26 February 2003
Power Relations and the Dissolution of Perceptual Boundaries in Blake’s The Fly
by Jason P. Preu
William Blake’s The Fly is an interesting poem because, unlike other Songs that present speakers constricted by one extreme or the other, this poem’s speaker moves from an innocent, careless state to one positively influenced by Innocence and humbled by Experience. When the poem ends the speaker seems to arrive at a perceptual state that equally encompasses both binaries. This new state provides a foundation from which the speaker interacts with life in a non-dualistic, non-separatist manner.
Using an almost child-like verse, Blake establishes a casual tone in the poem's first two lines. "Little fly, / Thy summer's play," (1-2) is a short, seven syllable couplet that may remind readers of the rhyme schemes found in the Songs of Innocence. Blake hints at the speaker’s initial, innocent mindset by writing, "My thoughtless hand / Has brushed away" (3-4). The longest word in the poem, “thoughtless,” occurs in these lines. This choice of words indicates the speaker’s general lack of introspection or perhaps a more specific lack of understanding causal relationships. The speaker in these early stages is one who swats a fly without comprehending the effects of his actions and the power he wields.
The second stanza follows the speaker as he begins to speculate more on the relationship between himself and the fly. The speaker engages in a reflective thought process that seems typical of a human growing aware of an underlying similarity between physical beings. "Am not I / A fly like thee? / Or art not thou / A man like me?" (5-8) shows this self-reflection in action. In addition, by having the speaker question learned notions of hierarchical boundaries separating him from the fly, Blake foreshadows the poem’s later, metaphysical claims. Still, it’s too early for the speaker to have developed any clear opinion on where he stands in relation to the fly and so the reader is left with his questions as the stanza ends.
The third stanza is where the speaker tells us his reasons for daring to draw comparisons between the fly and himself. We find that the speaker is not quite yet ready to equate himself with the fly, nor is he willing to give up any power he holds over the creature. Rather, his comparison stems from the realization that as he interrupted the fly's life, so some "blind" hand might arbitrarily "brush" his own life away. "For I dance / And drink and sing," (9-10) suggests a somewhat frivolous, yet nevertheless innocent and enjoyable life that “some blind hand" interrupts. The language might imply to some that God is the blind hand’s owner, but I’m inclined to see the blind hand as belonging to Experience. Note the emphasis on the word "blind" in this stanza in connection with "thoughtless" in the first. This connection, I think, well encapsulates the poem's trajectory. An action taken without thought hints at the possibility to avoid such future thoughtless action. An action taken by a blind hand, however, is an action rooted in an inability to change. Experience, as a blind hand, is a powerful, equal-opportunity-tempering device that consistently wields power over Innocence. One person may become embittered by Experience and another may choose to ignore it altogether. It is the individual’s perception of that Experience that affects their relation to the world and how they use their willful power in that world. So, neither response above is really optimal.
Following the visit from sobering Experience is a contradictory stanza that prepares the reader for the poem's seemingly light, yet charged, ending. In this fourth stanza, the speaker first equates thought with things a typical reader would consider positive: life, strength, and breath. Then, in the following couplet, the speaker claims that “the want / Of thought is death;” (15-16). I find it hard to determine if this stanza is the speaker’s own opinion or if he is reiterating some conventional attitude toward prosperity. Perhaps this prevailing attitude holds that to be prosperous or, more specifically, that to desire prosperity might be somehow sinful. How the want of thought is death, I’m uncertain. Maybe classifying thought and the want of thought into terms that connote positive and negative responses is the point. At any rate, this stanza seems the most dense in terms of packed ideas but it also seems to me the most difficult to relate back to the poem as a whole.
The poem continues for one more stanza and the speaker (provided the conditional put forth in the fifth stanza holds) no longer sees himself separate from the fly. They are the same stuff, merely expressed in different ways, and at the mercy of something beyond their control. Further, the speaker declares himself a “happy fly.” This qualifier, coupled with the final lines, “If I live / Or if I die” (19-20) suggests that the speaker is willing to live life joyfully despite the ever present movement of Experience’s blind, swatting hand. There is also a sense at the poem’s end that the speaker has somehow learned to better control whatever power he has in the world.
Briefly, I’d like to mention Blake’s etching of ‘The Fly.’ In the foreground we have a babe and mother (or nurse) interlocked in what may be a protective embrace, restraining grip, or benign dance - depending on the perspective one chooses to view it from. We should note some details, however, before coming to any conclusions about this pair. First, it appears to be the woman who grips the child and not vice versa. Also, the faces of the woman and child turn toward each other and bear no signs of menace or despair. I would go so far as to call their expressions loving. In this pairing I see an older, experienced figure guiding a younger one. The placement of the older figure’s hands seems to hint at the power the Experience often wields over Innocence.
The fly swatter in the background, on the other hand, takes no notice of the pair behind her. The swatter flails about trying to destroy the life of one thing and takes no notice of the life nearby that needs to be nurtured. In relation to my explication of the verse, I’d use this interpretation of the graphic to reinforce the notion that the poem’s speaker comes to better manage the relations between Experience and Innocence, himself and the Other.
Works Cited
Wu, Duncan, ed. Romanticism An Anthology With CD-ROM. Second Edition. Malden:
Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 2000. All quotations from Blake’s work taken from this
edition.
The William Blake Archive. University of Virginia. 21 Feb. 2003 <http://www.blakearchive.org/cgi-bin/nph-dweb/blake/Illuminated-Book/SONGSIE/songsie.c/@Generic__BookTextView/10403;cv=java#X>.