What immortal hand or eye/ Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

I wrote this post ages ago but I wasn't sure whether it was appropriate for me to post it on a blog. I came across it in my files a few days ago and thought, why not. Anyways, I'm not sure what this post is going to turn out to be but I am not trying to offend anyone through it.

I read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman three years ago and was overwhelmed by it. I was about 15 at that time and I don't think I understood all of Pullman's implications in the book and the symbolism very well. To tell you the embarrassing truth, I saw it like a normal, fantasy series like the Lord of the Rings (which is still one of my favorites) or anything else in particular. But then last year I was first introduced to The Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake and then later on Paradise Lost by John Milton because we were studying both the books for school. Suddenly, it all started making sense to me. I started understanding the full extent of Pullman's implications and was blown away by series itself. It quite strange actually people actually label this series under Children's Literature because I really don't think its meant for children and wouldn't recommend anyone to give it to their children.

Sometimes, as TPF said in one of her previous posts, literature has the habit just makes you feel strange and give you a certain desire, but at the same time an inability to continue reading. When you read a certain line or a specific paragraph in a good book, it affects you in such a way that you start feeling queasy and almost lightheaded. I think, I had that feeling all through The Amber Spyglass and it just made such an huge impact on my mind because it is such an intense book. It is basically a recreation of the famous 'Fall of Man' with different symbolic characters and a twist in the tale. I also get the similar feeling when I read certain poems by Blake or certain parts of Paradise Lost. My very favourite lines in Paradise Lost are the lines from where Philip Pullman got the title for His Dark Materials:

Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage,

I do understand that most people will find it hard to understand what is going on but I beg you to re-read them several times until you start getting the hang of what they mean. The key to understanding Milton is re-reading and trying to understand it in small bits, rather than the paragraph as a whole. After all, its only in English. Oh, by the way, the 'the wary fiend' that Milton talks about is Satan (if you hadn't already understood that), who is standing at the edge of hell looking into the land of Chaos that he has to pass before reaching Earth in order to tempt Man. Its rather interesting that Milton has aptly named the mansion in hell that Satan and his followers build for their meetings 'Pandemonium'. Its oddly fitting isn't it? What I love about Milton that he's explored a very different side of the famous story that almost everyone, Christian or non-Christian knows - 'the Fall of Man'. Don't get me wrong; he hasn't changed or misrepresented any facts. The story is an almost similar replica to the one told to us in the Old Testament, but with different implications. How can I explain it without being confusing? Paradise Lost is narrated from a different point of view, with Satan being the anti-hero of this epic poem.

'With Ambitious Aim against The Throne and monarchy of God
Rais'd Impious War in Heav'n, and Battel Proud'

The above quote is another one of my favourites. In Paradise Lost, Satan is the main character and God, one the other hand is seen as daunting and intimidating ruler, like in the Old Testament really. I mean, most of Book III in Paradise Lost actually describes a Lord Of The Rings kind of battle scene between Satan's army and God's army in heaven with weapons and the works. Of course, as we all know that God's side wins.

I love William Blake just as much actually. I can't believe that he actually wrote poems about his fascination with Hell and got away with nobody killing him:


'As I was walking among the Fires of Hell,
Delighted with the Enjoyments of Genius'

Blake was a poet much ahead of his times. He clearly believed himself to be the living embodiment of the spirit of Milton. Some of his poems in The Songs of Experience can be linked to the 'Fall of Man' and its future consequences as they are presented in the Old Testament and in Paradise Lost. The poems in The Songs of Experience may not seem linguistically complex for us to comprehend. This is because Blake's simplicity in language contradicts the complexity of his ideas. Most of his poems can be interpreted at different levels from a one-dimensional stories to multi-dimensional messages and we eventually realize that the seemingly simple content of his poetry is much more sophisticated than what it initially appears. One of my favourite Blake poems is A Poison Tree because it can just be understood at so many different levels:

A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunnéd it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veiled the pole.
In the morning, glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

William Blake also happens to the only man according to me who could have summed up in an unbiased way the entire 'The Fall of Man' in just 4 lines:


The sexes sprung from shame and pride,
Blowed in the morn, in evening died;
But mercy changed death into sleep;
The sexes rose to work and weep.

I do adore his poetry so much. Of course, I cannot end this post without mention his most famous poem, The Tiger, from where the title of the post comes from. It is a wonderful piece of work with implications that one would find almost inconceivable especially at the time when it was written.

I obviously not being a scholar or an expert cannot be arrogant enough to claim to understand even half of Milton or Blake's ideas, but whatever little I have understood from their work, I can say that I love them very much.

PS: This is long, I'm sorry. I do get rather verbose when I'm feeling particularly fangirlish.