"The Lamb" and "The Tyger"--How Far with Blake? Author(s): Robert F. Gleckner Source: The English Journal, Vol. 51, No. 8 (Nov., 1962), pp. 536-543 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/810419 Accessed: 16-02-2016 19:08 UTC

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This content downloaded from 141.117.125.76 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 19:08:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "The Lamb" and "The Tyger"-How Far with Blake? Robert F. Gleckner

The author believes we should teach the "poetry of intellectual shock" in order to "jar the student out of his lethargy." For this purpose Blake has possibilities. Dr. Gleckneris a professorof English at the University of Californiaat Riverside.

HEREare a number of fairly con- I had in teaching Keats in college- ventional ways by which I might Keats, who for most people, perhaps, is approach the problem of whether Blake the epitome of the lace-hankie type ought to be taught in the high school dreamer-poet. I asked a girl in my class classroom, and, if so, how much of to explain what Keats was about in the Blake. I could say, for example, that first stanza of the Ode on Melancholy- much of what he has to say to us is which begins like this: modern, that the world of his London No, no! Go not to Lethe, neither twist is precisely our world. I could say that he would to the students as Wolf's bane, tight-rooted, for its poison- speak many ous wine ... another poet doesn't-for he is the poet of rebellion, of defiance; he is an angry The student's answer was: "It has some- man who cries out his in accents anger thing to do with beauty"-for clearly similar to we hear recognizably those her mind had been usurped by the I could that he is an today. Or, say widely accepted truth that all poetry who writes in lan- exciting poet simple has something to do with beauty. It was guage and that therefore he would fit a safe answer; but, of course, it was as well in a school curriculum. But I high wrong as it could be: telling someone shall not of these say any things-for not to take poison, not to commit sui- are true in although they general, they cide, hardly has much to do with do not seem to me to be reasons urgent beauty. for to school teaching any poet high Blake rarely concerns himself with students. I should like rather to say, in fact, his is, over-all, that we to teach more "beauty"; poetry simply, ought even ugly. Still, some- Blake to school and teach quite unpleasant, high students, how, he has come to be a "popular" him because he is a well, difficult, hard, in some Everyone knows at times-and poet respects. tough poet-even cryptic "The (or better, everyone because he is a Tyger" especially disturbing knows bright / who attacks at one time or another "Tyger, Tyger, burning poet, In the forests of the though almost we think we stand night"-even everything they do not know who William Blake is, for. And finally (a point I shall not de- what his or what but he should be tiger really signifies, velop only mention), the forests of the night really imply). because he does not, in taught general, Everyone knows "The Lamb." Children write beautiful poetry-that is, pretty recite it. Records have been made of this that kind of words, dreamy airs, poetry and other of the Songs of Innocence and which the mass mind thinks of when- of Experience. Sickeningly sweet and ever the word "poetry" is mentioned. sentimental music has been written so I am reminded here of an experience that the songs can be sung. Children's 536

