SONG OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
Blake's originality is expressed in these two books
where we can see the two opposing states of human soul namely "Innocence" and
"Experience".
"Innocence" is the inner state of innocence, freedom
and imagination, a state identified with childhood. "Experience", instead,
means the experience brought by man's laws and institutions, is the world of
normal adult life, when people are incapable of spontaneity and imagination.
His vision of life is made not of
"contraries" but of "complementary opposites" because this two state of soul
coexist within the human being and are necessary to his existence. He said:"
without contraries there is not progression!". This two states coexist not only
in the human being but also in the
figure of Creator who can be at the same time the God of love and
innocence(identified with lamb) and God of violence and energy(identified with
tiger).Moreover Blake believed that only intuition and imagination bring man
into contact with true reality. Child, poet and God share this power pf vision
.Blake was interested in political and social problems. He believed in
revolutions as redemption of man, but was disillusioned by the industrial
revolution such as a exploitation of human being.
According to me true reality is not reached with the
intuition or the imagination. Through the imagination we have only a subjective
and superficial understanding of things.
experience allows us to try to understand to fund the reality and the life,
with its bitterness and joys. So to my opinion imagination is the 'not to
accept the reality', perhaps because painful, perhaps because
disappointing, because always gives us a happy and abstract vision, but not
true! But the world is made of facets and, as the same Blake said, of
'contrary.' the contrary ones bring the man to the progress!! So it is not correct to think that the soul is separated in blocks or
that experience makes the man bad. On the contrary of a child, the adult is set
by the same events of the life in front of situations to have to overcome, to
pains to have to accept and experience can improve him and allow to progress him. If was only the
imagination the source of knowledge the man would be a creature deluded by the
appearances and always incapable to face any event! However he doesn't have to
be deprived of it because imagination allows to have aspirations, and after all
also a necessary separation from the life of every day.
[ Picolo appunti ]
