Blake's Unanswered Questions

art print of Blake's The Number of The Beast is 666

Last month, while thinking about a new prompt, I considered using "The Tyger" as a model poem. It might be the most famous poem written by William Blake, though "The Lamb" and "Jerusalem" are also contenders. The opening line, "Tyger Tyger, burning bright" is among the most famous opening lines in English poetry.

It turns out that I have already used "The Tyger" as a prompt about questions since the poem is a series of questions, as is "The Lamb."

Little Lamb who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

The poem appeared in Blake’s 1794 volume Songs of Experience, which complemented his earlier collection, Songs of Innocence. I was taught that the poem was a kind of answer to the earlier "The Lamb." 

"The Tyger" is a series of questions as the speaker wonders about a creator who would make something so fearsome. The tiger is "burning bright" and its creator is a kind of blacksmith.

In the fifth stanza, Blake brings in the "stars" which I have always associated with both astrology and destiny.

Blake seems to ask why this all-loving God made such a fearsome animal? "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"

"The Tyger" is in Blake’s Songs of Experience, and is seen as a complement to the earlier Songs of Innocence with its innocent "The Lamb." Was Blake reconsidering the innocence of the world?

Scan of a plate printed by William Blake from Songs of Experience (1794)
British Museum, Public Domain via Wikimedia

     

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Prompt: Asking Questions with William Blake

Doubt by William Blake

When I was looking in my Norton Anthology for another poem, I came across William Blake's poem "The Tyger."Almost everyone who has sat through a few years of English literature classes in high school or college has come across this poem. Being that I do not have a good memory for poems, it surprised me that I could remember portions of this poem. I think that I was once assigned it for memorization.

When I reread it, I also remembered what I had liked about the poem when I first read it. It was filled with questions and, more importantly, the poet didn't seem to be able to answer them any more than I could answer them. You could write a poem that asked questions but didn't come up with the answers? This was something new to me.

Some teacher must have taken me through the poem and discussed how the questions are in themselves a kind of answer to the main question of "What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry." I doubt that God came up in my public school discussions, but then again it was a very different time - a time when having a Christmas tree in the classroom was considered the norm. In fact, would my teachers have suggested that some other method had produced the fearful symmetry?

For our September writing prompt at Poets Online, we are taking a shot at a poem that is almost all questions, but in the asking presents a kind of answer.

"William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. While his visual art and written poetry are usually considered separately, Blake often employed them in concert to create a product that at once defied and superseded convention. Though he believed himself able to converse aloud with Old Testament prophets, and despite his work in illustrating the Book of Job, Blake's affection for the Bible was accompanied by hostility for the established Church, his beliefs modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the unfolding of the Romantic Movement around him."  excerpted from the Wikipedia entry on Blake

If you're interested in more about Blake's poems or artwork, try the Blake Archive.