09 September 2024 by Jian Zhi Qiu
Quote from Dear Su Yen pp. 106-108
Dear Su Yen
Perhaps you may find sympathy in this poem by William Blake because his poetry often shows his concern for the cruel fate of truth and innocence in the world of experience, for which he found no answer either. Blake lived in the second half of the eighteenth century and on into the nineteenth. He was a skilled engraver and painter, with a very distinctive style, and a poet. He was a radical in politics, and wrote poems expressing sympathy with people or animals that were badly treated. He was also a mystic: what he wrote does not always make logical sense; he claimed to have seen angels in the trees one morning. His best-known poem, and an English favourite, is The Tiger.
This appears to be a poem expressing the beauty and power, and the menace, of the tiger. But it contains ideas which even English people do not understand. 'Burning bright' could be a metaphor for the golden flame colour of the tiger's coat, but what about verse four where the tiger seems to be made of iron? Perhaps Blake was referring to the developments and machines of the industrial revolution, which were also both beautiful and menacing, and which he hated.
I have told you about poets who just repeat the first verse at the ends of their poems. Sometimes this seems to be because the first few lines they thought of are the best and their inspiration falls off after that. In the best sonnets and poems the final lines are original, strong and conclusive. Blake appears to repeat his first verse at the end, but he has a subtle variation: do you see it? God "could' make the tiger, but after the poem has considered how terrible the tiger is, Blake concludes by asking who would 'dare' make the tiger?
There is also perhaps a more general and mystical debate here about good and evil, 'Did he who made the lamb make thee?' The lamb is a symbol of innocence and peace in Western religion; did the same God make the fierce tiger and the gentle lamb? How could the God whom we believe made all good things also make evil? This has always been a major problem for Christian belief since Christians believe in only one God who made everything.
The Tiger, by William Blake (1757-1827)
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
