The Tyger

The Tyger
The Tyger
by William Blake
	Copy A of Blake's original printing of The Tyger, 1794. Copy A is held by the British Museum.
Country	UK (then Kingdom of Great Britain)
Language	English
Publication date	1794
Full text
	The Tyger (1794) at Wikisource

"The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his Songs of Experience collection and rising to prominence in the romantic period. The poem is one of the most anthologised in the English literary canon,^[1] and has been the subject of both literary criticism and many adaptations, including various musical versions.^[2] The poem explores and questions Christian religious paradigms prevalent in late 18th century and early 19th century England, discussing God's intention and motivation for creating both the "Lamb" and the eponymous "Tyger."^[3]

The Songs of Experience

The Songs of Experience was published in 1794 as a follow-up to Blake's 1789 Songs of Innocence.^[4] The two books were published together under the merged title Songs of Innocence and of Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: the author and printer, W. Blake^[4] featuring 54 illustrated plates. In some copies, plates are arranged differently and a number of poems are moved from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake printed the work throughout his life.^[5] Of the copies of the original collection, only 28 published during his life are known to exist, with an additional 16 published posthumously.^[6] Only five of the poems from Songs of Experience appeared individually before 1839.^[7]

Poem

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?^[8]^[9]

Structure

"The Tyger" is six stanzas in length with each stanza containing four lines. The meter of the poem is largely trochaic tetrameter. A number of lines, such as line four in the first stanza, fall into iambic tetrameter.^[10]

The poem is structured around questions that the speaker poses concerning the "Tyger," including the phrase "Who made thee?" These questions often repeat instances of alliteration ("frame" and "fearful") and imagery (burning, fire, eyes) to frame the arc of the poem.

The first stanza opens the poem with a central line of questioning, stating "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?". This direct address to the creature serves as a foundation for the poem's contemplative style as the "Tyger" cannot provide the speaker with a satisfactory answer. The second stanza questions the "Tyger" about where it was created, while the third stanza sees the focus move from the "Tyger" to its creator.^[11] The fourth stanza questions what tools were used in the "Tyger's" creation. In the fifth stanza, the speaker wonders how the creator reacted to its "Tyger" and questions the identity of the creator themselves. Finally, the sixth stanza is identical to the poem's first stanza but rephrases the last line, altering its meaning: rather than question who or what "could" create the "Tyger", the speaker wonders who would "dare," effectively modifying the tone of the stanza to present as more of a confrontation than a query.

Themes and critical analysis

"The Tyger" is the sister poem to "The Lamb" (from "Songs of Innocence"), a reflection of similar ideas from a different perspective. In "The Tyger", there is a duality between beauty and ferocity, through which Blake suggests that understanding one requires an understanding of the other.

"The Tyger," as a work within the "Songs of Experience," was written as antithetical to its counterpart from the "Songs of Innocence" ("The Lamb") – a recurring theme in Blake's philosophy and work. Blake argues that humankind's struggles have their origin in the contrasting nature of concepts. His poetry argues that truth lies in comprehending the contradictions between innocence and experience. To Blake, experience is not the face of evil, but rather a natural component of existence. Rather than believing in war between good and evil or heaven and hell, Blake believed that each man must first see and then resolve the contraries of existence and life.^[11] Therefore, the questions posed by the speaker within "The Tyger" are intentionally rhetorical; they are meant to be answered individually by readers instead of brought to a general consensus.^[12]

Colin Pedley and others have argued that Blake may have been influenced in selecting the animal by the death of a son of Sir Hector Munro by a tiger in December 1792.^[13]

Musical versions

Blake's original tunes for his poems have been lost in time, but many artists have tried to create their own versions of the tunes.^[14]

