标题: The image of appealing evil——case study of “tyger” [打印本页] 作者: Crystal_zyy 时间: 2006-12-15 09:41 标题: The image of appealing evil——case study of “tyger” The image of appealing evil——case study of “tyger”
What is romanticism？It is a question under ever-lasting discussion even when realism was prevailing. After hundreds of years’ analogizing and summarizing, people came to a seemingly reasonable answer: romanticism is the freshest and the most realistic way of expressing beauty. In other words, it is the longing for intimacy, spirit, color and eternity that indicated by every artistic means contained in romanticism.
Undoubtedly William Blake is the pioneer and martyr of this pre-romanticizing movement, the same as other unrecognized writers and poets who unluckily but praiseworthily to bear the inevitable responsibility of initiating a new trend of thinking. To some extent, he is a meek lamb，meek enough to endure all the loneliness and distress, living in his small but plenteous world, he is even richer than a king, and he can also be a fierce tiger, whose burning fire is like a pointy claw, seizing your throat, and you cannot even breathe, because his image is so powerful that you become fearful of the significance of your own life. Then there comes one of Blake’s greatest poems: Tyger.
Tiger! Tyger! 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, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & 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 water’d 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?
There has never been a conclusion of what this tiger represents. However, after first glancing of the poem, the tiger image is not joyful, definitely not blissful, but it is also undeniable that careful readers can find beauty under ostensible lines. Or to be more precise: it is an appealing evil. Then this issue is much simplified: how could this appealing evil hit the reader with an inexpressible power? Not only because of the spiritual force of the image itself, but also the correspondence to the modern readers. But most importantly, it is the inevitability to get rid of ethic and reason.
Appealing evil is not initiated by William Blake. John Milton licked Satan into shape in his greatest work “paradise lost”, and Byron’s Don Juan. Why writers continuously devoted their energy to this appealing evil? Take tiger for example, people may get a deeper understanding of the power of appealing evil.
In Scripture, tiger is of course not something that is conversant, however, these two sentences “Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” brings the whole poem a sense of religious solemnity, which appears clearly after combining with the word “HE”. Here it refers to God, the metaphysic God who Blake trusts completely. Yes, tiger is frightening, even a little desperate, but fright and desperation are acceptable, or in other words, they are the assurance of bearing faith. Although tiger is the main character, it is the “HE” who is the very core of the poem. But also the poet cannot live in fright and desperation, because those are not the horizon through which Blake can get unlimited near to the truth of God. If he didn’t attempt to eliminate fright and desperation whiles the poet himself living in which, otherwise the life didn’t make any sense. This is the spiritual force of the appealing evil “tiger”: God creates it, with both kindness and evil, but people still trusted God, which was the only choice for that period of time and people. And this was exactly what tortured William Blake: tiger is frightening, but people had no choice but revere it, all of which resulted from his hesitating but complete trust to his metaphysic God. Since his theological starting point was the universal man instead of the almighty God, then Blake’s aesthetic standard would never be perfection. His hope for everything was discounted, and his tolerance for evil was a terrified conception. No doubt the image tiger is fearful, for Blake, it is destined to be evil. But the beauty and glamour of tiger is thus so obvious that the evil part becomes appealing, and this is the spiritual force that conveyed harmony and awe. Blake’s dualism decided the feature of this appealing evil, fearful and awesome.
For modern readers, they tend to love this kind of appealing evil. Based on the principle of phenomenology, it does not matter what was the initial image that transferred into the poet’s mind, but how the readers interpreted the image. The world comprises the objects, but the world itself is not an object, and it has a symbiotic relationship with the existence of human beings. There are two elements that consist of the human spiritual will: sense of joy and sense of sorrow. The major function of the first one is to maintain the joyful state while the latter is to balance the state of mind when they realized they are thirsty children from want. The essence of sorrow is the yearning for what human beings are lacking of. Now here comes the question: what is William Blake lacking of?
He lived a not very rich but peaceful life. With a common wife and literary job etching, Blake was still feeling confused. “Revolutionary government” is the freedom’s despotism to tyranny. As Danton was confused about the real meaning of “democracy”, what Blake didn’t understand was: if individuals try to measurelessly get near to the original universal man, could human beings still have the possibility to practice perfection? The image tiger is just about what troubled Blake: perfect evil created by perfect God. So what Blake lacked most was the trust to the highest ethic code, which he even doubted its existence.
The appearance of Appealing evil is the inevitability to get rid of ethic and reason. In his poem “tiger”, what readers cannot apperceive the most is the sense of reason. The unstinted praise to this tiger has greatly beautified the tiger image, and the only rational sentence is a question: Did he who made the Lamb make thee? People who were from 17th century were facing the same question as those from modern age: where does sin derive from? Where does terror that combined with sin come from? And is there sin among existence? Kierkegaard once said: “sin” is the syncope of freedom, the opposition of sin is not virtue, but faith. Those philosophers like Hegel made the mistake of trying to find the answer from the sense of reason. For the part of appealing evil, readers don’t need to consider the question of whether it has the possibility or reason to exist, because even if we find a seemingly right answer, the dialectic reasoning thought could only make this question less worthy of discussion. Apparently William Blake regarded it as a phenomenon of faith. When he thought of the image tiger, he came with the idea of the Creator, but his doubted theological mind hindered his deeper motivation of getting rid of ethic and reason, which made the unborn modern readers keep endless quarrelling and discussing.
Now there comes the question again: what is Romanticism, for William Blake? It’s true, he was longing for intimacy, spirit, color and eternity. However, deep in his mind, there was always an unquestionable mystery. And this is romanticism, heavenly-minded but skeptical, fearless but sometimes hesitating. And this is also William Blake.作者: hollisyu 时间: 2007-12-21 17:31 作者: nightele 时间: 2008-2-13 21:28
[rm]http://www.johnmitchell.org/tyger.mp3[/rm]
Set by John Mitchell (1941-) op. 25, Visions from the Flame, no. 9 (1977).
