The poem
Why art thou silent & invisible Father of jealousy Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds From every searching Eye
Why darkness & obscurity In all thy words & laws That none dare eat the fruit but from The wily serpents jaws Or is it because Secresy gains females loud applause
Who is nobodaddy -- is that like nobody's god? I feel it's very ingenious and yet I can't grasp this poem really. For one thing, it seems like it should be female's (possessive) possibly though another site I checked has it like this. I feel dumb today.
Nobodaddy is a reference to Freud, who believed that religion was born out of an infantile desire to always be under the care and discipline of one's father. Into adulthood, this desire results in the psyche creating a projection of a god. Blake picked up on this and wrote poems to mock the Judeo-Christian god, who he thought to be patriarchal and indeed a tyrannical father figure. Of course, we can assume that Blake would disagree with Freud's suggestion that *all* religion stems from an infantile father-hunger, as Blake himself was a mystic; however, he must have thought Freud's idea pertinent to Christianity with its preoccupation with the idea of God the Father.
Dear Lauren,
Invoking Freud sadly does not make you appear smarter in this instance, since William Blake died almost half a century before Freud was even born. Thus the title of the poem cannot be a reference to Freud in any way, unless you truly believe in Blake's prophetic genious. sic
Nobodaddy is Nobody-Daddy - nobody/father - in other words, a patriarchal god who is a nobody because he never shows himself to those he supposedly created. Blake has no time for a ghost of a god - he wants a living, breathing, guiding god - one who interacts with humans and doesn't remain invisible to them; he also wants one who does not lay down stupidly dark and obscure laws, especially those that prohibit the gaining knowledge. Blake finds this insulting. It's a great poem.