Lyca hears; wild beasts coming out of their caves, and then carrying the girl back with them), unhindered by the repressive presence of authorities. Lyca is “Lost in desart wild”

(Blake 26), and the experience that she is about to make is going to be just her own, because “The quest for God, for a true vision of life, cannot be carried out under parental supervision” (Blackstone 3). The mother may weep, trying to raise guilty feelings and shame in the child, but Lyca (fortunately for her) is too deep among the beasts to hear any of her parents. Her quest for the forbidden fruit may be succesfully accomplished under the surveillance of a “kingly lion”, who according to Blackstone symbolises “the majesty of natural energies” (3), but who may also represent Lyca’s subconscious. Once the desires are let loose from their chains, the frustrations and suppressed emotions disappear, no longer causing harm to the fragile psyche. The tigers do not howl anymore, but play tamely around the sleeping girl. Sleep that is constantly sought by Lyca is also an important element of the poem, as it is another means by which she descends into her instinctive self, another means to let her id run wild. As both the lioness in the text, and Lyca in the accompanying illustration take off their dresses and prepare for the night, their unity, the unity of human an his inner animal, is complete. Deep caves are there to be explored, and Lyca is not afraid, “…like the blushing bride of popular tradition, seems to know and look forward to what awaits

28 her,” (Leader, 188). She has found a new source of self-confidence that emmanates from the inner layers of her psyche. The classic situation is turned upside down (to come to terms with oneself, say the psychiatrists, means to find ones “inner child”)—the outer child has found its inner woman. Lyca is now confident, even as she lies among the trees of “desart wild”, surrounded by unfamiliar setting.

But still the parents cannot leave their child (their possesion) unattended for long, and venture on to search for her in the companion poem entitled .

This, Blackstone argues, is of course partially out of natural parental anxiety for the welfare of their offspring (3), but also out of a selfish need to keep their child at home.

For when the dependent infant discovers sex and becomes an independent adult, its parents are suddenly unnecessary, their counsels unsought for, their nurture and care pestilent. In their blind, possessive way of love, they do not realize that “…Lyca has in fact been driven from her home by the repressive discipline” (Blackstone 3). However, this story is one of the few in the Songs that reaches a positive conclusion. The Bard, who spoke from present time to the “Future Age” in case of A Little Girl Lost , now turns his “prophetic” vision at the future which he believes to be more sympathetic to human emotions and desires—the people to come, as he expects, will once be surprised at the fact that “Love! Was thought a crime” (Blake 42)—and presents the contemporary readers with an example of a parent-child reconciliation. Having wandered the wilderness for a week, Lyca’s parents at last reach the secret garden, the most intimate place of their daughter. Though at first startled by the supposedly ferocious lion that lies in their way, they do not run away, nor do they kill the beast.

These parents finally show that they can be attentive to the child’s natural needs

(however scary these seem at a first glance), and are rewarded by a glimpse of a real personality of the child. The lion transforms into “A spirit armd in gold” (Blake 28),

29 with golden hair and a crown on his head, a character that Leader identifies as “…the true Christ… [whose] love is human, earthly, energetic” (188). But this creature of light and wisdom also resembles Greek god Apollo, amongst whose chief responsibilities was to act as a “…guardian of herds (Nomios), and furthemore of musicians, poets, rapsodes and prophets; these all needed some form of ecstasy to perform…” (Neškudla

34) 3, and generally to be a good spirit to all those who use their imaginative powers.

Lyca’s parents do follow the lead of creative energy and their instincts, as the golden vision guides them towards the innermost sanctum, where sleeping Lyca is lying. The family is thus reunited in the midst of “garden mild”, where nothing natural is forbidden, and no needs or urges are restrained. In the illustration, both the parents and children are naked, resting together with the lions, underneath a pair of intertwined tree- trunks. The whole scene bears an atmosphere of perfect serenity, and above all unity— old and young, human and animal, body and soul, innocence and experience. If the parents look more closely, they will see that their own children are their gates to

Paradise.

