William Blake References Insects and the Fly in Songs of Experience
Poet involved
What happened
William Blake included 'The Fly' in Songs of Experience (1794), in which he meditates on the parallel between a man's brushing away of a fly and God's brushing away of human lives. The poem draws on the long tradition of insect-as-mortality-symbol while transforming it through Blake's characteristically visionary and radical perspective. Blake's Songs of Experience emerged from a period of revolution and social upheaval in which the vulnerable and marginalised — human and insect alike — appeared equally subject to arbitrary power.
Literary impact
Blake's 'The Fly' stands in a direct lineage with Donne's flea and Burns's louse as a major poem that uses an insect to articulate a philosophical or political vision. For Blake, the fly's fate and the human being's are morally and metaphysically equivalent — a radically egalitarian claim. This tradition of finding in the fate of insects a commentary on human power, vulnerability, and mortality runs from Burns and Blake through Hardy, Lawrence, and beyond, making the insect one of the most sustained metaphorical resources in English poetry.
Source: Wikipedia
