William Blake

W i l l i a m B l a k e

S t a t u s

●Literarily Blake was a Pre-Romantic or a forerunner of the Romantic

poetry of the 19th century, showing contempt for the rule of reason,

opposing the classical tradition of the 18th century, and treasuring the individual?s imagination.

●Politically Blake was a rebel, making friends with those radicals. He

strongly criticized the capitalists? cruel exploitation. He cherished great expectations and enthusiasm for the French Revolution. He once said that the “dark satanic mills left men unemployed, killed children and forced prostitution”.

L i f e S t o r y

William Blake was born in a business family in London in 1757. He educated himself through self-study. When he was 14, he was apprenticed to be an engraver and then made his living by engraving to illustrate the works for various publishers. He wrote romantic poems and supported the French Revolution. In his old age Blake gave up poetry to devote himself to painting and engraving. In 1827, Blake died in poverty and loneliness.

P o e t i c a l S k e t c h e s

●Blake?s first collection of poems is named Poetical Sketches, in which he was strongly opposed to the classical tradition in poetry composing of the 18th century not only in form but also in content. Poetical Sketches is a collection of lyrical poems, which are highly musical, and some of them sound like anvil music, rhythmic, short and brief. (An anvil is a large heavy block of iron on which a smith hammers heated metal into shape. )

C o l l e c t i o n s o f B l a k e’s S h o r t L y r i c s

S o n g s o f I n n o c e n c e

●Songs of Innocence contains poems obviously written for children, who are usually

considered naive and innocent. By using the language which even little babies can learn, Blake succeeds in describing the happy condition of a child before it knows anything about the pains of existence, or we can say, before it gets any experiences of life. Here everything seems to be in harmony. However, in some of the poems, we can also find racial discrimination and suffering.

S o n g s o f E x p e r i e n c e

In Songs of Experience, a piece of much more mature work, the atmosphere is no longer sunny but sad and gloomy. Evil is found everywhere in this world. The poet describes pictures of poverty and misery and shows the sufferings of the miserable. He implies the poor should save themselves through passionate rebellion, through revolution. Now he has set himself against the capitalist world.

T h e c o n t r a d i c t i o n o f t h e t w o c o l l e c t i o n s

●Many poems in the two collections contradict each other. They have the same title in the two books, but are opposite in meanings. The contrast is of great significance. It marks a progress in the poet?s outlook on life.

●For example, in both collections there?re poems entitled The Chimney Sweeper, but the tone and atmosphere are entirely different.

●The chimney sweeper in Songs of Innocence is really innocent. He works very hard but earns little, however, he does not pay any attention to that. He forgets his misery because he is told God will come to him and promises him that “He?d have God for his father and never lack joy.” In Songs of Experience, the chimney sweeper is no longer innocent but experienced. He is quite conscious of his miserable living condition and the causes. Now he curses at God and priests and the king who made up a heaven of their misery.

T h e C h i m n e y S w e e p e r

A little black thing among the snow

Crying “…weep! …weep!” in notes of woe!

“Where are thy father and mother? say?”

“They are both gone up to the church to pray.”

Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smil?d among the winter?s snow;

They cloth?d me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

“And because I am happy and dance and sing

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,

Who make up a heaven of our misery.”

扫烟囱的孩子

风雪里一个满身乌黑的小东西

“扫呀，扫呀”在那里哭哭啼啼！

“你的爹娘上哪儿去了，你讲讲？”

“他们呀都去祷告了，上了教堂。

“因为我原先在野地里欢欢喜喜，

我在冬天的雪地里也总是笑嘻嘻，

他们就把我拿晦气的黑衣裳一罩，

他们还教我唱起了悲伤的曲调。

“因为我显得快活，还唱歌，还跳舞，

他们就以为并没有把我害苦，

就跑去赞美了上帝、教士和国王，

夸他们拿我们苦难造成了天堂。”

（卞之琳译）

C o l l e c t i o n o f B l a k e?s L o n g P o e m s

●Under the influence of the French Revolution, Blake wrote a series of long poems, which he called Prophecies. They?re highly symbolic and difficult to understand, but the gleams of revolutionary thought are shown in many pages.

