TEXTUAL SWITCHPOINTS


 Night VIII, for example, makes maximum use of technique 6, while
Night II seizes on technique 2; Nights I, III, VIIa, and IX are strongly
influenced by technique 1; and so on. But these types are never simply
dormant while others operate: each can occur at any moment the narrative
permits, and each structure is struggling to be dominant at each point in
the narrative. Night II, for example, though initially controlled by spatial
imagery and by a spatialization of the narrative structure, is finally over-
whelmed by the emerging embedded structure of which Los and Enithar-
mon are the bearers. In addition to these supervening structures, without
exception the narrative of each Night of The Four Zoas shifts perspective
and/or plot focus approximately one-half to two-thirds of the way
through, though in each case the significance of such a shift is unique.
 Switchpoints at which one phase of structure transforms into another
are often marked either by the most radical discrepancies and gaps or by
quite explicit forms of repetition. Though there are always markers for
dividing the text into definite perspective patterns, these markers often get
buried, overwhelmed by other details. By continual use of excessive repe-
titions and discrepancies, Blake juggles the linear surface of the poem in
such a way that there are several legitimate ways of dividing the text, and,
since a serious shift of the boundaries within which perspectival structures
are deployed totally reorganizes the narrative field, such a transposition of
pattern markers at a critical point in the narrative could completely invert
the perspectival significance of an event.
 Ifa reader loses track of which details are perspective switchpoints in the
narrative and which are elements within a perspective structure, or misses
a key transformational signal planted strategically in a particular Night, or
disregards textual perspective markers altogether, the reader might well
be completely baffled by the apparently random flowing of events. In such
a state, the reader becomes vulnerable to intrusive appearances in the text
of conventionally providential figures (like the Lamb of God or Jesus):
these flashes or fragments of Eternity tempt the reader to believe that the
poem's complexities will be satisfactorily resolved by redemptive agents
in the text itself.24 This problem of perspective boundaries and redemp-
tion in the text itself is most urgent in Night the Ninth, which nearly
unhinges Blake's text and passes harshjudgment on any analytical method
which tries to penetrate it.
 The most powerful way Blake incorporates perspective structure into
the dialectic between character-originated and narrated information is in
the formation of "perspective analyses" of events -a process that reveals
how fully narrative processes and textual features constitute one another.
A perspective analysis of a prior event re-enacts the earlier event within the
same fictional framework -as when the key Tharmas/Enion conversation
in Night I is twice re-enacted, once in the metaphoric action of weaving
and once in the metaphor of sexual union. Blake overlaps contexts by
careful repetition of syntax and diction to subvert linear causal order and
make the two narratively subsequent actions function as retroactive trans-


Textual structures vie for
dominance in the
unfolding narrative.









Textual switchpoints:
repetition and/or discre-
pancy
















Careful attention to the
places where Blake
inserted redemptive
figures reveals that these
intrusions disturb rather
than relieve the reader.






Perspective analysis