English literature and linguistics with ASMA SHEIKH

A Divine Image critical appreciation

Synopsis of A Divine Image
Cruelty, jealousy, terror and secrecy are abstract ideas but they have no reality apart from human beings. It is from the heart of human beings that cruelty comes. It is human beings who are jealous, who cause terror, who create secrecy. Humanity is, therefore, not soft and tender. It is strong like iron. It is as powerful and as full of potentially destructive, as well as constructive, energy as a forge or a furnace. The human heart is not soft and tender but a consuming mouth, like that of a beast.

Commentary

This is an additional poem, added to the collection around 1804, after its first publication. It is useful to read this poem alongside The Divine Image, The Human Abstract and The Tyger, because they all deal with the same range of ideas.

Blake believed that a complete vision of life, of God and of people could only be obtained if contraries are held together. The world encompasses the tenderness of the lamb and the ferocity of the tiger. There is fierce energy at the heart of the world as well as beauty and gentleness. A true divine image must reflect this truth. If we say that human beings are the image of God, then these ideas must be related to God, too.

This poem, however, reflects the standpoint of experience. It looks at human beings when they have been corrupted by the ‘mind-forg'd manacles' discussed in London or are dominated by the growth in the human brain illustrated by The Human Abstract. This produces a distorted and incomplete vision of human beings, in which all their power and energy is interpreted and expressed in ways which are life-denying and destructive.

Language and tone
The extensive use of repetition produces an emphatic, fierce tone, heralded by the harsh opening consonants of ‘Cruelty'. The repeated H and F alliteration tightly links each line of the poem to its neighbours. This is increased by the assonance linking ‘forged', ‘forge' and ‘gorge' and the similarity between ‘form' and ‘forge'. Gorge implies something bestial and devouring, intensifying the sense of destructiveness created by the fiery forge and furnace. It can encourage the reader to overlook the fact that forges and furnaces are, in fact, aspects of a creative process.

Structure and versification

The poem has a regular rhythm with four stresses to each line. The regular iambic metre is disrupted by the inversion of the first foot in l.1 and 3, throwing emphasis onto the harsh realities of ‘Cruelty' and ‘Terror'.

The poem is patterned to begin and end with the human heart, as this is the source of everything. Hence, stanza one moves from heart to face, to form, to dress. Stanza two moves in the opposite direction, from dress, to form, to face, to heart. The sibilance of l.4 suits the implied whispering of ‘Secrecy'.

Imagery and symbolism
Human heart – Blake's readers would recognise this poem as echoing the New Testament teaching of Jesus, that evil should not just be blamed on external forces:

21 For from within, out of your hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile you. TNIV Mark 7:21-23

Divine –
Blake's perspective on God. The idea that a human was also ‘Divine' tallied with Blake's rejection of a transcendent God. Instead, ‘God' was to be found within humanity, ‘dressed' in human form.

Forge – The image of the ‘fiery forge' is probably an allusion to the forge of Hephaestus, the Greek blacksmith god of fire who built Pandemonium, the dwelling-place of all the demons. His symbols are a hammer and anvil. This links human beings with a powerful force within creation which is perceived as demonic.

The image was probably also inspired by the great industrial change witnessed in the second half of the eighteenth century, when mills and foundries were beginning to be established and the processes of mechanization were a source of national pride.

Investigating imagery and symbolism

• There is a link between the symbolism used in A Divine Image and that of The Tyger

Themes

How the human mind sees the nature of the world and its creator:

According to Blake, ‘contraries' are facts about the world and about the nature of the creative force behind it. For example, ferocious power and energy exist alongside what is fragile and tender. Humans falsify their understanding of the creator and of the human beings made ‘in his image' when one of these dimensions is excluded from the picture. This creates unnecessary questions and produces unhealthy splits between what are understood as forces of good and forces of evil.

According to the Bible, Heaven and Hell impinge on human experience. Thus, the powerful energies within the world and the energies and instincts within human beings are necessary and beautiful. They become destructive when they are either denied or seen as the sole factor in life and experience. Blake's sub-theme is that vision based wholly on experience is as incomplete as the inadequacy of ignorant innocence.

The idea that the divine qualities
Are in Man as well as in God
Is the message "The Divine Image" conveys

God as a form of goodness
through the imagination of man
"All deities reside in the human breast"
- William Blake