●One poem entitled The French Revolution is included in this collection. Blake wrote it at the moment of the very outbreak of the French bourgeois revolution, in which he predicts the final victory of the revolution. It is considered the most significant because it describes an important revolutionary event in modern European history with a true progressive tendency.

W r i t i n g f e a t u r e s

●Blake writes his poems in plain an direct language.

●He presents his view in visual images rather than abstract ideas.

●Symbolism in wide range is a distinctive feature of his poetry.

L o v e?s S e c r e t

●神秘的爱

●别把爱情倾诉，

●只能藏在心底；

●犹如清风飘散，

●声息全无，踪影难觅！

●我把爱情倾诉，

●赤诚表白心迹；

●颤抖、寒冷、惶恐---

●呵，她竟将我抛弃！

●她与路人相遇，

●刚刚与我分离；

●竟然一见钟情，

●爱情实在神秘！

●犹如清风飘散，

●声息全无，踪影难觅！

●路人为何获爱？

●仅凭一声叹息！

●爱的奥妙

千万不要倾诉你的爱，

爱只能深藏在心中；

因为和风吹拂时

总是悄无声息、无影无踪。

我倾诉了我的爱，我倾诉了我的爱，

我向她敞开了全部胸怀；

我颤抖、冰凉、恐惧异常，可她呢，她竟然走开！

她从我这儿离去不久，

一位游客便来到她身边，

悄无声息、无影无踪，

把她带走只凭一声叹息。

●切莫告诉你的爱情，

爱情是永远不可以告诉的。

因为她像微风一样，

不做声不做气地吹着。

●我曾经把我的爱情告诉而又告诉，

我把一切都披肝沥胆地告诉爱人了，

打着寒颤，耸头发地告诉，

然而她终于离我去了！

●她离我去了，

不多时一个过客来了。

不做声不做气地，只微叹一声，

便把她带去了。

●切莫爱语诉诸她

连珠妙语难以达

微风飘飘似轻纱

拂过悄悄无人察

●说爱她说爱她

她是公主我骑白马

刺骨颤抖着实恐怕

叹息啊！交臂之差

●时间凝留离别刹

过客悄悄无人察

只一叹息迷惑于她

L o n d o n

I wandered thro? each charter?d streets,

Near where the charter?d Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infant?s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg?d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper?s cry

Every black?ning Church appalls;

And the hapless Soldier?s sigh

Runs in blood down Palace wall.

But most thro? midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlot?s curse

Blasts the new-born Infant?s tear,

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

G l o s s a r y

●thro?: through

●charter?d: granted certain privileges according to a charter

●ban: public order or notice

●forg?d: form 锻造

●manacles: a pair of iron rings joined by a chain; bondage to one?s mind

●appall: shock, frighten

●hapless: unlucky

●Harlot: street girl, prostitute

●blast: destroy, ruin; blight: spoil

●tear: The harlot infects the parents with venereal disease, and thus the infant is

inflicted with prenatal blindness.

●hearse: a large car that carries the coffin at a funeral

伦敦

我走过每条独占的街道，

徘徊在独占的泰晤士河边，

我看见每个过往的行人

有一张衰弱、痛苦的脸。

每个人的每声呼喊，

每个婴孩害怕的号叫，

每句话，每条禁令，

都响着心灵铸成的镣铐。

多少扫烟囱孩子的喊叫

震惊了一座座熏黑的教堂，

不幸兵士的长叹

化成鲜血流下了宫墙。

最怕是深夜的街头

又听年轻妓女的诅咒！

它骇注了初生儿的眼泪，

又用瘟疫摧残了婚礼丧车。

（王佐良译）

A b o u t t h e p o e m

●Background:

●After the French Revolution broke out, the English government felt so alarmed that it strengthened the suppression of democratic activities in England. London, the English capital appeared quite different from before. It was filled with gloom, terror and misery.

