Thel 2

Thel

All the Thel Pics These pictures came from the Digital Collections of the Library of  Congress. The url is http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbc3&fileName=rbc0001_2003rosen1798Apage.db&recNum=0 Blake's  first large poem (not so large) was Thel. It consisted of 6 Plates  with two introductory pictures (called in Erdman's Illuminated Blake  Plates i and ii:Much can be said about all of them You may view all these plates in The William Blake Archive. Having  done that select Thel which will offer you 8 currently available  copies. Click on any one, then if you see 'compare' click on it; you  may see all 8 copies. They vary in several ways. ******************************************************************************* This from William Blake: A Helpfile In an excellent post on Romanticism the writer offers several meanings for  Thel's Motto; here's one of them: "One reading would be that it asserts a kind of environmentalism, that the mole  knows about the pit better than the eagle because it’s the mole’s habitat.". Read in toto much light is cast on Thel's Motto.      The Book of Thel Thel plate 4          (Here's a plate from Thel (Plate 4, I believe:)        This myth is one of Blake's early examples of the descent of the soul:        Thel, one of the Immortals (in the vales of Har) is attracted to the life below (as we all were).  After hearing the encouragement of the Lilly of the  valley, the little cloud, the helpless worm, and the clod of clay  she ventures  down: The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:  Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown; She saw the couches of the dead,..... The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek. Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har        In this early poem Blake asks the question, is life here in the  world worth living?  (The question is partly answered in The Little Girl.)        This poem may also be considered a commentary on  Innocence and Experience: the vales of Har represent Innocence  while the northern bar leads to Experience. Descent from Eden  leads to Experience, and when fully experienced, one may return to his (eternal) origin. Thel chose not to go through that journey,  so it doesn't express  Blake's myth except to act as a preamble.