This content downloaded from 141.117.125.76 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 19:08:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "THE LAMB" AND "THE TYGER" 537 books with saccharine illustrations, which And perhaps most terrifying of all-in outrageously presume to somehow bet- the face of what man has done to man ter Blake's own illustrations, are popular -simply, "I am hid." fare. All this and more-and all of it Blake himself is partly to blame for constitutes an extraordinary and terrible this irony-this way we have of ac- irony. For this nice man who wrote cepting him as a writer of children's these nice poems, also wrote: poems, of pleasant lyrics, a kind of In his Introduction Prisons are built with stones of Law, English Longfellow. to Innocence he wrote: Brothels with bricks of Religion. Songs of He desires but acts breeds who not, And I wrote my happy songs pestilence. Every child may joy to hear. As the catterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest And in a letter to a conventionally lays his curse on the fairest joys. minded friend of his, who was clearly Sooner murder an infant in its cradle enamoured of what Wordsworth called than nurse unacted desires. the gaudiness and inane phraseology of This is the man who believed that the popular poetry of the day, Blake wrote: Jesus Christ broke all the ten command- ments-and was the better for it. This You say that I want somebody to eluci- is the man who said to God about the date my ideas. [And then, bravely, for creation of this finite world, and about few read Blake in his own time or even God's punishment of man for not doing knew he existed:] I am happy to find a better with it: great majority of my Fellow Mortals who can elucidate my Visions and Par- If you have form'd a Circle to go into ticularly they have been elucidated by Go into it yourself and see how you children. would do. (my italics) But in the same letter he also wrote: This is the man like the bitter who, You to know that what is Grand Mark Twain most of us do not know ought is necessarily obscure to weak men. and prefer not to know, wrote-about his was clod his the [Happily correspondent good friend, painter Fuseli: enough not to realize that he was being The Man that e'er I knew insulted here by Blake.] That which only can be made to the Idiot is not Who did not make me almost spew explicit Was Fuseli: he was both Turk and worth my care. The wisest of the Jew- Ancients considered what is not too And so dear Christian friends, how do do? explicit as the fittest for instruction, you because it rouzes the faculties to act. This is the man who, tortured his by And here we are at the core of the vision of a sinful, vicious, corrupt, matter-an contradiction strangled world, wrote in his notebook apparent sentences like these: which is not a contradiction at all, an idea which makes a careless surface To defend the Bible in this year 1798 of Blake the would cost a man his life. The Beast reading greatest injustice we could possibly do him. Note that and the Whore rule without control. he his visions are elucidated chil- I I shan't live five and if I says by say years, dren-not that children are "amused" live one it will be a wonder. June 1793. by them, or "like them," or think them And who signed an album with: "pleasant and nice," or commit them to William Blake. Born 28 November 1757 memory. The child, for Blake, can eluci- in London and has died several times date, can imaginatively take in, the since. vision or the poem, because his inner

This content downloaded from 141.117.125.76 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 19:08:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 538 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL eye has not yet been cloudedover by than I, or more powerful than I, or the pall of convention,by the obstruc- whatever. tion of that commonsense we all praise so much, by the maturitywhich sees The Clue to Blake often as the fool sees, which accepts realitiesas the The clue to teaching Blake, then, and present only real,accepts therefore the clue to how much of "fact" as the only truth, worships scienceas the saviourof mankindeven Blake to teach to young minds, is im- while it is to blow plicit in his own vigorous and coura- helping up mankind, motto: must create a acceptsman's mask as the true index of geous "I system his the world as it or be enslavedby anotherman's." It's as character,accepts as that. There are no other al- is, believingthat the way to get along simple in it is to deal with it on the world's ternatives. To create for Blake was to terms.Such blindnessthe child has not be; this is why he insists so vehemently learned.He can still and he sees on judging everyone as an artist- yet see, whether are what we call artists creatively;as Blake said, he sees not they or not. Thus, Sir Isaac Newton to Blake with the eye but through the eye. Thus we from sensitive child to weak was a bad artist; Sir Francis Bacon was grow either one of man, who needs his faculties to be a bad artist-not because them or but because roused so that he act, so that he painted wrote, they may believed in the limitationsof the human may be a person, not a copy, so that he be "man not an in- creature-that is, because they were un- may thinking," creative human themselves. "A sensate aggregate of facts stored in the beings and poet, a painter,a musician,an architect," "accepted" categories pigeonholes. Blake wrote: "the Man or Woman who (We should recall here that our most brilliantelectronic brainscan is not one of these is not a Christian." only store, and his were all Artists." sort, classify, order, record, transcribe. "Jesus Apostles do not "The Whole business of Man is the They create.) Arts." The uncreative life for Blake is To see "The Lamb," then, as a kind a the of one's of version of little living death, abrogation sophisticated Mary's own divine responsibility to think for animalof the same name, or to see "The the as and terrible one's self, self-complacent accept- Tyger" frightening ance of the tyranny of another'sthought merely because that's what tigers in the zoo is -father's, mother's,teacher's, president's, look like, to arouse no faculties even God's. at all; it is rather to cater to the very But it is, minds that humanthirst for easy answers,which are you say, young based on even easier, unexaminedalter- you are concerned with, not the mind natives-good-bad, moral-immoral,free- that has matured to the point where it dom-slavery, angels-devils, heaven-hell, can intelligently guide the body it in- God-Satan. habits. Exactly. This is Blake's point, For Blake this is the ultimate sur- and the point of teaching him in the render of one's own mind to the high schools. "Some children are fools," group are some old men. the comfortable of the Blake said, "and so mind, position But there is a vast on the side nonvoter who to himself, majority says "Why of imagination or spiritual sensation." should I vote; one vote doesn't make It is a brave statement,for Blake knew difference the ac- any anyway"; lazy only too well that it is in the young ceptance of another man's ideas because that the mind begins to harden, to pet- it is a bother to think-and besides, he's rify, for it is in the young, in that last more famous than I, or more learned gasp of freedom and irresponsibility,

