The Divine Image

File:Songs of Innocence copy G object 12 The Divine Image.jpg

Copy G of The Divine Image held at the Yale Center for British Art and printed in 1789

"The Divine Image" is a poem by the English poet William Blake from his book Songs of Innocence (plate 18, 1789), not to be confused with "A Divine Image" from Songs of Experience (1794). It is a companion to "The Human Abstract" from the Songs of Experience,Template:Sfn one of the three plates by Blake that were most successful (along with "The Blossom" and "Infant Joy").Template:Sfn

Analysis

Aside from the basic observation that the poem reflects the biblical idea of men created by God in his own image (cf. Genesis 1:26–27),Template:Sfn multiple interpretations are possibleTemplate:Sfn (E. P. Thompson appears to oppose the complexity: "It is a pity to argue about so transparent a poem"Template:Sfn).

The poem expresses straightforward didacticism, similar to the one in The Lamb, like a child repeating in a "singsong voice" the information they have just learned at the Sunday school without questioning who are the All mentioned in the second line. This is in a stark contrast with "The Human Abstract" that challenges the broad signifiers. A "less cynical" interpretation by Stephen C. Behrendt is that the speaker is using the abstractions to connect God, an entirely unknown entity to a familiar one, the Man. Yet another approach is to consider the poem to be a "bridge" into the "Songs of Experience" that deals with the death in the real world.Template:Sfn

Stanley Gardner points to the idea of reconciliation through Christian compassion in "The Divine Image" stemming from its "cryptic expression" in "The Blossom".Template:Sfn

As in many other Blake's poems, the voices here belong not to the individuals, but to the Blake's idea of "states" , the representatives of good and evil mixed within each man.Template:Sfn

Graphics

The plate, like "The Blossom" and "Infant Joy", includes flowering flames. Their restrained appearance signify the consolation and faith turning into a triumph.Template:Sfn The visual appearance of "The Divine Image" and "The Blossom" is especially close, relating these texts in a unique fashion.Template:Sfn

At the bottom of the plate, Christ, dressed in green, offers a helping hand to the naked and suffering mankind. At the top, kneeling children "pray in [...] distress", and an angel helps them by leading a woman, also in green gown, towards them.Template:Sfn

Theology

The poem is generally considered Swedenborgian, "the signature of the New Jerusalem Church" with its doctrine of divine humanity ("Christ is God").Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Unlike both Unitarianism and Trinitarianism, the doctrine declared that God infused His own life into Christ via the "divine influx", so the Trinity exists, but within one person.Template:Sfn Thompson, however, argues that the poem is, actually, anti-Swedenborgian, as the very first verse apparently refute the Swedenborg's statement that "[w]ith Respect to God it is not possible that he can love and be reciprocally loved".Template:Sfn

Musical settings

The poem has been set to music several times by different composers:

• In Five Songs from William Blake (1951) by Virgil Thomson
• In Ten Blake Songs (1957) by Ralph Vaughan Williams
• In Jazz Songs of Innocence (2012) by Bob Chilcott

External links

• A comparison of extant original copies of "The Divine Image" at the William Blake Archive