A few thoughts on Life and Love

[jackofallgeeks]

So, I was at Mass this morning, and during his homily the priest made a reference to a poem by William Blake, "The Little Black Boy." In particular, he noted that in the poem the black boy's mother says, "And we are put on earth a little space/That we may learn to bear the beams of love," and he went on to explain that the meaning of life, as he believes and as Blake puts it, is to experience love.

I think that through his homily he had the right idea, but when he stated his conclusion he missed the mark; I think he misinterpreted "bear the beams of love." I'm no English major, I've never seen the poem before, and I certainly never spoke to Blake himself, but I don't think the sense is meant to be "experience the rays of love" but rather, "to uphold the structure of love." It says a couple things about me, I guess. First, that I think life is meant to be active, not passive; we aren't meant to just experience things, but to be a part of them, to do things. If we're all just sitting back experiencing love, who's the one providing it? But it also speaks to the fact that I think love is hard, that it takes effort to love and, in fact, that it takes effort to be loved.

Analyze me through that as you wish, but I think it holds.

Comments

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the poem either, but I think I'm much more inclined to support your interpretation -- both on semantic and philosophical grounds. You might not care much for his socialistic worldview, but you might appreciate some of the similar ideas advanced in Erich Fromm's Art of Loving. I personally couldn't get past his Freudian anti-BDSM and anti-gay attitudes -- which I admit were reasonable for his time, the 1950's -- but he's got a lovely thesis about modern people tend to treat love like a commodity that you accumulate, but it's really more like a skill that you must devote yourself to practice in order for it to be very meaningful...

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, actually it struck me as I was listening to the priest talk. He did a bit more build-up beforehand, and a line or two before the boy's mother points at the sun and says, "That is God, giving away his heat and light." So, from a strictly literal reading "bear the beams" means to experience the rays. I've never thought much of any poem that was only ever strictly literal, though, and I'd give Blake more credit than that. When he quoted the line I thought, "OK, he's going with the 'uphold the structure of love' angle," because that's the only interpretation of the line I thought reasonable. I was surprised when he took the literal reading.

I might have to check out this Art of Love thing, just to see what he says. Loving is, I think, pretty obviously a skill to be honed. I think it's a skill our society is generally rather poor at, most probably because love is seen as another "thing," as our society so loves things. (Overloaded the word in question, damn.)