Blake: His Shadowy Animals

Abstract

IN THE COURSE OF A DISCUSSION OF BLAKE'S POETRY MORTON PALEY SAYS, a phrase which I deUberately want to isolate from its context, that some of poems may be seen as locations where the passions, repre sented as animals, return to world.1 What might he mean by this view, and to what extent can we agree to it? In first place, we can easily see Songs of Innocence and of Experience as places inhabited by animals: by, perhaps, a world of animals particular to innocence?the lamb, emmet, glow-worm, beetle, wild birds, sparrow, robin, skylark and thrush, and so on; and also a world of animals particular to experience?the invisible worm, tyger, caterpiUar and fly, raven. There are also animals who appear more strangely located?in realm of innocence there are beasts of prey, Uon, leopards, tygers again, Uoness; realm of experience has its own transmutation of fly, its own curious transformation of horned but humble sheep. And if we were to look further afield Blake, we would of course find many more animals, and even stranger mythic transformations of them. But this is not reaUy to address, let alone to answer, question of what these animals are doing Blake's texts. For with rare exceptions?of which most outstanding is tyger?Blake is not a poet who describes animals; rather, animals, or perhaps one ought to say creatures, are in voked, conjured up as icons, with their supposed atttibutes ready-made; when we read a line like the h?ls are aU cover'd with sheep,2 we are not being invited to look closely at sheep, we are not being confronted with problem of distinguishing a blue Leicester from a black-face; if these sheep have any identity at aU, it is more as child's picture-book version of sheep, pretty, bouncy creatures who occasionally block road for Postman Pat's van.