In 1789 William Blake writes his Songs of Innocence and in 1794 he adds the Songs of Experience. He illustrates the collected edition with miniatures using in a personal way an old medieval technique of inlumination (some kind of stampas) and subentitles it „Showing the Two Contrary Status of the Human Soul”. This is neither an invitation to dual thinking nor a suggestion of choosing between the two perspectives. In fact things are as much intricated as their manners of expression: word and image.
W. Blake is a poet of visions so we must aproach him in terms of symbolical thinking rather than trying to grasp his ideas and pictures in a literal or even semiotical key of interpretation. Blake’ s poetry and paintings are onirical stuff so we need an open mind, sensibility, and freshness to make sense of it.
W. Blake clusters images and ideas of Innocence as the real state of human soul and of Experience as its destiny. The suggestion is, critics say, that by means of Imagination the original purity of Childhood can and should be recovered. So indeed we have to let us fly by his Immagination wings to the meaning of his verses. And it s not only about the meaning. It’s the form too. Harold Bloom observes its perfection, its maximal concentration, its capacity to create a world in few words.
In fact we know we are blessed with the presence of poetry because it could not be told otherwise.
Literary motives of the two sections of Blake’s volume are recurrently appearing through its lines. Such are Lamb, Tiger, Lion, Catterpiller, Worm, Boy, Girl, Mother, Chimneysweepper, Priest, on the concrete side, or Joy, Sleep, Life, Sensation, Religion, Love, Action, on the the abstract side of the same world which, we should never forget, keeps its unity. We note it’ s about life and death, purity and decadence, beginnings and ends.
Some of these motives make a web of meanings whose power of fascination enchantes the reader even after centuries.
It is the power to prepare us for „the last change” , which, „alas, is universal”, in Harold Bloom’s words.
That last change’s theme constelates motives as the Rose.
We see it in „The Sick Rose”, in „My Pretty Rose Tree”, and in „The Lilly”. All from Songs of Experience ...how could it not be so? It’s not an isolated motif but an interdependent one because linked with those of other Flowers and with that of Garden too. The Troubadours prepared us to read Rose poetry but to William Blake Rose is not a sign anymore ( that of the beloved woman): it is a symbol in a web of symbols composing his poetry universe.
In “The Lilly”, Rose is a flower compared with Sheep because of their potential aggresiveness (thorn and horn as a means of attack) and both of them are opposed to the white Lilly, an agent of pure Love and stainless beauty. Rose is seen here in a particular aspect, that of its capcacity to resist to attacks by means of threatening. The price paid is being less beauteous for a poet’s eye.
In “My Pretty Rose Tree”, Rose is a thorny flower too, only here the thorn has a more precise conotation, that of jealousy. The tonality is irony and dettachment, the unworthy sacrifice of not capturing the moment is contemplated in its platitudeness.
In “The Sick Rose” we see Rose in its plenty of symbolising capacity.
The Rose and the Worm shouldn’t be taken literally, nor semiotically, but symbollically. The same is available for sickness, night, invisibility, flight, storm, bed of crimson joy, dark secret love, destruction of life. Their refferences are undefinite, they lack clear contour and shape. It’s the power of ambiguity which seduces us in this poem. That’s why we should approach carefully or at least cum grano salis critics’ interpretation of this poem rather as a biografical accident than a more general human ... „experience”.
It’s the Experience indeed what we could see here. The poem could be read in the key of complaining the consequences of Doing. It’s not about every kind of Deeds, but about the one unappropriated to the real Being. An act unfitted to Nature (that is, to the inner Self) destroys life in its agent. What did the Rose do? It said yes to the Worm...or at least didn’t say no. The Worm „has found out” the Rose’s bed „of crimson joy”. It’s not a deploring of joy but of its death potential. The Worm remains a Worm even if it flies so it would get the Rose down to its’ level and that would eventually kill the sick flower.
We could see here a lyrical story of love, suffering and death too, only it’s not about the true love but about one staying under Pseudo sign. Love would bring life into the blessed creatures and if death comes with a bound that bound wouldn’t be quite love.
The action of Worm is piercing, penetrating and we could not eludate its sexual symbol. Still the poem is not firstly about sexuality but about death as a consequence of blind Experience. The night, the secret love, the darkness, even the howling storm suggest a limited stream of consciousness (if one). The result of undergoing such a blind Experience is a state of sickness which eventualy would bring up death.
We speak about the death of a Rose, not necessary to be understood as a woman. It may be the human soul drowned in blind sensuality. It’s not crimson joy what takes the Rose to death, but its atitude to itself.
Rose can thus be seen as a vivid motif in some of W.Blake’s poems.
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu