The Tyger by William Blake
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Question:
Reference to context
Tyger ! Tyger ! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Dec 2018, & June 2013
Answer
Reference
The above lines are taken from the poem The Tyger written and composed by William Blake.
Context
William Blake is considered to be one of the greatest visionaries of the
early Romantic era. Today Blake’s poetic genius has largely outstripped his visual artistic
renown.
"The Tyger" is a poem made of questions. Addressing "The Tyger," the speaker questions it as
to its creation – essentially: "Who made you Mr. Tyger?" "How were you made? Where? Why?
What was the person or thing like that made you?" The poem is often interpreted to deal with
issues of inspiration, poetry, mystical knowledge, God, and the sublime (big, mysterious,
powerful, and sometimes scary.)
Explanation
These lines are taken from the final stanza of the poem which echoes the first
stanza. Just like the first stanza, this stanza also begins with the repetition of the name
("Tyger, tyger"). The repetition creates a chant-like mood to the whole poem, which
contributes to the mysteriousness. The word burning bright may describe the appearance of
the Tyger (tigers have fiery orange fur), or it may on a deeper level describe a kind of energy or
power that this Tyger has. In the last line dare means that now instead of questioning
the ability of the creator, Blake questions his nerve.
Analysis
The symbol of the Tyger is one of the two central mysteries of the poem. It is unclear
what it exactly symbolizes, but scholars have hypothesized that the Tyger could be inspiration,
the divine, artistic creation, history, the sublime, or vision itself. The point is, the Tyger is
important, and Blake’s poem barely limits the possibilities.
The "forests of the night" are dark and mysterious, cloaking and hiding the fiery symbol of the
Tyger. Since the Tyger may have been created in either Hell (deeps) "or" Heaven (skies), it
remains ambiguous as to whether the Tyger is good or bad. Regardless, it would seem to us
that being in the forests of the night with a "fearful," "burning" Tyger on the loose, is scary,
whether abstract or not.
The body parts referenced in these lines – hands and eyes– are examples of synecdoche. Synecdoche is when a part of something is used to refer to the whole thing. For
example, when someone yells "All hands on deck!" he doesn’t actually mean that he wants a
bunch of severed hands on the deck; rather, he wants the people and their hands to help with
the ship. So, the phrase "immortal hand" references the whole being or person that the hand
belongs to, while at the same time focusing on the hands as the means of creation. The eye is
representative of the whole body and person, but also focuses (ha ha) our attention on the faculty of sight. Also, by including only parts of the creator in the actually poem, Blake contributes to the mystery of who or what he actually is. It’s like having only a few extreme
close-ups of a person.
The imagination, the poem ultimately suggests, is the location of a miraculous but dangerous kind of creative strength. That's why it takes bravery—the willingness to "dare," as the poem would put it—to create anything of any worth out of the "fire" of creativity.
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Sweet moans , dovelike sighs, Chase not slumber from thy eyes! - William Blake
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