Introduction William Blake’s “The Tyger” asks a seemingly simple question: who made the Tyger? While this question could appear as a rhetorical question, one whose answer is so obvious as to not need answering, the density of reference and depth of theological conundrums leaves the question unanswered because a true answer is unattainable. Blake’s conception of Christianity forces the poem to be ambiguous. In this collection, I examine “The Tyger” in detail by annotating the poem, comment on some of it critical reception, analyze the plate, and provide a conference abstract on the poem. THE TIGER1 [from Project Gutenberg] Tiger, tiger2 , burning bright3 In the forests of the night,4 What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?5 In what distant deeps or skies6 Burnt the fire of thine eyes?7 On what wings dare he aspire?8 What the hand dare seize the fire?9 And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart?10 1
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The Tiger​
: usually spelled The Tyger. Tiger, tiger​
: links “The Tyger” to “The Lamb” by starting the poems in the same style: a direct address to the animals and a question concerning their origin. Blake answers his questions in “The Lamb,” but Blake leaves the questions unanswered in “The Tyger.” Blake creates a sense of indecision concerning the creator of the Tyger that he does not concerning the Lamb. Blake associates the Lamb with Christ, but Blake leaves the Tyger’s creator as an undefined figure whose only characteristic is the level of dread Blake creates in his poem. 3
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burning bright​
: links the Tyger to the Miltonic Satan through the name Lucifer, translated as “morning star.” 4
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In the forests of the night​
: served as the inspiration for the titles of a multitude of books in a variety of genres, including nonfiction, romance, fantasy, and general ficiton. [amazon.com] 5
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fearful symmetry​
: inverts the standard of symmetry being found attractive. 6
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In what distant deeps or skies​
: furthers the indecisiveness of the poem. Blake questions whether the Tyger is from the distant deeps, Hell, or the distant skies, Heaven. Where Blake makes clear the connection between the Lamb and Christ, he leaves the connection between the Tyger and Satan vague; Blake was sure of the Lamb’s origin but not the Tyger’s. 7
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Burnt the fire of thine eyes​
: implies rage, again aligning the Tyger with Milton’s Satan. 8
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On what wings dare he aspire​
: further aligns the Tyger with Milton’s Satan in that Milton portrayed Satan as winged and ambitious. 9
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What hand dare seize the fire​
: a dual reference to fire in the sense of hell and the Prometheus myth. 10
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Could twist the sinews of thy heart​
: a reference to sinews in terms of creation occurs in the Bible in Ezekiel 37.4­6 “again he [God] said unto me [Ezekiel], Prophesy upon these bones and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behond, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: I will lay sinews upon you, and will 2
And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer?11 what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?12 What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their/ spears,13 And watered heaven with their tears,14 Did He smile His work to see?15 Did He who made the lamb make thee?16
Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, bring up flesh upon you, and and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live” (King James Version) In this story, Go brings dead men back to life. With this refWrence, Blake aligns the Lamb with Edenic man and the Tyger with fallen man. 11
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what the hammer​
: where previous lines showed the Tyger aligned or even created by a Miltonic Satan, here Blake positions the Tyger being created by God in a craftsman aspect. The concept of God as a craftsman has origins in the second chapter of Genesis, including verses two, “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made,” and seven, “and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (King James Version). Blake continues his indecision concerning the origin of the Tyger. 12
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what the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain​
: refers to several lines in John Milton’s Paradise Lost​
using the same chain and furnace or fire imagery in the same order. The lines Blake refers to are “In Admantine Chains and penal Fire,” “Chained on the burning Lake,” “Chained on the burning Lake?” “Yet Chains in Hell,” and “or Captive drag’d in Chains, with hostile frown / and visage all enflam’d first thus began.” Blake was familiar with Milton’s work; Blake illustrated Paradise Lost​
