London
William Blake
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
"London" is among the best known writings by visionary English poet William Blake. The poem describes a walk through London, which is presented as a pained, oppressive, and impoverished city in which all the speaker can find is misery. It places particular emphasis on the sounds of London, with cries coming from men, women, and children throughout the poem. The poem is in part a response to the Industrial Revolution, but more than anything is a fierce critique of humankind's failure to build a society based on love, joy, freedom, and communion with God.
Summary
The speaker takes a walk through the designated streets of London. This walk brings the speaker near the River Thames, which seems to have its course dictated for it as it flows throughout the city. The speaker sees signs of resignation and sadness in the faces of every person the speaker passes by.
The speaker hears this pain too, in the cries men as well as those of fearful newborn babies. In fact, in every voice in the city, in every law or restriction London places on its population, the speaker can sense people's feelings of being oppressed by city life.
The speaker hears the cry of young chimney-sweeps, whose misery brings shame on the Church authorities. Thinking of unfortunate British soldiers dying in vain, the speaker imagines their blood running down the walls of a palace.
Most of all, the speaker hears the midnight cries of young prostitutes, who swear and curse at their situation. In turn, this miserable sound brings misery to their tearful new-born children. The speaker also imagines this sound plaguing what the speaker calls "the Marriage hearse"—a surreal imagined vehicle that carries love and death together.
Themes
The Oppression of Urban Life
In “London,” the speaker takes a walk through the titular city and finds only misery. The dirty and dangerous city is an intense expression of human life—not at its fullest, but at its most depraved and impoverished. Blake was notably writing at a time when the Industrial Revolution was at full pace, restructuring society in a way that he believed made people lose sight of what it means to be human. Blake uses "London" to argue that this urban environment is inherently oppressive and denies people the freedom to live happy, joyful lives.
The poem opens with the speaker’s experience of walking through the city. Through the speaker’s eyes and ears, the reader gets a strong sense of the dismal lives of the Londoners. The people are “marked” by “weakness” and “woe"; the streets and even the river Thames are “charter’d”—that is, their courses have been decided for them. (Rivers are often a symbol of freedom, but not in this poem.)
The speaker also hears pain everywhere—it’s “in every voice,” even that of newborn babies—and it's caused by “mind-forg’d manacles.” Manacles are a type of physical restraint, like handcuffs, but these particular manacles are “mind-forg’d”—that is, they come from thought rather than the physical world. The root cause of London’s misery, it seems, is the way that humanity thinks about itself, the way that society has been conceived and developed. The speaker suggests that society could be joyful, free, and full of love, but that people's fear, greed, and thirst for power have made the urban environment unbearably oppressive.
Though the poem doesn’t delve too deeply into the way it thinks society should be, it's very clear about the strong links between misery and its urban setting. At the time of Blake's writing London was (and still is) one of the busiest, most developed urban environments in the world. The poem argues that this way of life—with its focus on economic activity and individualism—is fundamentally flawed.
To emphasize the point that the city environment itself oppresses its inhabitants, the speaker gestures towards some of the desperate measures people take in order to survive. The chimney-sweepers, who are only children, put their health at great risk to earn a living; both the soldiers and the harlots (female prostitutes), in different ways, must sell their bodies in order to survive. In other words, everyone is trapped by their situation, forced to exchange the only things they have—their bodies—in order to, paradoxically, keep those bodies alive.
What's more, the poem offers no real hope that society may find a way to cast off its “mind-forg’d manacles.” Note that the poem emphasizes the next generation in closing on the “youthful Harlots” and the “new-born infants.” This image turns what should be a joyous celebration of new life into an initiation into poverty, pain, and hopelessness; it implies the cyclical nature of London's poverty, and suggests people don’t have the freedom to escape their urban woes.
The poem, then, views modern city life as hopelessly oppressive. With the Industrial Revolution at full pace, London was undergoing significant and speedy changes. The poem argues these changes aren't for the better, and its criticism of London may be just as relevant to today’s cities.
The Corruption of Childhood
"London" also touches on an important theme throughout Blake's work, one that is especially prominent in his Songs of Innocence and Experience: the corruption of childhood. Blake believed that people are born with everything they need for a joyful, loving, and happy life—but that the adult world corrupts this innocent state. In this poem, the speaker describes how children are essentially crushed by the adult world, thus building a vivid argument supporting Blake's broader belief.
The speaker of "London" presents urban children as being in distress from the moment they are born. For example, line 15 describes how newborn babies are "blasted" by the curses of their impoverished prostitute mothers. With this image, the speaker gestures towards an ongoing cycle of misery—miserable mothers lead to miserable children, who may themselves create more miserable children later on—that is integral to the urban environment. Similarly, in line 6, infants are characterized as consistently crying, and these cries are specifically related to the fear they feel. It is as though they can sense the misery around them, before they've even developed their ability to meaningfully perceive and make sense of the world.
Perhaps the most poignant reference to childhood corruption is in line 9, when the speaker discusses the chimney-sweepers. Chimney-sweeping was a brutal but very common profession in London in Blake's day, and it was work that children were frequently sold or forced into. (Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" poems discuss this theme in greater detail.) Like the prostitutes and the soldiers mentioned elsewhere in the poem, the impoverished children of London are forced to exchange their one possession—their bodies—for money, food, and/or lodging. In other words, they give up their childhood—when they should be playing and learning about the world—in order to merely survive. And doing so, of course, actually diminishes their chances of survival, because chimney sweeping places them in toxic and physically dangerous environments.