This content downloaded from 141.117.125.76 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 19:08:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "THE LAMB" AND "THE TYGER" 539 that the greatest pressuresare exerted- tions which were to him an abhorrence, to be like the fathers,the teachers,to be he sees as a human being, or better, as like George Washington or Abraham a potential human being, a child. He Lincoln, to be like their fellows, to "get calls the poem "Infant Joy"-a lovely, with it," to "know the score," to learn ungrammatical exemplum of, and hymn how to "get along," to learn the value to, pure innocence: of the dollar, to plan for one's future I have no name: security, to be sensible, to realize one's I am but two days old. capacity, to settle for less, and in these What shall I call thee? ways to be what we confidently call I happy am, And all of these are Joy is my name. "happy." pressures Sweet befall thee. of a piece; they constitute what Words- joy worth called the "Shadesof the prison- Pretty joy! house" which "close the Sweet joy but two days old, upon growing Sweet I call thee: Boy." They constitute an insidiouscoer- joy cion of the infinite human mind into Thou dost smile, I sing the while: what Blake called a ratio. "He who sees Sweet befall thee. the infinite in all sees joy things, God," We should have our classes read this. wrote Blake; "he who sees the ratio But we should also point out quickly only, sees himself only." Thus the coer- that this one we is represents only side of cion, see, accompaniedand abetted one state of the human a things, soul as by an inner weakness, surrender of Blake and an all too self to the coercion. Desire can be re- put it, fleeting state at that. There is the other side, strained, Blake said, only if it is weak the state of the human ac- contrary soul, enough to be restrained.When we and it is this state which we are in. an as our ulti- cept arbitrary"capacity" We should not have our classes read the mate we are lost. And when potential, one without the other, for the second we, as teachers, the student's accept is the cruel but necessary puncturing ratio, and decide that that is his "ca- of the illusion of the first. The second pacity," how indeed can we endeavour is called "Infant Sorrow": to speak to the whole of his humanness? The answer of that we My mother groan'd, my father wept; is, course, can't; Into the world I and since we can't, we cram his head dangerous leapt, Helpless, naked, piping loud, with facts and say he has wisdom, we Like a fiend hid in a cloud. make him memorize a and poem say Struggling in my father's hands now he knows poetry, we tell him is and communismbad Striving against my swaddling bands, democracy good Bound and weary, I thought best and say he is politically sophisticated, To sulk upon my mother's breast. we read him "The without Tyger" When I saw that rage was vain, knowing that Blake never meant his And to sulk would to become like the never nothing gain, tiger lamb, Turning many a trick and wile, meant it to be seen as evil, never meant I began to soothe and smile. it to look like a zoo tiger. But we read And I sooth'd after it to him that even in day day anyway, hoping Till upon the ground I stray; his limited capacity, he will, as we say, And I smil'd night after night, "like" the poem. Seeking only for delight. Blakeon Ideas And I saw before me shine Clusters of the wand'ring vine, Blake once wrote a poem about the And many a lovely flower and tree essence of joy-which, like all abstrac- Stretch'd their blossoms out to me.

