Transcription

In my earlier blog post on Tiriel, I discussed the issue of reading Blake’s hand with regard to the word “seald” in object 1.  Here, I discuss another problem that I faced in transcribing this manuscript.  Again, the reading that will be found on the Blake Archive is at odds with those of David Erdman and G. E. Bentley, Jr.

In object 10, line 25 of Tiriel, Blake first mentions the name of Tiriel’s youngest daughter.  This name eventually evolves into “Hela” at the end of object 11.  However, Blake originally had another name in mind, which he used in object 10 and in part of object 11, before going back and making emendations to that name.  Blake’s (often inventive) names pose a problem– that examples such as those from my last blog post do not– in that textual context provides no clue as to what the word/name in question might be.  Fortunately, in the case of the “Hela” problem, Blake writes the name several times (there are some instances in which an illegible name appears only once), giving the transcriber a variety of examples to examine.

Here is an image of the name taken from object 10, line 25:

Erdman (in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake) suggests that the name “Hela” was originally written as “Hili”, noting that “the first vowel is conjectural, but is not ‘e'” (815n).  Bentley (in William Blake’s Writings) claims that the ‘e’ in “Hela” “is faulty, as if it were an ‘a’ which has been written over” (914n).  He does not offer a reading of the final letter of the name, which Erdman correctly states is also mended.  Presumably, Bentley reads the first version of the name as “Hala”.

In reviewing objects 10 and 11 of the Tiriel manuscript, I came to favor a combination of Bentley’s and Erdman’s readings with regard to the initial version of “Hela”.  I agree with Erdman that the last letter of the name—which is (contrary to Bentley’s description) clearly mended– was originally an “i”.  If you look at the following samples (from 10.27, 11.2, 11.4, and 11.7) as well as that above, you can—in each instance– discern smudge marks above the final letter in the name:

These are the dots of “i”s that have been erased (with varying degrees of success) by rubbing.  In fact, the dot in the third example above (from 11.4) is quite plain.

However, I do not agree with Erdman’s conjectural reading of the second letter of the initial version of the name as “i”.  This is in part because the erasure marks that appear over the final letters in the examples above do not appear above the second letters.  When I explained this reasoning to Rachel Lee, our Project Coordinator, she observed that the name may have been “Hili” and that Blake may not have dotted the first “i” because it would have interfered with the loop on the capital “H” preceding it.  I shared Rachel’s concern because, in some cases—especially when a pen stroke from another letter (the cross stroke of a “t”, for example) occupies the space above an “i”—Blake will omit the dot.  Therefore, I checked for instances of “i”s following capital “H”s elsewhere.  In object 1, Blake writes “His” several times, dotting the “i” each time:

Therefore, “Hili” does not seem to be an accurate reading.  Furthermore, based on the shape of the second letter in the name in the examples given, I believe that Bentley is correct when he suggests that the second letter in the name was originally an “a”.  While the pen strokes in some of the examples above (such as 11.2) are not clear enough to provide a reading of the letter in question, others (particularly 10.27) are.

To better enable you to see my readings, in the first image, I traced the pen strokes making up the original letter, an “a”.  In the second, I traced the emendation, an “e”.

Long story short, while Erdman reads the original version of “Hela” as “Hili” and Bentley reads “Hala”, I read “Hali”.

In addition to the other issues surrounding textual transcription discussed in earlier posts, Blake Archive assistants involved in manuscript transcription often run into the basic problem of deciphering Blake’s hand.  We are sometimes led to question established readings through a process that involves, not only being familiar with the usual way in which Blake forms particular letters, but also the way in which he writes his letters on a particular manuscript page or the way his letters appear when written in a certain sequence.  For example, here is line 31 from object 1 of the Tiriel manuscript (which will eventually be published on the Blake Archive):

G. E. Bentley, Jr. (in William Blake’s Writings, as well as his edition of Tiriel) and David Erdman (in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake) read this line as:

Look at my eyes blind as the orbless scull among the stones

The word in question is “scull”:

It is easy to see why Bentley and Erdman read this word as such.  The first letter of the word is definitely an “s” and the fourth is an “l”.  Furthermore, the last letter could be read as an “l” written over an accidental “d”.  However, this example becomes more complicated when you take into account the fact that the second letter (which Bentley and Erdman read as “c”) resembles the way in which Blake writes the letter “e” when it follows the letter “s”.  Look at the first “e” in the following image (the word is “serpents”, taken from object 1 of Tiriel):

The third letter in “scull” looks like a “u”.  However, it could also be an “a” that is not fully closed at the top (in other words, the first and second upward strokes don’t meet).  This actually happens elsewhere in this particular object (although the gap is not quite as pronounced).  Note the first “a” in the first image below and the second “a” in the second:

Now, compare the “a”s above with the “u” in “thus” (also from the same object):

They are quite similar.  This leaves us with a reading of “scull” as “seal_”.  With regard to the last letter, I would suggest that—as opposed to Bentley’s and Erdman’s readings of (presumably) an “l” written over a “d”—we read the reverse or a “d” written over an “l”.  The word in question then becomes “seald.”  If this is the case, Blake wrote “seall” and then corrected himself.  Now, “scull” is still a possibility (and will be noted in the eventual Archive publication).  However, while it would be an easy slip for Blake to write “seall” (as in “seal”/present tense) when he meant to write “seald” (“sealed”/past tense), it is less likely (although, of course, still possible) that he would accidentally write the letter “d” at the end of the word “scull”/“skull”.

Finally, “seald” (like “scull”) makes sense in the context of the sentence.  To paraphrase:

Look at my eyes, blind as the orbless/eyeless/dead sealed/interred/buried among the stones.