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Tiriel the DEATH of a CULTURE

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Tiriel the DEATH of a CULTURE Tiriel THE DEATH OF A CULTURE By L. H. ALLEN* When Nations grow old the Arts grow cold Blake was born in 1757, the year which Swedenborg announced as beginning the Last Judgment. In The Marriage ofHeaven and a Hell Blake pronounced that new heaven had begun. The Marriage was evidently itsmanifesto,1 and Blake itsprophet. "Whenever any individual rejects error and embraces truth a last Judgment passes upon that individual."2 It is the passing of old values, the finding of new; and Blake has expanded the theme in his Vision of thehast Judgment. We may call it the death of a culture and the birth of a new one; or, variantly, the passing of an epoch in a culture and the birth of its successor. This, in the main, is the theme of Tiriel, and I shall give, as brieflyas I can, the story:Old Tiriel stands before his ruined palace which once dominated theWestern Plains. In his arms is the dying Myratana, his wife?"soul, spirit, fire." He calls on his rebellious sons, the eldest of whom mocks him, saying that,until they rebelled, theywere the slaves of his cruelty. Tiriel curses them, accusing them of having drained theirmother dry, and declaring that he will bury her. But his sonHeuxos calls on a son of Zazel, TiriePs brother, to dig the grave, reviling his fatherbecause he has enslaved ZazePs sons and rejected his own. Tiriel replies: "Bury your mother, but you cannot bury the curse of Tiriel." over Thereupon he wanders the "dark and pathless mountains," with blinded eyes, being aware of the sun, but unable to feel the in * Professor of English literature, University College, Canberra. 1 "It is now thirty-three years since its advent," says Blake. This would date the Marriage at 1790; but Foster Damon gives good reason for regarding Blake as having spoken in round numbers, the more acceptable date being 1793. (William Blake, his Philosophy and Symbols, p. 07.) I think he took thirty-three years as being approxi mately a third of a century?a generation. 2 M.S. Book, Foster Damon, p. 340. 58 T THE AUSTRALIAN QUARTERLY June, 1940 fluence of themoon, which is now a "useless globe." He arrives at a valley, thedwelling ofHar andHeva, once so splendid, now dwindled to shadows of themselves, delighting in childish things. The aged Mnetha waits on them. At the sight of the strickenold man Har and Heva rush in fear toMnetha's arms. When Tiriel announces his name Mnetha cannot recognize in such decrepitude theKing of theWest, a on and thinks masquerader is imposing her. "No matter who I am," saysTiriel, and asks for food to stay him on his long journey. Har and Heva, in terror, beseech Mnetha not to go near the "King of rottenwood" who "wanders without eyes." Tiriel replies only by begging piteously for food. Mnetha allays the fears of Har and Heva, who now bless Tiriel, imagining they see in him "TiriePs old father." He tells them that he was "once father of a race far in theNorth," a race destroyed for itswickedness. Mnetha gives him milk and fruit. Har then blesses the stranger, recognizing him as Tiriel, who now denies his identity,saying: "Tiriel I never saw but once." He desires to resume his journey, but Heva urges him to see their singingbirds, to hearHar sing in the great cage, and to sleep on theirfleeces. But Tiriel, because of madness and despair,must take his way over rocks and mountains. There he meets his brother Ijim who takes him for a fiend in TiriePs shape and threatens to use him as a slave. The old man asks a for "a littlewater from brook" to save him from death. Ijim, an though stillmaintaining that he is imposter,allows him to drink, and bears him on his shoulders toTiriePs palace. He cries toHeuxos: "I have brought the fiend that troubles Ijim." He describesTiriel as a Proteus who turned into every shape until he was caught in that of Tiriel. Heuxos is bidden bring forthTiriel and Myratana. Tiriel tauntinglyrepeats Ijim's command, and then sternly tells them: blind is "poor Tiriel returned." Ijim is bewildered, thinking that sons and are all, father alike, illusions,and stridesgloomily away. Then, in words of terror and magnificence, Tiriel curses his sons and his five daughters. Four of his daughters perish, and of his sons only thirty remain. Tiriel then calls on Hela, his youngest daughter, to lead him away. Henceforth she is to be at his command because he has saved her from death. Hela replies that she has been preserved to act as for her eyes father?another instanceof his cruelty. Tiriel protests that, though he loves her, she "glories in rebellion." He commands her to lead him to Har andHeva. She obeys, not because of fear, but because this murderer of his