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My father then with holy look, He sits down with holy fears, In his hands a holy book, And waters the ground with tears; Pronounced curses on my head Then Humility takes its root And bound me in a mirtle shade. Underneath his foot. So I smote him, and his gore Soon spreads the dismal shade Stained the roots my mirtle bore; Of Mystery over his head; But the time of youth is fled, And the Catterpillar and Fly And grey hairs are on my head. Feed on the Mystery. We all strive against our swaddling And it bears the fruit of Deceit, and sweet to bands when young-and even as we do, Ruddy eat; like a strait or a Chinese And the Raven his nest has made jacket finger- In its thickest shade. lock, those bands grow tighter about us. Till bound and weary we make a The gods of the earth and sea decision: Don't fight it; pretend to give Sought through nature to find this tree. in. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and But their search was all in vain. There one in the Human Brain. fight 'em on their own terms. If sulking grows doesn't work, rage loudly and furiously at what everyone has done to you, The Effect of Blake miserable And when that poor you. All of this is I a few pretty grim, agree. doesn't get you anywhere, try Indeed we are it-as we learn the repelled by tricks of the trade, ropes, play should be. And this me to device de- brings my the game. Use every in your main about Blake's It is of to point poetry. veloping repertoire gambits gain that kind of which to be of course-for poetry ought pleasure-and profit, your- in school because it is im- the taught high self. Never mind others; they're to remain neutral in the face look out for possible doing the same thing. Just of its on our cherished values. out for that onslaught yourself. But as you reach S. of of the Jerome Bruner, professor psy- tempting flower success, holy, at it suc- law brands as evil chology Harvard, recently put self-righteous you "The of education is bonds of cinctly: objective and binds you in the eternal not the of Now production self-complacent suffering, enslaved humanity. you fools." it is a which are a man. Rather, process by we teach the young student to doubt, Or if we refuse to our- recognize to conjecture, to wonder, to be con- selves if we refuse to see that we here, fused. The trouble with a good many allow ourselves to be enslaved forces by students when they come to college is which we ourselves create and per- that they are never disturbed or con- we should read on to discover petuate, fused about anything. They have no how little human, finally, we really are. basis on which to be confused or dis- In Blake's parlance, we cease to be hu- turbed, because we have so carefully man and become an abstract quantity. sheltered them from confusion that in their boredom with the old Here is his "Human Abstract": cliches, they have simply accepted them with- Pity would be no more out a sulk their moth- If we did not make somebody Poor; fight-they upon And no more could be er's breast, simply because that is the Mercy where sulks. We have If all were as happy as we. place everyone taught them that some guys are good And mutual fear brings peace, Till the selfish loves increase: guys, and some are bad guys; we have Then Cruelty knits a snare, given them labels to tack onto their And spreads his baits with care. perceptions; but we have not taught

