Уильям Блейк
учебно-методический материал на тему

WILLIAM  BLAKE  (1757 – 1827).

   Blake was one of the greatest and most original of the English poets as well as one of  England’s greatest artists. According  to one of the English critics, “he was the genius who had been dropped on the right planet but at the wrong time or at the right time but on the wrong planet”.  He was almost completely unknown during his lifetime and later, when he was re-discovered was greatly misinterpreted and misrepresented.

     He was born in London in the family of a hosier. His education included training in art at St.Paul’s college and then at the Royal Academy. Most of his poems were written in the last  twenty years of the XVIIIth century and illustrated by himself Blake also made many engravings to illustrate the poems of other writers, past and present. In his lifetime he published but one of his books and died in poverty. Nowadays each copy of his lifetime engraved editions cots a fortune that might have saved him from starvation.

    His works are:

Poetical Sketches (1753)

 Songs of Innocence (1789)

Songs of Experience (1794)

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Read the poem and find the fundamental features of Romanticism in it. Discuss them in a group.

To see  a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

SONGS  OF  INNOCENCE.

THE LAMB

  Little Lamb, who make thee
  Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly, bright;

 Gave thee such a tender voice,

 Making all the vales rejoice?

   Little Lamb, who made thee?

   Dost thou know who made thee?

   Little Lamb, I'll tell thee;

   Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:

 He is called by thy name,

 For He calls Himself a Lamb

 He is meek, and He is mild,

 He became a little child.

 I a child, and thou a lamb,

 We are called by His name.

   Little Lamb, God bless thee!

   Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Tasks:

1. Whom is the poet addressing to?

2. What connotations  does the word “lamb” have?

3. What qualities are usually attributed to  a lamb?

4. Who is “he” in the line “he is called by thy name…”?

5. What does the poet mean as saying “ we are called by His name”?

THE  LITTLE  BLACK  BOY
 
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
  And I  am black, but oh my soul is white!

 White as an angel is the English child,

   But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

 My mother taught me underneath a tree,

   And, sitting down before the heat of day,

 She took me on her lap and kissed me,

   And, pointed to the east, began to say:

 "Look on the rising sun: there God does live,

   And gives His light, and gives His heat away,

 And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

   Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

 "And we are put on earth a little space,

   That we may learn to bear the beams of love

 And these black bodies and this sunburnt face

   Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

 "For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,

   The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,

 Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care

   And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice',"

 Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;

 And thus I say to little English boy.

 When I from black and he from white cloud free,

 And round the tent of God like lambs we joy

 I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear

 To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;

 And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

 And be like him, and he will then love me.

Tasks:

1. Whom is the story told by?

2.  Whom is the boy compared and contrasted with? In what way?

3. What is the point the boy’s mother driving at?

4.  Is the boy sad that he differs from  other English children? What makes you think so?

5. Who is “he” in the last line of the poem?

6. What role do colours: “white”, “black”, “silver” play in the poem? What do they  signify?

7. What is Blake’s idea of equality?

INFANT  JOY

"I have no name;
I am but two days old."

 What shall I call thee?

 "I happy am,

 Joy is my name."

 Sweet joy befall thee!

 Pretty joy!

 Sweet joy, but two days old.

 Sweet Joy I call thee:

 Thou dost smile,

 I sing the while;

 Sweet joy befall thee!

Tasks:

1. Who is speaking each line?

2. Who is smiling? What is the other person doing?

3. How old is the child?

4. Do we know his name?

5. What feelings are expressed in the poem?

SONGS  OF  EXPERIENCE.

THE  TIGER

 Tiger, tiger, burning bright

 In the forest 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 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 watered heaven with their tears,

 Did he smile his work to see?

 Did he who made the lamb make thee?

 Tiger, tiger, burning bright

 In the forests of the night,

 What immortal hand or eye

 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Tasks:

1. What does the first stanza describe?

2.  Find the words that are repeated several times. What is the effect?

3. What emotional meaning do the  following phrases and words give to the poem: forest of the night, fearful, dare, twist the sinews of thy heart, dread, deadly terrors.

4. The words “fearful” and “symmetry” do not  ordinarily go together. Why is their coupling surprising?

5. In what workshop is the tiger created? What   kind of world are these images associated with?

6. The whole poem is a series of questions. What is the poet asking? What might the answer be? What effect does it produce on the reader?

7. Stars are usually associated with coldness and remoteness. However, in the poem they are full of emotion and feeling? Why does the author imply by mentioning them?

8. Find contrasts in the poem. Comment upon them.

9.  The poem has its counterpart in “Songs of Innocence” in the poem entitled “The Lamb”.  If the  attributes of the lamb are  mildness and meakness, what are the attributes of the tiger?

