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Class 11 Alternative English Chapter 10 The Divine Image
Class 11 Alternative English Unit 10The Divine Image Question Answer | Guide for Class 11th Alternative English Chapter 10 English Medium Also Same NCERT Solutions for Class 11 Alternative English In this post we will explain to you what to try If you are a Student of English Medium then it will be very helpfull for you. NCERT/SCERT,AHSEC Class 11 Alternative English Chapter 10.
Unit 10 The Divine Image
I. Answer these questions in one or two words.
1. When do people pray to Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love?
Ans: The people pray to Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love in distress.
2. What do people return to the ‘virtues of delight’?
Ans: The people return their thankfulness to the ‘virtues of delight’.
3. Who is God for us?
Ans: For us God is our father.
4. Which of the virtues has a human face?
Ans: Pity has a human face.
5. Who is seen as God’s child and care?
Ans: Man is seen as God’s child and care.
II. Answer these questions in a few words.
1. What do people do in distress? –
Ans: Generally, people pray to God in distress and in turn show gratitude towards God.
2. What does the term ‘virtues of delight’ refer to?
Ans: The term ‘virtues of delight’ refer to Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love
3. Name the different human forms represented by ‘virtues of delight’?
Ans: The different human forms represented by ‘virtues of delight’ are Mercy as a human heart, Pity as a human face, Love as the human form divine and Peace as the human dress.
4. What kind of man prays to the ‘human form divine’?
Ans: All men of all clime and region pray to the ‘human form divine’.
5. Where does God dwell?
Ans: The poet, William Blake says that God dwells in the people in whom dwell the virtues of mercy, pity and love. The poet equates these qualities with God as well as with man. He believes that these qualities are the characteristics of God and the man who possesses them is divine.
III. Answer these questions briefly.
1. What human form must all man love?
Ans: All man must love the divine image of God which is irrespective of their culture or religion.
How do the qualities of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love embody both God and Man?
Ans: The qualities of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love embody both God and Man because God himself lives in us as He is the very essence and source of all the four qualities.
3. What is the significance of the expression ‘In heathen, Turk, or Jew’?
Ans: The lyrical voice mentions that “all must love the human form/In heathen, Turk or Jew”. This is because all forms of humanity are linked to divinity and, consequently, they are all important. Finally, the lyrical voice finished the poem by saying that three of these virtues (Mercy, Love, and Pity) coexist with God together: “Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell/There God is dwelling too”.
IV. Answer these questions in detail.
1. Bring out the central idea of the poem ‘The Divine Image’ by William Blake.
Ans: The poem’s speaker says that humanity was made in God’s own image, but that doesn’t mean that the human shape physically resembles God. Rather, it means that people embody God’s powerful goodness: his “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love” are expressed on earth through people. And this connection between humanity and God, the speaker insists, also connects human beings to each other, every person expresses the goodness of God, and every living person is thus holy. All people, whatever their background, are thus united by their shared divinity.
To this speaker, “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love” aren’t just attributes of God-they are God, “our father dear” himself. And, at the exact same time, they’re “Man, [God’s] child”-that is, all of these qualities are embodied by human beings. Mercy, for instance, “has a human heart” it’s through real, live human hearts that the divine quality of mercy appears on earth. In other words, humanity expresses God.
Since God’s virtues appear on earth in human form, it follows that everyone carries God with them, just by virtue of being a person. God’s “divine image” lives on earth, the speaker argues, through “the human form divine.” When people “pray in their distress” to God, they’re thus also praying to the goodness and kindness of humanity (because, again that goodness and kindness is God).
If God lives in the “human form,” the speaker proclaims, then people don’t just need to remember that they can seek and express God’s goodness in themselves. They need to remember that God’s goodness lives in every person. That truth cuts across false distinctions between religions and cultures: addressing a predominantly Christian audience, this speaker reminds readers that God lives in “heathen, Turk, or Jew,” not just in Christians. All people must love every single “human form” for this very reason. Through “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,” then, God lives in every “human form” and unites all people.
2. How does the poem ‘The Divine Image’ by William Blake illustrate the Biblical adage “God created man in his own image”?
