''Har'' is a character in the mythological writings of

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

, who roughly corresponds to an aged

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

. His wife, Heva, corresponds to

Eve Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...

. Har appears in '' Tiriel'' (1789) and ''

The Song of Los ''The Song of Los'' (written 1795) is one of William Blake's epic poems, known as prophetic books. The poem consists of two sections, "Africa" and "Asia". In the first section Blake catalogues the decline of morality in Europe, which he blames ...

'' (1795) and is briefly mentioned in ''

The Book of Thel ''The Book of Thel'' is a poem by William Blake, dated 1789 and probably composed in the period 1788 to 1790. It is illustrated by his own plates, and compared to his later prophetic books is relatively short and easier to understand. The metre ...

'' (1790) and ''

Vala, or The Four Zoas ''Vala, or The Four Zoas'' is one of the uncompleted prophetic books by the English poet William Blake, begun in 1797. The eponymous main characters of the book are the Four Zoas (Urthona, Urizen, Luvah and Tharmas), who were created by the fall ...

'' (1796-1803).

Synopsis

Many years before ''Tiriel'' begins, Har was overthrown by his children, Tiriel, Ijim and Zazel. As time went by, he and his wife, Heva, came to reside in the Vales of Har, where they gradually succumbed to

dementia Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affe ...

, regressing to a childlike state to such an extent that they came to think their guardian, Mnetha, is their mother, spending their days chasing birds and singing in a "great cage" (''Tiriel''; 3:21). After Tiriel loses his throne to his own children, he visits Har and Heva. Excited by the visit, although unaware that Tiriel is their son, they ask him to stay with them, but he refuses and resumes his wanderings. Later, after Tiriel has had most of his own children killed, he returns to the Vales with the express purpose of condemning his parents, and the way they brought him up, declaring that Har's laws and his own wisdom now "end together in a curse" (8:8); Upon this declamation, Tiriel then dies at their feet. In the ''Africa'' section of the later poem ''The Song of Los'' (1795), which is set chronologically before ''Tiriel'', Har and Heva are forced to flee into the wilderness, after their family rebel against them. In their exile in the desert, they then turn into reptiles.

Background

Mary S. Hall believes that Har's name is derived from

Jacob Bryant Jacob Bryant (1715–1804) was an English scholar and mythographer, who has been described as "the outstanding figure among the mythagogues who flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries." Life Bryant was born at Plymout ...

's '' A New System or Analysis of Antient Mythology'' (1776), where Bryant conflates the Amazonian deities Harmon and Ares with the

Egyptian Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...

deity

Harmonia In Greek mythology, Harmonia (; grc, Ἁρμονία /Ancient Greek phonology, harmoˈnia/, "harmony", "agreement") is the immortal goddess of harmony and concord. Her Rome, Roman counterpart is Concordia (mythology), Concordia. Her Greek op ...

, wife of Cadmus. Blake had engraved plates for the book in the early 1780s, so he would have 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" S. Foster Damon, ''A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake'' (Hanover: University Press of New England 1965; revised ed. 1988), 174 and the traditional spirit of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

Northrop Frye Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Frye gained international fame with his first book, '' Fearful Symmet ...

reaches a similar conclusion, but also sees divergence in the character, arguing that although Har and Heva are based on

and

, "Har is distinguished from Adam. Adam is ordinary man in his mixed twofold nature of imagination and Selfhood. Har is the human Selfhood which, though men spend most of their time trying to express it, never achieves reality and is identified only as death. Har, unlike Adam, never outgrows his garden but remains there shut up from the world in a permanent state of near-existence."

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...

agrees with this interpretation, arguing that "Har is natural man, the isolated selfhood." Bloom also believes that Har is comparable to Struldbruggs from

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...

's ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan ...

'' (1726) and

Tithonus In Greek mythology, Tithonus ( or ; grc, Τιθωνός, Tithonos) was the lover of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn. He was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the Naiad Strymo (Στρυμώ). The mythology reflected by the fifth-century va ...

from

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...

's poem of the same name (1859).

, "Commentary" in David V. Erdman (ed.), ''The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake'' (New York: Anchor Press, 1965; 2nd ed. 1982), 946 '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.

Blake's mythology

Both Har and the Vales of Har feature in Blake's subsequent prophetic work. The Vales of Har are mentioned in ''The Book of Thel'' (1790), and it is in the Vales where lives Thel herself. 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 unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har" (6:21-22). In the ''Africa'' section ''The Song of Los'' (1795), which is set chronologically before ''Tiriel'', Har and Heva flee into the wilderness, after their family rebel against them: Damon refers to this transformation as turning them into "serpents of materialism," which he relates back to their role in ''Tiriel''. Har and Ijim are also briefly mentioned in ''Vala, or The Four Zoas'' (1796-1803), where Har is the sixteenth son of

Los LOS, or Los, or LoS may refer to: Science and technology * Length of stay, the duration of a single episode of hospitalisation * Level of service, a measure used by traffic engineers * Level of significance, a measure of statistical significance ...

and

Enitharmon Enitharmon is a major female character in William Blake's mythology, playing a main part in some of his prophetic books. She is, but not directly, an aspect of the male Urthona, one of the Four Zoas. She is in fact the Emanation of Los, als ...

, and Ijim the eighteenth. Har's immediate father is

Satan Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as Devil in Christianity, the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an non-physical entity, entity in the Abrahamic religions ...

, representative of self-love in Blake, and his children are Ijim and Ochim (''The Four Zoas'', VIII:360).

Notes

{{William Blake, myth Cultural depictions of Adam and Eve Poetry by William Blake William Blake William Blake's mythology