"TIGER, TIGER BURNING BRIGHT..."
WHAT DO TIGERS SYMBOLIZE?
Tigers are So beautiful. So powerful. So quick. So hungry!
Imagine a world with no tigers.
Within our lifetimes, zoos are apt to be the only places left
to see these magnificent animals. | A century ago there were
about 100,000 tigers in the wild. Now there are just 2,500 adults,
with the Bengal variety almost extinct.
See TigerSoft Blog - 11/20/2007 - Poaching Tigers for Profit Is Pushing The Species To Extinction
Apart from their striking beauty, why would their extinction
make us so sad? For one thing, their extinction would show
us yet again just how violent and destructive we humans are.
Once again, we would see it is much easier to destroy than
it is to save. A lesson should be all too apparent. The conservation
of the world's remaining wild Tigers requires immediate, serious,
purposeful collective planning and action. In this we see how
dangerous are the Myths of Profits and Gun-Toting Individualism.
We truly need Tigers. They remind us of our limitations.
Our human bodies are weak and slow, by comparison. Our
mental constructs are artificial and often arbitrary. They can
become debilitating. Tigers, by contrast, are strong and swift.
They do not hesitate. They do not ponder alternatives. They have
no rules. They are the perfect symbols of pure, untamed
FREE Nature. Very often, we badly need to be reminded of our
limits. We can try to control the universe. But there is much
more beyond our control that we usually want to admit to.
Tigers demonstrate that Nature can never be fully tamed.
How foolish we are to think that.
Where we would probably hesitate, Tigers instinctively
and immediately go after what they want. In this, Tigers
help prevent us from being hopelessly and excessively
paralyzed by reflection, from being ever-conflicted, always
self-absorbed and all too arrogant.
Below is William Blake's (1757-1927) most famous poem. He died the same year
that Beethoven did. Blake was a poor craftsman. He traveled little. Where Beethoven
celebrated the brotherhood of mankind, Blake sought to liberate the individual not
just from prisons but from money, churches, social taboos and popular opinions.
He opposed wars, especially "holy" ones. He detested factory-oppression and child labor
He fought against :"mind-forg'd manacles".and for artistic imagination. Blake was
tormented by the clash between the concept of a benevolent God who has made
man in his moral image AND a world that is naturally raw, violent, meat-eating and
selfish. Morality, he believed, was educated conformity. The concepts of "Sin" and
"Evil" were as alien to him as they would be to a tiger. "Restraint in obedience to a
moral code" made as little sense to him, as it would a tiger. In gratified desire there
was pure energy and natural beauty.
See Alfred Kazin - An Introduction to William Blake.
"TIGER, tiger, 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 and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
The Tiger is in the eye of the beholder. What did Blake
see when he thought of the tiger? Some say he saw the tiger
as the French Revolution, the industrial revolution or even Evil.
Blake has us walked into God's factory. Listen to the meter at the
beginning. Surely, the poem is an inquisition of God for forging
such a hurtful, killing nature? What do you think?
Here are some opinions: http://www.eliteskills.com/c/12337
A short lecture on "The Tyger" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgCVumXD2q8
 |
Blake was born in London. He never attended school. He was educated at home by his mother..[note] The Blakes were Dissenters, and are believed to have belonged to the Moravian Church. He wrote:
|
Here are some links to places where you can find more
pictures.
http://www.freetigerpictures.com/
http://www.bigcatrescue.org/StockPhoto/bigcatphotos.htm
http://www.northrup.org/photos/crap/animals/tiger-water-closeup.htm
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~tlouie/Tiger.htm
http://community.webshots.com/album/227159586zrIJoA
http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/dynoGallDetail.asp?photoID=663764&catID=527&style=&contestCatID=&rowNumber=1&camID=
http://www.indianwildlifeportal.com/tiger-pictures.html
http://www.animaltrial.com/animals/Tigerpictures/tigerposters.html
http://www.picsearch.com/pictures/siberian-tiger.html
Here are some of my favorites.
![tigerart11[1].gif (12008 bytes)](tigerart111.gif)
![tigcolorsmall[1].gif (5572 bytes)](tigcolorsmall1.gif)