However, trying to deprive the children of their sexuality, thus also repressing their individuality, is not the only way in which parents could do more harm than good.

Another area, where they can excersise their control and rule the world of the child is education. The maternal figure on one of the very first plates of Innocence has already been mentioned in connection with education, or rather with imposition of theoretical knowledge on the little ones. Knowledge here has the effect of taming the children, of making them more obedient and submissive to the will of authorities of the outer world, and also of chaining their desires. The same pattern can be seen in poems such as The

Little Black Boy or The Chimney Sweeper , where the indoctrination with Christian

3 This passage was translated from a Czech original by the author of this thesis 30 learning makes mute slaves out of the children concerned. But nowhere is the this phenomenon more evident than in the poem called The School Boy, of which Gardner says: “…another [poem] which late in his life Blake moved out of Innocence into

Experience” (107). Eventhough the poem starts in the voice of Innocence, with an enumeration of the joys of summer, the light-hearted tone of the speaker changes as soon as he comes to the notion of school, of the place where “The little ones spend their day/ In sighing and dismay” (Blake 54). Though not described as a place of any kind of medieval torture, still the school is represented by a nameless teacher with “cruel eye outworn”, who not so much beats as rather bores any sign of enthusiasm, any sign of imaginative energy, and indeed any sign of life out of his unhappy pupils. Their spirit has to be broken, like the will of a caged bird. The image of a bird in fact runs through the whole poem, as the narrator identifies with it at the beginning, happily singing with a sky-lark. But as everyone knows, caged sky-larks seldom sing, and most of them die in the end—and so the child, locked up in a classroom on a pleasant “summer morn”, may only “droop his tender wing” (Blake 54), and try to survive the lesson. “The deader a thing is, the more obedient it is,” says Frye (189), and that is the purpose of the

“dreary shower” that falls heavy on the heads of the children. Their youth is like

“blossoms blown away,” (Blake 54) by the constant influx of (from the point of view of a small child) useless information. This happens with an approval of the parents, who are (for the first time) directly accused by the narrator. The last two stanzas are addressed to any “father&mother”, who would care to listen, as the narrator pleads for preserving of the “youthful ”. Because if the time of innocent plays, simple joys of life, and imaginative progression is taken away from the children, if their creative powers are harnessed, the speaker argues, then their generative powers are equally afflicted. Without spring there can be no summer, without blossoms there can be no

31 fruit, and if the children are not actually permitted to be children, then how can they have offspring of their own? This situation is therefore not only a problem of the present, but it is also likely to influence the “Children of the Future Age ” (Blake 42), and probably affected the parents in the past as well. Here, Blake with an astonishing precision described a mechanism that was noticed by psychiatrists a century later—the human psyche is from a large part formed by its earliest environment, by its family, and parents are very often the ones who are responsible. Most of the neuroses spring from the “mind-forg’d manacles” that are imposed on human needs and desires. These imaginary fetters have many forms, and one of them is also brought to existence with the help of the Church and its perverted version of religion.The last chapter is therefore devoted to the Church.

3.2 The Church

Save for the brief episode with the New Church, Blake never belonged to any organised religious group, and reportedly “was fiercely antagonistic to the Church itself” (Davies 8). To him, the Church was one of the trinity of usurpers that had the most damaging effect on society. Its sin, so to speak, was indifference towards the pressing problems that ran through the society of the eighteenth century like plague, but also its hypocricy. The clergymen who were supposed to be wise shepherds of their flocks cared more for matters of their own well-being than they did for their duties and responsibilities towards their community. The wealth distributed among the clergy increased, and a typical “…parson was… living on equal terms with the gentry… But he was not for that any more in touch with the bulk of parishioners” (Trevelyan 373).

However, the holy men did not drift away from the common people only materialy, but also ideologicaly. Their sermons now more resembled “…literary excersises… too abstract and impersonal to move the patient rustic audience” (Trevelyan 373), no longer

32 offering spiritual comfort to the common man, or the despairing poor. But perhaps the greatest flaw Blake saw in the teachings of the established Church was its insistence on chastity, on the separation of soul and body (“The latter, we are told, is ‘tainted’ and

‘corrupt’; the former becomes ‘pure’ when separated,” [Frye 74]), and on taming of the desires of flesh.

