"The Tyger" is one of my favorite poems and I've always thought of it as a thing of beauty, but after reading Burke's essay on the sublime, I think of it a little differently.
The speaker spends the entirety of the poem asking the question, "What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry (3-4)?" He wonders how such a fearsome yet beautiful creature could have been created. What does this Tyger mean to the world? The creature inspires a sense of lurid fascination. If we encountered it we would find ourselves enraptured, in the state that Burke would have described as the moment of astonishment when we find that we've gone blank in the face of something greater than we are.
We are presented with vividly dark imagery. The tyger is "burning bright/In the forests of the night (1-2)." Images of fire recur throughout, which call to mind the idea of not being able to tear your eyes away from something dangerous, but nonetheless enticing. There are images of sinews along with objects such as a hammer, chain, anvil, and spears, which all have connotations of foreboding. They could be used as tools to inflict pain. The speaker asks, "What dread grasp/Dare its deadly terrors clasp (15-6)?" This Tyger instills fear. We don't know what to expect from it, so we are stuck asking the questions of where it came from.
I always thought that "The Tyger" was the antithesis of everything light and, with Burke in mind, everything beautiful. The speaker questions how two such opposing entities can exist, this balance between lightness and darkness, which is exemplified in what I find to be the defining line of the poem: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" Unlike the poem of "The Lamb," the speaker is not asking God to bless the creature, rather he is asking how God could have created a world where both beings exist. How can this balance maintain itself and why does it exist? The poem leaves this up in the air, but Burke might have called it a necessary thing.
What I found most affecting at the end was the way Blake changes one word to drastically change the question in the beginning from one of wonder to a loaded demand: "What immortal hand or eye/Dare frame thy fearful symmetry (23-4)?"
While reading The Tyger, I also was reminded of the Sublime theme that we read about and talked about in class. I thought about how people often mix up beauty and sublime, and how sublime is much more grand and even fearful, which is very representative of the ferocious tiger. Its "fearful symmetry" is grand and awe-inspiring, but what makes it most sublime is its scary demeanor, and the mystery behind its beautiful structure and "art" of its look (129). Along with thinking that the dark imagery showed how people fear the tiger, I also felt that the description of "deadly terrors", and "burnt fires of thine eyes" was contrasting heaven (which is brought about by the sacred lamb which usually refers to sacrifice), and hell (which the fire and deathly images evoke) (129). I felt that the line that you pointed out, "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" questions heaven and hell, the Devil and God (130). It expresses that the narrator of this poem wants to understand how God could make such intricate, large, ferocious and evil things, while as well making simple, beautiful, white lambs. For me this connected to how people view the world when something goes terribly wrong. When there is a huge natural disaster, people question how God could create something so terrible in the midst of creating such beautiful things. Like an ocean and winds causing a natural disaster, the tiger in all of its power and grandness can cause such catastrophe and fear too. This mystery of the world in general too, like the obscurities that Burke spoke about, makes the world a sublime, scary, and mysterious place. Blake challenges the reader of this poem to think more deeply about the obscurities of animals, catastrophes, and the world.
ReplyDeleteComparing “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” provides quite a few differences, not only in their main message, for lack of a better word, but also in terms of their respective structures and persona.
ReplyDeleteBoth of the works have refrains that serve as bookends, but they are not placed in the same position. In “The Lamb,” these couplets encapsulate each stanza, and range in content from questions to assertions – “Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!” (12) – to blessings. “The Tyger,” in contrast, has one refrain at the beginning and end, and is a question, creating a more ambiguous, uncertain tone than its counterpart in Songs of Innocence.
Speaking of innocence, the personas assumed are also different. The speaker in “The Lamb,” if not explicitly a child, certainly identifies as one – “I a child & thou a lamb” (17) – while it could be argued that in “The Tyger” the speaker assumes a much grander role…I smell a paper prompt…
I think the fourth stanza is the most compelling part of this poem. The language makes it seem as though the tyger were made in a factory. "What the hammer? what the chain?/ In what furnace was thy brain?" (13-14). These lines make it seem as though the tyger is not a living creature. "Brain" is the only word that leads the reader to believe that he's alive. The rest of the language "hammer," "chain," "furnace," seem more appropriate for making toys than for making living beings. Also, what does this say about the alleged Creator? Is this a metaphor for how he feels about living beings lesser than him--that they are just toys to be mass-produced?
ReplyDeleteThere is some intense, scary language in this poem that makes me feel sad for the tyger :(
I am really glad you brought up the sublime when talking about this poem. I have also read "The Tyger" before in previous English classes, however I had always thought of it in terms of beauty and obscurity. I did not previously think to compare these two ideas, beauty and sublime, in a way to think about the significance and power of these ideas. I also really like how you said, "Unlike the poem of "The Lamb," the speaker is not asking God to bless the creature, rather he is asking how God could have created a world where both beings exist." This asks the question, can the sublime and beauty occur together? I honestly have no idea, but I think it is something to think deeply about. My favorite part about reading this poem was that we were also given an image. For me, the words were much more powerful than the image. That proves to me that words and poetry are much stronger than art and a single image to create meaning and an image in my mind. I think Burke is really onto something.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the sublime dawned on me as well when reading "The Tyger." Between the two poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" the first is definitely what Burke would have classified as the beautiful while the second would have been considered the sublime. I think this became most apparent to me when rereading a quote from Burke: “A human is far more likely to respond to the fear of pain rather than the satisfaction of pleasure.”
ReplyDeleteThus, a fierce tiger is much more compelling than an innocent lamb in terms of the damage each creature could do to its observer. The language of each poem mirrors this suggestion as well. "The Lamb" has much softer, easier diction that I considered more accessible for the common man to understand while "The Tyger" definitely became more philosophical and complex with its rhetorical questions and word choice.
Another connection that I thought was particularly interesting after reading "The Tyger" and "A Woman of Colour" was comparing the scene of Olivia and George discussing the color of her skin to the rhetorical questions circulating in "The Tyger." Olivia suggests to George that despite different appearances, they are all created from one God. This sentiment seems to mirror the question proposed in "The Tyger": "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" It is interesting to consider this in terms of race. The lamb is pure and white while the tiger is colored and suggestively evil, yet both are considering the question of their creators.