William Blake's “On Another's Sorrow”
There is a strong religious theme in Blake's
poem, “On Another's Sorrow.” He uses the idea of sorrow to
show how we deal with it in the perspective of God and humans.
Whereas, he converses that human sympathy is a precious trait. I will
be focusing on the essential question: what might a given
interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological
motives of the reader through a Psychoanalytic point of view. It
could change the reader’s psychological motive to where they can
think or feel something different than what Blake is saying. Two
psychological motives used in this poem are exploration and
curiosity. Exploration is used in a way to help humans find their own
ways of coping with sorrow. Curiosity is used to examine how God's
position in the sorrows of humans. He also illustrated this poem an
image that I imagined to be a picture that represents life with all
of the vines and large leaves that are growing all around the birds
flying in the sky. The image that I will be using is Songs of
Innocence and of Experience, copy AA, 1826 (The Fitzwilliam
Museum): electronic edition object
27 (Bentley 27, Erdman 27, Keynes 27). The sky looks like
a sunset is forming. To contrast between the image and the poem the
issues of exploring and having the curiosity of sorrow through humans
and God will be taken into consideration.
While examining
this complex poem, it seems to point out two different individual’s
perception of sorrow; the innocent individual of a human, and God
response to sorrow. Blake explains the psychological feelings through
exploration and the curiosity of sorrow in the world. People always
want to explore the world or just about anything. Its the same thing
when you're finding ways to help you feel better when dealing with
sorrow. “Allowing yourself to grieve and you will find that with
the passing of time your [sorrow] will lessen” (Dealing
with Sorrow). Having curiosity with how God deals with his sorrow
when he sees others who feel the same sorrow is the ability of
believing in God and his abilities of making everything better.
However, Blake also believes that once you see another’s sorrow,
then you should feel that same sorrow.
The image displays
a human playing a pipe to a dog and and a person climbing up a tree
in the bottom left of the illustration. Trees symbolizes different
outlooks and parts of life. Vines in the bible represents the tree of
life, hence the vine symbolizes the growth of life. As I look at the
human climbing up the tree, I come to a conclusion that it feels
sorrow and is looking for a better outlook in life. Focusing on the
human playing the pipe with the dog, I'm predicting is a way for the
person to cope with their sorrow. The dog has its head raised, maybe
listening to the figure play the pipe. Blake asks, “And he who
smiles on all / Hear the wren with sorrows small, / Hear the small
bird’s grief and care / Hear the woes that infants bear” (Blake).
He talks about Gods ability and position in the sorrows of humans.
It also refers to a “wren” which is a very small bird. The small
bird could possibly represent very small humans. In addition, the sky
of the image looks like its forming into either a sunrise or a
sunset. This can represent the emotions and the feeling of God and
the humans. Sunrise; their mood is positive with the sun shining.
Sunset; the dark sky but a little of sunshine can mean their mood in
not positive, but negative. The image can give off different
interpretations, but this was my ideas of illustration.
Blake’s
certainty of the existence of sorrow in human beings is reflective of
his views that the world is full of innocence and joy. Blake says in
the last stanza, “O he gives to us his joy / That our grief he may
destroy / Till our grief is fled and gone / He doth sit by us and
moan” (Blake).
In other words, he believes that God sorrows with us and helps us to
overcome our grief, and also provides its own views of God’s
involvement in humans’ difficulties views on religion. In the last
stanza he mentions “he”, I believe he is referring to God.
“Therefore, in any human sorrow, God identifies with his children,
drawing alongside them. Although he gives them joy which will
overcome their grief, until that process is complete he shares in
their suffering” (crossref-it.).
This is not a poem that concentrates on a plot, but rather, it
focuses on Blake’s inquiry about the existence of sorrow from both
the mortal and divine point of view. Blake is clearly very religious
and his work seems to take on a propaganda towards religion.
William Blake’s
“On Another’s Sorrow” is a thoughtful and intense poem about
the understanding between human beings and as well as Gods sympathy.
The most obvious of the poem are that humans have the ability to
inherent sorrow for others and God has the power to feel sorrow for
the entire world. The poem and the image are much related in my own
opinion, even though certain aspects of sorrow and God were not fully
illustrated in the image. Blake’s writing give the interpretation
of different ideas, but here is what I thought what the text had read
to me.
Works Cited
