A Brief Defence of William Blake's "London"
Readers might have noticed my occasional study of the Romantics. In this piece and the next, I shall discuss two Romantic poems which have received the possibly ignoble fates of inclusion on the GCSE English syllabus, at least when I encountered them some years ago, namely William Blake’s “London” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” For reasons which shall become clear, one could also consider these conservative interpretations or defences, since there should exist more intelligent discussion of these genuinely worthwhile poems beyond the stunted extent sufficient for state education.
The key to this subject is in Romantic philosophy. Contemporaneously, a number of English Romantic poets were political radicals influenced by the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine. This was a decidedly emancipatory worldview with ultimately deleterious effects, as manifested by the French Revolution. However, from identical roots Romantic philosophy possesses a fiercely alternative direction to Rousseau through certain works of Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre and Thomas Carlyle. Since there were precursors of Romanticism and individuals influenced by its ideas on both sides of the Enlightenment ‘debate’, their common topics of discussion allow for competing interpretations of the literary fruits of Romanticism along these lines.
As for Blake’s “London,” its commentary on the state of the city clearly anticipates Carlyle’s Condition-of-England question in poetic guise. Carlyle’s invention of the phrase in Chartism in 1839 was effectively a condensed formulation of his criticisms of industrialisation and modernity which broke into the Zeitgeist, thus it mirrored the similar concerns of prior and later writers. Blake’s poem, published in 1794, depicts the London of Christopher Wren having degenerated into a bleak shadow of itself. The overwhelming feeling observed is not quite the “bitter discontent” Carlyle saw in the masses by his time, which was perhaps an overestimation of Chartism’s sway over the popular imagination, but instead a thorough weariness with the world. Poverty and vice are rampant in this vision of London, with a sense that those with the power to restrain the ill-effects of this burgeoning modernity are indifferent to the condition of the majority. The Church is mentioned specifically in this regard, as well as the monarchy to an arguably lesser extent.
Contrary to some interpretations, the emotions listed by Blake do not strongly lend themselves to a supposed imminent outbreak of revolution. There is little experience of anger detailed, just ubiquitous solemn resignation. In this case, a cessation of institutional indifference through a Christian paternalism, or equally a bout of social concern from elsewhere, could ameliorate the condition of London in the poem. Alternatively, for the Romantic, such a hopeless existence in the city leaves one with no option but to seek the refuge of nature. “London” depicts the opposite of Burke’s concept of the sublime, which is apt since the poem as one of Blake’s Songs of Experience was written in contrast to the generally pastoral harmony of his Songs of Innocence. Indeed, “The Divine Image” from the Songs of Innocence supports the idea that London would be improved by more Christian virtue and less indifference.
If readers have not encountered “London” before, I recommend seeking it out online and drawing one’s own conclusions about its message and prescience. Its sixteen lines makes it no epic, but it is not exactly meaningless either.