Masonic Poets
Masonic poets include writers whose lodge membership is documented and writers who addressed poems to fellow Freemasons. A poem's imagery can also be read in a Masonic context, but that interpretation does not by itself establish its author's membership.
Poets who were Freemasons
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe belonged to the Weimar lodge Anna Amalia zu den drei Rosen from 1780. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar records this association in its account of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library's Masonic collection.[1]
Robert Burns became a Freemason at St David's Lodge in Tarbolton on 4 July 1781.[2] His Farewell to the Brethren of St. James's Lodge, Tarbolton directly addresses his lodge companions. Its recollection of their meetings and friendship supplies a clear Masonic connection within the poem itself.[3]
Voltaire was initiated into the Paris lodge Les Neuf Sœurs on 7 April 1778, shortly before his death on 30 May. His Candide had appeared in 1759, long before that initiation; the chronology matters when considering claims that his writing resulted from lodge membership.[4]
William Blake and the question of affiliation
Blake's relationship with Masonic circles is a subject of historical research. Marsha Keith Schuchard's 1992 study examines Freemasons involved in the Swedenborgian societies around him and argues for possible connections with their ideas. It records William and Catherine Blake's signatures in the minutes of a Swedenborgian conference in April 1789; that is not a record of initiation into a Masonic lodge. The study does not substantiate a specific claim that Blake was initiated in 1787.[5]
The Tyger
William Blake published “The Tyger” in Songs of Experience in 1794. Its questions about the maker of the tiger and the lamb concern creation and its apparent contradictions. Those questions allow religious and philosophical readings without establishing a specifically Masonic meaning.[6]
The text below follows the transcription of Blake's illuminated poem published by the Poetry Foundation.[7]
- 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,
- Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
- And when thy heart began to beat.
- What dread hand? & 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?
- Tyger Tyger burning bright,
- In the forests of the night:
- What immortal hand or eye,
- Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
References
- ↑ Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Freimaurerliteratur, collection description.
- ↑ Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon, A Robert Burns chronology, entry for 1781.
- ↑ Robert Burns, The Farewell to the Brethren of St. James's Lodge, Tarbolton, transcription from a 1927 facsimile of the 1786 Kilmarnock edition, Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon.
- ↑ Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon, Voltaire, biography and initiation details, citing Denslow.
- ↑ Marsha Keith Schuchard, The Secret Masonic History of Blake's Swedenborg Society, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 2, Fall 1992, pp. 40–51, especially pp. 45–47.
- ↑ Poetry Foundation, William Blake 101, section “The Tyger”, 2 December 2016.
- ↑ William Blake, The Tyger, Poetry Foundation; text credited to the facsimile of Songs of Experience in William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books, William Blake Trust and Tate Gallery, 2009. Blake's original poem is in the public domain.
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