This content downloaded from 141.117.125.76 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 19:08:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "THE LAMB" AND "THE TYGER" 541 them very well how to see in the first manacles his own brain and then blames place. it on society, government, his father, his Once, when teaching Clifford Odets' God, or whatever. Like the fox in short, biting play about a taxicab strike, Blake's proverb, "he condemns the trap, Waiting for Lefty, I asked my students not himself." As for "The Tyger," we on a quiz who or what was the villain do not, indeed somehow we can not, of the piece. They were unanimous in bring ourselves to think, as the speaker their answers-unanimously wrong; for of the poem cannot, that God could they all answered "the Communists," have created such a thing as a tiger, or "Communism," despite the fact that when he could have gone on creating the real villain was clearly, melodramati- lambs. In one of his great and disturb- cally, even crudely presented by Odets as ing works, "The Marriage of Heaven the powerful, rich, capitalistic, unscru- and Hell" (which is perhaps more cen- pulous head of the taxicab company, tral to an understanding of Blake's ideas who was squeezing his nonunionized than any other single work), Blake has drivers dry. It was my first fright- the Devil speak a series of Proverbs. ening awakening to the fact that even They should be read by all students when given a clear set of good guys along with Poor Richard's Almanac and and bad guys, even with a program, the myriad books of conventional, these college students could not tell the homey mind-forged manacles that we players-so brainwashed were they with have been taught to accept blindly as pat answers. And I am also reminded the only wisdom. here of the extraordinary reaction of "Do unto others as you would have people to Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt-that others do unto you," we say. Blake vicious, heavy-handed satire on the mid- says, "Opposition is true friendship." dle-class businessman, his narrow pro- We stare and blink; we ought to be dis- vincial mind, his unthinking prejudices, turbed. But we think at any rate, and his dishonesty and hypocrisy, his crassly if we think hard enough we can see that commercialized religion, etc. But-de- perhaps it is true that, as Blake says, spite all this-the people who read of "Without contraries is no progression." him liked him; he was really a fine fel- As soon as we iron out all the contraries, low, a good guy. That is, they identified cancel out the opposition, reconcile all with him because he was like they were, differences, and agree-we cease to and hence he was all right with them. move, indeed we cease to be what is It is precisely this sort of thing that our most precious birthright-ourselves. Blake meant by "mind-forged manacles" "The same dull round, even of a uni- (in his poem, "London"). We forge verse," Blake said, "would soon become manacles for our own minds by limit- a mill with complicated wheels." We ing our perceptions and values to easy say, "Be prudent." Blake says, or rather black-white dichotomies that are com- his Devil's advocate says, "The road of fortable to live with: lambs are nice excess leads to the palace of wisdom"; and tigers are terrible. But certainly and "Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid part of Blake's point in these two poems courted by incapacity." "Be discreet," is that they both were divinely created we say, or you will get into trouble. to be exactly what they are; they are Blake says, "Always be ready to speak neither nice nor not nice. They are your mind and a base man will avoid simply a lamb and a tiger. It is man who you." "Improvement makes strait roads," puts labels on them and decides, in his he agrees; "but the crooked roads with- appropriated omniscience, that one is out improvement are road of genius." good and one is evil. It is man who Do we have the courage to contradict

This content downloaded from 141.117.125.76 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 19:08:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 542 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL him, the wherewithall to argue with he "knows." We often complain that him? Perhaps. But, to teach him aright, students can't write even when they we've got to let the student hear him get to college. It's a grievous problem, first, before there is any problem. We I agree. But it's even more discouraging have been taught to choose between to discover that they don't have any- lambs and tigers; but how does one thing to write about-that they haven't choose between a God who creates a been prodded or goaded or disturbed lamb and a God who creates a tiger? or bothered or challenged enough even Indeed, must we choose? to ask meaningful questions. They have Again and again in "The Marriage of answers; but, alas, so often they are Heaven and Hell" Blake pounds at the merely the old dichotomies again, what same point-you have eyes to see and a every normal redblooded American boy brain to act upon your perceptions; be or girl has already said more times than yourself, exercise to the fullest your is humanly bearable. Do you prefer own divine individuality and originality. lambs or tigers? The answer is easy; it It is not so much conformity that he takes no thought; there is no confusion, berates (though that is what we would no problem, no doubt, no necessity to call it, I suppose) but rather the more wonder. And it does not occur that one terrible crime of unthinking, servile does not have to prefer lambs or tigers. imitations: A. E. Housman once wrote a de- The eagle never lost so much time as lightful poem about all this-more tem- when he submitted to learn of the perate and amusing than my prose: crow. "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff," the The tree never asks the beech apple "this" of course being poetry. Over how he shall nor the lion, the grow; beer and victuals in a pub, the first horse, how he shall take his prey. in the berates If the lion was advised the he speaker poem Terence, by fox, the for such stuff: would be cunning. poet, writing stupid No bird soars too high, if he soars with Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme his own wings. Your friends to death before their time Moping melancholy mad: Value of the Unconventional Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad. Terence's answer is to my point: But these proverbs also imply a num- if 'tis would be, ber of things beyond the horror of Why, dancing you There's brisker pipes than poetry. imitation and conformity. They imply, it seems to me, that by teaching poems a of brews that are easy and conventional, we are Oh, many peer England Livelier liquor than the Muse, merely adding to the store of easy an- And malt does more than Milton can swers the student has. teach- already By To justify God's ways to man. ing poems that have a vocabulary suited Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink somehow to a particular grade level, For fellows whom it hurts to think: we counteract that natural elasticity of Look into the pewter pot the student's mind-and instead pander To see the world as the world's not. to his that and "capacity" (whatever is, And then he goes on: however we know about it). Thus when he comes to he knows a little Therefore, since the world has still college Much good, but much less good than ill, bit about a lot of things, and he has And while the sun and moon endure been "exposed" (as we say) to some Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, poems; but he has seldom thought, even I'd face it as a wise man would, a little bit, about that lot of things that And train for ill and not for good.