helpless childrenwill be cursed byHar 1 2 * CO June, 1940 THE AUSTRALIAN QUARTERLY and Heva. As retributionfor thisTiriel causes snakes to rise from his at on daughter's hair. Howling in terror this sorcery, Hela leads him until they reach the caves of Zazel, a brother of Tiriel. Zazel mocks his senility, saying: "Thou wilt be as foolish as thy foolish brother Zazel." But the blind old man, holding on undeterred, reaches the mountains of Har. While Har and Heva are sleeping like infants Mnetha hears the howling ofHela and rushes out to threaten the pair with her bow. Tiriel, now directly claiming to be King of theWest, demands to be led toHar and Heva. Then, bemoaning the thrustof fate which has driven him to this sad decay, and governs human life with such inscrutableparadox, he falls in "awful death." The image of a blind old man led by his daughter immediately evokes two great figures of literature?Oedipus led by Antigone; and Milton, helped in his literarywork by his daughter when his eyesight had gone. Of these two there is little doubt thatMilton is the prototype of Tiriel. Blake regardedMilton and Swedenborg in very much the same light. They were grand souls, impregnatedwith divine fire which they had quenched by misuse of their faculties. The latter had been granted the vision of the spiritual world only to constricthimself to within the "angelic" conventions, whereas, Blake, the only real world was "demonic" dynamism. Similarly, to Milton had been opened theworld of theDaughters of Beulah, but he had chosen to bind himself within the classic canons and had become a slave to the Muses, the Daughters of Memory. In the same way, when, under the guidance of Inspiration, he might have beheld God as a Spirit, he preferred to limitHim within the restrictionsof classicReason. Thus, forMilton, saysBlake, "The Father isDestiny, the Son a ratio3of the a five senses, and the Holy Ghost vacuum." Yet Blake had the deepest reverence forMilton, regarding him self, indeed, as the inheritorof his spirit.He spoke of Swedenborg as a "Samson shorn by the churches" (Milton 20.50), and the same was even more image applicable to the creator of Samson Agonistes. For what was the result ofMilton's effort? The exaltation of Puritanism, the negative aspect of virtue, the glorification of Thou Shalt Not! And the decadence of the classic formwhich Milton gave it was Augustan enervation?elegant scepticism in mechanical echo. Blake regardedMilton as being at least tremendouslyserious, whereas the Augustans had nothing serious in them to be tremendous about. 3 By "ratio" Blake means the perception of the finite, instead of the infinite, in things. (Cf. There is no Natural Religion. Second series.) 6o THE AUSTRALIAN QUARTERLY June, 1940 Neither satire nor translation,which formed so large a part of Augustanism, appealed to Blake. What he regarded as the only Art was creation. Miltonism and Augustanism are the nucleus of Tiriel: and I shall now try to give a brief sketchof themain significancesof the poem. Tiriel4 isKing of theWest. The points of the compass play an or important part in Blake's system since they represent "states," attitudes of the soul towardsGod. Generally theWest is for Blake the region of the Instincts (the Shepherd Tharmas). But there seems here to be a variation. The West seems to represent the region where the Sun, which should be theGnosis, the immediate apprehension of God, declines into the hardness of intellectusing matter, the food of the senses, to constructthe deity of the Syllogism. Har calls him the "King of rottenwood," theGreek Hyle (Matter). When such arts and religions are in their prime, however, they do mean something real; but when the "matter" rots,nothing is left but the pretence of a senile sacerdotalism?in other words, the hypocrisy of formalism dis guising poverty of form. That iswhy, at the end of the poem, Tiriel a confesses that he is hypocrite.5 The poem opens with the senile epoch conscious of its lost inspir ation. Myratana, theWife, themoon (Enitharmon, the inspirational reflex of Los, the creative spirit), is dead. The sons (schisms in seem religion, "movements" in art) to have forgotten that they ever owed theirbeing to her, and are glad to bury her. They are rebellious against the petrified authority of the parent system; but they are its inferiors,without its dignity, without its consciousness of greatness, even if a lost one. So Tiriel wanders away from them,blind, like the old man called Aged Ignorance, in the Gates of Paradise. He cannot see the moon of inspirationat all because perceptive Organs closed their objects close. The Sun of the Gnosis is only felt in the dim shadows of reason. 4 Foster Damon warns us not to confuse Tiriel with Thiriel.
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