Symbolism and Nature

1. Explain the Symbolism of Man in Blake's Poems

      William Blake (1757-1827) was a painter, engraver, and one of the main poets of British Romanticism. Being an en graver helped him to represent the world as an artist whose drawings are complicated. Likesome of poets in his peri od such as William Wordsworth (1770-1850)and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), he is an observer who looks at the world carefully in order to demonstrate the environ- ment and nature. Like other romantic poets there is a special concern with the passion emotion and nature in his poetry.

      He emphasizes on the man's emotion and its interrelation. with nature which is common in every romantic poem. Since Blake gazes at nature and environment in different viewpoints, in his poems, he visualizes different natural creatures that exist and live together in an organism .Blake makes a relation between literature, nature, and environment in his poems of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Being written from 1789 to 1794, Songs of Innocence (including nineteen poems) and Songs of Expe- rience(including twenty-six poems) are collections of for ty seven poems. Blake embodies nature and environment through describing different earthly and natural creatures in these collections of poems.

        Enriching his idea with his powerful imagination, Blake illustrates nature and environ ment in his poems, engravings, and drawings. Consequently, he defends and revives nature against destruction by human and industrial development resulting from expanding and increasing the rate of urban life. Songs of Innocence and Songs of 13 Experience consist of poems which Blake composes illustrate the coexistence between human and nonhuman in nature. "The Echoing Green," "Laughing Song" "Spring." "Nurse's Song ",and "On Another's Sorrow" are five poems from Songs of Innocence, and Holy Thursday," "The Lit- tle Girl Lost," "The Little Girl Found," and The School- boy," are four poems from Songs of Experience which are discussed in this paper.

       The features of these poems revolve around such coexistence between human and nonbuman in nature William Blake looks at the external world carefully and thinks about different creatures in the environment and na- ture. He uses his powerful imagination and makes an attempt to show various parts and members of environment and na- ture. In his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake reveals that some living creatures and nonliving enti- ties live and exist in the environment and nature, and every one of them has its role and position in this environment and ecological system.

     In this sense, human has its own substan- tial position in the natural world, and the other creatures and entities, which are nonhuman, have their own significant position in the world, too. Therefore, every creature or enti ty, whether human or nonhuman, lives and exists in its own position in the environment with interrelation between its members and parts(Baradaran,Khoshkam,2017,p15, 16) .

    If in the process of "recovering" nature, Marxism or any other political movement ignores the violence and ideological complexity of nature as a cultural concept, it will recover a nature imbued with those ideologies which have helped provoke present crises. In short there is a danger that much reactionary thought will return on the backs of nature and of those who rightly recognize ecological politics as of the utmost urgency. Of 14 course there are obvious and fundamental distinctions which can help prevent that--between human nature and the nature that is destroyed by human culture; between the ecological and the ideological conceptions of nature. But...they are distinctions which the concept itself traditionally slides across and between Nature has no Outline: but Imagination has. Nature has no Tune: But Imagination has! Nature has no Supernatural & dissolves: Imagination is Eternity (Hutchings,1998,p43 ).

       Believe that it is difficult to discuss the genesis of car- ing about nature or conservation behavior without examin- ing the issue of the split between humans and the natural world. In the occidental industrialized world, our relation- ships with animals have a somewhat paradoxical quality. On the one hand, we understand that we, along with other ani - mals and the rest of nature, exist together as small parts of the universe as a whole. We sometimes have a sense of fellow- ship with the other beings who share our situation in the grand scheme of things and occasionally experience environ mental epiphanies in which we feel at one with the natural world (see, for example, Chenoweth and Gobster 1990, on peak aesthetic experiences).

       On the other hand, as we contin ue developing new technologies, we feel less dependent on nature for our survival. One result is that we find ourselves in the paradoxical position of making moral distinctions between the animals that are permissible to eat or kill and those whom we bring into our lives on a more intimate and social basis Even so, by seeking a relationship with nature, often through interactions with other animals, we may be able to connect with what is often a spiritual sense of wonder at being part of a vast interconnected network Levinson and Mallon (1997/1969) suggested that humans endeavor to affirm their unity with nature.

      "[The natural world] gives 15 man [sic] a point of reference and support, and to some peo- ple, an assuagement of existential anxiety. It appears that the possession of pets symbolizes this unity with nature and thus satisfies some deep human needs" Muth echoed this idea and suggested that post-modern alienation and exis- tential angst can be seen in our celebration of pets. Several authors have proposed that, at an early point in our history, humans were closer, both physically and psycho- logically, to the natural world than they are now Campbell (1983; see also Meison 2001, Morris 1998 , Nelson 1983; Shepard 1993, 1996 and Urton 1985) .

     Argues that the primitive human world was replete with animal symbols and spiritual ceremonies, Serpell (1986) notes that early European settlers of North and South America reported that indigenous peoples kept a wide variety of animals as pets. Others have claimed that the survival of early humans may have depended in part on main- taining the presence of friendly animals that kept watch for predators(Fenning, 2003,p88).

