The Tyger

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The Tyger
by William Blake
The Tyger BM a 1794.jpg
Copy A of Blake's original printing of The Tyger, 1794. Copy A is held by the British Museum.
CountryUK (then Kingdom of Great Britain)
LanguageEnglish
Publication date1794 (1794)
Full text
Wikisource-logo.svg The Tyger (1794) at Wikisource

"The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his Songs of Experience collection and rising to prominence in the romantic period. The poem is one of the most anthologised in the English literary canon, [1] and has been the subject of both literary criticism and many adaptations, including various musical versions. [2] The poem explores and questions Christian religious paradigms prevalent in late 18th century and early 19th century England, discussing God's intention and motivation for creating both the "Lamb" and the eponymous "Tyger." [3]

Contents

The Songs of Experience

The Songs of Experience was published in 1794 as a follow-up to Blake's 1789 Songs of Innocence. [4] The two books were published together under the merged title Songs of Innocence and of Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: the author and printer, W. Blake [4] featuring 54 illustrated plates. In some copies, plates are arranged differently and a number of poems are moved from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake printed the work throughout his life. [5] Of the copies of the original collection, only 28 published during his life are known to exist, with an additional 16 published posthumously. [6] Only five of the poems from Songs of Experience appeared individually before 1839. [7]

Poem

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, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & 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? [8] [9]

Structure

"The Tyger" is six stanzas in length with each stanza containing four lines. The meter of the poem is largely trochaic tetrameter. A number of lines, such as line four in the first stanza, fall into iambic tetrameter. [10]

The poem is structured around questions that the speaker poses concerning the "Tyger," including the phrase "Who made thee?" These questions often repeat instances of alliteration ("frame" and "fearful") and imagery (burning, fire, eyes) to frame the arc of the poem.

The first stanza opens the poem with a central line of questioning, stating "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?". This direct address to the creature serves as a foundation for the poem's contemplative style as the "Tyger" cannot provide the speaker with a satisfactory answer. The second stanza questions the "Tyger" about where it was created, while the third stanza sees the focus move from the "Tyger" to its creator. [11] The fourth stanza questions what tools were used in the "Tyger's" creation. In the fifth stanza, the speaker wonders how the creator reacted to its "Tyger" and questions the identity of the creator themselves. Finally, the sixth stanza is identical to the poem's first stanza but rephrases the last line, altering its meaning: rather than question who or what "could" create the "Tyger", the speaker wonders who would "dare," effectively modifying the tone of the stanza to present as more of a confrontation than a query.

Themes and critical analysis

"The Tyger" is the sister poem to "The Lamb" (from "Songs of Innocence"), a reflection of similar ideas from a different perspective. In "The Tyger", there is a duality between beauty and ferocity, through which Blake suggests that understanding one requires an understanding of the other.

"The Tyger," as a work within the "Songs of Experience," was written as antithetical to its counterpart from the "Songs of Innocence" ("The Lamb") – a recurring theme in Blake's philosophy and work. Blake argues that humankind's struggles have their origin in the contrasting nature of concepts. His poetry argues that truth lies in comprehending the contradictions between innocence and experience. To Blake, experience is not the face of evil, but rather a natural component of existence. Rather than believing in war between good and evil or heaven and hell, Blake believed that each man must first see and then resolve the contraries of existence and life. [11] Therefore, the questions posed by the speaker within "The Tyger" are intentionally rhetorical; they are meant to be answered individually by readers instead of brought to a general consensus. [12]

Colin Pedley and others have argued that Blake may have been influenced in selecting the animal by the death of the 18-year-old son of Sir Hector Munro by a tiger in December 1792. [13]

Musical versions

Blake's original tunes for his poems have been lost in time, but many artists have tried to create their own versions of the tunes. [14]

Bob Dylan refers to Blake's poem in "Roll on John" (2012). [17]

Five Iron Frenzy uses two lines of the poem in "Every New Day" on Our Newest Album Ever! (1997).

Joni Mitchell uses two lines in her song about the music industry "Taming the Tiger" (1998)

See also

Related Research Articles

A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.