Ans: In the Book of Genesis, the creation of man and woman takes place after six “days” of creation in which God first brings into being the heavens and the earth, light, day and night, sky and sea, dry land, trees and other vegetation, the sun and the moon, sea creatures and birds, and finally livestock and wild animals. Then later on the sixth day, God decides to “make man in our image, in our likeness.” The manifestation of God’s image in “man” is both masculine and feminine:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Gen. 1:27
God proceeds to bless the couple to, “Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” God gives them, “every tree that has fruit with seed in it” to eat. At the conclusion of this sixth day of creation God declares His work to be “very good” and proceeds to rest on the seventh day.
Additional Question & Answer
1. What is meant by The Divine Image?
Ans: The poem’s speaker says that humanity was made in God’s own image, but that doesn’t mean that the human shape physically resembles God. Rather, it means that people embody God’s powerful goodness: his “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love” are expressed on earth through people.
2. What is The Divine Image of God?
Ans: The Divine Image describes four divine virtues (Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love) that men can achieve. The title of the poem suggests the importance of the image of God and, later through the stanzas, how it can be reflected in mankind.
3. What kind of poem is divine image?
Ans: The poem is comprised of five ballad stanzas quatrains in which the lines have four and three beats, alternately, and rhyme ABCB. This stanza form, in English poetry, conveys a sense of candor and naturalness, and it is common in songs, hymns, and nursery rhymes.
4. Which literary devices are used in The Divine Image?
Ans: Many literary devices are used throughout this poem, but the ones that stick out more than others are simile, metaphor and imagery. These devices provide a thorough and very descriptive explanation to the poem.
5. Discuss the summary of the poem.
Ans: In difficult times, everyone prays for mercy, pity, peace, and love. And when people are feeling grateful, it’s these same wonderful qualities they thank.
Because God, our caring father, is none other than the forces of mercy, pity, peace, and love themselves. And Humanity, God’s beloved child. is also an embodiment of these qualities.
That’s because mercy appears in the human heart, and pity has a human face. Love takes the shape of the human body, and peace wears human clothing.
Therefore, every single suffering person in the whole world who prays is actually praying to the holy human body, which is the embodiment of love, mercy, pity, and peace.
So everybody must love and care for every person, whatever religion they practice. Since mercy, love, and pity (which are God) take human form, that means that God lives inside every person.
6. Discuss the themes of the poem.
Ans: The poem’s speaker says that humanity was made in God’s own image, but that doesn’t mean that the human shape physically resembles God. Rather, it means that people embody God’s powerful goodness: his “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love” are expressed on earth through people. And this connection between humanity and God, the speaker insists, also connects human beings to each other: every person expresses the goodness of God, and every living person is thus holy. All people, whatever their background, are thus united by their shared divinity.
To this speaker, “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love” aren’t just attributes of God-they are God, “our father dear” himself. And, at the exact same time, they’re “Man, [God’s] child”-that is, all of these qualities are embodied by human beings. Mercy, for instance, “has a human heart”: it’s through real, live human hearts that the divine quality of mercy appears on earth. In other words, humanity expresses God.
Since God’s virtues appear on earth in human form, it follows that everyone carries God with them, just by virtue of being a person. God’s “divine image” lives on earth, the speaker argues, through “the human form divine.” When people “pray in their distress” to God, they’re thus also praying to the goodness and kindness of humanity (because, again that goodness and kindness is God).
If God lives in the “human form,” the speaker proclaims, then people don’t just need to remember that they can seek and express God’s goodness in themselves. They need to remember that God’s goodness lives in every person. That truth cuts across false distinctions between religions and cultures: addressing a predominantly Christian audience, this speaker reminds readers that God lives in “heathen, Turk, or Jew,” not just in Christians. All people must love every single “human form” for this very reason. Through “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,” then, God lives in every “human form” and unites all people.
7. What is the form of the poem?
Ans: “The Divine Image” is one of William Blake’s poem’s in Songs of Innocence, a collection he eventually merged with a companion volume, Songs of Experience, to form (you guessed it) Songs of Innocence and Experience. The poems in this collection approach grand mysteries of human life with deceptive simplicity, using straightforward forms to explore complex ideas.
