Songs
of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the
Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English poet and painter,
William Blake. Although Songs of Innocence was first published by itself
in 1789, it is believed that Songs of Experience has always been
published in conjunction with Innocence since its completion in 1794.
Songs
of Innocence mainly consists of poems describing the innocence and joy
of the natural world, advocating free love and a closer relationship
with God, and most famously including Blake’s poem The Lamb. Its poems
have a generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and are typically
written from the perspective of children or written about them.
Directly
contrasting this, Songs of Experience instead deals with the loss of
innocence after exposure to the material world and all of its mortal sin
during adult life, including works such as The Tyger. Poems here are
darker, concentrating on more political and serious themes. Throughout
both books, many poems fall into pairs, so that a similar situation or
theme can be seen in both Innocence and Experience. Many of the poems
appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of
Experience with opposing perspectives of the world. The disastrous end
of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of
mankind, explaining much of the volume’s sense of despair. Blake also
believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and
from a religious community which put dogma before mercy. He did not,
however, believe that children should be kept from becoming experienced
entirely. In truth, he believed that children should indeed become
experienced but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a
number of these poems. Blake believed that innocence and experience were
“the two contrary states of the human soul”, and that true innocence
was impossible without experience.
The
Book of Thel is a poem by William Blake, dated 1789 and probably worked
on in the period 1788 to 1790. It is illustrated by his own plates, and
is relatively short and easy to understand, compared to his later
prophetic books. The metre is a fourteen-syllable line. It was preceded
by Tiriel, which Blake left in manuscript. A few lines from Tiriel were
incorporated into The Book of Thel. This book consists of eight plates
executed in illuminated printing. 15 copies of original print of
1789-1793 are known. Two copies have watermark of 1815, which are more
elaborately colored than the others. (Summary from Wikipedia)
# 01 - Songs of Innocence 01-19 # 02 - Songs of Experience 01-27
