“The Tyger” is one of the poems of William Blake’s collection “Songs of Experience” in 1794. In “A Cradle Song”, which belong to “Songs of Innocence”, there is an innocent perspective, as we have already seen previously whereas in “Songs of Experience” the perspective of the world is completely hopeless and devastated.We could say in another words that in “Songs of experience”, there is a mature point of view of life, whereas in “Songs of innocence” everything is pure, whitish and hopeful.
It could be considered as one of the most known and analysed poems of William Blake. Furtheremore, “The Tyger” is one of the most popular examples of his artistic unions between theologically critical Romantic poetry and the prints that he used as a medium for expressing them.
I was introduced to “The Tyger” when I was in Ireland last summer, as I have mentioned before in the introduction but my admiration increased when our poetry’s teacher read it for us in class and explain the main ideas of it. I knew that I would work about William Blake so I thought it could be interesting include it in my work to show you his “uniqueness”.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
This poem has a religious references, as we could see in “A Cradle Song”. It could be considered as an intriguing moral critique of Protestant Christianity, or more specifically, a theological query into the motivations of Creation itself. William Blake builds upon the devout Christian theme of its poetic predecessor and goes on to ask questions concerning what Blake believed to be the existence of evil, the malice of Creation, and the Judeo-Christian God’s apparent desire to punish that which he creates.
Undoubtedly, this poem is a good example of “Blake’s uniqueness” as well since he was a perfect example of the more rebellious genre of Romanticism: questioning and sometimes overtly attacking principles of Protestant theology in his work. “The Tyger” is such an enthralling theological critique, because it has, forging in the depths of hell a monster to be unleashed upon mankind, not the Devil, but the Protestant God himself, the creator of the Tyger.
“The Tyger” contains a different perspective of human life than “A Cradle Song”. The tyger could be compared to an “experienced” human. It is described as an animal that basically has to kill everyday in order to live. It is a being whose life is made by death. The question is asked “What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” The “experienced” author is asking why God dared to make humans the way that they are, the way of the tyger. This, of course, is differs greatly from the perspective of the “innocence” which we saw in the analysis of the other poem.
William Blake’s “The Tyger” could be regarded as a theological examination into who exactly it was that created such a fiery and powerful creature such as the Tyger. We can see it in the first stanza:
Blake, in essence, is asking: “Was it God or the Devil that created such a terrible, awe-inspiring beast? And if it was not the Devil, what kind of Protestant God would create a creature with such a dreadful and unholy maliciousness? ” It is this line of theological debate that makes Blake’s “The Tyger” such an interesting philosophical question, and in order to come close to Blake’s meaning one must dive deeply into the mind of a poet who has had his very sanity questioned after expressions of such profoundly intense genius.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In the second stanza, in lines 5 and 6 Blake is asking whether the Tyger was created in Heaven by God or forged in Hell as some from of vengeance by the Devil. After this powerful introduction, the rest of Blake’s “The Tyger” goes on to question until the fifth stanza, in poetic verse, which divine entity could be the architect of such a dreaded creature as the Tyger.
In line 7 we can see is an allusion to the question of which side of the divine spectrum was the creator of the Tyger. Was the “framer” ascending on heavenly angel wings, and therefore a symbol of the Judeo-Christian God or one of his affiliated Arch angels, or did he have, as Milton describes in Paradise Lost, dragon wings of a scaly membrane characteristic of the fallen angel, Satan.
Line 8 can be interpreted in several ways. It can be read as two different, but refreshingly similar, references to Greek mythology’s Prometheus, and the antagonist of Milton’s own Protestant epic mythology of Paradise Lost, Satan. On one hand,Prometheus was the Greek titan who, favoring the good of humanity, stole fire from Zeus, and, after giving it to mankind, was punished by being chained to a rock where a great bird would eat his immortal liver every day thereafter.
On the other hand, as a reference to Satan, the seizing of “fire” can be interpreted as the unholy oath by Satan to rule in hell and attack Creation through subterfuge and unholy sabotage.
The Prometheus interpretation carries so much weight in Blake’s “The Tyger” because it is a classical, pre-Christian myth about a rebellious divine actor who disobeys on the behalf of mankind but is punished by a tyrant God. This can be seen as significant because the theme of the Prometheus myth shares a great deal in common with the overlying theme of William Blake’s Song of Innocence and Experience and “The Tyger”: a theme of divine tyranny over mankind.
In what distant deeps or skies,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
In the third stanza we can realise the powerful imagery-like descriptions of a divine creator molding the Tyger creature into existence. Lines 9 and 10 are a particularly powerful poetic description of a large demonic predator having its nature perverted into carnivorous malevolence by some divine force that has no love for the humanity that will be sharing the world with it. This stanza is used by Blake to further influence the reader who is trying to answer Blake’s question: Was the Tyger created by God or the Devil? It is later in the poem, when Blake reveals who he truly believes created the Tyger, that the third stanza comes to show just how much passion he has for the subject matter; describing a terrible, bloody procedure that many of us have come to think of as a miraculous creation that happens on a heavenly cloud with a flash of white light.