●Linguistic features:

●the rhythm pattern：iambic tetrameter , trochaic tetrameter the rhyme scheme ：abab, cdcd, efef, dgdg

●Repetition

●Anvil music

f i

g u r e o f s p e e c h

●Metonymy : Church

Here church does not refer to a specific church but refers to the clergymen living in the church.

f i

g u r e o f s p e e c h

●Metaphor : black’ning

Physically, the outward appearance of the church is blackening because of the pollution.

Morally, it refers to the hypocrisy and corruption of the church.

f i

g u r e o f s p e e c h

●Synaesthesia : sigh run in blood

Hearing the sigh of the miserable soldier, the picture of many soldiers? blood running along the Palace walls is brought into the poet?s mind.

f i

g u r e o f s p e e c h

●Oxymoron : the Marriage hearse

●a figure of speech that juxtaposes two opposite or apparently contradictory words to present an emphatic and dramatic paradox for a rhetorical purpose of effect.

Examples: wise fool, bittersweet, eloquent silence, painful pleasure

●The harlot?s curse ruins the newly married people with plagues,

most probably venereal disease. It turns the wedding into a funeral. The marriage coach therefore becomes a funeral hearse.

Q u e s t i o n s

1. Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem. What role does it play?

2.What does the speaker mean when he says “The mind-forg?d manacles

I hear”?

3. What does the “blackening Church” suggest? What does the palace represent?

4. Why does the poet use the phrase “marriage hearse”? What kind of plague would be associated with the harlot?s curse?

5. What is the main idea of the poem?

S u m m a r y

The speaker wanders through the streets of London and comments on his observations. He sees despair in the faces of the people he meets and hears fear and repression in their voices. The woeful cry of the chimney-sweeper stands as a chastisement to the Church, and the blood of a soldier stains the outer walls of the monarch's residence. The nighttime holds nothing more promising: the cursing of prostitutes corrupts the newborn infant and sullies the "Marriage hearse."

William Blake——London赏析英文版(威廉布莱克 《伦敦》评析)

London I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every black’ning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse The poem London was written by the British poet and engraver William Blake. It has

4 quatrains with alternative lines rhyming. Written in iambic pentameter, the poem is beautifully rhymed. London deals with the dreadful scene in the industrialized London in the 18th century. In the first stanza, Blake gives an overview of the city and successfully creates the gloomy, dark and suffocating atmosphere. Blake applies varied rhetorical devices in the poem, of which the most striking and significant is repetition. For example, the word “chartered” is reiterated in line 1 and line 2 to emphasize the fact that the streets and river are owned by the wealthy upper class. And the word “mark” occurs in “mark in every face I meet”(line 3) and “mark of weakness, mark of woe”(line 4). The transition of the word “mark”from verb to noun manifests the change of observation to noticeable signs. Every person Blake meets in London is desperate and feeble. What a horrible scene it is! Repeated appearance of the word “every “in the second stanza stresses the idea that everyone suffers from misery. Blake hears the cry of the grown-ups, and of the infants in fear. Blake perceives the destructive restrictions on people’s mind caused by law and rules. “Mind-forged manacle” is a metaphor. Blake compares limitations with manacles. The expression that Blake hears “manacles” is synesthesia. In the third stanza Blake satirizes the church and the monarchies. The church walls are becoming black because of pollution; the sound of crying from the chimney sweepers combines with the sigh of soldiers arouses a feeling of fear and scare in me. On account of relentless warfare, soldier’s blood runs down from palace walls

William Blake’s The Songs of Innocence and Experience

William Blake’s The Songs of Innocence and Experience The Songs of Innocence and Experience are masterpieces of English lyric poetry and William Blake's most famous work, presenting two vastly different views of the world: one beautiful and one horrific. This edition contains all of the poems (including the rare early poem, "A Divine Image") and unlike most editions, preserves Blake's idiosyncratic spelling, punctuation, and capitalization system. The poems are presented exactly as Blake intended them. To elucidate Blake's poems, 46 full-page illustrations were created by author and designer Robert Crayola. Each image is rendered in meticulous grayscale, and adds a new level of insight and clarity to the work. Also included are a commentary on the poems and an author biography, making this the definitive edition of this classic work. William Blake subtitled his Songs of Innocence and Experience 'Shewing Two Contrary States of the Human Soul'. His overall vision of the human condition is one where good and evil exist interdependently and this is an idea reflected in Blake's coloured engravings of the poems, examples of which are included in this collection.This edition has comprehensive notes on the poems and an Approaches section offering commentary and activities on key themes and techniques, such as Blake's political beliefs and the role of imagery within his poetry. The style of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is simple and direct, but the language and the rhythms are painstakingly crafted, and the ideas they explore are often deceptively complex. The album, William Blake's Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience, is an often seamless marriage between Blake's fluid poetry and Vertunni's arrangements.

