Optimism in Blake's Songs of Experience

To be “optimistic” is to “believe that good things will happen in the future”. Most readers would balk at the poems within Songs of Experience being described thus. Afterall the collection is meant as a contradiction to Songs of Innocence – the latter showing life through the eyes of innocent children, while Songs of Experience illustrate an “experienced” view of the world. However, to simply polarise the two would be a gross injustice to the complexities of Blake’s work. Upon close inspection, it is actually possible to detect a slim thread of hope within the negative future Blake describes within Songs of Experience. As long as one is able to appreciate the deep subtleties inherent within the poems instead of simply taking them as face value, one would be able to understand why the collection is not “entirely pessimistic”. Though the future presented is bleak, Blake still presents a solution out of our problems, giving us hope, however slim, for our future.

This may be hard to swallow for most, unless one bears in mind that there are a myriad of possible interpretations of Blake’s poetry. There is no one definite interpretation as each poem contains a wealth of meanings - even a single word could hold a different significanc

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This is clearly a vision of hell on earth – in this bleak and harsh reality, where could fragile hope exist? Yet hope shines through when one considers a simple phrase: “mind-forged manacles”, which the speaker hears

“In every cry of every man,

In every infant’s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban”. Unfortunately, he has wasted this gift of thought by using it to rationalise away the emptiness of his life.

Rather, one gains the impression that the rationalistic speaker is merely indulging in self-comfort – an escape route from his current dreary lifestyle, which saves him from having to “suffer” any intense emotions or to take responsibility of his life. Yet one must bear in mind that other than his expression of fear, the father has not punished or even reprimanded his child! He has not condemned Ona for her actions, and thus hope is still present – hope that the parent and child can eventually come to terms with Ona’s sexual maturity and move on to a higher innocence. The poem ends with the father’s expression of his fear, and the reader is left with the powerful image of the father and child staring at each other, both frightened by the other. In this solution, optimism can be found. Essentially, Blake believes that all the evils of the current world – from theft, to poverty, to adultery – are the product of society, a man-made institution we imposed upon ourselves in order to achieve “peace”.

However, at the end of the poem, Blake delivers his usual twist, a positive one this time. The maiden “forgot her fear” and the couple engages in free love. However, there is still hope! For what Mankind created, he too, can destroy.

One can take hope in the fact that the future predicted within Songs of Experience is not the inevitable destiny of Mankind – rather it is the product of our very own mind. Though capable of great thought, these speakers are daunted with the problem of coming to terms with their painful experiences in this world. Blake delivers an extremely disheartening warning of the dangers of rationalism, as it easily changes self-love to selfishness. Rationalism, though essential in the world of science, is extremely undesirable for it is yet another trap luring Man unto the path of evil.

Approximate Word count = 1852
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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