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I agree. This is what poetry is for. This an extraordinarily consistent poet-that is a good reason for teaching it as early as is, whenever we find a king in his poetry possible in the schools. But it is also the we know he is writing of tyranny; most urgent reason for teaching difficult whenever anyone is lost, we know that poetry in high school, for teaching that person is, in some way, in error especially what we might call the poetry because he refuses or is unable to see. of intellectual shock (God knows, the Moreover, he is what I call a cumula- movies and television give our students tive poet-that is, one who builds his enough of the other kind of shock)-an images and symbols carefully as he goes intellectual shock to jar the student out along, from poem to poem, deliberately of his lethargy, to make him question- misusing, warping, modifying the con- himself and all others, to make him un- ventional associations of those images comfortable with the old dichotomies, and symbols, forcefully challenging his to encourage indeed his rebellion, but at reader in every line to dare to hang on the same time to provide him an intelli- to his conventional notions in the face gent context for that rebellion to rumble of this, and this, and this. This does not around in. It has always seemed to me mean, of course, that we should en- that much of juvenile delinquency is courage the student to accept the va- merely rebellion in a vacuum-the spirit lidity of Blake's assertions and discard without the matter, or perhaps better, his own. That would be merely to sub- the physical accouterments of rebellion stitute one tyranny for another. But by without the discriminating powers to exposing him to the vigorous, trenchant, understand the nature of the rebellion passionate cry of an unconventional or what is being rebelled against. Like poet, we can, I think, arouse his slug- the young man, accused recently of gish faculties to act; we can help the shooting a 15-year-old girl: when asked student, in Emerson's words, to lift the why, he merely replied: "I hate the iron lids of his sluggard intellect; we whole damn world." It is not much can, simply, give him something to think worse, I submit, to say, "I don't under- about. Without more of Blake than a stand it, but I know what I like" or, meek lamb and a fierce tiger acting con- that poetry has something to do with ventionally in a kind of good-guys vs. beauty. bad-guys Grade B movie melodrama, we as not teach him at all. To teach Blake well is a final prob- might just well Blake wrote: lem-and I cannot say much about it here. That he is a his demanding poet I give you the end of a golden string; own statement makes clear: "Every Only wind it into a wall: word and every letter is studied and put It will lead in at Heaven's into its fit the terrific numbers you gate, place; Built in Jerusalem'swall. are reserved for the terrific parts, the mild and gentle for the mild and gentle We need not try to be our student's parts, and the prosaic for inferior parts. saviours; but if we don't give them the All are necessary to each other." More end of the golden string, how will they helpful, perhaps, is the fact that he is ever be able to wind it into a ball?

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