Innocence with a bloody smile: a brief history of the Songs of Experience

by Jasmin Ochoa

...he was no longer mastered by his experience; his experience was mastered by what he had written.

-Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere

In Life is Elsewhere, Milan Kundera characterizes experience as innocence with a bloody smile, and having taken a voracious bite out of life, William Blake hums his Songs of Experience aloud.

Experience is the storybook of loss; a pithy study in the awakening from innocence; and in the death of innocence. Composed between 1789 and 1793, and published in 1794, the Songs of Experience is a collection of poems created in contrast to the Songs of Innocence, published some four years prior. Together, the works represent "the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul," and among their pages, contain two contrary states of human expression; the line written; and the line drawn. On the whole, the project is an exercise in thorough and beautiful binary, and fragment upon fragment is a work of verbal and visual image.

The Songs of Experience belong thoroughly to William Blake. He is their author, and their ultimate authority; and they are his manifesto. Blake not only published, but produced, by hand, each of the two dozen or so copies of the original press of the complete Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. This spirit if independence and innovation permeates the body of the form. Using a process he called "illuminated printing," Blake etched the text and illustration for each song into a series of copper plates that acted, later, as the master designs from which he reproduced every other copy. After stamping designs out onto paper, he masterfully and vividly water-colored each. It appears as though many of the etchings and illustrations were conceived before the songs that later accompanied them, proving that the visual images contained in the Songs of Experience are as central to their meanings as the stories and verbal imagery contained therein.

In addition to the obvious use of mixed media in the Songs, it is important to consider that Blake intended the poems contained in the series also as musical expressions. These poems, in their original form; in the form written, pressed out, painted, and sung by William Blake, himself, can be read, viewed, and heard. They are quite literally small masterpieces of human sensory Experience, and in order that the reader may fully understand a poem like The Sick Rose, for example, it is necessary to study not only the text, but with equal attention, its accompanying illustration. Then, and only then, may we understand the full implications of the "sickness," and the "invisible worm," and just who "rose" is. The gentle rhyme of the poem is best appreciated out loud. Each poem comes to the reader complete, with its own frame narrative; its own small set of references, and its own soundtrack.

It is estimated that Blake printed and etched two dozen complete copies of Songs of innocence and of Experience, The Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Though the order of the songs and the graphics that accompanied them tended to change within the sequence, songs were never moved across the Innocence/Experience line, with one exception. Originally Little Girl Lost and Little Girl Found appeared in Songs of Innocence, but if we consider Experience as the completion of Innocence it makes sense that Blake would move the poem just as soon as he had written, drawn, and uttered the proper forum to house it. With the publication of Experience, he completes a cycle.

Though the two series of Songs appeared in publication together with the inclusive title The Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, they were always divided by explicit title pages; that of Experience morbidly and appropriately depicting mourners weeping over their dead. The title page for Innocence depicts two children hovering over a book in the lap of an obviously maternal figure. Whether coincidentally or by intention, the two figures of the mourners hovering over their dead appear to be the same children who hover over their mother in the Songs of Innocence. Experience brings them into adulthood; and the death of their mother marks the death of innocence.

A primary irony of the Songs of Experience is that the occasionally innocuous titles of the poems and the storybook-like appearance of the original text belie a content of somber wisdoms. The original text plates measured 7x11 cm. Their tiny size disguises a maturity and cynicism of substance. Blake mimics the form of the children,s book to tell his own stories of discovery and doubt. Blake tricks the reader because he has to; he is compelled to tell his story to such a degree that manipulating the contrast between innocence and experience becomes completely justifiable. He appeals to the reader,s child-like sense of wonder in order to deliver a series of nursery rhymes of the adult experience.

To picture the Songs of Experience is to picture the triumphant and bloody smile of the poet who has feasted upon life; who has emerged from the drowse of innocence, and lived to tell (and sing and show). The integrity of origin of these songs pervades every aspect of their form. The Songs of Experience innovate art; innovate form; and express the coming of age of a true craftsman.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Gillham, DG. Blake's Contrary States. London: Cambridge University Press, 1966.

Johnson, Mary Lynn. Blake,s Poetry and Designs. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979.

Wilson, Mona. The Life of William Blake. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.

<http://www.english.uga.edu/wblake/SONGS/>