Tiriel

Many years before the poem begins, the sons of Har and Heva revolted and abandoned their parents. Tiriel subsequently set himself up as a tyrant in the west, driving one of his brothers, Ijim, into exile in the wilderness, and chaining the other, Zazel, in a cave in the mountains. Tiriel then made slaves of his own children, until eventually, led by the eldest son, Heuxos, they too rebelled, overthrowing their father. Upon his demise, Tiriel refused their offer of refuge in the palace and instead went into exile in the mountains with his wife, Myratana. Five years later, the poem begins with the now blind Tiriel returning to the kingdom with his dying wife, as he wants his children to see her death, believing them to be responsible and cursing them for betraying him five years previously; "Come you accursed sons./In my weak arms. I here have borne your dying mother/Come forth sons of the Curse come forth. see the death of Myratana" (1:7-9). Soon thereafter, Myratana dies, and Tiriel's children again ask him to remain with them but he refuses and wanders away, again cursing them and telling them he will have his revenge; {{blockquote| There take the body. cursed sons. & may the heavens rain wrath As thick as northern fogs. around your gates. to choke you up That you may lie as now your mother lies. like dogs. cast out The stink. of your dead carcases. annoying man & beast Till your white bones are bleachd with age for a memorial. No your remembrance shall perish. for when your carcases Lie stinking on the earth. the buriers shall arise from the east And. not a bone of all the soils of Tiriel remain Bury your mother but you cannot bury the curse of Tiriel ); the illustrated text is: "Then Har arose and laid his hand on old Tiriel's head" (2:35). After some time wandering, Tiriel eventually arrives at the "pleasant gardens" (2:10) of the Vales of Har, where he finds his parents, Har and Heva. However, they have both become senile and have regressed to a childlike state to such an extent that they think their guardian, Mnetha, is their mother. Tiriel lies about who he is, claiming that he was cast into exile by the gods, who then destroyed his race; "I am an aged wanderer once father of a race/Far in the north. but they were wicked & were all destroyd/And I their father sent an outcast" (2:44-46). Excited by the visit, Har and Heva invite Tiriel to help them catch birds and listen to Har's singing in the "great cage" (3:21). Tiriel refuses to stay, however, claiming his journey is not yet at an end, and resumes his wandering. He travels into the forest and soon encounters his brother Ijim, who has recently been terrorised by a shapeshifting spirit to whom he refers to as "the Hypocrite". Upon seeing Tiriel, Ijim immediately assumes that Tiriel is another manifestation of the spirit; {{blockquote| This is the hypocrite that sometimes roars a dreadful lion Then I have rent his limbs & left him rotting in the forest For birds to eat but I have scarce departed from the place But like a tyger he would come & so I rent him too Then like a river he would seek to drown me in his waves But soon I buffetted the torrent anon like to a cloud Fraught with the swords of lightning. but I bravd the vengeance too Then he would creep like a bright serpent till around my neck While I was Sleeping he would twine I squeezd his poisnous soul Then like a toad or like a newt. would whisper in my ears Or like a rock stood in my way. or like a poisnous shrub At last I caught him in the form of Tiriel blind & old ); the illustrated text is "All day he bore him & when evening drew her solemn curtain/Enterd the gates of Tiriels palace. & stood & calld aloud/…/Tiriel raisd his silver voice/Serpents not sons why do you stand fetch hither Tiriel/Fetch hither Myratana & delight yourselves with scoffs/For poor blind Tiriel is returnd & this much injurd head/Is ready for your bitter taunts. come forth sons of the curse" (4:40-41, 62–66). Tiriel assures Ijim that he is, in fact, the real Tiriel, but Ijim does not believe him and decides to return to Tiriel's palace to see the real Tiriel and thus expose the spirit as an imposter; "Impudent fiend said Ijim hold thy glib & eloquent tongue/Tiriel is a king. & thou the tempter of dark Ijim" (4:36-37). However, upon arriving at the palace, Heuxos informs Ijim that the Tiriel with him is indeed the real Tiriel, but Ijim suspects that the entire palace and everyone in it is part of the spirit's deception; "Then it is true Heuxos that thou hast turnd thy aged parent/To be the sport of wintry winds. (said Ijim) is this true/It is a lie & I am like the tree torn by the wind/Thou eyeless fiend. & you dissemblers. Is this Tiriels house/It is as false as Matha. & as dark as vacant Orcus/Escape ye fiends for Ijim will not lift his hand against ye" (4:72-77). As such, Ijim leaves, and upon his departure, Tiriel, descending ever more rapidly into madness, curses his children even more passionately than before; {{blockquote| Earth thus I stamp thy bosom rouse the earthquake from his den To raise his dark & burning visage thro the cleaving ground To thrust these towers with his shoulders. let his fiery dogs Rise from the center belching flames & roarings. dark smoke Where art thou Pestilence that bathest in fogs & standing lakes Rise up thy sluggish limbs. & let the loathsomest of poisons Drop from thy garments as thou walkest. wrapt in yellow clouds Here take thy seat. in this wide court. let it be strown with dead And sit & smile upon these cursed sons of Tiriel Thunder & fire & pestilence. here you not Tiriels curse Upon this declamation, four of his five daughters and one hundred of his one hundred and thirty sons are destroyed, including Heuxos. Tiriel then demands that his youngest and only surviving daughter, Hela, lead him back to the Vales of Har. She reluctantly agrees, but on the journey, she denounces him for his actions; "Silence thy evil tongue thou murderer of thy helpless children" (6:35). Tiriel responds in a rage, turning her locks of hair into snakes, although he vows that if she brings him to the Vales of Har, he will return her hair to normal. On the way through the mountains, as they pass the cave wherein lives Zazel and his sons, Hela's cries of lamentation awaken them, and they hurl dirt and stones at Tiriel and Hela, mocking them as they pass; "Thy crown is bald old man. The sun will dry thy brains away/And thou wilt be as foolish as thy foolish brother Zazel" (7:12-13). Eventually, Tiriel and Hela reach the Vales of Har, but rather than celebrating his return, Tiriel condemns his parents, and the way they brought him up, declaring that his father's laws and his own wisdom now "end together in a curse" (8:8); {{blockquote| The child springs from the womb. the father ready stands to form The infant head while the mother idle plays with her dog on her couch The young bosom is cold for lack of mothers nourishment & milk Is cut off from the weeping mouth with difficulty & pain The little lids are lifted & the little nostrils opend The father forms a whip to rouze the sluggish senses to act And scourges off all youthful fancies from the newborn man Then walks the weak infant in sorrow compelld to number footsteps Upon the sand. &c And when the drone has reachd his crawling length Black berries appear that poison all around him. Such was Tiriel Compelld to pray repugnant & to humble the immortal spirit Till I am subtil as a serpent in a paradise Consuming all both flowers & fruits insects & warbling birds 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 Upon this outburst, Tiriel then dies at his parents' feet; "He ceast outstretch'd at Har & Heva's feet in awful death" (8:29). ==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. 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. [Blake] 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 become 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 Rex 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. • 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 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. '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. Damon believes he represents the power of the common people. Ijim's name could have come from Emanuel Swedenborg's Vera Christiana Religio (1857); 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. 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, archrival of William Pitt. • 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. 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 ==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 number 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, ) 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 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. 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." ==Blake's mythology==

