Optimism in Blake's Songs of Experience

A detailed Summary of 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

This is especially evident when one considers the poem, "The Fly". Inspired by his killing of a fly, an isolated rationalist begins speculating in a detached manner about the meaning of life. Comparing his life to that of the fly's, he equates the meaning of the universe to blind chance. Since he is eventually going to be killed, like the fly, by "some blind hand", life and death are equally meaningless. There is great disparity between his cold, objective tone and the consequential conclusion he draws. However, upon closer inspection, one realises the speaker is not as resolute as he would like to appear. The last stanza, which is essentially his conclusion, is actually phrased in the form of a question, though it lacks the question mark. Consequently, the speaker's statement evidently suffers a lack of conclusiveness.

In "London", Blake presents an extremely harsh and bitter view of the city, characterised by repression, regimentation, disease, hypocrisy and death. The spirit of Reason dominates London - the "mind-forged manacles" that bind and restrict the natural spirit, resulting in streets, and even the famous river Thames, being "chartered". In such times of distress, the hypocritical "church" and "palace" (i.e. the state) do not heed the "chimney-sweeper's cry" or the "hapless soldier's sigh", and do nothing to prevent or protest such injustice. Even the "new-born infant", traditionally a symbol of hope, is now the child of a "youthful harlot", and every marriage in this city is associated with the hearse - the traditional symbol of death.

This is clearly a vision of hell on earth - in this bleak and harsh reality, where could fragile hope exist? Yet hope shines through when one considers a simple phrase: "mind-forged manacles", which the speaker hears

Rather, one gains the impression that the rationalistic speaker is merely indulging in self-comfort - an escape route from his current dreary lifestyle, which saves him from having to "suffer" any intense emotions or to take responsibility of his life. Afterall, if his life is as meaningless as that of a fly, it would not matter that throughout his life, he merely

and Ona is frightened into submission, ruining the positive effects of her earlier innocent sexual play.

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Approximate Word count = 1852
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Music