William Blake’s Contraries

William Blake’s Contraries Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul An exhaustive companion to the paired poems of Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789–1794). Each pair reveals complementary visions of the same human reality—innocence and experience—neither complete without the other. “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.” — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Why Contraries? Blake published Songs of Innocence in 1789 and combined them with Songs of Experience in 1794 under the full title Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul . He did not present innocence as pure good and experience as pure evil. Instead he insisted that both states are necessary; truth emerges only when they are held together. Many poems were deliberately written as counterparts. Some share identical titles; others are linked by opposing titles…