Overview . . .

Introduction

Trees formed an essential component of both Blake's life and his works. During his childhood, he lived on the edge of town, and spent "a great deal of his time sauntering out into the countryside, enjoying the green fields and pleasant villages and groves. He strode the 'sweet hill and vale and sylvan wilds' of rural Dulwich . . . The beauty of those scenes in his youth was a lifelong reminescence. Blake stored his mind with the lovely pastoral images that were to appear over and over again in his poetry and prose" (Singer 15). Certainly, such rural imagery was to play a large role in his life, for it led to his first vision. "By this time Blake had discovered that it was possible to disregard the immediate world of practicality in favor of a compellingly attractive playground in the limitless fields of imagination. At the age of eight or nine, as he subsequently related, he experienced his first vision. Sauntering along on Peckham Rye, the boy looked up and saw a tree filled with angels, their bright translucent wings bespangling every branch like stars. He casually related the incident when he returned home, as he was always to speak of his visions in later years, with the most matter-of-fact tones" (Singer 15).

Blake had this early pastoral imagery to draw upon throughout his work, and one of the resulting images is that of the tree. Repeated constantly throughout both his illustrations and his written works, the tree always functions as a symbol that enlarges the meaning of the surrounding text. Whether Blake uses the barrenness of the tree to illustrate a point, as in the frustrated young energy of "A Little Girl Lost" (Erdman 93), or draws upon various mythologies to create his own oddly familiar yet entirely new mythology, as in The Book of Ahania, the tree always fulfills a need within Blake. As is noted in the section on the tree as a symbol, the mythological tree extends throughout the three worlds, its roots, trunk and leafy (or barren) branches touching the underworld, the world of man, and the sky or heavens. In much the same way, the tree reaches throughout Blake, drawing upon a complex combination of myths and symbols to form what is often the only recognizable element in a brilliant but confusing amalgamation of genius and tradition.

A Brief Summary/Exposition of the HyperContents