This attitude of the Church towards the joys of sexuality are explored in a poem ironically named The Garden of Love . The narrator enters the garden where he “used to play on the green” (Blake 37), perhaps a place where he played games like the children of The Ecchoing Green , or where enjoyed innocent encounters with Ona before her father put an end to them. But his grapes had also turned sour, because the garden he had expected to find turned out to be a dead thing of the past. As if by magic, “A Chapel was built in the midst” (Blake 37). This is definitely not the house of the Father

“meek&mild” who loves all his creation equally. It is rather the sanctuary of the angry

God of Old Testament, who severely punishes any sign of moral weakness, and of submission to one’s bodily desires. His words do not sound like a song of a bird of paradise, nor like the “tender voice/ Making all the vales rejoice” (Blake 11) that all the innocents were used to hearing. Instead, their design is imprinted on the doors of the chapel, as if etched by corrosive acid, and their tone is superior, possesive and commanding: “Thou shalt not” (Blake 37). The narrator is at once turned off from entering the uninviting shrine, and decides to look for his garden, with its “many sweet flowers” (Blake 37) that would please his senses. But it is already too late, as the chapel is joined by a complementary graveyard—in fact, the whole text of the poem is set underneath an open grave, underneath a priest and two praying children. The children are both sorrowful and obedient, their heads bowed in silent submission. The priest practises funeral service, but the body that he is burrying is more imaginary than

33 material. He is in fact enacting the will of the Angry God, burrying the youthful energy of the children, their ability to feel and live, for “…the killing of love is as dear to him as the killing of life” (Frye 74). The whole graveyard is “filled with graves” (Blake 37), presumably containing innocent parts of other children that fell victims to the squadron of priests “walking their rounds”, priests resembling a group of black-clad undertakers, or spiders carefuly weaving their net to entrap the unsuspecting victim. This time, the

“mind-forg’d manacles” take on a form of briars, “binding… my joys & desires” (Blake

37). Briars, thorny vines not too different from the Crown of thorns that once encircled the head of Jesus Christ, are are the threads of the net woven by priests, choking all that was innocent, natural and good in their subjects. The motives of the priests might be in accordance with their ideas of salvation, but their way of enacting them is counter- productive. Instead of expelling the sin, they breed it. Because if love is repressed, “…it finds an outlet in lust,” (Davies, 145), lust leads inevitably to corruption of the natural urges of a man, and corruption leads to sin. Moreover, according to Davies, “…shame arises from the entrance of sin into the sex relationship so that sex and spirit are divided,” (105). When shame appears, the innocent self of the person, their id , is driven back deep into its shell, and more frustration and repression of desires ensues. Thus the whole cycle becomes self-sustaining and never-ending, as the opressed becomes his own opressor. The priests, or the agents of the Church of Angry God, only have to sow the seeds of death into the living garden, and the graves will grow on their own.

But killing the joys of sexual life is not the only damage carried out by the Church that Blake exposes, as shown by the poem called . Innocence has another element that may be broken by the “Priestly care” (Blake 46), and that is its individuality, clarity and sincerity, with which it views the world around and reports its findings back. Wide-eyed, child-like, the narrator of this poem dares to address the

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“Father” (directly, without the assistance of a priest as his mediator, thus without anybody influencing his outlook), though a bit sheepishly, as if defending his case against a strong opponent (could this be the Angry God again?). His statement is that every living thing, all creation (including the Creator himself) is equal in his eyes. His attitude is democratic, as even the humblest of creatures “that picks up crumbs” (Blake

46) deserves to receive the same amount of love as the Supreme Being. But the innocent child also listens to his inner, instinctive self, to the part of his personality that is closest to animal, and understands a fact that many adults fail to see, or refuse to acknowledge.