威廉 布莱克介绍

威廉布莱克 William Blake (1757-1827) William Blake was a poet, artist, and mystic（神秘主义者）---a transitional figure in English literature who followed no style but his own. Blake grew up in the middle of London, surrounded by the grit （unyielding courage）and poverty of the new industrial age. His family was poor, and Blake received virtually no education as a child. When he was ten his father was able to send him to drawing school, and at fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver (雕刻师). As an apprentice he had time to read widely and began to write the first of his poetry, realizing early that he was not content to follow the artistic and literary values of the day. （the zeitgeist (the general intellectual, moral, and cultural state of an era) of his age） In 1778, when he had completed his apprenticeship at the age of 21, Blake became a professional engraver and earned a living over the next twenty years by supplying booksellers and publishers with copperplate engravings （雕版）. In 1789 when he was 32, he published a volume of lyrical poems called Songs of Innocence. Five years later he published another volume Songs of Experience，which is a companion volume to Songs of

William Blake英文简介

William Blake Blake, William (b. Nov. 28, 1757, London--d. Aug. 12, 1827, London) English poet, painter, engraver; one of the earliest and greatest figures of Romanticism. The most famous of Blake's lyrical poems is Auguries of Innocence, with its memorable opening stanza: To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. "I do not behold the outward creation... it is a hindrance and not action." Thus William Blake--painter, engraver, and poet--explained why his work was filled with religious visions rather than with subjects from everyday life. Few people in his time realized that Blake expressed these visions with a talent that approached genius. He lived in near poverty and died unrecognized. Today, however, Blake is acclaimed one of England's great figures of art and literature and one of the most inspired and original painters of his time. Blake was born on Nov. 28, 1757, in London. His father ran a hosiery shop. William, the third of five children, went to school only long enough to learn to read and write, and then he worked in the shop until he was 14. When he saw the boy's talent for drawing, Blake's father apprenticed him to an engraver. At 25 Blake married Catherine Boucher. He taught her to read and write and to help him in his work. They had no children. They worked together to produce an edition of Blake's poems and drawings, called Songs of Innocence. Blake engraved both words and pictures on copper printing plates. Catherine made the printing impressions, hand-colored the pictures, and bound the books. The books sold slowly, for a few shillings each. Today a single copy is worth many thousands of dollars. Blake's fame as an artist and engraver rests largely on a set of 21 copperplate etchings to illustrate the Book of Job in the Old Testament. However, he did much work for which other artists and engravers got the credit. Blake was a poor businessman, and he preferred to work on subjects of his own choice rather than on those that publishers assigned him.

