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Innocence and Experience

William Blake's earliest works include his short book of poems Songs of Innocence and Experience. These were originally printed separately (Songs of Innocence 1789 and Songs of Experience 1794) and contain illustrations made using Blake's innovative printing methods.   The two short books were combined because they belong together, illuminating as they do two states of human consciousness. In writing them, Blake was reacting to the mythical dualism of Milton's Paradise Lost, which Blake greatly admired. Rather than following the pattern of Creation and Fall, Blake perceived the human condition to be a tension between two states, Innocence and Experience which worked in a dynamic tension in each human soul.

The two states are portrayed in the book by pairs of contrasting poems. So, in the Book of Innocence we have the poem, The Lamb:
Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name.
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.
Which sits against it's counter poem in The Book of Experience, that poem which every school child is made to learn at some stage, The Tyger

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
In the forests of the night; 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies. 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and; what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain, 
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp, 
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears 
And water'd heaven with their tears: 
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright, 
In the forests of the night: 
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?


Innocence corresponds somewhat to Creation and Experience somewhat to Fall. Blake thought we are born in a state of innocence, but, as we age and are subject to the pressures of our own humanity and our own culture, we enter the state of Experience. The innocence we are all born with is a primeval state, a state of goodness and blessedness, given by God. Experience is the working out of human strictures and it distorts and corrupts innocence. Blake thought we are never completely deprived of our state of innocence, but it is often deeply hidden in our Experience. Experience is not evil, however. It is a necessary state, without which we would never grow into our intended ends. Blake thought that Experience was temporary, and was transcended in late age by a new Innocence, when the perceptions and blessedness of infancy return with a new depth and a new power.

Which all makes sense to me. More sense than the doctrine of original sin. Blake tells me what is happening when Teddy is awestruck by an ant. It tells me why I am not, but why I want to be. 

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