The most potent imperative in the whole of Nature, the one that all healthy creatures must needs obey at all occassions, is that of preserving ones own life, even at the expense of someone else. These thoughts, these means by which a child explores the world around him and slowly, at his own pace, grows into the gown of Experience, were not designed for the ears of another person. They could have been silent prayers, or only day-dream talk of an idle child that plays all by himself. Still, there is always someone spying, and the little boy is “accidentaly” discovered by a priest who “sat by and heard the child” (Blake 46). This priest is “trembling with zeal”, because the prospects of promotion in the hierarchy of the Church were always a matter of “political jobbery” (Davies 20), rather than of honest care for the salvation of the consigned parishioners ―and, from the point of view of the said priest, what could help to improve the reputation of a clergyman better than a good old witch-hunt? All he has to do is attract the attention of his community, and this he knows better than his own shoes.

“…standing on the altar high,” (Blake 46) in the manner of a daily sermon, the priest leads a fabricated process against the little boy. Leader observes that “ Experience is filled with characters whose individual identities are compromised by, or sacrificed to, the causes of ideas they espouse” (171). However, this is not the case of A Little Boy

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Lost . This time, the child will not be allowed to oppose the other side, nor even to plead its case, remaining a silent victim. Either because of the thunderous speech of the priest who seems to delight in large, dramatic gestures ―“Lo what a fiend is here!” (Blake,

46—or because of the hum of blood-thirsty mob, always inclined to attend the odd execution, the “child could not be heard” (Blake 46), and could not become a martyr in the manner of Joan D’Arc or John Huss. His death in the chastising flames of the

Church’s ideology is vain and anonymous, only one of the “many [who] had been burn’d before” (Blake 46), which leaves the reader with a sense of tragic waste, and with a bitter aftertaste. The only outcome of the whole situation is a possible promotion of the priest, confirmation of the power of the Church over the wills and lives of its members, and a death of a child. Yet again, the “mind-forg’d manacles” were imposed on all those who came into contact with the institution that held authority in its hands.

The individuality of a child was severely punished, sacrificed on the altar of unity, or rather on that of uniformity of belief. The affiliation of the priest to his maternal Church was strengthened. The ordinary people were affirmed of its omnipotency. But an attentive reader was given a mighty push towards his own Experience—for is it not a sin to kill an innocent child?

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4 Conclusion

The first, informative chapter serves the purpose of brief outlining of the aspects of

Blake’s life that made him reflect the zeitgeist of the eighteenth century, foremostly his individualism that made him stand out among his peers, and also his tendency to resist authorities. If the eighteenth century was a period of revolution, then William Blake was truly the man of his time.

The whole thesis is structured much in the same way as its subject, the Songs of

Innocence and of Experience . The main body is therefore divided into two parts, one dealing with the innocent victims, ground by the mills of the turbulent age, the other with the agents of the system, so to speak. The Innocence Chained starts with a chapter on the two songs entitled quite simply, The Chimney Sweeper. Both of these poems depict the harsh life conditions of the exploited children, and both of them are here approached as being strongly subversive. Christian doctrine is named as a chief means of turning the children into obedient slaves, or rather into innocent lambs that enter the slaughterhouse willingly, which is an accordance with a poetic image of the (holy) lamb, in Blake’s work frequently associated with the innocent children and Christ.

Their plight is in connection with the situation of African slaves that were also traded like cattle, and treated accordingly. Here, the points of special interest are two. First, it is the fact that the narrator of the poem is the eponymous Little Black Boy , belonging to an entirely different ethnical and historical background, and yet portrayed in such a way that he is still able to appeal to the sympathies of the readers, though not the compassion of his antagonist, the English child. The second point made is that the device, whereby the little slave-to-be tries to gain the love of the white boy, is the same by which he is enslaved—and that is yet again the Christian doctrine. The religion that claims to be

37 democratic to all actually discriminates the ones that do not fit into its black-and-white view.

The fourth chapter is the last belonging to the “innocent segment”, and it deals with the urban poverty, which spread like a disease during the onset of the Industrial

Revolution. The character of the Bard is again pointed out as being an ingenious metaphorical device, this time serving as a symbol of the decaying urban society, and also of the imminent danger of death that waited behind every corner on the streets of

London . The misery of the lower-class adults affects the life-expectations of their children; sometimes the children fare worse than adults. And their situation is made even worse by ignorance of the higher classes, and the indifference of the magistrates.