     One of the very important and known features of Blake's poetry is the use of symbols. In all his poems there is the footprint of symbolism. of besides surface meaning. Though many believe that Blake's poems are written in a simple language, no one can deny the presence of deep meaning. However in order to catch deep meaning people should have knowledge about the use of symbols in Blake's poetry which have been classified into innocence symbols, energy symbols, sexual symbols , corruption symbols, oppression symbols and so on. Blake is one of the known figures in Romantic Period 1785-1830).

     According to Moinzadeh 2013 Romantic poets had idealistic view about human's sprit which will be spoiled with worldliness. One of very 16 important themes in that time was revolution ( which means replacing industrial with natural life style .Poets at that time were playing the role of profits who warned people against such happening. The Tiger and The Lamb were both poems by William Blake, there is a comparison of the two poems, Blake, as a child ,was an outcast and didn't have many friends. He was educated at home by his parents and found sociability difficult. His family believed very strongly in God but did not agree with the teachings of the church. During his lonely hours, Blake often read the Bible. He had a lot of free time to think about ideas, reflect on life and to strengthen his imagination.

2. Blake's Poems in Symbolism and Nature

        Person could find a lot of biblical discourse in his poems .Two of William Blake's poems typify this: The Lamb and Tiger. Both poems display Romanticism through the use of symbolism which glorifies the disparity of nature's aspects. In The Lamb, Blake uses pastoral symbolism to depict nature as innocent, meek and mild. The Lamb is representative of nature as a whole and is described as tender, soft, wooly and bright. Also, Blake draws. on traditional biblical symbolism to present the Lamb as pure , innocent, and childlike. The words used in this poem combine to create the image of unsullied purity and simple delight. This imagery advances the Romantic view of nature and of God.

The Romanticists are inclined to believe that the society causes corruption and that nature is al deaning force. The Lamb is the perfect representation of this view of nature. Blake relates the Lamb to God. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb assures the Christian values of gentleness and peace. In this case, the naturalistic metaphor is more than figurative; it hints at a link between human and n on-human nature (Ibrahim, 2017,p63,64).

The notion of childhood only began to get recognition in the second half of the 18th century within the period which we now define as The Romantic Movement. This period marks an important transition in Britain's as well as Europe's history, mainly associated with the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class, signifying the end of the Classical period. With the new social structure that came with these changes, the construction of childhood changed as well. Adrianne E. Gavin, in discussing the literary constructions of childhood and its development from medieval to contemporary times, claims that Romantic writers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were the first to produce a sustained construct of childhood through their poetry.

       Childhood in the Romantic sense is distinct from adulthood, a desirable state to which adults wish they could return: "a lost, idealized, clear-visioned, divinely pure, intuitive, in-tune-with-nature, imaginative stage of life, of whose spirit adults felt the loss and sought to capture in literature" To understand the role of children and innocence in Blake's poetry, he must first be considered in relation to the features of Romanticism, even though his work marks the beginning stages of the period which defines him as a Pre-Romantic poct. Calling a writer Romantic, as David Simpson explains it, "has thus traditionally been to signal an interest in such categories as genius, nature, childhood, and imagination, perhaps along with some assumed response to the French Revolution." (2003:,17).

      All of which are touched upon by Blake in his work. However, the way Blake fits into the constructions of the period has been widely debated by literary critics, and some of those debates, as summarized and compared in Simpson's essay Blake and Romanticism do not narrow the defining parameters that make Blake a Romantic poet. Even though 18 Blake himself did not have any children with his wife, he was certainly involved in the subject of children and childhood. Both are significant subjects in Blake's work, and in the Songs, he delves into the issues of exploitation and repression of children in and by the English society, as well as the Church. Robert Rix argues that "It is against this repressive ideology that Blake most clearly articulates a theory of 'infancy' as pivotal for an understanding of man's rights to be treated respectfully as an individual." (2020,P 49).

     One of the objects of Blake's criticism was later documented in the form of the Report of Children's Employment Commission, which contains thousands of pages of testimonies revealing abusive practices in particular industries like factories, mines, mills, trades and manufacturers, bleach and dye works, lace manufactures and ,notably, chimney sweeping.

        Testimonies sometimes came from children as young as five years old, who were used for tasks which benefitted from their small size and forced obedience. In discussing the literary constructions of childhood and its development from medieval to contemporary times, claims that Romantic writers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were the first to produce a sustained construct of childhood through their poetry. Childhood in the Romantic sense is distinct from adulthood, a desirable state to which adults wish they could return: "a lost, idealized, clearvisioned, divinely pure, intuitive, in-tune -with-nature, imaginative stage of life, of whose spirit adults felt the loss and sought to(Magic, 2020,p1,p4,6).