This poem, for instance, uses only five short quatrains (four-line stanzas), a simple ABCB rhyme scheme, and down-to-earth common meter. The effect is rather like a nursery rhyme-except, this is a nursery rhyme that proclaims the nature of God himself! Many of the Songs of Innocence play similar tricks, presenting grand (and sometimes unsettling) ideas in a voice of childlike simplicity.
Part of Blake’s point in using such a simple form is to suggest that truths like the ones this poem expresses are all part of a natural human wisdom-an instinctive religiosity that people lose as they grow up, and must work to regain. Many of the poems in Songs of Innocence also have a counterpart in Songs of Experience-a companion poem that approaches the same ideas from a sometimes grim or world-weary adult perspective. This poem’s counterpart is called “A Divine Image,” and it uses the same basic form as this poem to make the point that humanity embodies not just “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,” but all kinds of evils, too.
8. Write about the speaker of the poem.
Ans: “The Divine Image” doesn’t give readers much direct information about its speaker, but nevertheless makes it clear that this speaker is a person of deep (and unorthodox) faith.
To this speaker, everyone in the world is equally part of the “Divine Image.” All humans express godly virtues merely by being human. That belief cuts across boundaries of culture and religion: a connection to God doesn’t come through any one belief system, but through plain old humanity.
In proclaiming this fervent belief, the speaker of this poem sounds a lot like William Blake himself. Blake believed in (and indeed, invented) a famously wild, anti-denominational, and prophetic version of Christianity, in which every person is a version of Christ, embodying God.
But the reader should remember that this poem isn’t Blake’s final word on the matter of human divinity: in a corresponding poem in Blake’s Songs of Experience, “A Divine Image,” humanity also embodies a multitude of evils! This poem’s speaker thus expresses just one facet of Blake’s prismatic imagination.
9. Write about the setting of the poem.
Ans: There’s no distinct setting in “The Divine Image”: this is a philosophical statement of belief, not a story grounded in a place. In a sense, then, this poem is set anywhere that the “divine image” appears. In other words, the “action” of this poem takes place all over the world: wherever there’s a person to embody godly virtues, the speaker suggests, this poem is relevant.
However, there’s certainly a hint here that this speaker has a particular place and time in mind. The exhortation to extend love to “heathen, Turk, or Jew” suggests that the speaker’s audience doesn’t fit into any of those categories and that they might, in fact, be the predominantly Christian people of 18th-and 19th-century London, the time and place where Blake wrote this poem.
10. What is the literary context of the poem?
Ans: William Blake (1757-1827) is often considered one of the earliest English Romantic poets-but he’s unlike any other. In fact, Blake is a unique figure in literature, full stop. His wild, prophetic poems (which he illustrated, hand-engraved, printed, and distributed himself) express a whole cosmology of his own.
During his lifetime, he was seen as an eccentric: even the noted Romantic visionary Samuel Taylor Coleridge once remarked that “I am in the very mire of common-place common-sense compared with Mr. Blake.” But since his death, Blake has become one of the best-known, best-loved, and most influential of poets. His works have left deep marks on writers from Olga Tokarczuk to Philip Pullman (to name only two recent examples).
“The Divine Image” first appeared in Songs of Innocence and Experience, perhaps Blake’s most famous work. The two halves of this book treat related ideas from different angles. The Songs of Innocence read the world from a visionary, childlike perspective of unity, joy, and delight (tempered with intense indignation about 19th-century cruelty to children and people of color). The Songs of Experience consider what happens when people forget their sacred connection to God, each other, and their own souls and the ways in which organized religion, in Blake’s view, downright demands such amnesia.
Many poems in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience, and “The Divine Image” is one of them. In its partner poem, “A Divine Image,” the speaker points out how humanity expresses, not just “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,” but “Cruelty,” “Jealousy,” “Terror,” and “Secrecy.”
Blake conceived most of his poems not just as text, but as illuminated manuscripts in which illustrations deepen (and sometimes complicate or contradict) the meanings of the words. He produced his books using an innovative technique he called the “infernal method.” Where most engravers would carve into the copper plates they printed with, Blake painted his poems and pictures directly onto his plates with a resilient ink, then submerged them in a bath of acid so that the material around the images was burnt away. This process fit right in with his philosophy: he believed his role as an artist was to burn away the dross of falsehood to reveal “the infinite that was hid.”
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