Rebecca Clarke – "The Tiger" (1929–33)
Benjamin Britten, in his song cycle Songs and Proverbs of William Blake (1965)
Marianne Faithfull, in her song "Eye Communication" (1981) from the Dangerous Acquaintances album.
Howard Frazin, in his song "The Tiger" for soprano and piano (2008), later expanded into an overture for orchestra, "In the Forests of the Night" (2009) commissioned by the Boston Classical Orchestra.^[15]
Duran Duran – "Tiger Tiger" (1983)
Greg Brown, on the album Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1986)
John Tavener – "The Tyger" (1987)^[16]
Tangerine Dream – the album Tyger (1987)
Jah Wobble – "Tyger Tyger" (1996)
Lauren Bernofsky – "The Tiger" (2002)
Kenneth Fuchs – Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Four Poems by William Blake for Baritone, Flute, Oboe, Cello, and Harp (completed 2006)
Herbst in Peking – "The Tyger and The Fly" (2014)
Qntal – "Tyger" (2014)
Mephisto Walz – "The Tyger"

Bob Dylan refers to Blake's poem in "Roll on John" (2012).^[17]

Five Iron Frenzy uses two lines of the poem in "Every New Day" on Our Newest Album Ever! (1997).

Joni Mitchell uses two lines in her song about the music industry, the title track of her 1998 album Taming the Tiger.^[18]

References

^ Eaves, p. 207.
^ Whitson and Whittaker 63–71.
^ Freed, Eugenie R. (3 July 2014). "'By Wondrous Birth': The Nativity of William Blake's 'The Tyger'". English Studies in Africa. 57 (2): 13–32. doi:10.1080/00138398.2014.963281. ISSN 0013-8398. S2CID 161470600.
^ ^a ^b Gilchrist 1907 p. 118
^ Davis 1977 p. 55
^ Damon 1988 p. 378
^ Bentley 2003 p. 148
^ Blake, William (1757–1827). Johnson, Mary Lynn; Grant, John Ernest (eds.). Blake's Poetry and Designs: Authoritative texts, Illuminations in Color and Monochrome, Related Prose, Criticism. W. W. Norton Company, Inc., 1979. pp. 21-22. ISBN 0393044874.
^ Blake, William (1757–1827). Erdman, David V. (ed.). The Complete Poetry and Prose (Newly revised ed.). Anchor Books, 1988. pp. 24-25. ISBN 0385152132.
^ Holman, Bob; Snyder, Margery (28 March 2020). "A Guide to William Blake's 'The Tyger'". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 28 April 2024.
^ ^a ^b Kazin, 41–43.
^ Hobsbaum, Philip (1964). "A rhetorical question answered: Blake's Tyger and its critics". Neophilologus. 48 (1): 151–155. doi:10.1007/BF01515534. ISSN 1572-8668. Retrieved 28 April 2024.
^ Pedley, Colin (Summer 1990). "'Blake's Tiger and the Discourse of Natural History'" (PDF). Blake - an Illustrated Quarterly. 24 (1): 238–246.
^ #3746: "Songs of Experience": Music Inspired by Poetry of William Blake | New Sounds - Hand-picked music, genre free, retrieved 7 December 2017
^ "In the Forests of the Night – Howard Frazin". Retrieved 15 October 2020.
^ "John Tavener". musicsalesclassical.com. Chester Music. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
^ "Roll on John". Bob Dylan. Retrieved 11 May 2021.
^ https://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=32

Sources

Bentley, G. E. (editor) William Blake: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1975.
Bentley, G. E. Jr. The Stranger From Paradise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-300-10030-2
Damon, S. Foster. A Blake Dictionary. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1988.
Davis, Michael. William Blake: A New Kind of Man. University of California Press, 1977.
Eaves, Morris. The Cambridge Companion to William Blake, 2003. ISBN 978-0-521-78677-5
Gilchrist, Alexander. The Life of William Blake. London: John Lane Company, 1907.
Kazin, Alfred. "Introduction". The Portable Blake. The Viking Portable Library.
Whitson, Roger and Jason Whittaker. William Blake and Digital Humanities:Collaboration, Participation, and Social Media. New York: Routledge, 2013. ISBN 978-0415-65618-4.