An Anthropocentric Approach to William Blake’s “The Book of Thel”.

“The idea of nature contains, though unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history.”— Raymond Williams 

Blake’s poem “The Book of Thel” deals with a psychological issue of purposelessness which is metaphorically projected as a journey from Innocence towards Experience. Blake’s own engraving portrays a young Girl standing under a drooping tree. In front of her blossoms a plant of a young couple. The young girl Thel in her ‘unfallen’ or innocent state, resides in the pristine valley of Har. Thel is an angel who is the youngest daughter of Seraphim. Kathleen Raine views Thel as a fairy because fairies are spirits of vegetation and in the engraving she stands amidst flora. Other interpretations suggest that the word Thel, having its Greek root can imply ‘will’ or ‘desire’ and the poem presents her desire for wisdom. Thel asks questions about her importance and the impermanence of beauty in the world and complains “no one hears my voice” but the lily and the cloud responds and answers her questions. Blake in this way gives voice to the voiceless. It is Thel’s own life, her knowledge that constructs the speeches of the inanimate things and in this way the idea of ‘desire’ works out its articulation in Blakes poem. In order to gain a better understanding, it is important to acknowledge what the ‘desire’ seeks and how it attains its objective. Desire’s natural tendency is to seek its object, the object is the origin as well as the end of desire and in this case it is wisdom. As none by traveling over known lands can find out the unknown, so from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more. For this reason Blake arranges a dialectic where Thel puts her questions and answers herself through the lily, cloud and clod. The worm does not have a speech in the poem. The Worm represents the object, origin, and end of Desire, and since Thel’s vocabulary lacks a word for this perception, she is unable to give it speech. The Worm speaks from the Grave of Experience, and he speaks of phallic sexuality and of death. Thel understands from the words of the clod that she is born of her parents. Marjorie Levinson comments, “Desire's true lover is the perception that gave it birth.” 

This act of self- consciousness propels Thel into Experience and she is rewarded with a visit to the realm of Experience. Here, Desire meets its origin (Death, Experience, adult sexuality) exerts its effect (locates its erotic contrary: the Worm), and realizes its end (death of Desire in its present identity, once it marries its object and origin). 

The poem exhibits an anthropocentric attitude where all other living and nonliving things of Nature are subjected to be used for humans and humans have to take care of everything. Eco-critics offer an alternate reading of this particular text. These critics point to the way humans have constructed, named and exploited nature, and thus created a discourse for human use. Blake’s poem is a part of the same discourse. They question this anthropomorphism or pathetic fallacy in this allegorical poem and finds out that Blake breaks this ideology of anthropocentrism. According to Hutchings, when “Lion, Tyger, Horse, Elephant, Eagle Dove, Fly, Worm, / And the all wondrous Serpent . . . Humanize”, they not only become human (as most readers have concluded) but make others humane in a “profound ‘ministry of reconciliation’”. Thus Blake gives importance on ecology where the setting of the poem, Har, can be read as ‘harmony’. In this harmonious state the process of psychosexual development completes and the journey from Innocence to Experience is done.