W. Blake: Tiriel and 密 The Book of Thel 教 - A Passage to Experience- 文 化 Toshikazu Kashiwagi (1) When Blake completed Songs o f Experience in 1794, he bound it to- gether with Songs of Innocence (1789) and published them in one volume under the full title of Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shelving the Two Contrary States of the Huinan Soul. Songs of Experience is, as it were, an antithesis to Songs of Innocence. The one is in a sharp contrast with the other. It is, however, a serious mistake to overlook the transitional phase from Innocence to Experience. We cannot exactly know when he got an idea of showing the contrary state to Innocence' but he was probably conscious of the necessity to show the contrary state to Innocence before he published Songs of Innocence. For a few Songs of Innocence show us the world of Experience and their author transferred them to Songs of Experience later. My aim in this paper is, however, to examine the transitional phase from Innocence to Experience in special reference to Tiriel (c. 1789) and The Book of Thel (1789). I Early critics and biographers of Blake, including A. Gilchrist and A. C. Swinburne, pay little attention to Tirriel and with some reason, for this allegorical poem is rather a poor and unsuccessful one and the author himself abandoned its publication and it was not printed till (2) 1874, when W. M. Rossetti included it in his edition. But in my present study it bears not a little importance because it shows what kind of problems Blake was concerned with during the transitional period from Innocence to Experience, It is quite significant that Myratana, who was once the Queen of all the western plains, is dying at the outset of Tiriel. She was queen, -80- but it is more important that she was a mother. The mother of The Little Black Boy took the black boy on her lap and taught him how universal the love of God is. In The Echoing Green children were ready for rest ... round the laps of their mothers. It is true that the mother and the child of The Little Boy Lost were momentarily separated, but the child was led back to his mother by the hand of God who appeared like his father in white in The Little Boy Found. There can be no fatal separation of mother and child in the world of Innocence. On the contrary, the mother of Tiriel is dying. As R. F. (3) Gleckner points out, the mothers function expires with the end of Innocence. And while no father had any important role in the world of Innocence, a father-king (Tiriel) is a hero in Tiriel. Tiriel is king of the West, but he is also a selfish and cruel father. His sons rebe against his tyranny: Old man! unworthy to be call'd the father of Tiriels race! For every one of those thy wrinkles, each of those grey hairs Are cruel as death & as obdurate as the devouring pit! Tiriel heaps curses on his sons: Serpent, not sons, wreathing around the bones of Tiriel! Ye worms of death, feasting upon your aged parents flesh! After the burial of his wife Myratana, the blind old Tiriel sets out on his lonely travel, taking his pathless way over mountains and through vales. Then he happens to come to the vales of Har. The vales of Har are a kind of earthly paradise, where Har and Heva spend the day playing with flowers and running after birds and sleep like infants, delighted with infant dreams. Har and Heva are senile infants and they are, as we see later in the poem, the parents of Tiriel. Finding Tiriel harmless, they invite him to catch birds with them and to hear Har sing in a great cage. But Tiriel refuses their invitation, saying My Journey is o'er rocks & mountains, not in pleasant vales:/ I must not sleep nor rest, because of madness & dismay He is destined not to stay in an earthly paradise and he takes his -79- lonely way again. Then he meets with his brother Ijim at entrance of the forest, but Ijim cannot recognize him and calls him a tempter of dark Ijim and bears him by force to his palace. Finding his identity, 密 however, Ijim turns his back and wanders away in anger. After de- 教 stroying most of his sons and daughters by calling down thunder, fire and pestilence upon them, Tiriel compels his youngest daughter Hela 文 to guide him to the vales of Har again so that he can live with Har and Heva there. When they pass by the caves of Zazel, another of 化 Tiriels brethren, Zazel and his sons mock at them and throw stones at them. They wander through the wood all night and come to the mountains of Har at sunrise. But Tiriel is destined to expire at the vales of Har. At his death he makes a desparate appeal to his parents Har and Heva: 0 weak mistaken father of a lawless race, Thy laws, O Har, & Tiriels wisdom, end together in a curse. And why men bound beneath the heavens in a reptile form, A worm of sixty winters creeping on the dusky ground? And now my paradise is falln & a drear sandy plain Returns my thirsty hissings in a curse on thee, O Har, Mistaken father of a lawless race, my voice is past. This allegorical poem is too obscure to understand in its precis meaning. But it cannot be denied at least that this poem shows the transitional phase from Innocence to Experience in various ways. The end of mothers function and the beginning of fathers tyranny are (4) characteristic of the world of Songs o f Experience. The children of Songs o f Innocence were very young, while the sons and daughters of Tiriel are young adults. It is natural that they should be in conflict with their cruel father, because they have grown up and begun to act out of their own will. The conflict between father and his children is fatal in Tiriel. Tiriel is, as it were, the moral law incarnate which restrains human life. Margaret Rudd says Tiriel is an anagram of (5) reality. Mark Schorer conjectures that Tiriel is a poor anagram of -78- (6) ' ritual.' But Harold Bloom seems to be right in saying: Tiriels name may compound the Greek root of "tyrant" and the Hebrew El for "the (7)Al mighty," one of the names of God. It is, of course, ironical to say that Tiriel is an almighty tyrant, because he is never almighty in the true sense of the word. Another important thing about Tiriel is that he is not only cruel and selfish but also blind as the orbless scull among the stones. His blindness is symbolic of spiritual blindness. In There is No Natural Religion Blake says as follows (the italics are mine): (1) Man by his reasoning power can only compare & judge of what he has already percievd. (2) If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philo- sophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still, unable to do other things than repeat the same dull round over again. (3) He who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God. He who sees the Ratio only, sees himself only. Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is. In the above passages Blake rejects the omnipotence of reasoning power. According to Blake, man cannot see the Infinite in all things by reasoning power alone. It is by the Poetic or Prophetic character (i.e. Imagination) that we can see the Infinite in all things. Blake was concerned with the problem of rejection of the eighteenth century Natural Religion or Deism. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that Blake intended to show the tragic fate of one who can see the Ratio only and see oneself only. Tiriel cannot see divine vision because of his spiritual blindness. He is destined to be like a worm of sixty winter creeping on the dusky ground. He can do nothing but wander off beneath the heavens in a reptile form. Moreover, Tiriels two brothers, Ijim and Zazel, are no less lacking in the visionary power. Ijim is a forest-dweller and Zazel is a cave-dweller. The words cave (or cavern) and forest (or wood) are symbolic of the world (8) of spiritual blindness and barrenness. Ijim is the Hebrew word for (9) satyrs which occurs in Isaiah xiii, 21. Zazel is possibly the Hebrew -77- (10) Azazel ('scapegoat'). Ijim and Zazel seem to symbolize the brutal side of human nature represented by Tiriel. This allegorical poem is quite obscure partly because its author is 密 trying to criticize too much at a time. Tiriel seems to be the jealous 教 God of the Old Testament who imposed the Ten Commandments upon mankind. On the other hand David V. Erdman goes so far as to say 文 that Tiriel is the living example of King George I[j, chiefly because the pattern of Tiriel's 'madness and deep dismay' parallels that of King 化 (11) George's. In short, Tiriel contains within itself criticisms and attacks upon the Old Testament morality, the eighteenth century Deism, the (12) eighteenth century poetry and painting. It is no exaggeration to say that Tiriel 'symbolizes a society or civilization in its decline' with Northrope (13) Frye.