‘By Wondrous Birth’: The Nativity of William Blake's ‘The Tyger’
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 57; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00138398.2014.963281
ISSN1943-8117
Autores Tópico(s)Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
ResumoAbstractThis essay intends to demonstrate how Blake's pre-existing sketches in his ‘Notebook’ (henceforth [N]) influenced the composition of ‘The Tyger’. Blake drafted the poem amongst rough pencil drawings illustrating Milton's Paradise Lost (henceforth PL). The two sketches closest to the drafts of ‘The Tyger’ depict, respectively, Satan's encounter with the personifications of primeval Chaos and Night in PL II; and God's wrath at his foreknowledge, articulated in PL III, that Adam will disobey the single prohibition laid upon him. The Son of God immediately offers himself as a sacrifice to suffer the penalty due for Man's failing. Meanwhile, Satan struggles through the Abyss of Chaos, determined to make his way to the Earth to bring about Man's Fall.The tiger had been widely used as a symbol for the violence and bloodshed associated with the Revolution taking place in France when Blake was composing the poem. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell shows that Blake perceived in Milton's account of the Abyss of Chaos a parallel for the chaotic conditions prevailing in Paris. Blake illustrated part of the Miltonic passage in the sketch on [N108], and wrote the second draft of ‘The Tyger’ over it. Its influence is traceable in both drafts. The crucial fifth stanza of the completed poem, added to the second draft, was inspired ‘oppositionally’ by Milton's ode On the Morning of Christ's Nativity. Blake satirized the ode in Europe, probably work-in-progress concurrently with ‘The Tyger’. Blake may have been reminded of the ode by Milton's reference to the ‘wondrous birth’ of Christ in the context of the PL passage illustrated on [N110–111]. ‘The Tyger’ is thus a forerunner of W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’: the evocation of an apocalypse.Keywords: ‘Tyger’BlakeParadise LostBlake's ‘Notebook’‘Burning bright’‘Abyss of Chaos’Nativity Ode
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