REVISIONS TO THE BEGINNING


Father appears as a reflex to the sons' achievement of Brotherhood, from
which females (such as the Daughters of Beulah) are excluded.
 These observations concerning the spatial layout of the text do not, of
course, fully take into account the microscopic detail of the poem's surface
at this point. David Erdman points out that Blake made several tries at a
six-line introductory stanza, "with erasure on erasure"(E739, 819). The
original versions of these lines clarify the syntactic tension in a way that
(for whatever reasons) did not satisfy Blake. As they stand in Erdman's
edition in the state beyond which Blake revised no further (usually
attributed to his giving up), these lines read:
 The Song of the Aged Mother which shook the heavens with wrath
 Hearing the march of long resounding strong heroic Verse
 Marshalld in order for the day of Intellectual Battle
 (3:1-3)

The earliest layer of the text Erdman could recover made explicit the
relation of the "Song" to the poem we are reading, and the relation of both
the song and the poem to the individual reader of the poem:
 This is the [Dirge] (Song) of [Eno] (Enitharmon) which shook the
 heavens with wrath
 And thus beginneth the Book of Vala which Whosoever reads
 If with his Intellect he comprehend the terrible Sentence
 The heavens [shall] quake: the earth [shall move] [moves] (was moved)
 & [shudder] [shudders] (shudderd) & the mountains
 With all their woods, the streams & valleys: [wail](waild) in dismal
 fear
 [To hear] (Hearing) the [Sound] (march) of Long resounding strong
 heroic verse
 Marshalld in order for the day of intellectual battle
 (E739, 819, Erdman's italics)

The fact that Blake at some time numbered the lines 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 4, 5
(E739, 819), a revision that dictated some of the verb phrase alterations,
does not remove the fundamental gap between the three-line introduction
(which Blake revised no further) and the earlier longer deleted versionss.
In the original versions) the opening lines express the analogy between
the shaking of the heavens in wrath against the Song (which begins the
poem we are reading, the "Book of Vala") and the shaking of the heavens
infear at the comprehension by any individual of the "terrible Sentence" of
the Song/Book. In the final version, it is quite unclear who or what is
doing the "hearing": it is possible that the "heavens" are hearing the song
composed of "strong heroic verse" and are shaking in wrath against it; it is
also possible that the Aged Mother is doing the hearing and that her
"Song" is a wrathful response to the strong heroic verse that composes The
Four Zoas.
 As Blake left it, the revised version of these lines decisively compresses
 the reader into the ambiguity of the syntax, deletes the "Book of Vala,"


Textual discrepancies
stand at the threshold of
the poem.


Deletion of eruptive
imagery suppresses the
sexual dimension of tex-
tual origin.