Blakes Portrayal of Creation in Songs of Innocence and Experience Essa

In Jerusalem, Blake famously asserted that 'I will not reason and compare: my business is to create'. This quote highlights the fact that Blake himself was participating in an inventive process. Northrop Frye commented that 'man in his creative acts and perceptions is God, and God is man? ' man's creativity is, for Blake, the manifestation of the divine. The Songs of Innocence and Experience deal with life and the move, in particular, from youth to age. Creation is an extremely important aspect of life [being its beginning], whether the subject is creating or being created. As religion plays an enormous part in all of Blake's poetry, we can expect creation to have some biblical resonance as well. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience portray creation ? as they portray most themes ? in entirely different ways. The innocent child in The Lamb automatically answers his own question when he asks ?who made thee It was, of course, God. But the child?s simple reply conceals more ominous symbolism. By linking himself to the lamb and Christ, we are reminded uncomfortably of Christ?s great sacrifice and the slaughter of animals in honour of pagan gods. The simplistic, idealistic version of creation in Innocence veils the darker face of a sub-textually present knowledge involving ritual or religious sacrifice, perhaps the inevitable surrender of innocence in favour of experience. Creation in Experience is much more complex. In contrast to image of the lamb, the tiger is a predator, no longer ?meek? and ?mild? but ?fearful? and ?deadly?. The poem progresses with a series of questions, constantly gathering pace and frequency. The poem reaches a climax at the question ?Did He who made the lamb make thee The narrator cannot reco... ...hat it leads to more questions. Blake was almost certainly making a point about the nature in reality of experience, after we have created and have truly been created as adults, we begin to reach a higher understanding of what it means to exist, including the knowledge of death and contingency. This may make us bitter, but it also enables us to become wise, perhaps even reach a higher kind of innocence, a second childhood, in acceptance of the inevitability of age. So while the mother in Cradle Song sings sorrowfully ?Sleep, sleep, happy sleep,/ While o?er thee thy mother weep? in recognition that her child will one day reach experience, she is also able to see the ?Heavenly face?, which ?Smiles on thee, on me, on all?, regardless of age and experience. For, it seems to suggest, we are all His children, and He bears the same love for His creations as we do for ours.