Tiriel (poem) - Manuscript

Manuscript

Tiriel survives in only a single manuscript copy, located in the British Museum. An eight-page document written in Blake's hand, the manuscript is inscribed "Tiriel / MS. by Mr Blake". It is believed that up to page 8, line 4 ("Lead me to Har & Heva I am Tiriel King of the west"), the poem is a fair copy, transcribed from somewhere else, but at 8:4 the quantity of corrections and alterations increases, and the writing becomes scribbled and in a different ink to the rest of the poem. This difference has led Erdman to argue that the later part of the poem was not transcribed, but was worked out in the manuscript itself, and may have been rushed. Additionally, many of the handwritten corrections, emendations and deletions in the parts of the poem prior to 8:4 are in the same ink as the lines after 8:4, suggesting Blake went back over the manuscript and revised earlier parts of it when he returned to finish it.

A considerable amount of material has been deleted by Blake in the manuscript. For example, when Tiriel initially arrives in the Vales of Har, he lies about his identity. In the poem as Blake left it, the scene reads "I am not of this region, said Tiriel dissemblingly/I am an aged wanderer once father of a race/Far in the north" (2:43-44). However, in the original manuscript, between these two lines is contained the line "Fearing to tell them who he was, because of the weakness of Har." Similarly, when Har recognises Tiriel he proclaims "Bless thy face for thou are Tiriel" (3:6), to which Tiriel responds "Tiriel I never saw but once I sat with him and ate" (3:7). Between these two lines were originally the lines "Tiriel could scarcely dissemble more & his tongue could scarce refrain/But still he fear'd that Har & Heva would die of joy and grief."

The longest omissions occur during the encounter with Ijim and when Tiriel returns to the Vales of Har. When Ijim arrives at the palace with Tiriel, he begins by saying "Then it is true Heuxos that thou hast turned thy aged parent/To be the sport of wintry winds" (4:72-73). However, originally, Ijim begins

Lotho. Clithyma. Makuth fetch your father
Why do you stand confounded thus. Heuxos why art thou silent
O noble Ijim thou hast brought our father to our eyes
That we may tremble and repent before thy mighty knees
O we are but the slaves of fortune. & that most cruel man
Desires our deaths. O Ijim tis one whose aged tongue
Deceive the noble if the eloquence of Tiriel
Hath worked our ruin we submit nor strive against stern fate

He spoke & kneel'd upon his knee. Then Ijim on the pavement
Set aged Tiriel, in deep thought whether these things were so.

The second large deletion occurs towards the end of the poem, when Tiriel asks Har "Why is one law given to the lion & the patient Ox/And why men bound beneath the heavens in a reptile form" (8:9-10). Originally, however, between these two lines was

Dost thou not see that men cannot be formed all alike
Some nostril'd wide breathing out blood. Some close shut up
In silent deceit. poisons inhaling from the morning rose
With daggers hid beneath their lips & poison in their tongue
Or eyed with little sparks of Hell or with infernal brands
Flinging flames of discontent & plagues of dark despair
Or those whose mouths are graves whose teeth the gates of eternal death
Can wisdom be put in a silver rod or love in a golden bowl
Is the son of a king warmed without wool or does he cry with a voice
Of thunder does he look upon the sun & laugh or stretch
His little hands into the depths of the sea, to bring forth
The deadly cunning of the flatterer & spread it to the morning

A major question concerning the manuscript is whether or not Blake ever intended to illuminate it. Whether he had devised his method for relief etching at the time of composition is unknown, although he did make twelve drawings which were apparently to be included with the poem in some shape or form. Peter Ackroyd suggests that the illustrations, "conceived in the heroic style," were inspired by the work of James Barry and George Romney, both of whom Blake admired and were intended for illustration rather than illumination. Most scholars agree with this theory (i.e. the images wouldn't be combined with the text, they would simply accompany the text) and it has been suggested that Blake abandoned the project when he discovered the technique to realise his desire for full integration of text and image. His first relief etching was The Approach of Doom (1788), and his first successful combination of words and pictures were All Religions are One and There is No Natural Religion (both 1788), but they were experiments only. His first 'real' illuminated book was The Book of Thel (1789) and it is possible that he abandoned Tiriel to work on Thel after making his breakthrough with All Religions and Natural Religion. According to David Bindman, for example, "Tiriel's clear separation of text and design is transitional in being an example of the conventional method of combining text with design implicitly rejected by Blake in developing the method of illuminated printing. He probably abandoned the series because his new technique took him beyond what had now become for him an obsolete method."