The second part of the thesis, Authority Unleashed , deals with the ones Blake held responsible for the generally bad conditions among the poverty-stricken masses. With an almost shocking accuracy, Blake named the two reasons of the downward tendency within the society, and also of the fact that innocent, good children became experienced, corrupt adults. The fifth chapter deals with one of these reasons, and that is the role of parents in a life of a child. As the parents are in control, they are at will to form the child into whatever shape they like. Not only that they try to prevent the children from entering the realm of adulthood, from discovering their own sexuality (as portrayed in A

Little Girl Lost ), but they also curb the childrens’ individuality and natural intelect. The argument is that a parent, resembling Angry God (the very same that cast Adam and

Eve out of Paradise), feels that a child is his possesion, his property, and should therefore obey him at all times, and at all costs. Even if this means to punish the child for its natural urges, or make it waste the joys its childhood with unnecessarily strict education.

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The very last chapter makes use of the fact that Blake was a life-long opponent of the established Church of England, and blamed this institution for many vices and evils.

This thesis however deals only with the tendency of the Church to dictate its teachings to its subjetcs, while at the same time not obeying them herself. The ironical view in the

Garden of Love, with its images of celibacy imposed on young children, is in its effect very similar to that in A Little Boy Lost. The former poems explores killing love, whereas the latter one deals with killing of life, but both have the same implications— the very ability of reproduction of new generations is endangered.

The main aim of this thesis is to show the way in which certain aspects of the eighteenth century—namely the given social issues—were portrayed in the collection of poetry Songs of Innocence and of Experience , but also to prove that the phenomena were depicted with a sophisticated, sympathetic, and above all experienced way. Blake knew the life conditions in England, knew the mean streets of London, and of course knew the people that inhabited them. Together with his viewpoint of an informed outsider—of a man who stood within, and at the same time outside the society—he provides a competent as well as valuable resource of information both for an innocent, and an experienced reader.

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5 Bibliography

Primary Sources

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience . London: Falcon Press, 1947.

Blake, William. “The Songs of Innocence” and “The Songs of Experience”. In: The

Poetical Works of William Blake . ed. John Sampson. London: Oxford University

Press, 1913.

Blake, William. The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience, Illuminated . 28 Dec. 2008. ‹http://worldebookfair.org/Members/Penn_State_Collection/PSUECS/songs~in.pdf. ›

Secondary Sources Blackstone, Bernard. William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience. London:

British Council, 1963.

Burdett, Osbert. William Blake . London: Macmillan, 1926.

Davies, J. G. The Theology of William Blake . Oxford: Claredon Press, 1948.

Frye, Northrop. Nicholas Halmi (ed.). : A Study of William Blake .

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

Gardner, Stanley. Blake’s Innocence and Experience Retraced . London: The Athlone

Press, 1986.

Hibbert, Christopher. “No One Knows the Cruelty”. 13. Apr. 2008.

‹http://www.phil.muni.cz/elf/mod/resource/view.php?id=15403›

Leader, Zachary. Reading Blake’s Songs . London: Routledge&Keagan Paul, 1981.

Lucas, John. England and Englishness . London: The Hogarth Press, 1991.

Neškudla, Bo řek. Encyklopedie řeckých boh ů a mýt ů. Praha: Libri, 2003

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Stephen, Leslie. English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century .

London: Duckworth and Co., 1904.

Trevelyan, G. M. English Social History . Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd,

1967.

Vokurka, Martin, et al. Praktický slovník medicíny . Praha: Maxdorf, 1998.

“Percival Pott and the Chimney Sweeps’ Cancer”. 25 Apr. 2008.

‹http://www.bookrags.com/research/percivall-pott-and-the-chimney-swee-scit-

0412/›

“To Charter”. 13 Apr. 2009. ‹ http://dictionary.reference.com/›

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