11/17/13

   My two favorite poems out of the William Blake packet are "The Divine Image" and "The Human Abstract."  These are the two poems that my group was assigned to piece back together. (Shout out to Sven and I for figuring out the order of "The Human Abstract."  Trust me, that was no easy task to complete).  "The Divine Image" is from Songs of Innocence while "The Human Abstract" is from Songs of Experience.  The titles themselves connect yet contrast at the same time.  When I hear "divine image" I usually lift the image up to a holy or God-like image.  "Human Abstract" makes me think of an imperfect human.  I think of all different parts of a human put together, and it is most certainly not God-like.  "The Divine Image" seems to discuss God himself, and His interaction with humans.  The humans pray to God with emotions of "Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love" to say thank you.  The poem seems to say that God is made of these emotions, so he made man of the same emotions.  "Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress," all of these emotions make up a part of a man.  God is the "human form divine."  God is the divine image, and humans have parts of God in them.  God must love the humans because they all have a part of God in them.  They appear to be God in human form.  "The Divine Image" discusses the positive results of the emotions of mercy, pity, peace and love, but "The Human Abstract" talks about the negative side of being made of such emotions. "Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody Poor."  If people did not suffer, pity would not exist.  People have to suffer, so that all aspects of human emotions can be felt.  "The Catterpiller and Fly, Feed on the Mystery,"  These insects seem to feed on the mystery of human emotions.  "The fruit of Deceit" relates to the Garden of Eden.  The fruit is a lie, and it is "ruddy" and bloody.  The men search to find the tree with fruit, insects, and Raven, but the tree grows in human brains.  This is a tree of emotions that oppose one another.  The Gods are searching to understand the humans' emotions and how they act.  In this poem of experience, it seems that humans have taken the emotions of God and have manipulated them to fit their own evolution.  When a human is innocent, they portray the pure emotions of God, however, when they have experience, they manipulate the pure emotions to fit their own progress and society. 
  I think that it was extremely wise and sneaky for John Gardner to put an expert of a Blake poem in the beginning of Grendel.  It seems as if he was trying to warn us of Grendel's transformation.  Grendel begins is life innocent of the world.  He knows nothing out of his own little cave and his mother.  Once Grendel explores the outside world and becomes connected with Hrothgar, he has gained experience.  Grendel's own life journeys from innocence to experience.  He ends up hating the men's society just as Blake did.  Grendel thinks that the men's society is based on sacrifice (which is exactly what Blake thought). Sneaky Gardner, very very sneaky.