威廉.布莱克(1757年11月28日 – 1827年8月12日)，是一位对英国文学有着重要影响的诗人、画家，其影响一直波及到当代的美国文学领域，关于 “The Tyger” 如果你看过美剧“The Mentalist ”（中国网络上翻译为“超感警探”）会对这首诗印象深刻，这首诗简单来说刻画了自然界中善恶的对立存在，深入理解的话，它体现了作者对这个世界的一些本质认识和理解。据说布莱克对老虎并不熟悉，之所以选择老虎开头是因为老虎在其认识中拥有残忍的品质。
"The Tyger" is the sister poem to "
The Lamb" (from "
Songs of Innocence"), a reflection of similar ideas from a different perspective (Blake's concept of "contraries"), with "The Lamb" bringing attention to innocence. "The Tyger" presents a duality between aesthetic beauty and primal ferocity, and Blake believes that to see one, the hand that created "The Lamb", one must also see the other, the hand that created "The Tyger”: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee? The Songs of Experience were written as a contrary to the "Songs of Innocence" – a central tenet in Blake's philosophy, and central theme in his work.
[1] The struggle of humanity is based on the concept of the contrary nature of things, Blake believed, and thus, to achieve truth one must see the contraries in innocence and experience. Experience is not the face of evil but rather another facet of that which created us. Kazin says of Blake that, "Never is he more heretical than ... where he glories in the hammer and fire out of which are struck ... the Tyger".
[1] Rather than believing in war between good and evil or heaven and hell Blake thought each man must first see and then resolve the contraries of existence and life; in "The Tyger" he presents a poem of "triumphant human awareness", and "a hymn to pure being", according to Kazin.
[1] [1] Kazin, 41-43 source:
The Tyger William Blake The Tyger
BY
WILLIAM BLAKETyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
