Optimism in Blake's Songs of Experience
To be “optimistic” is to “believe that good things will happen in the future”. Most readers would balk at the poems within Songs of Experience being described thus. Afterall the collection is meant as a contradiction to Songs of Innocence – the latter showing life through the eyes of innocent children, while Songs of Experience illustrate an “experienced” view of the world. However, to simply polarise the two would be a gross injustice to the complexities of Blake’s work. Upon close inspection, it is actually possible to detect a slim thread of hope within the negative future Blake describes within Songs of Experience. As long as one is able to appreciate the deep subtleties inherent within the poems instead of simply taking them as face value, one would be able to understand why the collection is not “entirely pessimistic”. Though the future presented is bleak, Blake still presents a solution out of our problems, giving us hope, however slim, for our future. This may be hard to swallow for most, unless one bears in mind that there are a myriad of possible interpretations of Blake’s poetry. There is no one definite interpretation as each poem contains a wealth of meanings - even a single word could hold a different significanc
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Songs Experience, London Blake, Songs Innocence, Fly Inspired, Girl Lost, Fly Tirzah, Essentially Blake, Clod Pebble, Abstract Blake, songs experience, Answer Ona, poems songs, songs innocence, poems songs experience, little girl lost, girl lost, little girl, extremely positive, evils current, organised religion, expression fear, blake delivers,
Approximate Word count = 1852
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
