DETERMINACIÓN DE LA RESISTENCIA A LA COMPRESIÓN

necessitated by sexual repression, v^ich is actively enforced by the Church, as in "The Garden of Love". P rie st and King are also indicted i^n stanza three: "How the Chimney-sweeper's cry / Every black'ning Church appalls; / And the hapless S o ld ier's sigh / Runs in blood down Palace w alls." Leader c a lls "London" the

"most comprehensive as well as the most powerful of B lake's indictments of experienced society and i t s in stitu tio n s. " [28] While exploring London, the speaker encounters the products of

English society, v^ich is governed by the despotic in stitu tio n s ruled by p rie s t and king. The oppression is universal, evidenced in every face, every cry, every voice. Yet here, as in "The Garden of Love", the tyranny of the social order is best

illu stra te d by i t s repression of desire: "But most th ro ' midnight s tre e ts I hear / How the youthful H arlo t's curse / B la st's the new born In fa n t's te a r, / And b lig h ts with plagues the Marriage hearse." The Church seeks to re stra in desire through moral codes and re s tric tio n s, y et desire cannot always be restrained. Since the Church has labelled monogany virtuous and polygamy and

adultery sin fu l, those who sa tis fy sexual desire outside of the prescribed marriage relatio n sh ip are deemed h arlo ts.

In terestin g ly , i t is relig io n its e lf th at creates the need for h a rlo ts, as "Prisons are b u ilt with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of R eligion." Men have enslaved themselves to the

in stitu tio n s they created, for the manacles are forged in th eir own minds.

[28]Zachary Leader, Reading Blake’s Songs (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981) 195-6.

Not only has man enslaved himself to in stitu tio n s of h is own making, but also to h is idea of God, In "To Nobodaddy", Blake rid icu les what he perceives to be the Judeo-Christian concept of God:

Why a rt thou s ile n t & in v isib le . Father of Jealousy?

Why dost thou hide th y self in clouds From every searching Eye?

Why darkness & obscurity In a ll thy words & laws.

That none dare e a t the f r u it but from The wily serpents jaws?

Or is i t because Secresy gains females' loud applause?

Davies omits th is poem from h is discussion of B lake's doctrine of God, yet Blake must grapple with th is idea of d eity , for he sees i t as the prevalent relig io u s b e lie f. For the poet, the notion of a transcendent d eity makes God unreachable and unsympathetic, " sile n t & in v isib le", "hidfing] in clouds" from those Who would know him. Blake asks. Why must God be mysterious? Why must there by laws forbidding g ra tific a tio n of desire? Why is attainment of the knowledge of good and e v il a sin? As Frye suggests, for Blake there is no God separate from man—Jesus is sinply the expression of divine humanity; the God of the Church is scarcely human—he is "nobody's daddy."

Although "To Nobodaddy" was not included in Songs of

Experience, Blake did discuss the nature of God in Experience in what is perhaps h is best-knovm poem—"The Tyger". In "The Lamb" of Innocence, God is a beneficent Deity, bestowing kin! g ifts on

80 •

I

I

h is creation. The Son is the Jesus of childhood, the Lamb of God, rather than the Lion of Judah. The piper of Innocence

perceives only the father lik e , protective aspects of God; the ^

% bard of Experience is driven to search beyond the nursery to "the | fo rests of the night" in order to understand the whole nature of

deity and of creation. The central question in "The Tyger" is : | "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?", or in P a l i 's words, "Can

love and wrath emanate from the same being?" [29] The question, for Paley, then, is not one of good and e v il, but of love and wrath. This is one of the central concerns of C hristian

theology: the reconciliation of the God of wrath and judgment in the Old Testiament with the God whose own sacrifice redeems

mankind in the New Testzament. However, Raine in terp rets the

question as prin cip ally concerned with the co-existence of good |

I and e v il and p o sits e v il incarnate in the tyger. [30] This, too, f

and Gleckner th a t "The Tyger" is eith er ambiguous or ambivalent regarding the nature of the Creator and of the creation. Blake leaves h is question unanswered, perhaps because he realized th a t God the creator is the Holy Word which is Jesus, the divine human, or in Blakean terms, the Poetic Genius, and therefore

[29]Paley, "Tygers of Wrath", 75.

[30]Raine, Blake and T radition, vol 2, 10.

I

is a major question of C hristian theology: could a Wiolly good creator introduce e v il in to creation? Either inquiry is valid from a theological stzandpoint, and both may be superinposed upon

; the te x t of "The Tyger", but th is study agrees with Prye, Adams, €

transcends good and e v il. Or, perhaps the poet him self never arrived a t a sa tisfac to ry answer to the incisive questions of "The Tyger." Prom the kindly father figure of "The Lamb," the poet has come to reckon with the creator of the powerful,

occasionally destructive force embodied in the tyger, the Poetic Genius to which conventional ideas of m orality do not apply.

Notice th a t in the triurtph of organic over mechanistic creation in stanza fiv e, man is freed to discover the poetic genius in him self. Paley sta te s th at "Blake. . . thought of the sta rs as symbols of oppression because they were associated with the mechanism of the Newtonian universe and with the

instrum entality of fa te . The defeat of the s ta rs sig n ifie s the casting off of both cosmic and internal co n strain t, freeing man to realize h is p o ten tially divine nature. "[31] I f man would throw off ' the passive which obeys reason,' the life le s s dogma of the Church, the mechanical oppression of Newtonian science and Lockean philosophy, and embrace the world of imagination, then he would perceive the divine humanity and come to understand th at

'everything th a t liv e s is h o ly .'

Ju st as the tyger is a powerful, p o ten tially destructive force, so too is man, for he has the p o tential for tremendous good or unimaginable e v il. During th is period in B lake's lif e , he was grappling with the conditions prevalent in the liv es of London's poor. The Songs of Experience address such ev ils as small boys forced to sweep chimneys u n til eith er they were too

82