Tierra del Fuego
Trigger
Tiger
Trifle
Gatillo
Disparador
Proverbs 21:28
“A false witness shall perish: but the man that heareth speaketh constantly.”
"What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"~~~William Blake. THE TIGER
Psalms 107:1
“O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.”
"he had come to know every triffling feature that bordered the great river"~~~Mark Twain
"En el principio de los tiempos, tan dócil a la vaga especulación y a
las inapelables cosmogonías, no habrá habido cosas poéticas o prosaicas.
Todo sería un poco mágico. Thor no era dios del trueno; era el trueno y
el dios." ~~~Jorge Luis Borges. EL ORO DE LOS TIGRES. Prólogo
Chess: "Trigger" "Gatillo" "Tierra del Fuego" "Trifle"
Chess: "California" "Cáliz" "Chalice"
"En un plato de trigo,
tres tristes tigres,
trigo comieron"
THE TIGER
By William Blake
Published in 1794 in Songs of Experience
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
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Chess: "Trigger" "Gatillo"
Theme
.......“The Tiger,” by William Blake (1757-1827), presents a question that embodies the theme: Who created the tiger? Was it the kind and loving God who made the lamb? Or was it Satan? Blake presents his question in Lines 3 and 4:
What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Blake realizes, of course, that God made all the creatures on earth. However, to express his bewilderment that the God who created the gentle lamb also created the terrifying tiger, he includes Satan as a possible creator while raising his rhetorical questions, notably the one he asks in Lines 5 and 6:
In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thy eyes?
Deeps appears to refer to hell and skies to heaven. In either case, there would be fire--the fire of hell or the fire of the stars.
.......Of course, there can be no gainsaying that the tiger symbolizes evil, or the incarnation of evil, and that the lamb (Line 20) represents goodness, or Christ. Blake's inquiry is a variation on an old philosophical and theological question: Why does evil exist in a universe created and ruled by a benevolent God? Blake provides no answer. His mission is to reflect reality in arresting images. A poet’s first purpose, after all, is to present the world and its denizens in language that stimulates the aesthetic sense; he is not to exhort or moralize. Nevertheless, the poem does stir the reader to deep thought. Here is the tiger, fierce and brutal in its quest for sustenance; there is the lamb, meek and gentle in its quest for survival. Is it possible that the same God who made the lamb also made the tiger? Or was the tiger the devil's work?
Meter
The poem is in trochaic tetrameter with catalexis at the end of each line. Here is an explanation of these technical terms:
Tetrameter Line: a poetry line usually with eight syllables but sometimes seven. Trochaic Foot: A pair of syllables--a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Catalexis: The absence of a syllable in the final foot in a line. In Blake’s poem, an unstressed syllable is absent in the last foot of each line. Thus, every line has seven syllables, not the conventional eight.
The following illustration using the first two lines of the poem demonstrates tetrameter with four trochaic feet, the last one catalectic:
.....1...........2...........3...............4 TIger, | TIger, | BURN ing | BRIGHT .....1...........2...........3...............4 IN the | FOR ests | OF the | NIGHT
Notice that the fourth foot in each line eliminates the conventional unstressed syllable (catalexis). However, this irregularity in the trochaic pattern does not harm the rhythm of the poem. In fact, it may actually enhance it, allowing each line to end with an accented syllable that seems to mimic the beat of the maker’s hammer on the anvil.