Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Innocence Leading to Experience
"Songs of Innocence" presents a refreshing view of Romantic-era England, fraught with pastoral and religious imagery, the delightful innocence of childhood, and parental love for children. However, as the poems progress chronologically, there is a diversion from these joyful, carefree scenes towards the other side of innocence: that of naivete that can lead to sorrow, pain, and loss, and ultimately to the opposite of innocence, experience. Interestingly, the footnotes related how Blake later republished some of these chronologically later poems into a joint book of "Songs of Innocence and of Experience," suggesting an awareness that this sort of innocence was the type that led to worldly experience. This transformation from naive to aware can be most clearly seen in the juxtaposition of "The Little Girl Lost" and "The Little Girl Found", the kidnapping of a young girl leads to the grief of her parents, and represents a loss of her innocence (virginity) and transformation into an adult, sexualized being. The forces that cause this transformation of parents and child from innocent to experienced are a band of lions; this suggests that the transformation is one that occurs through the force of nature and is an unavoidable process of the human experience.
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I thought this post was really interesting because it not only spells out a theme of romanticism but also suggests another important theme. The post discusses how "Songs of innocence" juxtaposed to "Songs of Experience" illustrates the the "transformation from naive to aware". This is most certainly an important element of Romanticism. But I am interested in the moment between the transition. It seems to me that many of these poems discuss two different existences (i.e. naive and then aware) but what is important to me in the poem is what isn't talked about. It is the moment of awareness, of a higher consciousness. I think this moment fits in with the Romantics idea of time as fleeting and no one moment can repeat itself. This is important because in other Romantic poems we see a similar discussion of time and how it passes. There is also a very strong hint of sadness for the past or longing to return to a moment that I think is important to think about.
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