The Tyger
Blake was regarded in his time as very strange, but many of his ideas make
sense to the modern reader. When this poem was written it was most unusual for
writers to show interest in wild animals. People did not have access to
wildlife documentaries on television, as we do today: exotic animals might be
seen in circuses and zoos, but tigers would be a rarity, perhaps turning up
stuffed or as rugs (this was to become very common in the 19th century). Just
as today the tiger is a symbol of (endangered) wildlife, so for Blake, the
animal is important as a symbol - but of what? One clue is to be found in the
comparison with The Lamb (see the next poem, and the fifth stanza of this one).
Blake's images defy simple explanation: we cannot be certain what he wants us
to think the tiger represents, but something of the majesty and power of God's
creation in the natural world seems to be present. Blake's spelling in the
title (The Tyger) at once suggests the exotic or alien quality of the beast.
The memorable opening couplet (pair of rhyming lines) points to the contrast of
the dark 'forest of the night' (which suggests an unknown and hostile
place) and the intense 'burning' brightness of the tiger's colouring:
Blake writes here with a painter's eye.
The penultimate (last but one) stanza takes us back to Genesis and the creation
story there: on each of the six days (He rested on the seventh) God looked at
His work and 'saw that it was good'. God is represented as being
pleased with His creation, but Blake wonders whether this can be true of the
tiger. If so, it is not easy to see how the same creator should have made The
Lamb. The poem appropriately ends, apparently with the same question with which
it started, but the change of verb from 'could' to 'dare'
makes it even more forceful.
This poem is not so much about the tiger as it really is, or as a zoologist
might present it to us; it is the Tyger, as it appears to the eye of the
beholder. Blake imagines the tiger as the embodiment of God's power in
creation: the animal is terrifying in its beauty, strength, complexity and
vitality.
The Lamb
In The Tyger Blake points to the contrast between these two animals: the tiger
is fierce, active, predatory, while The Lamb is meek, vulnerable and harmless.
In the first stanza Blake, as in The Tyger, asks questions, and these are again
directed to the animal, although the reader has less difficulty guessing the
answer, which the poet in any case gives in the second stanza. The picture of
The Lamb's feeding 'by the stream and o'er the mead' (=meadow) is a
beautiful one, which suggests God's kindness in creation, and has an echo of
similar descriptions in the Old Testament book of Psalms (especially Psalm 23,
'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want') and the parables of Jesus.
In the second stanza, Blake reminds The Lamb, and us, that the God who made The
Lamb, also is like The Lamb. As well as becoming a child (like the speaker of
the poem) Jesus became known as The Lamb of God: Jesus was crucified during the
Feast of the Passover (celebrating the Jews' escape from Egypt) when lambs were
slaughtered in the temple at Jerusalem. This was believed to take away the sins
of the people who took part in the feast. So when Jesus was killed, for the
sins of all people, according to the Christian faith, He came to be called The
Lamb of God. Although this is an image mainly of meekness and self-sacrifice,
in the last book of the Bible (Revelation) Jesus appears as a Lamb with divine
powers, who defeats the Anti-Christ and saves mankind. Blake's poem seems to be
mainly about God's love shown in his care for The Lamb and the child and about
the apparent paradox, that God became both child and Lamb in coming, as Jesus,
into the world.
[ Picolo appunti ]
