19th-century British Literature & Art
Gao Jin
Liu Yanchun (2013012734)
February 29th, 2016
Soul in Two “The Chimney Sweeper”: From Fake Unity to Isolated Selfhood William Blake is renowned for his original mythmaking. He constructs the prophetic vision of the primal “Universal Man” falling from the divine unity that fuses inclusively man, nature and god together into the “Division” and “Selfhood” of detached individuals (Norton, 78). After the fall the world undergoes three lower phases: Beulah of pastoral innocence and serenity, Generation of realistic human ordeal and contradiction, and the lowest, hell-like Ulro of “bleak rationality, tyranny, static negation, and isolated Selfhood” (Norton, 79). The transition of human soul from …show more content…
The empathy between men that is previously displayed by the speaker who internalizes and recounts in details the dream of his fellow while muting his own voice to only one stanzas, in this poem is replaced by the piercing selfhood embodied in the chimney sweeper’s loud, eager proclaim of “I, I, I”. So focused on expressing himself, the chimney sweeper can’t and doesn’t bother to achieve active interaction with the other speaker who asks him "Where are thy father & mother? say?". Such egocentricity separates the child in this allegorical poem from his listener and deprives him of the possible pity and comfort from other people that may more or less relieve his pariah state, which a metaphor for a larger picture where human soul is confined in the isolation and solitude of his own selfhood. In this version of “The Chimney Sweeper”, the selfhood that leads to isolation is not only in the child, but also in the God and church, the intuitions that feed on the child’s ordeal to build up their heaven. “The Human Abstract”, another poem in Song of Experience gives an annotation for the religious
Gao Jin
Liu Yanchun (2013012734)
February 29th, 2016
Soul in Two “The Chimney Sweeper”: From Fake Unity to Isolated Selfhood William Blake is renowned for his original mythmaking. He constructs the prophetic vision of the primal “Universal Man” falling from the divine unity that fuses inclusively man, nature and god together into the “Division” and “Selfhood” of detached individuals (Norton, 78). After the fall the world undergoes three lower phases: Beulah of pastoral innocence and serenity, Generation of realistic human ordeal and contradiction, and the lowest, hell-like Ulro of “bleak rationality, tyranny, static negation, and isolated Selfhood” (Norton, 79). The transition of human soul from …show more content…
The empathy between men that is previously displayed by the speaker who internalizes and recounts in details the dream of his fellow while muting his own voice to only one stanzas, in this poem is replaced by the piercing selfhood embodied in the chimney sweeper’s loud, eager proclaim of “I, I, I”. So focused on expressing himself, the chimney sweeper can’t and doesn’t bother to achieve active interaction with the other speaker who asks him "Where are thy father & mother? say?". Such egocentricity separates the child in this allegorical poem from his listener and deprives him of the possible pity and comfort from other people that may more or less relieve his pariah state, which a metaphor for a larger picture where human soul is confined in the isolation and solitude of his own selfhood. In this version of “The Chimney Sweeper”, the selfhood that leads to isolation is not only in the child, but also in the God and church, the intuitions that feed on the child’s ordeal to build up their heaven. “The Human Abstract”, another poem in Song of Experience gives an annotation for the religious