10. Blake said, “Without contraries there is no Progression”. How are “The Lamb” and “The Tiger” contraries? How does reading of both poems  make for a more complete understanding of Blake’s  idea of the world and life in general?

INFANT SORROW

 My mother groaned, my father wept:

 Into the dangerous world I leapt,

 Helpless, naked, piping loud,

 Like a fiend hid in 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.

Tasks:

1. Who is speaking to whom?

2. Does the poem sound as if it is spoken by an adult or a child?

3. What event does the poem refer to?

4. Does the child accept his fate? Willingly or unwillingly?

5. How does the child show his or her feelings?

6. Again the poem has its counterpart in “The Songs of Innocence”. Compare and contrast the two poems.  How is Blake dialectical view on life revealed in this poem?

LONDON
 
I wandered through each chartered street,

   Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

 A mark in every face I meet,

   Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

 In every cry of every man,

   In every infant's cry of fear,

 In every voice, in every ban,

   The mind-forged manacles I hear:

 How the chimney-sweeper's cry

   Every blackening church appals,

 And the hapless soldier's sigh

   Runs in blood down palace-walls.

 But most, through midnight streets I hear

   How the youthful harlot's curse

 Blasts the new-born infant's tear,

   And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

Glossary:

Charter’d = privileged; manacles = fetter or chain for the hands or feet; Harlot = prostitute; hearse = carriage for carrying a coffin at a funeral

Tasks:

1. Sum up the picture of London drawn by Blake. What features of the age does it describe?

2. How do you understand the phrase “mind forg’d manacles’?

3. What literary device does the author  employ in the second stanza? What is the effect?

4. Explain the last stanza of the poem. What is the effect of the words “blasts” and “blights” in the last two lines?

5. Whom is Blake looking upon as  the victims of London?

6. Why does “London” belong to the “Songs of Experience”?

From  “THE  MARRIAGE  OF  HEAVEN  AND  HELL”

 “Proverbs of Hell”

Read these proverbs created by Blake and comment upon them:

1. In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

2. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

3. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

4. He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

5. The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

6. The most sublime act is to set another before you.

7. What is now proved  was once only imagined.

8. Excess of sorrow laughs, Excess of joy weeps.

9. The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

10.Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

11. One thought fills immensity.

12. Expect poison from the standing water.

13. Listen to the fools reproach! It is kingly title!

14. The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

15. The crow wished everything was  black, the owl that everything was white.

16. Opposition is true friendship.

17. Without Contraries there is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

WILLIAM  BLAKE  (1757 – 1827).

   Blake was one of the greatest and most original of the English poets as well as one of  England’s greatest artists. According  to one of the English critics, “he was the genius who had been dropped on the right planet but at the wrong time or at the right time but on the wrong planet”.  He was almost completely unknown during his lifetime and later, when he was re-discovered was greatly misinterpreted and misrepresented.

     He was born in London in the family of a hosier. His education included training in art at St.Paul’s college and then at the Royal Academy. Most of his poems were written in the last  twenty years of the XVIIIth century and illustrated by himself Blake also made many engravings to illustrate the poems of other writers, past and present. In his lifetime he published but one of his books and died in poverty. Nowadays each copy of his lifetime engraved editions cots a fortune that might have saved him from starvation.

    His works are:

Poetical Sketches (1753)

 Songs of Innocence (1789)

Songs of Experience (1794)

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Read the poem and find the fundamental features of Romanticism in it. Discuss them in a group.

To see  a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

SONGS  OF  INNOCENCE.

THE LAMB

  Little Lamb, who make thee
  Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly, bright;

 Gave thee such a tender voice,

 Making all the vales rejoice?

   Little Lamb, who made thee?

   Dost thou know who made thee?

   Little Lamb, I'll tell thee;

   Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:

 He is called by thy name,

 For He calls Himself a Lamb

 He is meek, and He is mild,

 He became a little child.

 I a child, and thou a lamb,

 We are called by His name.

   Little Lamb, God bless thee!

   Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Tasks:

1. Whom is the poet addressing to?

2. What connotations  does the word “lamb” have?

3. What qualities are usually attributed to  a lamb?

4. Who is “he” in the line “he is called by thy name…”?

5. What does the poet mean as saying “ we are called by His name”?

THE  LITTLE  BLACK  BOY
 
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
  And I  am black, but oh my soul is white!

 White as an angel is the English child,

   But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

 My mother taught me underneath a tree,

   And, sitting down before the heat of day,

 She took me on her lap and kissed me,

   And, pointed to the east, began to say:

 "Look on the rising sun: there God does live,

   And gives His light, and gives His heat away,

 And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

   Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

 "And we are put on earth a little space,

   That we may learn to bear the beams of love

 And these black bodies and this sunburnt face

   Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

 "For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,

   The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,

 Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care

   And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice',"

 Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;

 And thus I say to little English boy.

