Upon reading “The Mental Traveller” by
William Blake, D.G. Rossetti who
initially published the manuscript declared it a “hopeless riddle.” It is with
that knowledge that I very happily decided to take a crack at interpreting it
to accompany my current read, John Gardner’s Grendel. Gardner opens the book
with an except from the poem: “and if the babe is born a boy/ he’s given to a
woman old/ who nails him down upon a rock/ catches his shrieks in cups of gold”
(lines 9-12)
The poem is rich with imagery,
specifically biblical imagery. The aforementioned child seems like a model of Christ,
as he is pierced on “both his hands and feet” and crowned with “iron thorns
around his head.” Additionally, the “woman old” who initially nails him to the
rock and feeds off of shrieks closely resembles the Whore of Babylon from the
book of Revelation, a lady who was “adorned with gold and precious stones and
pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations” (Revelation
17:4).
Additionally, mythological
references are present, particularly a reference to Prometheus. Similar to the
infant boy, Prometheus is chained to a rock as an eternal punishment for
stealing fire from the gods and giving it to man. His liver is pecked out daily
by an eagle. The liver was believed to be the organ associated with life and
emotion in the same way that the heart is the organ that is more modernly
associated with emotion.
However, the biblical imagery and
mythological references seem very ironic when juxtaposed with the author of the
poem himself: William Blake is probably best known for developing his own
mythology based on religion in which God is a tyrannical figure, while the
Luciferian figure Ork is regarded as a
hero for rebelling against the tyrant god. The majority of the belief system
was based on the concept of contrast, the idea that with light there must be
dark, and with creation there must be destruction to create balance.
In my personal interpretation of
“The Mental Traveller,” the idea of this balance was what I found to be one of
the most prevalent themes. The poem is structured in a cyclical pattern, in
which the old woman feeds on the energies of the infant to prosper and regain
her youth, and then the infant, now a youth, must deprive the woman of her
energy. The cycle repeats itself as the female character and male character
struggle against one another. However, the struggle is necessary for the
survival of both parties: one cannot exist without the other. They feed off of
each other and one can’t live without the other.
I think that this is
predominately why Gardner chose to open Grendel
with an excerpt from this poem: to introduce the idea of interdependence.
Similar to the man and woman in the poem, Grendel and the Danes need each
other. Grendel fuels their religious and societal beliefs: without being able
to identify him as evil, the Danes would not be able to identify of appreciate
goodness. As the dragon says, Grendel “improves” the Danes by giving them
something to believe in. The Danes reciprocate this by giving Grendel something
to believe in: The Danes give Grendel something to despise through their
wastefulness and hatefulness.
“The Mental Traveller” was a
mystery when I started reading it. It still is, for the most part. But overall,
my take away from it was the motif of interdependence, how two halves are
necessary for the creation of a whole, and that one half causes the other half
to thrive.
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