Read Online Morning, Noon, and Night: Finding the Meaning of Life's Stages Through Books by Arnold Weinstein - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Arnold Weinstein
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such a procedure to Tom, namely that his white hair could no longer be soiled. Comforted, Tom dreams and has a vision. It is a vision of liberation and purity: all the sweeps (there are thousands of them now) are rescued from the black coffins where they are locked up (hardly a metaphor, this, if you think of them dying in the chimneys), and the rescuer is an Angel with a “bright key.” Free at last, the children run and laugh and play on the green plain, and wash in the river and shine in the sun. It is a chimney sweep’s vision not only of paradise, but also of resurrection itself: to move from life in death to joy in Heaven. And their pleasures grow: naked (no longer a hazard), free of their bags, they rise to the clouds and “sport in the wind.” Further, they now have a kind Father to look after them and keep them in this state of happiness, requiring only that they be “a good boy.”
How does one go about being a good boy? The final stanza answers that (unposed) question by returning us to the waking world of reality—dark, cold, replete with bags and brushes and work: exactly what one had been freed from by the good graces of the Angel—with a strategy for happiness: do your duty, and you need fear no harm. We realize, of course, that duty consists of going back (forever) into chimneys, but now armed with a vision of beatitude. And that is where the poem leaves it. But where does it leave us?
In my view, Blake has reprised the oldest and most potent political critique of the Church known to civilization: its delicious promise of salvation, its solemn pledge of an afterlife, and its clear exhortation to accept current conditions as they are, to do your duty, as the ticket to that radiant afterlife. For we cannot fail to see that the vision of happiness, gaiety, and freedom is a dream, a vision, and that it accords smoothly with a sociopolitical order that requires children in chimneys. The pathos of the poem stems from our sentiment that the great joys of this paradisal vision—running, laughing, playing, washing in the river, shining in the sun—should be available to children in reality, not merely in dream. And Blake’s terms prefigure our own more cynical discourse, for how can we not see that the miraculous washing at the core of this beatific vision (miraculous for chimney sweeps, shorn and sleeping in soot) is a version of brainwashing? Brainwashing means altering someone’s moral perspective to suit the needs of power. Brainwashing means that one’s moral perspective is actually alterable, and power knows how to do it. Brainwashing is Blake’s tragic yet profound view of growing up.
Why is none of this critique I’ve elaborated stated in the poem? Because it is a poem of innocence. And here we approach what is most sublime in this short poem: the radical distinction between what we see and what the child sees. And more still: the world-altering power of innocence. We see in this poem a portrait of victimization, carried all the way into the soul. But that is not what the child speaker sees. He sees a radiant dream of purity and salvation and bliss, and that dream is enough to carry him through the darkness of his life as chimney sweep. He is warmed by his vision of radiance, by the promise of joy to come. And that is why no easy final verdict is possible here. One does not know whether to pity or to envy this child. What, after all, is the ideal mind-set of a chimney sweep? To want to take to the barricades and tear down the system? Or to do one’s duty, with the ardent conviction that it will lead to final bliss? It is seductively easy, I think, to come down hard, as I have to believe Blake himself did, because an ideologically savvy twenty-first-century reader is likely to see exploitation in every word of this poem. But I am no less stunned by the wisdom of innocence, for make no mistake about it: it pays its way, it warms the child, it generates the energies needed to live a life of
How does one go about being a good boy? The final stanza answers that (unposed) question by returning us to the waking world of reality—dark, cold, replete with bags and brushes and work: exactly what one had been freed from by the good graces of the Angel—with a strategy for happiness: do your duty, and you need fear no harm. We realize, of course, that duty consists of going back (forever) into chimneys, but now armed with a vision of beatitude. And that is where the poem leaves it. But where does it leave us?
In my view, Blake has reprised the oldest and most potent political critique of the Church known to civilization: its delicious promise of salvation, its solemn pledge of an afterlife, and its clear exhortation to accept current conditions as they are, to do your duty, as the ticket to that radiant afterlife. For we cannot fail to see that the vision of happiness, gaiety, and freedom is a dream, a vision, and that it accords smoothly with a sociopolitical order that requires children in chimneys. The pathos of the poem stems from our sentiment that the great joys of this paradisal vision—running, laughing, playing, washing in the river, shining in the sun—should be available to children in reality, not merely in dream. And Blake’s terms prefigure our own more cynical discourse, for how can we not see that the miraculous washing at the core of this beatific vision (miraculous for chimney sweeps, shorn and sleeping in soot) is a version of brainwashing? Brainwashing means altering someone’s moral perspective to suit the needs of power. Brainwashing means that one’s moral perspective is actually alterable, and power knows how to do it. Brainwashing is Blake’s tragic yet profound view of growing up.
Why is none of this critique I’ve elaborated stated in the poem? Because it is a poem of innocence. And here we approach what is most sublime in this short poem: the radical distinction between what we see and what the child sees. And more still: the world-altering power of innocence. We see in this poem a portrait of victimization, carried all the way into the soul. But that is not what the child speaker sees. He sees a radiant dream of purity and salvation and bliss, and that dream is enough to carry him through the darkness of his life as chimney sweep. He is warmed by his vision of radiance, by the promise of joy to come. And that is why no easy final verdict is possible here. One does not know whether to pity or to envy this child. What, after all, is the ideal mind-set of a chimney sweep? To want to take to the barricades and tear down the system? Or to do one’s duty, with the ardent conviction that it will lead to final bliss? It is seductively easy, I think, to come down hard, as I have to believe Blake himself did, because an ideologically savvy twenty-first-century reader is likely to see exploitation in every word of this poem. But I am no less stunned by the wisdom of innocence, for make no mistake about it: it pays its way, it warms the child, it generates the energies needed to live a life of
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