The differences between
innocence and experience songs, what is good and what is bad?
هالنقطة تتكلم عن الموازنة بين البراءة وبين الخبرة
طبعا البراءة وحدها لا تنفع والخبرة وحدها لا تكفي
هالنقطة تتكلم عن الموازنة بين البراءة وبين الخبرة
طبعا البراءة وحدها لا تنفع والخبرة وحدها لا تكفي
In a
sense then the problem of the Songs of Innocence is the problem of 'innocence'
itself. That is to say, we are usually more confident about identifying what we
take to be lie than in defining 'truth', better at saying something is a
fantasy than in given a definition of reality. The problem of innocence is like
that. We often overlook the fact that the word is actually negative because the
positive term has dropped out of the language. To be innocent is to be not
nocent, to be not guilty. It would seem then that innocence, rather than being
a positive quality, signifies the absence of certain negative qualities.
Songs of
Innocence and Songs of Experience
• Blake’s
greatness as one of the leading poets of English Romanticism is best expressed
in his illuminated books: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. They are
visual and poetic masterpieces where art and text are inextricably linked and
mutually enrich each other.
• Many of
the poems in Songs of Innocence are about childhood and are written in such
simple language that it seems they could have been written by a child. These
poems depict a world of Good where virtue and purity triumph. The meek and
gentle Lamb is a symbol of this idyllic world of infancy.
•
Childhood comes to an end, and adulthood reveals a different world. In Songs of
Experience Blake highlights how corruption, greed and violence take over the
human soul and how individuals are exploited by a cruel world.
_________________________________________________
Lyrical
Ballads
• The Lyrical
Ballads are a collection of poems, written by Wordsworth and Coleridge, that
marked the birth of Romanticism in English poetry.
•
Wordsworth’s poetry is best understood from a reading of his “Preface” to the
Lyrical Ballads which is often considered to be a sort of manifesto for the
Romantic Movement. In it, Wordsworth theorises about poetry concluding that:
• - The
language of poetry should be the simple language “really used by man”;
• - The
subject of poetry should consist of “incidents and situations from common
life”;
• - The
poet’s imagination can reveal the inner truth of ordinary things to which the
mind is habitually blind;
• -
Poetry takes its origin “from emotion recollected in tranquillity”;
• - The
poet is “a man speaking to men”. He uses his special gift to show other men the
essence of things.
• Wordsworth
is best known as a nature poet who found beauty, comfort and moral strength in
the natural world. For him the World of nature is free from corruption and
stress, and offers man a means of escape from industrialised society.
_________________________________________________
Defence of
Poetry
• “Poetry
is something divine. It is at once the centre and the, and that to which all
science must be referred circumference of knowledge; it is that which
comprehends all science.”
• It is
“the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”
• “A poet
is the author to others of the highest wisdom, virtue, pleasure and glory.”
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
_________________________________________________
Ozymandias
• The
fragment is a melancholy meditation on the inevitable fate of all human
actions, doomed to oblivion. The whole poem is wrapped in a mysterious
atmosphere: the land where the broken statue lies is an ancient desert,
windless, as still as the lifeless wreck. Of the colossal work only two
trunkless legs and a shattered visage remain. The passions of that powerful
king can still be seen on the “wrinkled lip” and the “sneer of cold command”,
which the ancient sculptor read and tried to stamp on the visage of the statue.
Nothing else remains, and also what art meant to preserve to immortality is
destined to decay, symbolized by the “lone and level sands” of the last line.
It’s a sad poem, a poem of death.
Shelley
was the most revoluctionary and non-conformist of the Romantic poets. He was an
individualist and idealist who rejected the institutions of, family,church,
marriage and the Christian faith and rebelled against all forms of tyranny.
