William Blake

William Blake was born in London in 1757, and he got little formal education. Blake had visions which helped him escape from the squalid reality around him; he also used to talk to God or to great ures of the past like Dante or Milton. In 1783 Blake's first work Poetical Sketches was printed. In the same years he developed the relief-engraving technique, " illuminated printing". Thanks to this technique, both words and decorations remained in relief and could be printed in any shade that the artist wanted. Songs of Innocence appeared in 1789. They are collection of poems centred around the ure of the child and focusing on the theme of innocence. Songs of Experience 1749 show that innocence is corrupted and destroyed by experience.

Blake was not indifferent to the political and social events of his time and responded passionately to the cruelty of the slave trade or to the inhumane exploitation of children, especially the chimney sweepers. Current affairs inspired some of his early prophetic works. The French Revolution, a Prophecy, and America, a Prophecy. His great symbolical poems Milton and Jerusalem contain beautiful lyrics, but they are not easy to understand. He was often disappointed by the lack of recognition that his work received, and suffered from fits of depressions. In 1825 he made illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy. William Blake was still working at them when he died in 1827.

Blake intended the two collections to be opposite and complementary. The poet saw Innocence as a state of freedom and happiness, which is associated with child-hood because children represent the free power of the imagination. The tone is naïve, childlike, and the style clear and poignant. Experience represents the corruption of innocence. The poems of the second collection are the result of disillusionment, the tones are dark and threatening. The two collections, present the mingling of lyrical and mystical elements. Flower, angels, animals like lams and birds, children, valleys, playing, are among his symbols, of innocence, while cities, priest houses, night, silence, represent experience.

This poem -formed by two stanzas- opens with the question posed by the author and that's addressed to the Lamb "do you know who made you?", and the answer to this question is given by the poet in the second stanza: the creator of the lamb is God. He appears very generous, in fact he gave him softest clothing and a tender voice, but also the lamb is describes by expressions that convey the idea of innocence, purity, simplicity and tenderness. In two lines the poet refers to himself as a child and this creates a link between the poet-child, the lamb and Christ, in fact the poet is like a child because the child represents the free power of imaginations; a child is innocent, and Christ - who became a Child- was innocent like a lamb.

In this poem -that starts with a sort of invocation to the protagonist- there are 12questions all refers to the creations of the tiger, in fact the poet asks "who did you forge?" and "where did he forge you?", but all this questions don't receive an answer, in this way the poet creates an effect of mystery. In the poem there are some word (like hammer, chain, anvil) and some expressions associated with the craft of the blacksmith; they refer to the creator that forge the tiger and so the man. There are some adjective that describe the tiger like "powerful, strong, cruel, terrifying" and other that describes the poet's attitude to both the tiger and its creator like "admiration, terror and awe"

The lamb represents innocence, tenderness and mildness, instead the tiger the corruption of innocence, terror and darkness; this contrast inspires a questions contain in the poem "the tiger" that's "is it possible that the lamb and the tiger are been created by the same perfect being?"; the creator of the Tyger looks like deeply different ed to the creator of the first poem. In this two poem is confirmed the Blake's theories of the presence in the word of totally different beings.

The narrator of this poem is a chimney sweeper who is telling about the fact that his mother died when he was very young, and his father sold him when he was so young that ha couldn't even scream correctly "sweep" while he was cleaning the chimneys. The poet speaks also of a little friend, Tom Dacre, another little sweeper and describes the unpleasant treatment that received: his head was shaved (in fact all the little sweeper had their hair completely cut and they soon became black from the soot). He also describes a Tom's dream: "thousand of chimney sweepers were locked in black coffins, but an Angel arrived and open it. The children were thus free to run, jump and laugh, and they soon take away the black dirt from their bodies, becoming clean and white, Then they rose up on the clouds. The Angel told Tom that, if he would be obedient, he would have God for his father and be happy". This dream represent the hope of a poor little child in the cruel reality of his life, it's a possibility to escape from this terrible reality.

The little sweeper received such a cruel treatment: first of all they were sold by their families when they were young for little money to a master who exploited them because they were small and could easily climb up the very narrow chimneys and clean them, they didn't have a home and slept in bags in which they colleted the soot. In line 6 there is also a simile that emphasise the idea of cruelty: children's heads were shave like the wool of the lamb. In this simile Tom is e to a lamb and the lamb is a symbol of innocence, so there is a contrast between the little and the innocent child and the cruelty he received.

This poem looks like a dialogue in which are involved two persons, the young boy and the poet. This Chimney Sweeper  isn't an orphan but his fate is exactly the same of the other sweeper; in fact his parents behaves with cruelty towards him because they don't care about him, they make him work as a sweeper and his childhood has been killed; as a result of the indifference and cruelty of his parents and of his master he has learnt the meaning of suffering.

In the last two line we can find an attack of the poet to some institutions like family, Church and Monarchy probably for the indifference in front of the cruelty these children are suffering.