Tiriel (poem) - Characters

Characters

• Tiriel – as the former king of the west, Tiriel is of the body in Blake's mythological system, in which the west is assigned to Tharmas, representative of the senses. However, when he visits the Vales of Har, Tiriel falsely claims to be from the north, which is assigned to Urthona, representative of the imagination. Most scholars agree that Tiriel's name was probably taken from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia libri tres (1651), where the name is associated with the planet Mercury and the elements sulphur and mercury. Harold Bloom, however, believes the name is a combination of the word 'tyrant' and the Hebrew word for God, El. In terms of Tiriel's character, David V. Erdman believes that he is partially based on King George III, who suffered bouts of insanity throughout 1788 and 1789. Erdman argues that "the pattern of Tiriel's "madness and deep dismay" parallels that of King George's," and thus the poem is "a symbolic portrait of the ruler of the British Empire. knew that the monarch who represented the father principal of law and civil authority was currently insane." As evidence, Erdman points out that during his bouts of insanity, George tended to became hysterical in the presence of four of his five daughters, only the youngest, (Amelia), could calm him (in the poem, Tiriel destroys four of his daughters but spares the youngest, his favourite). Bloom believes that Tiriel is also partially based on William Shakespeare's King Lear and, in addition, is a satire "of the Jehovah of deistic orthodoxy, irascible and insanely rationalistic." Northrop Frye makes a similar claim; "He expects and loudly demands gratitude and reverence from his children because he wants to be worshipped as a god, and when his demands are answered by contempt he responds with a steady outpouring of curses. The kind of god which the existence of such tyrannical papas suggests is the jealous Jehovah of the Old Testament who is equally fertile in curses and pretexts for destroying his innumerable objects of hatred." Alicia Ostriker believes the character to be partially based on both Oedipus from Sophocles' Oedipus the King and the prince of Tyre from the Book of Ezekiel (28:1-10), who is denounced by Ezekiel for trying to pass himself off as God. Looking at the character from a symbolic point of view, Frye argues that he "symbolises a society or civilisation in its decline."

• Har – Mary S. Hall believes that Har's name was derived from Jacob Bryant's A New System or Analysis of Antient Mythology (1776), where Bryant conflates the Amazonian deities Harmon and Ares with the Egyptian deity Harmonia, wife of Cadmus. Blake had engraved plates for the book in the early 1780s, so he would have certainly have been familiar with its content. As a character, S. Foster Damon believes that Har represents both the "decadent poetry of Blake's day" and the traditional spirit of Christianity. Northrop Frye reaches a similar conclusion, but also sees divergence in the character, arguing that although Har and Heva are based on Adam and Eve, "Har is distinguished from Adam. Adam is ordinary man in his mixed twofold nature of imagination and Selfhood. Har is the human Selfhood which, though men spend most of their time trying to express it, never achieves reality and is identified only as death. Har, unlike Adam, never outgrows his garden but remains there shut up from the world in a permanent state of near-existence." Bloom agrees with this interpretation, arguing that "Har is natural man, the isolated selfhood." Bloom also believes that Har is comparable to Struldbruggs from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) and Tithonus from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem of the same name (1859). In another sense, Frye suggests that "Har represents the unborn theory of negative innocence established by obeying a moral law." On the other hand, Anne Kostelanetz Mellor sees Har as representing simple innocence and the Vales of Har as representative of Eden. 'Har' is the Hebrew word for 'mountain', thus giving an inherent irony to the phrase "Vales of Har". Damon believes this conveys the ironic sense that "he who was a mountain now lives in a vale, cut off from mankind.
• Heva – Frye believes she is "a reduplicate Eve." Damon argues that she represents neoclassical painting.
• Ijim – Ostriker feels he represents superstition. Damon believes he represents the power of the common people. Ijim's name could have come from Emanuel Swedenborg's Vera Christiana Religio (1857); "the ochim, tziim and jiim, which are mentioned in the prophetical parts of the Word." In the poem, Ijim encounters a tiger, a lion, a river, a cloud, a serpent, a toad, a rock, a shrub and Tiriel. In Swedenborg, "self-love causes its lusts to appear at a distance in hell where it reigns like various species of wild beasts, some like foxes and leopards, some like wolves and tigers, and some like crocodiles and venomous serpents." The word is also found in the Book of Isaiah 13:21, where it is translated as "satyrs". According to Harold Bloom, "The Ijim are satyrs or wild men who will dance in the ruins of the fallen tyranny, Babylon. Blake's Ijim is a self-brutalised wanderer in a deathly nature The animistic superstitions of Ijim are a popular support for the negative holiness of Tiriel." On the other hand, W.H. Stevenson reads Ijim as "an old-fashioned Puritan – honest but grim, always a ready adversary of Sin." Nancy Bogen believes he may be partially based on William Pitt, especially his actions during the Regency Crisis of 1788.
• Zazel – Damon argues that Zazel represents the outcast genius. As with Tiriel, his name was probably taken from Agrippa, where it is associated with Saturn and the element earth. The name could also be a modification of the Hebrew word Azazel, which occurs in the Book of Leviticus, 16:10, and tends to be translated as "scapegoat". Nancy Bogen believes he may be partially based on the Whig politician Charles James Fox, arch rival of William Pitt.
• Myratana – her name may have come from Myrina, Queen of Mauretania, who was described in Bryant's A New System.
• Heuxos – Hall believes the name was derived from the Hyksos, an Asiatic people who invaded the Nile Delta in the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt c.1720 BC.
• Yuva – son of Tiriel
• Lotho – son of Tiriel

• Hela – Damon argues that she symbolises touch and sexuality. She is possibly named after Hel, the Scandinavian goddess of Hell in Thomas Gray's "The Descent of Odin" (1768).
• Mnetha – Damon believes she represents the spirit of neoclassicism, which Blake felt encouraged inferior poetry and painting. He also points out that Mnetha is "almost" an anagram of Athena, goddess of wisdom. Frye suggests that the name is an amalgamation of Athena and Mnemosyne, the personification of memory in Greek mythology. Anne Kostelanetz Mellor sees her as representative of "that memory that preserves the vision of the past."
• Clithyma and Makuth – sons of Tiriel mentioned in a deleted passage
• Four unnamed daughters and one hundred and twenty-five unnamed sons