The
Romantics believed that they could find the
spirit of God through nature. They believed this
because they thought (at
least many of them did) that since God created the natural world, this
world
was infused with traces of his divinity. They often depicted nature as a place of
solace
to the soul and thought of it as a space of purity, where one could
escape the corruptions of
the city. They also moved away from rationalism and
found themselves attracted to the
mysterious.
Because
Blake, a Romantic, believed that nature was an expression
of the divine, he
was compelled to question why God created such a frightening and predatory
beast as a tiger. A tiger is a beautiful creature, but it doesn't align with Christian
concepts
of God as a "lamb" in the form of Jesus or of nature as a gentle
place filled with
soothing flowers, butterflies, and babbling
brooks.
The tiger represents to
Blake the mystery of the
sublime. In the sublime, the Romantics found the awe and terror of God
made
manifest. Usually, Romantics found the thrill of the sublime in beautiful but
frightening
landscapes, such as mountaintops or the edges of cliffs, but
here, Blake finds it in the tiger.
In his poem, Blake ponders the sublime
mystery of why God created such a fearsome
creature.
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