literary analysis of "To The Evening Star" by William Blake
Literary Analysis Essay
Linde Betsens
Thomas Van Der Goten, Els Schoonjans, Joanna Britton
English Language and Textual Proficiency III
23 April 2014
Imagination and Biblical themes in William Blake’s poem “To The Evening Star”
Some say that imagination has no boundaries, but in fact it does and this concept preoccupied William Blake. Blake – an English poet, engraver and mystic of the late 18th century – believed that imagination is “the body of God” (Frye et al. 50). Thus it is not surprising Blake 's poetry is imbued with these two concepts: on the one hand there is desire to understand a higher power as reflected in his Biblical symbolism; on the other hand imagination is central to Blake’s poetry. A good example to apply these concepts is Blake’s poem “To The Evening Star”, which was published in 1783 in his book Poetical Sketches. In “To the Evening Star” William Blake uses Biblical symbolism, metaphors and personification to evoke images in the mind’s eye. Readers are familiar with those images of a night scenery and of Biblical scenes which make it easier to grasp the transcendental meaning of the religious subject of the poem: asking a godlike figure for protection during the night.
Imagination was Blake’s religion, he worshipped it. Throughout history religion has been approached from uncountable different points of view, but William Blake was a mystic who was very ahead of his time. Blake believed imagination was vital to the human life and prized it above all else. Blake attacked conventional religion, because when it comes to imagining a ‘perfect God’ one stumbles upon different kinds of problems, but perhaps the biggest problem is that one simply cannot imagine it.
“ We cannot conceive an essentially superhuman imagination, and when we try to imagine above human nature we always imagine below it. We can imagine men who can do things we cannot, who can fly, who perspire instead of excreting food, who conserve by intuition instead of words. But
Linde Betsens
Thomas Van Der Goten, Els Schoonjans, Joanna Britton
English Language and Textual Proficiency III
23 April 2014
Imagination and Biblical themes in William Blake’s poem “To The Evening Star”
Some say that imagination has no boundaries, but in fact it does and this concept preoccupied William Blake. Blake – an English poet, engraver and mystic of the late 18th century – believed that imagination is “the body of God” (Frye et al. 50). Thus it is not surprising Blake 's poetry is imbued with these two concepts: on the one hand there is desire to understand a higher power as reflected in his Biblical symbolism; on the other hand imagination is central to Blake’s poetry. A good example to apply these concepts is Blake’s poem “To The Evening Star”, which was published in 1783 in his book Poetical Sketches. In “To the Evening Star” William Blake uses Biblical symbolism, metaphors and personification to evoke images in the mind’s eye. Readers are familiar with those images of a night scenery and of Biblical scenes which make it easier to grasp the transcendental meaning of the religious subject of the poem: asking a godlike figure for protection during the night.
Imagination was Blake’s religion, he worshipped it. Throughout history religion has been approached from uncountable different points of view, but William Blake was a mystic who was very ahead of his time. Blake believed imagination was vital to the human life and prized it above all else. Blake attacked conventional religion, because when it comes to imagining a ‘perfect God’ one stumbles upon different kinds of problems, but perhaps the biggest problem is that one simply cannot imagine it.
“ We cannot conceive an essentially superhuman imagination, and when we try to imagine above human nature we always imagine below it. We can imagine men who can do things we cannot, who can fly, who perspire instead of excreting food, who conserve by intuition instead of words. But
Cited: Frye, Northrop, and Nicholas Halmi, eds. Northrop Frye 's Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. Vol. 14. University of Toronto Press, 2004. Damon, S. Foster. A Blake dictionary: The ideas and symbols of William Blake. UPNE, 2013. Blake, William. Blake’s Poetry and Designs. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979.