Blake’s Innocence and Experience
Case 6 Figure 2 (35b)
Figure 2. Blake, William. Songs of innocence and experience: shewing the two contrary states of the human soul. [London, Trianon Press for the William Blake Trust, 1955].
This edition contains 54 leaves of plates, color facsimiles, issued in a slipcase, with a bibliographic statement by Geoffrey Keynes.
William Blake was an English poet, engraver, painter, and mystic. He worked as an apprentice to a printer/engraver, and in 1771 began to illustrate his own work with copperplate engravings and watercolor. His visionary world of mysticism has foundations in the theological philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg. This mysticism is essential to the understanding of his work, based in antinomian belief of direct communication with God through visions. Antinominism is the theological doctrine of faith, that by God's gift of grace through the gospel a Christian is freed not only from the laws of Moses, but from all forms of legalism, and all accepted norms of morality of a given culture. Blake is most well-known for his illustrations of the works of Thomas Gray and Dante.
Songs of Innocence and Experience are two dualistic groups of poems, each possessing a correlation to the other. Songs of Innocence emotes the feeling of divine love and sympathy while Songs of Experience address the power of evil. Blake presents innocence and experience as two opposing states of the human soul. Although education is usually a mark of experience, Blake places The Schoolboy with the Songs of Innocence. The poem speaks of a love of nature, especially on a spring morning, but bemoans the need to ruin the experience by having to attend school. The schoolmaster is presented as "a cruel eye outworn" and portrayed as a villain who holds students hostage against their will. Learning and books become meaningless drudgery which cage the spirit of the child who longs to take flight into the whimsical joys of nature. For Blake, youth is fleeting, and must be enjoyed while it lasts.