Day: April 1, 2025

I have a genuine love of poetry; be it Wordsworth, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Poe’s laments, T.S. Eliot’s journeys in verse, or evocative pieces from the likes of Masefield (Sea Fever) or  William Blake’s The Tyger.

Both of the latter are perhaps populist pieces; there are few, if any, lovers of poetry who cannot quote at least their opening lines. However, both contain a wealth of imagery and a depth of reflection on life – something often missed when reading either, such is the strength of the overlying imagery within them.

Of the two, Blake’s the Tyger is perhaps the more structurally and visually impressive, mixing as it does  trochaic tetrameter and  iambic tetrameter, alliteration and focused imagery, whilst also containing a deeper questioning which reaches beyond its own form, notably in reference to its “sister” (and potentially less well-known) piece The Lamb.

The Tyger is also the subject of a new poetic experience by the master of visual poetry in Second Life, Sheldon Bergman (SheldonBR).

I’ve covered Sheldon’s work in this pages, both in its own right, and with regards to his collaborations with Angelika Corrall, both as artists at and curators of, the former DaphneArts Gallery in Second Life. As such, I was delighted to receive a personal invitation from Sheldon to visit The Tyger, and took the first opportunity I could to immerse myself within it.

Now, when I say poetic experience with regards to Sheldon’s work, I mean just that; The Tyger is powered by a Second Life Experience, and it is essential you accept it on arrival at the installation if you are to proceed further, and then ensure your viewer is set as instructed in the pop-up (with the caveat that you only perhaps need to set Advanced Light Model (Preferences → Graphics) if you are running a non-PBR capable viewer and don’t run ALM as standard). Once you are set, click the Continue option on the HUD pop-up to deliver you to the installation proper.

A quick point of none here is that your screen will go into a “letterbox” display format, courtesy of the HUD – and it is essential you should leave it in place. A second note here is that I’m not going to go into a deeply analytical piece on Blake’s works, by they The Tyger,  The Lamb, or the volumes from which they are drawn (Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience), nor am I going to dwell overlong on Blake’s use of The Tyger as an exploration and questioning of 18th/19th century Christian religious paradigms. While these all fold into Sheldon’s The Tyger, they have all been written about extensively elsewhere.

Rather, what I will do here is offer thoughts on what appears to be a much broader canvas on which Sheldon paints, using The Tyger and its religious reflections as his foundation; a canvas which – to me at least – appears to offer thoughts not so much on our relationship with God, but our place within, and relationship as a whole with, the cosmos around us.

The installation initially begins within a twilight setting, at one end of a path formed by the waters of a stream rushing outwards from high waterfalls. The watery path is lit at intervals by pairs of candles, one to each bank. As well as lighting the way, they perhaps suggest the opening line of the poem and the flashes of colour one might see of a tiger passing through the shadows of the jungle. However, of more practical tone-setting (to my way of thinking, at least), is the initial quote offered by the HUD on arrival:

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

– John Muir, environmentalist and philosopher

This offers an intrinsic link between Sheldon’s use of the poem and its ability to question Christian tenets and paradigms with his broader theme as intuited above. One which grows as we follow the watery path as it travels through the gorge its has cut (symbolic, perhaps of the path we cut through life?) before the water turns to the left and enters a broad pool, and the visitor is left facing the open maw of a tunnel.

This opening, into which the flicking eyes of the candles lead us, is prefaced with a quote oft attributed to  Joseph Campbell (although so far as I’m aware is not something he wrote):

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek

It’s a statement that potentially takes us in several directions: caves can be thought of of dangerous and the home of predators; thus we remain rooted somewhat in the poem: whilst not a cave dweller itself, the tiger is perhaps the apex predator among land animals today. Further, caves can represent a journey into darkness and the unknown – just as life itself is a daily journey into the unknown; just as we have no idea what awaits at the end of our walk through the tunnel, we cannot comprehend what awaits at the end of our journey through life. Might it be the “treasure” of the kingdom of heaven as Christianity and its ilk would have us believe? Or might it be a quiet return to the nothingness of the Cosmos which, ultimately, birthed us?

Within Sheldon’s tunnel we have the opportunity to reflect both on Christian thinking – and the joining of Blake’s The Tyger with The Lamb  – complete with the opening lines of the latter (look for the side tunnel after passing the seaward opening in the tunnel walls). This is itself a layers element within the installation, encouraging us to consider Christian tenets (the Lamb of God, the Christian flock, etc.), whilst also underscoring Blake’s reflections on God’s apparently capricious nature as the creator of both the defenceless lamb and the deadly tiger:

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?

It is also here – or at least, a little further down the tunnel – that the installation opens more fully onto questions of our place in the universe, starting with a further quote. This one from one of the great thinkers of the 20th century (and one of my heroes), Carl Sagan. It is a image he used a number of times in his writings, but it appears here in what is perhaps its most widely-quoted form:

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage: The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean (1980)

It is a quote that leads us, figuratively and literally, to a god’s-eye view of a spinning galaxy, a further marvellous metaphor and visual prompt for all that we might ascribe to Sheldon’s installation. It is also the perfect means to embody our unity with the universe, because to proceed, we must step through it.

To do so is to enter the core of The Tyger, a space filled with the most incredible symbolism, questioning and statements for those willing to listen. From a vocal rendition of Blake’s poem, through the use of the Lacrimosa from Zbignew Preisner’s Requiem for My Friend (1998) to the lifting of the veil of blackness and revelation of Sheldon’s floating Tyger and its potential for layered interpretation, it is utterly breath-taking.

To itemise in words the richness and depth of all that’s offered here – from the poem, through the particular selection of Preisner’s Lacrimosa (hint: the piece has perhaps most memorably used to overlay the birth of the universe at the start if The Tree of Life, and we are perhaps particularly focused on the cosmos within this space) as well as its role within Zbignew’s Requiem (and indeed, the Catholic Requiem mass as a whole) to the presence of the floating Tyger and all that surrounds it – would be to defeat the purpose of the installation’s purpose.

Instead, I urge you to go and witness it; immerse yourself in The Tyger, its imagery, the richness of the poem itself and of Sheldon’s installation, and allow it to speak to you directly. It is magnificent.

SLurl Details

• The Tyger. An Experience by Sheldon Berman (Canary Island, rated Moderate)