William Blake was not just a poet or an artist. He was a visionary who challenged the core beliefs of his era. His perspective on love, in particular, was revolutionary. He saw it not as a polite, controlled emotion but as a powerful, divine force. Blake believed society’s rules often crushed this vital energy. Consequently, his work explores a journey of love through two key states: Innocence and Experience. Understanding these states reveals his radical vision for human connection and spiritual freedom.
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The Unspoiled Love of Innocence
In Blake’s world, Innocence represents a state of pure, uninhibited existence. This is not ignorance but a form of genuine, spontaneous joy. Love in the world of Innocence is natural and free. It flows without jealousy, shame, or possession. Children, animals, and nature often embody this state in his poems. For example, in Songs of Innocence, poems like “The Lamb” depict a gentle, divine love that connects all living things to their creator. This love is simple and unquestioning.
Furthermore, Blake presents this innocent love as deeply connected to the divine. He saw God not in a distant church but in the immediate, joyful expressions of life. Love was an act of worship. Therefore, the laughter of children or the beauty of a flower reflected a divine presence. Society, with its rigid rules and moral codes, had not yet corrupted this pure state. It was a world where emotions were honest and the human spirit was free to love openly and without fear.
Love Corrupted by Experience
The world of Experience is a stark contrast. Here, Blake shows how institutions like the Church and the state build walls around the human spirit. They create what he famously called “mind-forg’d manacles.” Love, in this world, becomes a source of pain and suffering. It is twisted by jealousy, secrecy, and possessiveness. The natural, free-flowing energy of Innocence is trapped and poisoned by restrictive social norms. As a result, connection becomes a transaction, and passion becomes a sin.
Blake‘s poem “The Sick Rose” powerfully illustrates this corruption. An “invisible worm” destroys a beautiful rose with its “dark secret love.” This worm symbolizes forces like shame, jealousy, and repressed desire. These forces, born from social conditioning, kill love from the inside. Similarly, in his poem “London,” Blake observes how laws and institutions crush human connection, leaving marks of weakness and woe on every face. Experience is the harsh reality of a world that has forgotten how to love freely.
. William Blake: Poetry, Poems, …
Forgiveness as Radical Love
For William Blake: The Complete Poems, the journey does not end in the despair of Experience. He envisioned a higher state of being, an organized innocence that integrates the wisdom of both worlds. A central part of this higher love is forgiveness. Blake famously wrote, “Love to faults is always blind, Always is to joy inclin’d.” This was a direct challenge to the judgmental morality of his time. He argued that true love does not seek perfection. Instead, it embraces flaws and offers unconditional acceptance.
This concept was profoundly anti-establishment. The Church preached about sin and punishment. However, William Blake: The Complete Poems – Poet… proposed a love that transcends such rigid dualities. He believed that condemning others for their faults was a form of spiritual death. True connection, therefore, requires empathy and the ability to forgive. This form of love is a revolutionary act. It liberates both the giver and the receiver from the chains of guilt and shame. Source
Freedom Through Divine Energy
Ultimately, Blake’s vision of love is inseparable from freedom. He celebrated the human body and its passions as sacred. In his view, our desires and energies were divine gifts, not sinful impulses to be suppressed. He famously declared in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Energy is Eternal Delight.” Suppressing this energy, as religious doctrines demanded, was the true sin. It led to the sickness and misery he depicted in the world of Experience. William Blake: Poetry, Paintin…
Therefore, true spiritual liberation required embracing the whole self, including physical passions. Blake’s love is a holistic force that unites the body, mind, and soul. It breaks down the artificial barriers between the sacred and the profane. By loving fully and freely, humanity could reclaim its divine nature. This vision remains incredibly powerful today. It calls on us to question restrictive norms and to embrace a love that is courageous, forgiving, and fundamentally liberating.