Islamic perspective on the characteristics of human being presented in William Blake’s The Divine Image and The Human Abstract

ENGLISH:

It is complex in defining the characteristics of human being since each expert has various arguments. Hence, this research attempts to discover the characteristics of human being through William Blake’s Poems as an alternative definition. Among Blake’s poems, The Divine Image and The Human Abstract are the most representatives for discovering human being’s characteristics. On the other case, Islam and European literature have always been seperated due to racial, political, and cultural difference (Robinson, 2007:5). Thus, this study strives to establish the correlation between Islamic value and European literature. Therefore, the research produces two questions; (1) what are the characteristics of human being in William Blake’s poems; The Divine Image and The Human Abstract? and (2) What are the characteristics of human being in William Blake’s poems; The Divine Image and The Human Abstract?.

The study conducts new criticism in discovering the human being’s characateristics in the poems by two steps of analysis; paraphrashing and explication. After conducting the analysis, it is found that there are four positive characteristics in The Divine Image and four negative characteristics in The Human Abstract. The positive characteristics consist of mercy, pity, peace, and love while the negative ones are exploitation, cruelty, conflict, and hypocritical humility.

Furthermore, the result of the poems analysis is perceived by Islamic perspective through a remarkable Islamic expert, Murtadha Muthahhari. Muthahhari explains fourteen positive and eight negative points of human in accordance with Holy Qur’an. This research discovers that human positive characteristics of mercy, pity, peace, and love (all at once) lie on four points of the positive aspects of human: third, seventh, eight, and ninth point. However, in the negative aspects of human, the negative characteristics of human (exploitation, cruelty, conflict, and hypocritical humility) are displayed in four points; the first point portrays about all four negative characteristics, the second point draws exploitation, the verse in the third point displays cruelty, and the seventh point shows a negative characteristic of conflict. As a result, the ideas of human being’s characteristics in The Divine Image and The Human Abstract relate with the ideas of Islam through Murtadha Muthahhari’s thought.