The Human Abstract Essays - Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience

The Human Abstract Annotated Bibliography: The Human Abstract The Human Abstract has not received much critical attention on its own. Of the critical interpretations that do exist, many approach the poem by examining its various manifestations in Blake's manuscripts, reading it against A Divine Image, a poem w hich was never finally published by Blake, or comparing it to its Innocence counterpart, The Divine Image. Most critics seem to agree that The Human Abstract represents a philosophical turning point in The Songs of Innocence and of Expe rience, and in Blake's work as a whole. In 1924, Joseph H. Wicksteed observes that this difficult poem, originally called 'The human Image, represents Blake's attempt to summarize his philosophy of revolt against the ob ject of worship he found in the mind of his age. He contends that Blake makes no distinction between God and Man: God is Man and Man is God, and either may be good or bad. Placing the poem in context with Blake's work as a whole, Wicksteed argues that, with this poem, Blake is moving toward s the position definitely reached in 'The Marriage,' that Reason, or the abstracting power of the mind, robs life of all its fullness and vigour. He then proceeds with a line-byline reading of the poem. Robert Gleckner briefly treats The Human Abstract in his book, The Piper and The Bard, suggesting that 'The Divine Image' of Innocence is perverted in experience to 'The Human Abstract.' He places the poem i n the didactic landscape of The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, contending that the rational 'holiness' in the poem leads us directly to the 'holiness' of 'Holy Thursday,' the 'heaven' of 'The Chimney Sweeper,' the 'Church' of 'The Littl e Vagabond,' the 'mystery' of 'A Little Boy Lost,' and the 'Christian forbearance' of 'A Poison Tree.' In a later essay, William Blake and the Human Abstract, 1961, Gleckner offers a more extensive reading of the poem, paying particular attention to t he formulation of its title and observing that of all the songs of experience the one which provides the greatest insight into Blake's concern with his titles, his struggle to define the two contrary states of the human soul, and his poetic technique (es pecially in the Songs of Experience), i s The Human Abstract. He also approaches the poem through an examination of the four drafts located in Blake's manuscript, pointing out that critics have neglected to examine the way in which the poem A Divine Image is complexly operative in 'The Human Abstract.' This connection is the focus of the Gleckner's essay, which he concludes with the contention that The Human Abstract represents Blake's final realization that the real disease is not a s ocial, economic, religious, [or] political force, but rather the cancerous tree of mystery...man's own thinking process. Later, both Geoffrey Keynes and David Erdman will point out that The Human Abstract replaced A Divine Image as the Experience response to The Divine Image. In Blake's Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument, 1963, Harold Bloom reads The Human Abstract in conjunction with its Innocence partner, The Divine Image, noting that the word Abstract should not be misconst rued as literally meaning separated, because the contrast between the two poems is not between the integral and the split human nature, but rather between the equal delusions of Innocence and Experience as to the relationship of the h uman to the natural. He links the poem to both Genesis and the Norse myths of Odin (whom Bloom calls the Norse Nobodaddy) and Balder, observing that both the raven and the Tree of Mystery were drawn from those mythologies. In 1964, E.D. Hirsch also compares The Human Abstract to The Divine Image, contending that the former is not only a satire of [the latter] but also a naturalization of it. He asserts that the satirical first stanza should be read as if one of the Swedenborgian 'Angels' were speaking. He notes a change in tone, however, in the sec ond stanza where Blake quickly drops the angelic mask and converts the two remaining divine attributes of Innocence to something overtly sinister. For Hirsch, the primary myth which Blake is responding to is that