Through the images of childhood suffering that the speaker observes and recreates for readers, Blake seems to suggest that the oppression of children is one of the worst examples of how the "mind-forg'd manacles" of urban life and industrialization corrupt society.
런던
난 도시 계획으로 정비된 런던 거리를 두루 걷네,
가까이엔 구획화된 템스강이 흐르고 있고,
마주치는 모든 얼굴마다
나약함과 슬픔의 상흔이 보이네.
모든 사람의 슬픈 울음 속에,
모든 갓난아이들의 겁에 질린 울음 속에,
모든 목소리 속에, 모든 금지령 속에,
마음을 통제하는 쇠고랑 소리를 듣네.
굴뚝 청소하는 아이들의 울음소리가
그을음에 검어진 모든 교회를 얼마나 경악시켰나,
불운한 병사의 한숨은
왕궁 벽을 따라 피와 함께 흐르네.
그러나 무엇보다 한밤중 거리에서 나는 듣네,
어떻게 젊은 창녀들의 저주가
갓 태어난 아이들의 눈물을 마르게 하고,
역병으로 결혼 마차를 영구차가 되도록 하는지.
윌리엄 블레이크의 이 시는 1794년 시집 "경험의 노래" 에 발표된 시이다.
1789년 발표된 시집 "순수의 노래" 가 평화로운 목가적 행복과 조화로운 자연을 노래했다면, "경험의 노래" 는 국가, 교회, 사회 제도의 타락과 억압을 다루고 있다.
그런 점에서 이 시도 18세기 후반 런던의 열악한 사회 상황을 강하게 비판하고 있다.
산업혁명의 부작용으로 야기된 비참한 노동 환경, 빈곤, 아동 노동, 윤락 여성 문제 등 당시의 런던 상황에 대해 개탄하고 있다.
한편 소외되고 빈곤한 계층의 반발과 저항을 억누르기 위해서 국가와 지배계층이 사회 곳곳을 통제하고 자유를 억압하고 있음도 비판하고 있다.
1789년 프랑스 혁명에 대해 비교적 호의적이었던 윌리엄 블레이크는 영국 왕정과 제도권 교회에 대해서는 매우 비판적이었다.
첫째 연에서,
'도시 계획으로 정비된 거리' (chartered street),
'구획화된 템스강' (chartered Thames)에서,
'법으로 허가받은' (chartered)을 반복해서 쓰고 있는 것은 정부의 통제가 사회 곳곳에 미치면서 시민의 자유가 억압받고 있음을 시사하고 있다.
둘째 연에서,
'모든 울음' (every cry),
'모든 사람' (every Man),
'모든 갓난아이' (every Infant),
'모든 목소리' (every voice),
'모든 금지령' (every ban)에서처럼
'모든' (every)을 반복하고 있는 것도 정부의 통제가 사회 깊숙이 미치지 않는 곳이 없음을 강조하고 있다.
'마음을 통제하는 쇠고랑' (mind-forged manacles)은 이러한 사회적 통제가 신체적인 억압뿐만 아니라 정신의 자유까지 통제함을 말한다.
이는 블레이크가 영향을 받았던 프랑스 계몽주의의 루소가 말한 "인간은 자유롭게 태어났다, 하지만 어디서나 쇠사슬에 묶여있다." 와 같은 맥락이다.
셋째 연에서,
굴뚝 청소부 (chimney-sweepers)는 전형적 아동 착취 노동이다.
굴뚝이 좁기 때문에 몸집이 작은 어린아이를 주로 쓰며, 굴뚝 속을 오르내리는 위험하고 힘든 노동이다. 그러한 비인간적 아동 착취에 대해 무관심한 교회를 비난하고 있다.
'검은 교회' (blackning Church)는 굴뚝에서 나온 그을음 때문에 검을 수도 있고, 당시 대부분의 건물이 그러듯이 런던의 매연으로 검게 되었을 수도 있다.
한편 교회가 위압적이며 어린이를 보호하지 않는 비정함을 상징하고 있다.
'불운한 병사' (hapless Soldiers)는 프랑스 혁명을 염두에 둔 것이다. 마음은 혁명파 쪽에 있으나 마지못해 왕실을 지키며 피를 흘려야 하는 운이 나쁜 경우를 말한다.
넷째 연에서,
'그러나 무엇보다 한밤중 거리에서 나는 듣네,
어떻게 젊은 창녀들의 저주가
갓 태어난 아이들의 눈물을 마르게 하고,
역병으로 결혼 마차를 영구차가 되도록 하는지.'
라고 하였다.
'젊은 창녀' (youthful Harlots)의 저주는 산업혁명으로 생계 수단을 잃고 어릴 때부터 윤락 여성이 되는 사회적 상황을 비판하려는 의도이다.
갓난 아이의 눈물을 저주하는 것은 윤락 여성으로 아이를 키울 형편이 되지 않기 때문이다.
다른 해석으로는, 갓난 아이의 눈물이 마르는 현상은, 매독을 앓는 매춘부가 낳은 아이는 매독을 옮는 경우가 있는데, 이 증상의 하나가 아이의 눈물이 메말라지는 것이다.
'결혼 영구차' (marriage hearse)는 형용모순(oxymoron)으로 서로 모순되는 어구를 나열하고 있다.
역병으로 결혼 영구차를 고사시킨다(blight)는 것도 창녀의 성병이 옮아 결혼 후 죽게 된다는 의미이다.
다른 해석으로는 윤락 행위 또는 윤락으로 인한 불륜이 결혼 생활을 파탄에 빠뜨린다는 것이다.