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
In the fourth stanza, there is an interesting dynamic between diabolical creation and a popular interpretation as a reference to the Greek god, Hephaestus. Again, the reader finds themselves enveloped in descriptions of dark, morbid manufacture: “What the hammer? what the chain, / In what furnace was thy brain?” (Lines 13-14). The more one reads into Blake’s “The Tyger”, the further they begin to acquire the image of some deep Hell-furnace where only Satan would be working such evils. The prose seems to almost sting with sulfur as Blake writes “what dread grasp, / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?” (Lines 15-16), building, again, upon the ominously infernal deed of bringing such a predatory force of nature such as the Tyger into existence; a deed that only one divine culprit could ever possibly be responsible: the Devil. Also, the descriptions of divine “hammer”, “chain”, “furnace” and “evil” popularly bring to mind the Greek god Hephaestus, the blacksmith god of fire and metallurgy who was plagued with a lame leg and toiled under the volcano, Mount Aetna, creating weapons, armor, and artwork for the other gods who only distained him for his ugliness. This plausible reference to Hephaestus serves much the same purpose as the reference to Prometheus to the possible theme of Blake’s “The Tyger”: presenting allusions of tragic Greek titans and gods who are either enslaved or bound in servitude to a malicious tyrant-God figure; a greater theme that that finds its deeper significance in the greater theme of Blake’s own Romantic work.
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
In the fifth stanza, it show us how William Blake was heavily influenced by the divine epic, Paradise Lost, written by John Milton in 1668, fifty years after the completion of King James’ own translation of the Bible to English. Within the epic, Paradise Lost, Milton writes of the Christian mythology of Satan’s revolt against God and the ensuing holy war that took place in heaven, ending with the exile of the rogue angel to Hell. This arousing and romantic allegorical epic would nurture artistic creativity to this day, and William Blake’s own creative work would be far from the exception; much of his own art centering around the theme of Protestantism, religious mythology, and theological philosophy. William Blake’s “The Tyger” would prove itself, though while still not his most absorbing project, one of the most popular examples of Blake’s philosophy in contemporary society, and its references to Milton’s Paradise Lost has helped to facilitate much of its popular consumption and interpretation.
The first two lines of the fifth stanza is a direct reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost, describing the scene where the defending angels, after the battle had been won in heaven, threw down their spears and wept for their angel brethren who had been cast out: “When the stars threw down their spears / And water’d heaven with their tears” (Lines 17 and 18). This reference to a scene from Milton’s Paradise Lost, while still an interesting addition to the poem, serves its greater purpose as setting the scene for Blake to reveal his overall theme of “The Tyger”, and essentially twist the direction of the momentum that he has been building up to this point.
The following lines, “Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” (Lines 19 and 20), are, perhaps, the most important lines of Blake’s “The Tyger”. Blake completely redirects the focus of “The Tyger” that had, until this point, been almost completely alluding to the creator of the Tyger being the Devil, and was now directly indicating that the creator of the Tyger was, in fact, God. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, God laughs at the fallen angels and mocks their disloyalty against their omnipotent patriarch; laughing at creatures that he himself had created and was now punishing after they exercised the free will he had given them. God exiles them to the prison, Hell, where he would also send more of his creations, mortal man, after they too sin against him. This dichotomy of God’s love and punishment, a duality between the images of a loving father figure and malicious patriarchic tyrant, would prove to be a cornerstone of Blake’s art and his poem “The Tyger”: duality being realized in the printed medium of “The Tyger” was well as within Blake’s theological theme.
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
These are some of the questions that William Blake make in “The Tyger”:
1) What kind of a God, then, could or would design such a terrifying beast as the tiger?
2)How is it possible that the God who created the Lamb, the symbol of God’s son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy love and compassion preached by the Protestant church, could also have created the Tyger?
3) The Tyger being a symbol for the evil, predatory, malevolent forces that exist on Earth, or perhaps even a symbol of the Devil himself; How could God have such blatant indifference, or even hatred, for the wellbeing of his creations that will suffer at the hands of such forces?
4) How can a God that loves mankind still be the same God who creates its undoing; How can the God who creates the Lamb, also be the creator of the Tyger that stalks and preys on it?
5) What does the undeniable existence of evil and violence in the world tell us about the nature of God?
6) What does it mean to live in a world where a being can at once contain both beauty and horror
The Tyger” show us theological accusations against the divine motivations of the very Judeo-Christian God who was responsible for Creation itself. William Blake, was created by God, so too was the Tyger, and Blake poetically confronts this theological issue.
William Blake is essentially unique in “The Tyger”, what he says is a a form of social protest, in much the same theme as the French Revolution, that Protestant Christians should be critical of a faith that has, at its centre, a God that chooses to punish so readily the creatures he brings into existence.
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