In songs of innocence and experience William Blake reveals the contrary states of human existence

William Blake was a madman. This is what many people believed and still do today. After all he claimed to have visions of angels and he thought himself to be a prophet. However, could someone so mad make poems full of ingenious sense? Is it possible for someone who was happily married with such creativity and artistic talent to be crazy? To determine whether Blake's sanity stayed firmly with him throughout his life, we can study his background and analyse the deeper meanings lodged within his poetry, in 17 of his poems from Songs of Innocence and Experience. ‘Without contraries is no progression', Blake summed up in this one quotation what he was trying to say in all of his poems; that opposites: ‘Attraction, Repulsion, Reason, Energy, Love, Hate' are partners in the structure of ‘Human Existence' hence the title ‘The marriage of Heaven and hell'. Blake's background plays a large part in why he was the way he was, so it is important to cover his background as well and not just what he managed to put in the form of a poem on paper. So, Blake had little money and certainly lived a poverty stricken life throughout his childhood (him and his other brother and sister). The impression is given through research of the illustrious writer's background, that he was religious from a very young age as he was born in 1757 which was still, of course, a very religious time and at the age of just 4 he claimed to have received a vision of God's head in a window. Blake only had a sister called Catherine after his brother, Richard Blake, died in infancy in 1762 and John Blake also died in infancy; until Robert Blake was born (who later went on to die at the age of 21) in 1767 which is also when William's father had recognised what a talent he had for drawing and so Blake was sent to a drawing school. Wanting a good income for his son, Blake's father arranged for Blake to be an apprentice to an engraver, called Basire. He spent 7 years there learning the arts of: engraving, etching, stippling and copying. When he was twenty one he became a professional engraver and met his future wife, Catherine Boucher. He stayed with her for the rest of his life. His other achievements apart from his poems were his paintings, poetical and political sketches, books and engrave. This picture was painted by Blake in 1805 with water colours as well as pen. It is called, ‘The River of life' and shows the experienced and innocent swimming and wading through the river of life. Also the golden sunset on the horizon appears to be the destination and it is like a guiding light, offering hope and almost suggesting it is heaven as Blake was very religious and it does lie at the end of the river. The two tall figures at either side of the picture are holding pipes and playing a tune on them which goes back to Blake's poem, in Songs of Innocence ‘Introduction'. The ‘Introduction' to Songs of Innocence is showing how Innocence needs Experience and is led by experience. Introduction Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child. And he laughing said to me. Pipe a song about a Lamb: So I piped with merry chear, Piper pipe that song again — So I piped, he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy songs of happy chear, So I sung the same again while he wept with joy to hear. Piper sit thee down and write In a book that all may read — So he vanish'd from my sight, And I pluck'd a hollow reed. And I made a rural pen, And I stain'd the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear The repetition of pipe and piper gives the poem an uplifting feel because of the imagery that it provokes in your mind (a tune being piped). This kind of youthful happy imagery is used in many of the poems to put across the carefree, naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve days that come with childhood. However the piper, being older, represents experience or so you would think and yet it is the little boy who cries to hear the song; if the boy is innocent and has no experience how could he know sadness that comes with experience. Blake was right that you need opposites because after all you cannot balance anything if it is one sided; hence the irony of the boy having experience and innocence. I think that Blake has chosen to make the Songs of Innocence poems happier on a whole because he had such an unhappy childhood as many of his brothers died then and re-wrote the jolly childhood that he missed out on. I also think that the Songs of Experience poems are less pleasant because Blake stated to see the world in an abstract way and was less naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve when he was older and he noticed more of the bad things in the world for example, in his descriptive poem of London where he spent lot of time (as well as in the countryside). London was also the subject of a poem by William Wordsworth but it portrayed a contrasting view to Blake's, many say this was because Blake became bitter. London I wander through each chartered street Near where the chartered Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear – How the chimney-sweeper's cry Every black'ning church appals, And the hapless soldier's sigh Runs in blood down palace walls; But most through midnight streets I hear How youthful harlot's curse Blasts the new-born infant's tear, And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse. This poem portrays a very sinister London which he appears to have experienced in detail as he says in the 1st line ‘each chartered street †¦..where the chartered Thames does flow', implying that he has been down the same streets many times before being that chartered means somewhere that has already been discovered or found. The repetition of ‘every' in the 2nd stanza, ‘In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban,' emphasizes the monotonous, repetition in every one of his days. As he is talking about ‘mind-forged manacles' as well, it is like he is saying that no-one escapes as even the innocent are touched by experience; for example, ‘In every infant's cry of fear' Blake could hear experience trapping them. The world was far from perfect in Blake's day and still is today, but that didn't stop Blake; in a perfect world, people would be able to do anything and not be restricted by rules of law or physics, which is what Blake wanted; this was because Blake was a Romanticist. Romanticism characterized many works of literature, paintings, music, architecture, criticism in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. Romanticism is often seen as the rejection of the rules of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that epitomised Classicism in general. This is why he was opposed to the enlightenment period and the reason and illusory science that came with it. In Songs of Innocence, Blake endeavoured to make the world a better and happier place in his eyes by giving a distinctive naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve view to the poems. The poems were striking in the 18th century and even more so today, but Blake in his time was seen as a unique thinker because he could look at the world differently to everyone almost in an abstract way which appealled to citezens of London and England (although mainly the radical thinkers he surrounded himself with e.g. Thomas Paine who he also wrote some political sketches with). Songs of Innocence and Experience are some of his most infuencial linguistic works of art, how ever it was the poem ‘London' which influenced L.S. Lowry to draw his infamous match stick people outside of a industrial building all walking around and that was written over 100 years prior.