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Tiriel (Blake)

Tiriel is a symbolic poem, the first of so called "prophetic books" by William Blake (1757-1827). It was written around 1789, shortly before The Book of Thel. It was the first of his poems written in free septenaries. He did not engrave it, and the poem was first time published only in 1874 by William Michael Rossetti. There were twelve sepia drawings accompanied the rough and unfinished manuscript, however the three of them are considered lost (they have not been traced since 1863).

Characters
Tiriel, as an eponymous hero of the poem, was a former king of the West, son of Har and Heva, brother of wild Ijim and enslaved Zazel, husband of dying Myratana, and father of 130 sons with the oldest Heuxos, then Yuva, Lotho, Clithyma and Makuth who usurped their father’s throne, and five daughters, the youngest of whom was Hela. Mnetha (an anagram of Athena) was a guardian of old and senile Har and Heva.

Only Har, Heva and Ijim were mentioned in Blake’s later books. Tiriel is foreshadowing of Urizen that appeared in many of Blake’s poems (including Europe, The Book of Urizen, The Book of Ahania, The Book of Los, The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem.

Story
The blind and aged king, Tiriel, calls down curses on his sons whom he has summoned to observe their mother’s death. The sons bury their mother, but declare that they have tired of their father’s tyranny and now will rebel against it. So Tiriel sets off wandering into the mountains.

Eventually he comes to the ‘pleasant gardens’ in the Vales of Har, where he finds his own parents, Har and Heva, who are both quite senile and have become like children again. They invite Tiriel to help them catch birds and listen to Har’s singing in the ‘great cage’. In madness and dismay, Tiriel abandons them and sets out further on his wanderings.

Tiriel’s wild brother Ijim finds him, captures him and takes him back to his children who are living in what once was his own palace. Tiriel, ever madder and more enraged, curses his children yet more passionately, calling down thunder and pestilence and destroying them. Doing so, he sends his favourite daughter Hela mad. Nonetheless it is Hela who must guide Tiriel back to his parents in the Vales of Har.

On the way through the mountains they pass caves which are the home of another of Tiriel’s brothers, Zazel. Zazel, together with his sons, hurls dirt and stones at Tiriel and his daughter. Eventually Tiriel and Hela arrive once more at the tent in the Vales of Har, where Har and Heva live. In a final speech, Tiriel explains how his father’s laws and his own wisdom now ‘end together in a curse’. And he dies at his parents’ feet.

Quotations

 * "Tiriel has always proved a puzzle to commentators on Blake." (Bentley, G. E.: William Blake: Tiriel)
 * "The poem is an analysis of the decay and failure of Materialism at the end of the age of Reason." (Foster Damon S. A Blake Dictionary)
 * "This phantasmagoria on the theme of the death of an aged king and tyrant-father may be - indeed, must be - read at several levels." (Kathleen Raine Blake and Tradition)

Adoptations
Tiriel (opera) (Russian: Тириэль) an opera with libretto and music by a Russian/British composer Dmitri Smirnov based on Blake's text.