although he claimed, in ​
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell​
, that Milton “was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” 13
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when the stars threw down their spears​
: refers to the Miltonic conception of the war between God and Satan and the Christian creation myth. Reading the stars as a metaphor for angels gives the first reference and reading the spears as metaphors for light generates the second. The ambiguity of this line ties in the ambiguity over the creation of the Tyger. The spears standing for light reading would indicate that Blake believed, through the Tyger representing fallen man, that the fall from Eden was predestined since the Tyger would then predate the actual event. 14
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and watered heaven with their tears​
: supports the reading of the previous line where the stars represented angels but does not clarify the ambiguities over the creation of the Tyger or the link between the Tyger and Milton’s Satan or fallen man. 15
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did He smile His work to see​
: refers to the repetition of “that it was good” in the book of Genesis (King James Version). Here Blake gives the creation of the Tyger to God because it was God who saw that creation was good. However, the ambiguity of other lines complicates the creation of the Tyger to such an extent that this line should not be view as the defenitive answer to the question of the creator of the Tyger. 16
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did He who made the lamb make thee​
: references “The Lamb” in ​
Songs of Innocence​
. In “The Lamb” Blake explicitly linked the Lamb with Jesus Christ. However, in “The Tiger” Blake leaves both the creator of the lamb and the precise association of the Tyger vague. What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?17 Annotated Bibliography Miner, Paul. “Blake’s Tyger as Miltonic Beast.” ​
Studies in Romanticism​
47.4 (2008): 479­505. Web. Miner demonstrates that Blake drew on Milton for his description of the Tyger. He further shows that the imagery used in “The Tyger” ran through Blake’s other works and influenced his cosmology. The Tyger becomes a figure that spans the distance between Milton’s Satan and Blake’s Christ. Baine, Rodney M. “”Blake’s ‘Tyger’: The Nature of the Beast.” ​
Philological Quarterly 46.4 (1967): 488­499. Web. Baine stated that scholarly interpretation had gone too far in metaphorical meaning and that Blake’s Tyger was meant to represent human and natural cruelty. He examined the poem in the context of the ​
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience​
progression and how the Tyger’s burning represents nature and man in fury and fallen states. The position of the Tyger as representing fallen man places the poem in opposition to the earlier “The Lamb” and it is in this dichotomy, deliberately set up by Blake in his referring to the Lamb in “The Tyger,” that the meaning of the poems can be discerned. Rix, Robert W. “William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’: Divine and Beastly Bodies in Eighteenth­Century Children’s Poetry.” ​
ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews​
25.4 (2012). Web. Rix argues that Blake’s poem drew on the Children’s literature of his time for both his poem and his illustration. The image of the tiger appeared to be based on the illustrations in children’s books concerning animal life, literature that often characterized tigers as especially cruel and dangerous. The other form of literature Rix claimed Blake used was instructional literature. The instructional literature from Blake’s time included Christian messages that cast tigers and lions as threats, associated with Satan, that the power of God could could overcome, often because God was even more terrible than the cat. Rix used the claims regarding Blake’s image and poem of “The Tyger” to position Blake’s Tyger as part of Blake’s view of divine humanity. Blake’s divine humanity place God within humans and eliminated the 17
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry​
: compare with the fourth line reading “Could frame thy fearful symmetry.” The change from could to dare shifts the focus concerning the aspect of the creator of the Tyger that Blake considered important. In the fourth line, Blake concerned himself with the ability of the creator to create the Tyger. In the last line, Blake focused on the willingness of the Tyger’s creator to make the Tyger. In this shift, Blake blurs the idea of the creator, leaving the questions of the poem unanswered. external threat posed by the God more terrible than the tiger. Hobsbaum, Phillip. “A Rhetorical Question Answered: Blake’s ‘Tyger’ and its Critics.” Neophilogus ​
