Tiriel (poem) - Blake's Mythology

Blake's Mythology

Although Blake was yet to formulate his mythological system, several preliminary elements of that system are present in microcosm in Tiriel. According to Peter Ackroyd, "the elements of Blake's unique mythology have already begun to emerge. It is the primeval world of Bryant and of Stukeley, which he had glimpsed within engravings of stones and broken pillars." Elements of his later mythology are thus manifested throughout the poem.

Although Northrop Frye speculates that the Vales of Har are located in Ethiopia, due to the pyramids in the illustration Tiriel supporting Myratana, S. Foster Damon believes the poem to be set in Egypt, which is a symbol of slavery and oppression throughout Blake's work. For example, in The Book of Urizen (1794), after the creation of mortal man,

They lived a period of years
Then left a noisom body
To the jaws of devouring darkness

And their children wept, & built
Tombs in the desolate places,
And form'd laws of prudence, and call'd them
The eternal laws of God

And the thirty cities remaind
Surrounded by salt floods, now call'd
Africa: its name was then Egypt.

The remaining sons of Urizen
Beheld their brethren shrink together
Beneath the Net of Urizen;
Perswasion was in vain;
For the ears of the inhabitants,
Were wither'd, & deafen'd, & cold:
And their eyes could not discern,
Their brethren of other cities.

So Fuzon call'd all together
The remaining children of Urizen:
And they left the pendulous earth:
They called it Egypt, & left it.

(Chap: IX, Verses 4-8)

Similarly, in The Book of Los (1795), Urizen is imprisoned within "Coldness, darkness, obstruction, a Solid/Without fluctuation, hard as adamant/Black as marble of Egypt; impenetrable" (Chap. I, Verse 10). Many years later, in On Virgil (1822), Blake claims that "Sacred Truth has pronounced that Greece & Rome as Babylon & Egypt: so far from being parents of Arts & Sciences as they pretend: were destroyers of all Art." Similarly, in The Laocoön (also 1822), he writes "The Gods of Greece & Egypt were Mathematical Diagrams," "These are not the Works/Of Egypt nor Babylon Whose Gods are the Powers of this World. Goddess, Nature./Who first spoil & then destroy Imaginative Art For their Glory is War and Dominion" and "Israel deliverd from Egypt is Art deliverd from Nature & Imitation."

Another connection to Blake's later mythology is found in The Vales of Har, which are mentioned in The Book of Thel (1789). It is in the Vales where lives Thel herself, and throughout the poem they are represented as a place of purity and innocence; "I walk through the vales of Har. and smell the sweetest flowers" (3:18). At the end of the poem, when Thel is shown the world of experience outside the Vales, she panics and flees back to the safety of her home; "The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek./Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har" (6:21-22).

The characters of Har and Heva also reappear in the Africa section of The Song of Los (1795), which is set chronologically before Tiriel. Disturbed by the actions of their family, Har and Heva flee into the wilderness, and turn into reptiles;

Since that dread day when Har and Heva fled.
Because their brethren & sisters liv'd in War & Lust;
And as they fled they shrunk
Into two narrow doleful forms:
Creeping in reptile flesh upon
The bosom of the ground

(The Song of Los; 4:4-9)

Damon refers to this transformation as turning them into "serpents of materialism," which he relates back to their role in Tiriel.

Har and Ijim are also briefly mentioned in Vala, or The Four Zoas (1796–1803), where Har is the sixteenth son of Los and Enitharmon, and Ijim the eighteenth. Har's immediate father is Satan, representative of self-love in Blake, and his children are Ijim and Ochim (The Four Zoas, VIII:360).

Although Tiriel himself is not featured in any of Blake's later work, he is often seen as a foreshadowing of Urizen, limiter of men's desires, embodiment of tradition and conformity, and a central character in Blake's mythology, appearing in Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), America a Prophecy (1793), Europe a Prophecy (1794), The Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Ahania (1795), The Book of Los (1795), The Song of Los (1795), Vala, or The Four Zoas (1796–1803), Milton a Poem (1804–1810), and Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804–1820). Tiriel is similar to Urizen insofar as "he too revolted, set himself up as a tyrant, became a hypocrite, ruined his children by his curse, and finally collapsed."

Other aspects of Blake's mythology also begin to emerge during the poem. For example, Damon argues that the death of the four unnamed daughters and the corruption of the fifth is Blake's first presentation of the death of the four senses and the corruption of touch, or sex; "all imaginative activity based on the senses disappears except automatic sexual reproduction. Even this proves too much for his moral virtue." As Damon elaborates, "Hela's Medusan locks are the torturing thoughts of suppressed lust." The corruption of the senses plays an important role throughout Europe a Prophecy ("the five senses whelm'd/In deluge o'er the earth-born man"), The Book of Urizen ("The senses inwards rush'd shrinking,/Beneath the dark net of infection"), The Song of Los ("Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave/Laws & Religions to the sons of Har binding them more/And more to Earth: closing and restraining:/Till a Philosophy of Five Senses was complete"), The Four Zoas ("Beyond the bounds of their own self their senses cannot penetrate") and Jerusalem ("As the Senses of Men shrink together under the Knife of flint").

Harold Bloom points out that the points of the compass, which would come to play a vital role in Blake's later mythological system, are used symbolically for the first time in Tiriel; "the reference to "the western plains" in line 2 marks the onset of Blake's directional system, in which the west stands for man's body, with its potential either for sensual salvation or natural decay." In The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem, after the Fall of the primeval man, Albion, he is divided fourfold, and each of the four Zoas corresponds to a point on the compass and an aspect of Fallen man; Tharmas is west (the body), Urizen is south (Reason), Luvah is east (emotions) and Urthona is north (imagination).

Another subtle connection with the later mythological system is found when Tiriel has all but thirty of his sons killed; "And all the children in their beds were cut off in one night/Thirty of Tiriels sons remaind. to wither in the palace/Desolate. Loathed. Dumb Astonishd waiting for black death" (5:32-34). Damon believes this foreshadows The Book of Urizen, where Urizen brings about the fall of the thirty cities of Africa; "And their thirty cities divided/In form of a human heart", "And the thirty cities remaind/Surrounded by salt floods" (27:21-22 and 28:8-9).

Another minor connection to the later mythology is that two lines from the poem are used in later work by Blake. The deleted line "can wisdom be put in a silver rod, or love in a golden bowl?" is found in the Motto from The Book of Thel, and a version of the line "Why is one law given to the lion & the patient Ox?" (8:9) is found as the final line of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790); "One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression."