Talk:The Mental Traveller

A fact from The Mental Traveller appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 28 July 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the William Blake poem "The Mental Traveler" went unpublished during Blake's lifetime but was translated multiple times after his death?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/July.

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Lede[edit]

The italicised [my italics] part of the lede quoted here – "the poem is part of a collection of unpublished works called The Pickering Manuscript and was written in a manner that was to be read from the collection" – doesn't make much sense and should be clarified. The manner is read from the collection? Eh? Ericoides (talk) 06:25, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Read from the manuscript, i.e. it is not a "draft" to be published. It was meant to read like a diary is meant to be read. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:14, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for making the change. Ericoides (talk) 20:22, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Revision[edit]

I found some principal mistakes in the article and decided to rewrite it. However I left everything that I thing is acceptable. The mistakes were about wrong references to S. Foster Damon that I didn't find in the text of his Blake Dictionary, and also about the attempt to present his individual point of view as an universal one. I used a few more sources that give more profound explanation to this extremely complex poem, and provide comments to each of 26 stanzas. As I think, the article became much more informative. But I was criticised, see: here by User:Ottava Rima, who wrote me at the meta.wikimedia.org. I am answering here. Dmitrismirnov (talk) 15:12, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, I think the additions look good. I haven't done a full read through (tired, and it's been a long couple weeks). The article probably needed an expansion. That being said the line by line breakout how it is organized now is a little overwhelming. Perhaps a more thematic organization of those textual discussions, like other strong fiction and literature articles. Remember, an internet reader is largely not going to be looking for a complete breakdown of all the texts (this might be a good annotation project for on Wikisource) but rather a summary of the available scholarship.

As regards Rima's general aggressiveness, he was banned from the project for being too aggressive towards other users. His feedback should be taken as it is: sometimes the critiques are valid, only if they are actionable and constructive, otherwise its one of the cases of internet making it really easy to attack other people, Sadads (talk) 02:53, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Textual error[edit]

I found what I believe is an error in the text as given. Line 63,

The Senses will themselves in fear

should, I believe, read instead

The Senses roll themselves in fear

I have not made this correction yet because I'm concerned this might be a textual variant unknown to me. I don't want to make a change that would mix together two different versions or anything like that.

Please comment.

Thank you. Dratman (talk) 13:44, 30 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]