48.2 (1964): Web. Hobsbaum criticizes a series of answers to the questions posed in Blake’s poem. He shows how the various responses to the poem all fail to take into account interpretation based on part of the poem, the entire poem, or the theological framework surrounding ideas of a Creator. Hobsbaum concludes the questions are the point; Blake was not sure who the Creator was and the purpose of “The Tyger” was to leave readers “in a state of ‘sublime doubt’” (153). Brennan, Joseph X. “The Symbolic Framework of Blake’s ‘The Tyger.’” ​
College English​
22.6 (1961): 406­407. Web. Brennan considers the progression of the poem from considering the power of the ability to make the Tyger to considering the power necessary to imagine the Tyger. In the shift from “could” to “dare” and the shift from “hand” to “eye,” Brennan argues that Blake heightens the dread created in the poem by moving from “the power of the tiger’s creator (symbolized by the hand) to a deeper wonder concerning the inscrutable mind (symbolized by the eye) which could will such a creature into existence” (407). Plate analysis 1. Blake’s plate for “The Tyger” illustrates the initial verse, placing a bright tiger in a dark forest. Blake uses the “burning” Tyger to link the Tyger to Satan and emphasizes the brightness of the Tyger through the darkness of the rest of the plate. The darkness of the “forests of the night” places the creation of the Tyger prior to the Genesis story, as the first creation listed there was light. Blake, then, indicates that the Tyger as Miltonic Satan predates the creation story, in accordance with the interpretation of the snake in Genesis already being opposed to Edenic man, and, through the Tyger being aligned with fallen man, Blake shows that the fall of man from eating of the fruit of the tree was predestined. 2. The background colors of the plate show the time to be dusk. 3. Along with the time of day, the unfinished nature of the Tyger is shown by its partly finished stripes. The time of day and lack of clear stripes refer to the concern over who created the Tyger from the poem. 4. The posture of the Tyger indicates movement and alertness. The position of the legs shows that the Tyger is walking and the upright position and enlarged eyes emphasize its alertness. The Tyger’s movement and alertness emphasize its predatory nature and increases the menace generated by the poem by doing so. 5. Instead of demonstrating the symmetry of the Tyger mentioned in the poem, Blake displays the Tyger in profile. Blake’s display of the Tyger’s profile separates the poet, looking at the Tyger’s symmetry, and the reader, looking at its profile. Blake’s separation of poet and reader aligns the Tyger with fallen, sinful man by linking it with Matthew 7.5 “thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye” (King James Version). Conference Abstract William Blake’s “The Tyger” presents several questions. One is explicit, who made the Tyger, and one is implicit, what does the Tyger represent. Blake avoids answering these questions directly. While Hobsbaum declared the questions to be the point of the story, I argue that the Christian theology underpinning Blake’s poetry creates the ambiguity. In order to see the relationship between “The Tyger” and the theology, the relationship between “The Tyger” and its companion poem “The Lamb” must be explored. Further, the ambiguities involved in the theology must be examined. Blake published ​
Songs of Innocence ​
and ​
Songs of Experience​
as companion pieces. Blake meant for the works to speak to each other and meant for some of the poems to provide opposing commentary on similar subjects. In “The Lamb,” Blake equates the Lamb to Jesus by claiming that the creator of the lamb is also called a lamb. Blake’s equation goes a step further when Jesus’ role as shepherd in the Christian story is recalled. The Lamb represents not only Jesus but the innocent, Edenic, side of humanity. Blake does not clarify the relationships in “The Tyger” with the same clarity. However, Blake does link the Tyger to Milton’s Satan. Through the same kind of step that equated the Lamb with innocent humanity, the Tyger, through Satan’s role as temptor, represents sinful, fallen humanity. The relationship between Edenic and fallen humanity in the Christian creation story and theology is itself ambiguous. In the Christian story, God created the world, people, the Tree of Knowledge, and the snake that tempted Eve to eat from the fruit of the Tree. The ambiguity is in God’s role in the story. God clearly desired for humans to remain in their Edenic state by forbidding them to eat from the Tree. God also created the instabilities in the situation, by providing easy access to the Tree and allowing the snake access to the humans, that caused the fall. Blake’s ambiguity over the creation of the Tyger follows the ambiguity over the cause of the fall from Eden. Blake’s questioning of the creation of the Tyger is questioning the cause of the fall from Eden.