RE: The Sick Rose - Wiliam Blake's Songs of Experience

This short poem is causing me grief. does anyone know what this poem is really about? On my first reading, I thought TSR was about a woman losing her virginity but the critics disagree. One critic thinks this is a poem of dishonest sexuality, male aggression and female hypocrisy. Other critics think TSR is about masturbation. Does anyone know?!

Thanks.

Lucy.

The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Lucy, given Blake's religious background I doubt whether any lewd interpretations would be valid. He might be referring however to the devil as a worm which makes us crave for lust.

Les

This poem has been discussed before, see the link below. Many interpretations are possible. It is impossible to say which one is the "true" one.

[tinyurl.com]

>It is impossible to say which one is the "true" one.


This is true, but some interpretations are more plausible than others.

As an instructor, I would give credit to any interpretation that could be proved by reading the poem. And as an instructor of Blake, I would point out the dozens of references in his work to religious themes, biblical references etc. which make certain theories about his poetry, including some I've read here, seem utterly ridiculous. [www.emule.com]


Les



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2005 04:34PM by lg.

Nonsense. Clearly, the masturbation theme is the one the Blakester intended.

The invisible worm is one held (tightly) in the fist. Probably a fairly tiny worm, if it can be hidden in such a small container, right. The flies that find the bed of crimson joy in the howling storm of the night are fireflies, illustrating the skyrockets that shoot off in ones's head at the moment of orgasm. Not only will this dark secret love destroy one's life, but will also cause blindness and create rapid hair growth in the palm of the hand. It is therefore always wise to switch hands often while stroking, both to avoid the dead giveaway of hair growth, and to provide the sensation that one is getting a touch of strange.

Oh, Rose is a lady, I hear you say? Never mind then.

Hugh, I'm rolling on the floor, here. In the height of Victorian England, William Blake, the man who wrote about an Angel singing, the new Jerusalem and the little lamb, decides to write a zinger about masturbation. Now that's funny!

Hugh, what do you think of this one, also by Blake:

The Question Answered
by William Blake

What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of gratified Desire


Les

More seriously, Blake was almost always about yin and yang, good and evil, black and white, beauty and ugliness. Well, perhaps good and evil is too strong. He merely saw the consistent tug between two opposite factions as life itself.

And, he never used those subjects themselves to make his point. He always used symbols to do the work for him. The Tyger as both good and evil, for example. The sick rose and the worm are similar features.

The Rose is something (anything) of beauty. The Worm is that which would destroy the beauty - its opposite. One can attach any concrete objects to the two concepts and make an interpretation that fits. Sure, it could be the innocent virgin and the raging erection. Could be the innocent chimney sweeper and the tyrant who earns ill-gotten goods from such oppression. The soldier and the state that sends him to do its bidding, and to the soldier's death, of course.

And, certainly the same with gratified desire. Both sexes see the other as objects for their own pleasure. The constant tug of opposites. To Blake, that is what life here on earth was all about. Was he correct? Tough to argue the point, I have to confess.

Hugh's 'more serious' post has said it absolutely right.

But I loved the less serious one better!

Touché. Hard to beat. Though the invisibility of the worm may be better explained as a symptom of the ensuing blindness.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2005 08:22AM by IanB.

The worm could certainly symbolize death, and the red vibrant bed, signify life. The theme of opposites, as Hugh so accurately stated, holds true.


Les

This may be relevant, maybe not. See Book IX of Milton's Paradise Lost:

[www.everypoet.com]

Here is an extract from a speech by the Evil-one


Thoughts, whither have ye led me! with what sweet
Compulsion thus transported, to forget
What hither brought us! hate, not love;nor hope
Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste
Of pleasure; but all pleasure to destroy,
Save what is in destroying; other joy
To me is lost.

uh, could anyone paraphrase that? I seem to be getting lost in the phrasing of the thing. Couldn't he speak plain english? ;-)

Blake- plain english- surely you jest!

pam

My paraphrase would be 'I'm contemplating evil, but it's my mind's fault, not mine!'

Good point - it just seemed strange to me that Milton rhymed those two words in succeeding lines of Paradise Lost, where other rhymes are not to be found. Makes me think that may be where Blake got his inspiration. Mere coincidence? Could be. I am not sure if Desi means Milton or Blake - both are obscure, right.

Satan is coming unravelled. His previous dream to rule on earth rather than serve in heaven is less attractive now than it once was. Only destruction itself now continues to bring joy.

I meant Milton. Blake's obscure in a way I understand grammatically at least. Your explanation makes it a lot clearer. Thanks.

Hmmm .. re-reading my last one, it occurs to me that ravelled and unravelled mean the same thing. There is a name for such words, but it escapes me for the moment. Some combination of homonym & antonym, mebbe? Homoant? Antohome?

From COD
unravel // v. (unravelled, unravelling; US unraveled, unraveling)
1 tr. cause to be no longer ravelled, tangled, or intertwined.
2 tr. probe and solve (a mystery etc.).
3 tr. undo (a fabric, esp. a knitted one).
4 intr. become disentangled or unknitted.


But to be fair, also from COD
ravel // v. & n.
v. (ravelled, ravelling; US raveled, raveling)
1 tr. & intr. entangle or become entangled or knotted.
2 tr. confuse or complicate (a question or problem).
3 intr. fray out.
4 tr. (often foll. by out) disentangle, unravel, distinguish the separate threads or subdivisions of.
n.
1 a tangle or knot.
2 a complication.
3 a frayed or loose end.
[probably from Dutch ravelen ‘tangle, fray out, unweave’]


So they can't quite make up their minds. I regard them as opposites, but I do knit and so use the words with their literal meaning.

Looks like those puppies are variously labeled contranyms, antagonyms, autoantonyms and even Janus words. I see I am not the first person to notice 'ravel' in such company:

[en.wikipedia.org]

[www.articleshead.com]

[www-personal.umich.edu]

[www.fun-with-words.com]





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/09/2021 10:23AM by Hugh Clary.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
(Walt Whitman)

Those are fine litters of puppies, Hugh; and there may be some more at

[www.emule.com]

but none is the special rare breed I thought you were searching for, which is words that are written as apparent opposites, but which are in fact synonyms (more or less). For instance:

ravelled/unravelled (your example)
valuable/invaluable
flammable/inflammable

Are there any others? What are they called? I don’t have the answer. Maybe the naming rights are still available. Pseudoantonyms?




Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/09/2021 04:13PM by IanB.

Thanks, Ian. That thread may very well be what prompted me to recall the concept. Here is some more discussion:

[linguistlist.org]

Janus word is interesting, although not to be confused with a Hugh Janus word, which is an equine of a different Hugh.

And, speaking of horses, not to mention the fun of further hijacking a thread astray, consider this poem by Donald Hall whenver you think your life might be too hard:


Names of Horses (1978) by Donald Hall (b. 1928)

All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the grass in the meadow and hayfield,
the mowing machine clacketing beside, while the sun walked high in the morning;
and after noon's heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,
gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load
of a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,
and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear,
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you,
where by next summer a dent in the ground make your monument.

For a hundred and fifty years, in the pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground--old toilers, soil makers:

O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.


I'm guessing the meter chosen was to have the reader plod through long lines much the same as Lady Ghost and her companions did?