); Har and Heva are shown naked in a shallow stream whilst Mnetha lies behind looking on. The picture is not a direct illustration of any particular part of the poem, but may be related to the lines, "they were as the shadow of Har. & as the years forgotten/Playing with flowers. & running after birds they spent the day" (2:7-8). Although Blake had 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, 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 delivered from Egypt is Art delivered 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 unhindered 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; {{blockquote| 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: Damon refers to this transformation as turning them into "serpents of materialism," which he relates back to their role in Tiriel. 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." ==Critical interpretations==

Tiriel has provoked a number of divergent critical responses. For example, according to G.E. Bentley, "Tiriel has always proved a puzzle to commentators on Blake." Making much the same point, W.H. Stevenson argues that "the theme is not clearly related to any political, philosophical, religious or moral doctrine." Northrop Frye reads the poem symbolically, seeing it primarily as "a tragedy of reason," A different reading is given by S. Foster Damon, who argues that it is "an analysis of the decay and failure of Materialism at the end of the Age of Reason." He also feels the poem deals with "the internal disintegration of despotism," and finds a political motive in Tiriel's final speech, which he sees as inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile, or On Education. Anne Kostelanetz Mellor also reads the poem as a political tract, although from a very different perspective than Erdman. She argues that the poem engages with "Blake's increasing uncertainty about both the social and the aesthetic implications of a closed form or system" and concludes with the edict that Tiriel's "repressive reign of deceit, slander, discontent and despair enslaves not only the ruled but the ruler as well [...] his closed mind, chained to closed palaces and legal systems ends by destroying both itself and everything over which it gains power. In this sense, she reads Tiriel's final speech as "reflecting the agony of a self trapped in the repressive social mores and intellectual absolutism of eighteenth-century England." Harold Bloom, however, is not convinced of a political interpretation, arguing instead that "Tiriel's failure to learn until too late the limitations of his self-proclaimed holiness is as much a failure in a conception of divinity as it is of political authority." Hilton is here building on the work of Damon, who argued that Mnetha represents "neoclassical criticism, which protects decadent poetry (Har) and painting (Heva)." Additionally, Har sings in a "great cage" (3:21), which to Damon suggests the heroic couplet, which Blake abhorred. ==Adaptations==

Tiriel () is a 1985 opera with libretto and music by Russian/British composer Dmitri Smirnov partially based on Blake's text. The opera incorporates material from several of Blake's other poems; the "Introduction", "A Cradle Song" and "The Divine Image" from Songs of Innocence (1789), and "The Tyger" from Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794). ==References==