The Precariousness of Fixity in Infant Sorrow

The paradoxical relationship that characterizes Blake's printing method is one between fixity and impermanence. Fixity refers to rigidity, order or stability, and ultimately describes a resistance to change that is reassuring. Impermanence is less defined and to avoid merely substituting chaos as a suitable synonym, I would like to characterize it as a general state of uncertainty or a potential for change. In the context of Blake's printing technique, fixity, or unchangeability would appear to be the main characteristic of his work since his designs are apparently permanently etched onto copper plates. Yet the process by which fixity is attained entails a recognition of impermanence since the "corrosivesî that were used to etch the plates could very well undo all that Blake has done with the plates.

This precariousness of fixity, or rather, the tension between fixity and impermanence, is almost inevitably played out in Blake's poetry. The poem Infant Sorrow from the Songs of Experience illustrates this aptly:

My mother groaned, my father wept!
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud
Like a fiend upon a cloud.
Struggling in my father's hands,
Striving against my swaddling bands,
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast. (1-8)

Thematically, it is about the birth of a child, screaming and crying into the arms of his parents. The basic premise in the poem is one of stability or order -- Blake describes a simple family unit. If we take into consideration that the birth of a child strengthens marriage relations, then the relationship between father, mother and child should be all the more characterized by stability. Yet this image of a family is not in the least reassuring and there is a lot of uncertainty at least in this particular moment of the child's life. Instead of being safe and comforted in his mother's arms, the infant is screaming "[helplessly]" (3). Also, the image of a stable family is undermined by its being juxtaposed alongside the image of a "dangerous world" (2).

The tension between fixity and change continues in the next stanza where images of fixity abound. Here, the baby is described as being "bound"; "[his] father's hands" and "[his] swaddling bands" are actual stabilizing agents in the poem that attempt to impose some semblance of order and discipline onto the baby and thus onto the poem itself (5-6). The child, however, "[struggles]" and "[strives]" against these ordering agents suggesting, perhaps, that they are not absolute but fallible (5-6). Another instance of rigidity being compromised occurs in the last line where the conventional notion of the "mother's breast" being the ultimate repository of solace is overturned and the baby, instead of suckling and gaining sustenance, "sulks" and possibly pines away at his mother's breast (8). Finally, it is worth noting that whereas the father and mother are both mentioned in the same line in stanza one, they occur in the two lines farthest from each other in stanza two, almost as if the family has been torn apart.

Structurally, the poem follows a rather restrictive rhyme scheme. Written in iambic tetrameter in rhyming couplets, it seems as though the poem is as "chartered" as the streets of "London." Yet the language used describes a violent desire to burst free from these structural restrictions. As already described, the baby "[struggles]," "[strives]' and also "[leaps]" as he tries to overcome that which physically binds him (5-6). At the metafictive level, this might also suggest that the baby is trying to burst free from the constraints of the poem itself. The comparison of the baby to a "fiend" underlines effectively this latent potential for violent self-liberation and once again problematizes the notion of a presumably innocent newborn baby in a happy family. Overall, the precariousness of it all is summed up most effectively by the passing reference to a "cloud" (4). Formless, transient, and found only in high altitudes, a "cloud" is the epitome of changefulness and impermanence. By using this image of a cloud, Blake undermines entirely the gravity of the poem. He robs the reader of his one fixed notion--that the poem means something--and insinuates that perhaps it is all just a big joke.

Kennie Wei Jin Ting