Fearful Symmetry is a phrase from William Blake's poem "The Tyger". It has been used as the name of a number of other works:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Lamb (poem)</span> 1789 poem by English poet William Blake

"The Lamb" is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Chimney Sweeper</span> Two-part poem by William Blake

"The Chimney Sweeper" is the title of a poem by William Blake, published in two parts in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794. The poem "The Chimney Sweeper" is set against the dark background of child labour that was prominent in England in the late 18th and 19th centuries. At the age of four and five, boys were sold to clean chimneys, due to their small size. These children were oppressed and had a diminutive existence that was socially accepted at the time. Children in this field of work were often unfed and poorly clothed. In most cases, these children died from either falling through the chimneys or from lung damage and other horrible diseases from breathing in the soot. In the earlier poem, a young chimney sweeper recounts a dream by one of his fellows, in which an angel rescues the boys from coffins and takes them to a sunny meadow; in the later poem, an apparently adult speaker encounters a child chimney sweeper abandoned in the snow while his parents are at church or possibly even suffered death where church is referring to being with God.

<i>Songs of Innocence and of Experience</i> Book by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">London (William Blake poem)</span> Poem by William Blake

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<i>Tiriel</i> (poem) Illustrated poem by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Garden of Love (poem)</span> Poem by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earth's Answer</span> Poem by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Little Girl Lost</span> Poem by William Blake

The Little Girl Lost is a 1794 poem published by William Blake in his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. According to scholar, Grevel Lindop, this poem represents Blake's pattern of the transition between "the spontaneous, imaginative Innocence of childhood" to the "complex and mature adult state of Experience."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Infant Joy</span> Poem by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Blake in popular culture</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Shepherd (Blake)</span> Poem by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Mental Traveller</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spring (poem)</span> 1789 poem by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laughing Song</span> 1789 poem by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">A Little Boy Lost</span> Poem written by William Blake

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">The School Boy</span> Poem by William Blake

"The School Boy" is a 1789 poem by William Blake and published as a part of his poetry collection entitled Songs of Experience. These poems were later added with Blake's Songs of Innocence to create the entire collection entitled "Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". This collection included poems such as "The Tyger", "The Little Boy Lost", "Infant Joy" and "The Shepherd". These poems are illustrated with colorful artwork created by Blake first in 1789. The first printing in 1789 consisted of sixteen copies. None of the copies of Songs of Innocence are exactly alike as some of them are incomplete or were colored in posthumously "in imitation of" other copies.

References

  1. Eaves, p. 207.
  2. Whitson and Whittaker 63–71.
  3. Freed, Eugenie R. (3 July 2014). "'By Wondrous Birth': The Nativity of William Blake's 'The Tyger'". English Studies in Africa. 57 (2): 13–32. doi:10.1080/00138398.2014.963281. ISSN   0013-8398. S2CID   161470600.
  4. 1 2 Gilchrist 1907 p. 118
  5. Davis 1977 p. 55
  6. Damon 1988 p. 378
  7. Bentley 2003 p. 148
  8. Blake, William (1757–1827). Johnson, Mary Lynn; Grant, John Ernest (eds.). Blake's Poetry and Designs: Authoritative texts, Illuminations in Color and Monochrome, Related Prose, Criticism. W. W. Norton Company, Inc., 1979. pp.  21-22. ISBN   0393044874.
  9. Blake, William (1757–1827). Erdman, David V. (ed.). The Complete Poetry and Prose (Newly revised ed.). Anchor Books, 1988. pp.  24-25. ISBN   0385152132.
  10. Holman, Bob; Snyder, Margery (28 March 2020). "A Guide to William Blake's 'The Tyger'". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 28 April 2024.
  11. 1 2 Kazin, 41–43.
  12. Hobsbaum, Philip (1964). "A rhetorical question answered: Blake's Tyger and its critics". Neophilologus. 48 (1): 151–155. doi:10.1007/BF01515534. ISSN   1572-8668 . Retrieved 28 April 2024.
  13. Pedley, Colin (Summer 1990). "'Blake's Tiger and the Discourse of Natural History'" (PDF). Blake - an Illustrated Quarterly. 24 (1): 238–246.
  14. #3746: "Songs of Experience": Music Inspired by Poetry of William Blake | New Sounds - Hand-picked music, genre free , retrieved 7 December 2017
  15. "In the Forests of the Night – Howard Frazin" . Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  16. "John Tavener". musicsalesclassical.com. Chester Music. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  17. "Roll on John". Bob Dylan. Retrieved 11 May 2021.

Sources