4 The Miltonic Basis of the Poem (a) Paradise Lost is called by Bernard Blackstone1 "a poem which influenced Blake more than anything outside the Bible itself."2 And critics have noted three kinds of influence by Milton's epic on The Tyger. We may take these as our starting-point. But before we do so a few words will be in place on how the poem of one writer may be related to that of another. The relation between them, no matter how vital, is not always open and full-figured: it is often subtle and embryonic. Not only do basic ideas, images and locutions pass from the earlier writer to the later in a straightforward or an oblique manner: there occur a

INDEX Abdiel, 56, 73, 74, 76, 77, 86, 104, 105 Abrama, M . H . , 42 fn. 127 Adam, 56, 57, 126, 157 Adam and Eve, 54, 99, 107, 157 Ahania, 1 80 Albion, 153, 188, 195-96, 202, 224, 234, 246, 249, 250, 262 Alchemic and Hermetic thought, iii, viii Alchemical philosophy, 27 America, 163, 202, 203 Ancient Mariner, The, 126 "And did these feet in ancient time . . ." (interpretation), 245-53 "Angel Tiger", 42 Annotations to Swedenborg's Divine Love, 70 fn. 58 Anti-Trinitarianism, 101-02 Arianism, 101 , 102 Arius, 102 Art, Artist, 10, 140, 141 "aspire", 96, 98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 107, 111 , 129, 226-27, 162 Aurobindo, Sri, 4, 5 B

Postscript Six years after this Preface, Miss Raine's monumental work was published: Blake and Tradition, Two Volumes (Bollingen Series XXXV. 11, Princeton University Press, U.S.A., 1968). In two places in her notes at the end of the work she has done me the honour of referring to my essay. On p. 230 of Vol. I, in the course of her own thesis, she has the statement: "Blake's Tyger is another fiery beast, created in the furnaces of the demiurge by the theft of 'fire,' the solar spiritual principle.78" Her note 78 on p. 407 reads: "K. D. Sethna has written a fine exposition of this theme, still unpublished at the time of writing." Vol. II, p. 5, finds her saying: "If Lamb and Tyg

1 The Tyger: The Problem of its Symbolism Ever since 1794 Blake's Tyger has confronted critics with its mystery no less than its intensity. They have yet to find definitive answers to the questions that beat upon us in quick succession out of the famous poem like a roll of wild drums reaching us at once from near and far: Tyger! 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,