William Blake Tiger 赏析

William Blake is an important poet representing the pre-romanticism in English literature in whose masterpiece The Tiger the structural identicalness between the enlarged metaphor "tiger" and the deafening "anvil music" represents the splendid "making process of the tiger". Tiger is associated with fire in color: the burning fire is in the color between red and orange, similar to the color of the tiger; secondly, the tiger's eyes are like flames, and made of flames.This poem is not so much about the tiger as it really is, or as a zoologist might present it to us; it is the Tyger, as it appears to the eye of the beholder. Blake imagines the tiger as the embodiment of God's power in creation: the animal is terrifying in its beauty, strength, complexity and vitality. Meanwhile, concerning to the social background of those poems, the tiger is symbolic of the revolutionary forces: the French people in the French Revolution to which Blake was a supporter. It could destroy the old system and establish a new one. Blake enhanced the meaning of both.These poems focus on evil and the importance of understanding the evil around in hope of attaining a state of innocence. In The Songs of Innocence Blake suggests that by recapturing the imagination and wonderment of childhood, we could achieve the goal of self-awareness.The poems thus present views of the world as filtered through the eyes and mind of a child.We can also infer that evil can bring forth the loss of innocence. Therefore, one existing similarity is that they both concern the loss of innocence.Many poems from each set are companion pieces to each other.The Lamb is an symbol of innocence, corresponding to The Tiger as the symbol of experience.Blake seeks for balance and harmony in this unbalanced world. Thus W wanted to express the dialectic unity of the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the white and the black in the world. The dialectic ideas are fully shown. Another shared theme between the two works, The Tiger and The Lamb, is the theme of creation and divine intervention. In both poems Blake questions multiple times about how each was created. In The Lamb, Blake suggests that the lamb was created by a godlike being. In The Tiger Blake questions if the tiger was created by the same being that created the lamb. Such curiosity is a common theme to both poems. Thus, through the information discussed, it can be seen that there exists a common comparison in two separate works by William Blake. The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Black. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of Blake's best known and most analyzed poems. The Cambridge Companion to William Blake calls it "the most anthologized poem in English."Most modern anthologies have kept Blake's choice of the archaic spelling "tyger". It was a common spelling of the word at the time but was already "slightly archaic"when he wrote the poem; he spelled it as "tiger" elsewhere, and many of his poetic effects "depended on subtle differences of punct uation and of spelling.” Thus, his choice of "tyger" has usually been interpreted as being for effect, perhaps to render an "exotic or alien quality of the beast", or because it's not really about a "tiger" at all, but a metaphor. "The Tyger" is the sister poem to "The Lamb" "Songs of Innocence", a reflection of similar ideas from a different perspective, but it focuses more on goodness than evil.

William Blake

W i l l i a m B l a k e S t a t u s ●Literarily Blake was a Pre-Romantic or a forerunner of the Romantic poetry of the 19th century, showing contempt for the rule of reason, opposing the classical tradition of the 18th century, and treasuring the individual?s imagination. ●Politically Blake was a rebel, making friends with those radicals. He strongly criticized the capitalists? cruel exploitation. He cherished great expectations and enthusiasm for the French Revolution. He once said that the “dark satanic mills left men unemployed, killed children and forced prostitution”. L i f e S t o r y William Blake was born in a business family in London in 1757. He educated himself through self-study. When he was 14, he was apprenticed to be an engraver and then made his living by engraving to illustrate the works for various publishers. He wrote romantic poems and supported the French Revolution. In his old age Blake gave up poetry to devote himself to painting and engraving. In 1827, Blake died in poverty and loneliness. P o e t i c a l S k e t c h e s ●Blake?s first collection of poems is named Poetical Sketches, in which he was strongly opposed to the classical tradition in poetry composing of the 18th century not only in form but also in content. Poetical Sketches is a collection of lyrical poems, which are highly musical, and some of them sound like anvil music, rhythmic, short and brief. (An anvil is a large heavy block of iron on which a smith hammers heated metal into shape. ) C o l l e c t i o n s o f B l a k e’s S h o r t L y r i c s

阅读理解 William Blake

Reading Exercise William Blake William Blake (November 28, 1757 ?August 12, 1827) was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. He was voted 38th in a poll of the 100 Greatest Britons organised by the BBC in 2002. According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's entire poetic corpus, his prophetic poems form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language." Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, at least one modern critic proclaiming Blake "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced." Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical vision that underlies his work. As he himself once indicated, "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself." While his visual art and written poetry are usually considered separately, Blake often employed them in concert to create a product that at once defied and superseded convention. Though he believed himself able to converse aloud with Old Testament prophets, and despite his work in illustrating the Book of Job, Blake's affection for the Bible was accompanied by hostility for the established Church, his beliefs modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the unfolding of the Romantic Movement around him. Ultimately, the difficulty of placing William Blake in any one chronological stage of art history is perhaps the distinction that best defines him. Questions (红色表示答案)