Blake's Tyger

Preface

This essay in interpretation has grown out of half a dozen talks given during 1959 to students of First Year Arts at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry (South India) in the course of a general study of poetic vision and expression.

It is mostly the pursuit, along several ways, of what has seemed to the author a new line of symbolic significance in Blake's intensest lyric, The Tyger. When it touches on the readings attempted by others, the aim has not been to exhaust the whole range of exegesis. As a rule, only those comments which, on coming to hand, have appeared to be immediately relevant as either guiding hints or partial supports or possible objections have been quoted and dealt with.

The author has benefited from the judicious remarks of a few friends in South India, especially those at the University of Annamalai and, among them, Professor M.S. Duraiswamy in particular, to whom Dr. V.S. Seturaman enthusiastically took the typescript of the original draft of the essay. It is also owing to their eagerness to interest Blake-scholars in England that the author set himself to make out of his talks a thesis for the scrutiny of experts.

The essay, in a somewhat revised version, went to England when, replying to Prof. Duraiswamy, Prof. J.H. Buxton of Oxford wrote that Sir Geoffrey Keynes would be glad to look at it. It is difficult to thank Sir Geoffrey adequately for the true scholar's courtesy he has shown to an unknown though earnest researcher. A triple courtesy as his letter of January 21, 1961 proved - for, he did not only read the essay and declare himself "very favourably impressed" though, in his opinion, "it needed a good deal of condensation": he also sent it to one whom he considered a great Blake-authority, Miss Kathleen Raine, and as his "own tribute" he presented me with an inscribed copy of

i

his edition of Blake's complete writings published by the Nonesuch Press in 1957. Miss Raine, on her part, was kind enough -as Sir Geoffrey put it - to think my research "worth criticising in detail" as well as to begin her long report on it to him with the encouraging words: "I like his essay immensely, for it is written by a mind with insight into the realities that concerned Blake also. In spite of its length and diffuseness I read it straight with continuous pleasure and the sympathy one feels with minds of quality and undistorted by any of the falsehoods so rife in modern criticism (and poetry also!)."

A happy discussion started between Miss Raine and the author. The correspondence ran for nearly a year and to a length that would make of it a little book by itself. As a result the original draft had to be modified or rewritten in several places at the same time that there was no alteration in fundamentals. In her letters Miss Raine elaborated what she had already laid down in her report. On the one hand she had seen my central thesis to contain "illuminating truth" and had even gone on to say to Sir Geoffrey: "I think he has found a profound truth not seen by any of us hitherto." On the other hand she had stoutly disputed a number of important points and offered some reconstructive suggestions. But at almost the end (July 25, 1961) of the main bulk of the debate by correspondence she was still generous enough to make a statement for which one cannot be sufficiently grateful: "I think you have more insight into the poem than any other commentator has ever done, and I hope to see your Essay published soon, with or without the modifications I have suggested. Some you may accept, others reject, of course."

Miss Raine allowed the author to read even her own essay on The Tyger, unpublished at the time, in its final revised form, and later the rough draft of her A.W. Mellon Lectures meant to be delivered in 1962 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington City. A part of them too expounded in a briefer and slightly altered shape the same poem. In the light of her far-reaching perceptions no less than extensive scholarship the author has realised many things more precisely and concretely:

ii

without her challenges he could not have set himself in the right direction towards his own goal. It was clear to him that unless he could meet all her objections his thesis was bound to fall short. He has tried to plug every possible leak and examined from all sides the particulars of her own splendid interpretation of The Tyger, feeling that if he could not pass beyond it this reading would certainly be the last word on the poem.

It is for the wide world of Blake-experts to pronounce whether or not he has succeeded in the difficult task undertaken. But the pronouncement they have to make must be based not merely on the arguments advanced in the face of Miss Raine's view. It must be based also on the several converging lines developed in favour of an alternative view independently of the issues here involved. The two main lines are: (1) the pattern of vision discoverable in The Tyger by a minute study of the lyric in itself and (2) the analogy of this pattern, both imaginatively and verbally, to certain phases of the Chris-tological drama unfolded in the course of Milton's Paradise Lost.

Miss Raine's charge of diffuseness against the original draft of the essay referred principally to the setting forth of the Miltonic analogy. But she was not altogether critical when she wrote to Sir Geoffrey: "I agree that the section on Milton wanders and is in great need of cutting. At the same time I think it contains a great deal that is convincing and excellent, and in general I think Mr. Sethna has proved beyond doubt that The Tyger is steeped in Miltonic thought." Later she wrote to the author: "As to Milton, while I agree that he is always with Blake, I think the influence of Alchemical and Hermetic thought, and of Boehme, was no less strong and in this poem has given him the symbolic bones, Milton only the imagery.... To be steeped in Miltonic thought is not to derive wholly from Milton."

After all this had been written, the section on Milton was redone. Whatever, in the author's opinion, seemed to "wander" was cut out. But, although he sought to guard against diffuseness, he could not help elaborating parts of the section

iii

further and adding much new material, so as to demonstrate fully that no other influences need be admitted in regard at least to the fundamental significance and structure of the poem's story.

If this section tries the reader's patience, which it most probably will unless he is both Milton-struck and Blake-bitten, he need not plough through it beyond the point sufficient to render my case plausible. He may return to the skipped parts after the rest of the book in order to complete the new understanding.

The relevance of this section will actually appear greater from some comments at almost the end of the book. For there what I feel to be the fullest and most satisfying interpretation of another famous and much-discussed lyric of Blake's - "And did those feet in ancient time" - emerges against a background affined to the Tyger-Miltonic.

Perhaps a long essay - long not only by the section on Milton but also by some other chapters - on a short poem "burning bright" runs the risk of looking markedly prosaic. But Blake's poetry is often apt to dazzle, and a patient tracing of the form in which, as he says somewhere, fire delights may not be ungrateful labour - especially if the form happens to be complex. Only, the "fearful symmetry" should be caught with neither too dull an eye nor too cold a hand. Besides, except for the first two chapters,¹ the book is meant really for Blake-cultists -not a small number, though, since they must run into many thousands - and it is to be hoped that they will permit a fellow-enthusiast his full say and, like Miss Raine and Sir Geoffrey, feel that he has striven to seize Blake's vision not quite without first quickening with his fire of "distant deeps or skies".

K.D.S.

Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry,

April 22, 1962.

1. These chapters have since been published in a commemorative volume in honour of Professor M.S. Duraiswamy, Critical Essays on English Literature, edited by V. Seturaman (Orient Longmans, Madras, 1965). - K.D.S. (1976)

iv