Super-scary poems: William Blake – hold on to the fear!

 

The Tyger

 

Tyger, tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

 

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

 

And what shoulder, and what the art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? And what dread feet?

 

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil, what dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

 

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

 

Tyger, tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night.

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry.

 

 

 

There is a mouthful! And in this case the historic “mindset” turned out to be really important. I did a bit of that “research”, rapidly processing the adjacent poems in my anthology: “The Rose”, “The Garden of Love”, and “London” – great choice because it kind of covers all the areas of life that poetry might reach: the heart, nature, society, God. I knew exactly where I was then. Surprisingly close to the Middle Ages – I immediately subscribed to the view that “modern” thinking didn’t begin in the 16^th century but the 18^th - or even not then in certain respects because William Blake didn’t KNOW yet that SUBJECTIVITY was coming. He just asked the questions and made the observations that helped to bring it about.

 

This became especially important as to the “status” of the imagery. In short: “The Rose” is still ENTIRELY an allegorical poem – though it is disturbing, it isn’t “modern”. And – even though it is probably important to see that “The Tyger” or “London” aren’t either – it is much more difficult to ignore that they are going where “we” probably still are. It is equally important to be aware, I believe, that the mind at all times was able to process a lot of things that couldn’t yet be expressed in any fictional form available. And “The Tyger” is kind of sitting on that “threshold” -  where people at the time either wouldn’t have understood it or might have dismissed it because it threatened their frame of mind. And - somewhere on the way to this thought - the poem had already become this burning glass for my feelings …

 

It became that when I focused on the thought that – even though in poetry subjectivity wasn’t yet possible and a “direct” approach to nature therefore barred – the tiger is not entirely an allegory but more of a metaphor already because the origin of this poem MUST have been some kind of ENCOUNTER with a tiger. This is probably contestable, but I cannot imagine how else the SURPLUS reality of the tiger might have got in there, which is “beating” through the poem like a living heart. It is pure FEAR. Only GENUINE fear could trigger the ENORMITY of that thought: What would the being have to be like that could have made the tiger? Or contain it, once it was made? It is UNIMAGINABLE.

 

(Obviously, William Blake was also a painter, and he tried to draw these unimaginable beings which appear like the creatures of nightmares and can therefore be dismissed by “sane” people. They were NOT nightmares but reality that just somehow COULDN’T yet be because it couldn’t be thought or expressed with words.)

 

Big leap: A week before I read the poem, on January 20th, “everybody” (except Trump-lovers) posted the American flag fluttering freely in the wind, and even I saw it and thought: EXACTLY! Hold on to this feeling – it already IS the best that will happen this year!

 

I WANTED to celebrate, and usually I don’t have a problem with celebrating on my own. I could easily have toasted to myself and sung the American hymn to myself – if I knew it! Or played it on YouTube … but I knew there would be no point because I didn’t FEEL joy. The joy I thought I should be feeling was just pretence. All these four years I successfully SUPRESSED my fears – as I supress my fears about everything – mostly by focusing on the “little things” that are before my eyes and by emigrating into imaginary worlds. Fears about not having money, about menopause, about possibly going blind, about climate change, about Amazon not sending things from the UK anymore, and Angela Merkel doing NOTHING at all … I do it “automatically” but, for the first time, I realized that it isn’t easy. In this case I had held them down so tightly and resolutely that they couldn’t be dissolved by alcohol just like that and flushed down. It took DAYS to thaw them just a little bit … until I FINALLY allowed myself to think: How could “we” have allowed this to happen? How could we have allowed the world to be held in fear like this?! How was this POSSIBLE???!!!

And, of course: ONE massive reason for fear dissolved … but there already is the next to step into the breach … (If nothing new, there is still Putin to suppress!)

 

Just a few days ago I realized that the sadness I have been dealing with for some time was gone. O, good! I thought. I don’t feel it anymore. Until I read “The Tyger” and focused on fear, and suddenly realized: The only reason it is gone is that I cannot FEEL it anymore. The only thing I can actually feel, is FEAR.

 

In one of my last posts I wrote that the worst damage the corona virus has done is how it has begun to mess with my head. I was wrong. The worst damage is how it has begun to mess with my FEELINGS.

 

That I cannot feel anything anymore doesn’t necessarily mean that everything that was there is gone. The “structure” of love that Shakespeare analysed in Sonnet 116 is a structure that I still find in my life – at least I am still doing the “height-taking” - but there are no feelings. So maybe it is just as well …? The structure may remind me of what was there – and could be found again … But I doubt it. “Dover Beach” already made me aware that my logic was faulty. It was only slightly faulty, but what makes these great poems so efficient is that they are so precise. They leave no margin of error. If the logic is faulty, the truth cannot prevail. And this applies PARTICULARLY to emotions because emotions reveal subjective truth - not thinking. With thinking I can always manage to navigate around something. What I needed was my brain being “cleared” by feelings …

 

(I remember how I stayed with “Ward No.6” for a day recently, NOT enjoying it, because I FELT: Somebody is trying to tell me the truth!)

And what makes poems so efficient in the first place is that they are short. I just couldn’t spend another day in “Ward No.6”, but I can now read “The Tyger” again – or “The Rose”, or “London”; just now I have a feeling I am beginning to understand “The Garden of Love” – all of them available in my Oxford anthology with just one page to turn. And I can focus on them again and understand them better because I have found MY fear. And they make me realize that fear – though often its cause – is not yet THE SAME as depression. It is certainly the one feeling we avoid HAVING at all costs because it is imminently life-threatening. Even in deepest sadness and distress there is – weirdly – this little “pocket” where we can still enjoy ourselves. There is no hiding from fear …

 

I recently watched the 11^th season of Doctor Who again – as the 12^th was a bit disappointing. But I realized that it only felt disappointing because the 11^th is the best one they ever made – the most contemporary they could have made, therefore the 12^th had to be all Cybermen and “The Master” again. The one before it was so good because it dealt so much with REAL LIFE fears and damage – about losing whom you love, about the damage done to the environment, about feeling inferior in a relationship, about depression … and this was the first time I found that thought: It isn’t that much of an achievement to supress fear. It is certainly useful, but the real achievement is to LIVE with it. To deal with it all your live because – unlike Trump – IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY. It is the ONE feeling that will never leave me and – make no mistake! – it will be the last thing I’ll feel still being me.

 

On first impression, there is nothing “good” or useful about it. Nonetheless – as “The Tyger” shows - fear is not just destructive. Like money, it can be such a MASSIVE source of energy. One that – unlike money! - is always available, at least if one finds a creative way of dealing with it, like William Blake. It can make somebody a titan who turns the moral ground upside down, and I am afraid it saved “the world” a thousand times more often than positive thinking did. I don’t envy William Blake – far from it! – I’d rather be in hell than be that strong! But that might be because I cannot imagine hell … (Thomas Harris - who obviously was a fan - could! With Hannibal Lecter he created a character that no reader is in any danger of liking but every reader is in constant danger of UNDERSTANDING …)

 

Therefore I’d better carry on with it and embrace my fears – at least until there is again something less disagreeable to embrace!