 When I from black and he from white cloud free,

 And round the tent of God like lambs we joy

 I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear

 To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;

 And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

 And be like him, and he will then love me.

Tasks:

1. Whom is the story told by?

2.  Whom is the boy compared and contrasted with? In what way?

3. What is the point the boy’s mother driving at?

4.  Is the boy sad that he differs from  other English children? What makes you think so?

5. Who is “he” in the last line of the poem?

6. What role do colours: “white”, “black”, “silver” play in the poem? What do they  signify?

7. What is Blake’s idea of equality?

INFANT  JOY

"I have no name;
I am but two days old."

 What shall I call thee?

 "I happy am,

 Joy is my name."

 Sweet joy befall thee!

 Pretty joy!

 Sweet joy, but two days old.

 Sweet Joy I call thee:

 Thou dost smile,

 I sing the while;

 Sweet joy befall thee!

Tasks:

1. Who is speaking each line?

2. Who is smiling? What is the other person doing?

3. How old is the child?

4. Do we know his name?

5. What feelings are expressed in the poem?

SONGS  OF  EXPERIENCE.

THE  TIGER

 Tiger, tiger, burning bright

 In the forest 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 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 watered heaven with their tears,

 Did he smile his work to see?

 Did he who made the lamb make thee?

 Tiger, tiger, burning bright

 In the forests of the night,

 What immortal hand or eye

 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Tasks:

1. What does the first stanza describe?

2.  Find the words that are repeated several times. What is the effect?

3. What emotional meaning do the  following phrases and words give to the poem: forest of the night, fearful, dare, twist the sinews of thy heart, dread, deadly terrors.

4. The words “fearful” and “symmetry” do not  ordinarily go together. Why is their coupling surprising?

5. In what workshop is the tiger created? What   kind of world are these images associated with?

6. The whole poem is a series of questions. What is the poet asking? What might the answer be? What effect does it produce on the reader?

7. Stars are usually associated with coldness and remoteness. However, in the poem they are full of emotion and feeling? Why does the author imply by mentioning them?

8. Find contrasts in the poem. Comment upon them.

9.  The poem has its counterpart in “Songs of Innocence” in the poem entitled “The Lamb”.  If the  attributes of the lamb are  mildness and meakness, what are the attributes of the tiger?

10. Blake said, “Without contraries there is no Progression”. How are “The Lamb” and “The Tiger” contraries? How does reading of both poems  make for a more complete understanding of Blake’s  idea of the world and life in general?

INFANT SORROW

 My mother groaned, my father wept:

 Into the dangerous world I leapt,

 Helpless, naked, piping loud,

 Like a fiend hid in 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.

Tasks:

1. Who is speaking to whom?

2. Does the poem sound as if it is spoken by an adult or a child?

3. What event does the poem refer to?

4. Does the child accept his fate? Willingly or unwillingly?

5. How does the child show his or her feelings?

6. Again the poem has its counterpart in “The Songs of Innocence”. Compare and contrast the two poems.  How is Blake dialectical view on life revealed in this poem?

LONDON
 
I wandered through each chartered street,

   Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

 A mark in every face I meet,

   Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

 In every cry of every man,

   In every infant's cry of fear,

 In every voice, in every ban,

   The mind-forged manacles I hear:

 How the chimney-sweeper's cry

   Every blackening church appals,

 And the hapless soldier's sigh

   Runs in blood down palace-walls.

 But most, through midnight streets I hear

   How the youthful harlot's curse

 Blasts the new-born infant's tear,

   And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

Glossary:

Charter’d = privileged; manacles = fetter or chain for the hands or feet; Harlot = prostitute; hearse = carriage for carrying a coffin at a funeral

Tasks:

1. Sum up the picture of London drawn by Blake. What features of the age does it describe?

2. How do you understand the phrase “mind forg’d manacles’?

3. What literary device does the author  employ in the second stanza? What is the effect?

4. Explain the last stanza of the poem. What is the effect of the words “blasts” and “blights” in the last two lines?

5. Whom is Blake looking upon as  the victims of London?

6. Why does “London” belong to the “Songs of Experience”?

From  “THE  MARRIAGE  OF  HEAVEN  AND  HELL”

 “Proverbs of Hell”

Read these proverbs created by Blake and comment upon them:

1. In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

2. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

3. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

4. He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

5. The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

6. The most sublime act is to set another before you.

7. What is now proved  was once only imagined.

8. Excess of sorrow laughs, Excess of joy weeps.

9. The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

10.Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

11. One thought fills immensity.

12. Expect poison from the standing water.

13. Listen to the fools reproach! It is kingly title!

14. The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

15. The crow wished everything was  black, the owl that everything was white.

16. Opposition is true friendship.

17. Without Contraries there is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.