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Blake is acclaimed as a spiritualist. However, he did not look down upon the senses. He was a spiritualist who strongly believed in the importance of the senses. What is more, there is no conflict or dichotomy in this. Blake was a mystic who claimed that his prophetic books were dictated to him by spirits, His visionary imagination is seen in the very first poem 'Introduction' (Songs of Innocence) itself. There he sees the vision of a child 'on a cloud' who is the spirit of pastoral poetry. Likewise in 'The Chimney-Sweeper' Tom Dacre sees an angel in his dream. In 'Night' angels tread in the valley and shower blessings upon all sleeping creatures and send sleep to the sleepless. In 'A Cradle Song' the mother sees a vision of Christ as a child. A similar vision is seen in the poem On Another's Sorrow. There is a vision of God in 'The Little Black Boy' and God assumes human form in 'The Little Boy Found.' These spiritual elements are not absent in Songs of Experience either. In 'Introduction' the vision of Christ walking among the trees in the Garden of Eden is described. 'To Tirzah' expresses Blake's thought in mystical language, ending in a cryptic remark.
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| William Blake |
The spiritual element in Blake's poetry, however, does not overwhelm or suppress instinctive belief in the importance of the senses. Blake believed in the 'Spiritual Body' - a paradoxical expression of the importance of both body and spirit. 'The Echoing Green'. 'Laughing Song' and 'Spring' celebrate sheer animal energy but being poems of Innocence, they do not involve any overt suggestions of sexuality. However, a sexual interpretation of the 'Blossom' has been attempted by some critics and such an interpretation is not utterly meaningless. The feminine blossom addresses her mate first as a sparrow and, then, when he alters, as a robin. She expresses her statement in both stanzas of the poem. She does not feel satiety or remorse after the consummation of love. She admires the male fearlessly and without feelings of guilt. Before the sexual union she sees him as cheerful and confident. flying to his object just like an arrow and after the act of love sees him as a subdued and fulfilled creature but still endeared to her. In a sense, this is the poet's approval of sex as healthy and essentially wholesome.
The poet has given more importance to the subject of sex in Song of Experience. There, we see Blake as a forceful and unambiguous advocate of free play of human senses. He denounces artificial social or religious restraints on sexual freedom. In 'Introduction' to Songs of Experience itself, we observe that the very image connotes sexual implications, especially in the last two stanzas which are rendered in the mode of a call from a lover to his beloved (here the Earth). In 'Earth's Answer,' the response of Earth, who is depicted as a woman, is not in the tone of a fulfilled and happy woman but as a woman who is worn out and dejected by a joyless intercourse. She asks:
Can delightChained in nightThe virgins of youth and morning bear?
Her implication is that her virginity is kept under the custody of conventional religion that censures everything that is sexual. But if the earth is to vegetate, fill herself with greenery and beauty and become fresh, the chains on her virginity will have to be hacked off. Why should Farth - or by implication human being make love by stealth and be controlled by rigid rules?
"Does spring hide its joyWhen buds and blossoms grow?"
Ask Earth, For the resuscitation and resurgence of mankind the life of the senses must be given freedom and importance. Blake gives poetic expression to the process of attaining libidinal maturity, through an allegorical presentation in 'The Little girl Lost' and its entailing piece 'The Little Girl Found'. In the course of her development and attainment of maturity the little girl of the poem cherishes and experiences libidinal yearnings which make the parents feel that she is going astray growing away from them. But in 'The Little Girl Found', the parents are brought to realise that nothing has gone wrong with their little girl Lyca except that she has begun to cherish the mature instincts of love. This change is normal, they understand, for a girl who has attained the age of puberty and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Blake champions the sexual urge in this poem and justifies the passion of love allegorically and symbolically.
Little Girl Lost very clearly puts forward Blake's view that the sexual urge is nothing to be guilty about. In this poem the father stands for the orthodox principles and standards of conventional morality which are defied by his daughter. She dares to make love with her lover, and when she comes back home her father is furious. He casts a fierce look at her as if burning with anger and it makes her tender limbs shiver in terror. Now she is made to feel guilty. The poet, however, expresses his hope of a future golden age in which mankind can exercise free love - unafraid and unhindered. He firmly believes in the necessity of sexual fulfilment in the growth of human personality.
In 'The Angel' Blake represents the self-suppression of love and sexual urge. Here he says how a woman who suppresses her feelings of love and rejects the advances of her lover, is doomed to suffer the decay of her own virginity. 'The Sick Rose' again illustrates the horror of repressed sexual urges. The rose is here portrayed as a girl of excessive modesty. But her modesty that leads: her to suppress her urges is seen as a vice by the poet. The canker hampering the loveliness of a rose-bud symbolizes the repression which gnaws into the essentials of her virginity. Blake asserts that a girl who does not give freedom to her senses is like a sick rose.
The message of 'Ah, Sunflower' is, once again, that expression of sexual love should be uninhibited. The sunflower is as much frustrated as the young man and the virgin whose passions are unwelcome to the world of conventional morality. Life is not wholly other-worldly, Blake seems to say; it is primarily this world and the life of the senses that also leads us to eternity. In love there is danger and treachery where you least expect it; but genuine innocence and love do exist, for example, in the lily because she welcomes love delightedly and accepts it frankly. The poet says:
While the Lily white shall in love delightNor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.
This view asserts the fact that the poct supports a free and frank acceptance of love or sensual pleasures. The senses are not to be chided and scoffed at, they play a crucial role in the fulfilment of human life which is quasi-sensual. Physical and spiritual claims are to be equally satisfied. As he makes the little vagabond say, he feels God should "have no more quarrel with the Devil or the barrel."