BEGINNING THE NARRATIVE PROPER


 The "narrator" at once
 becomes a tool of
 analysis-as if the nar-
 rator were a character
 with subjective con-
 sciousness (but is not).


 How beginning with
 Tharmas undermines
 Newtonian origin





 Arbitrary versus neces-
 sary origin







 The "Parent power" is
 initially ungendered.












Text as flight and as pat-
tern in Newtonian and
Four Zoas incarnations


sense arbitrary (or at least optional, expedient), for at first glance it pre-
sents itself as simply a point of departure-other, prior attempts to
"begin" the narrative in the preceding lines having failed.
 Following immediately upon the pseudo-invocation which has just
 fragmented the narrator's identity several times over, this command be-
 trays the narrator's own desperation. In seizing this apparently arbitrary
 point of departure in medias res Blake seems to be falling into the trap of
 presupposing another, hidden, ungraspable, non-arbitrary origin, thus
 providing exactly what the Newtonian reader yearns for. The appearance
 of the words, "Tharmas Parent power," however, suddenly revises the
 initial impression of desperate arbitrariness by demanding that this is the
 only beginning possible, for it purports to invoke a stable continuous
 identity (the character/name "Tharmas") who is (by implication, since the
 copula is deleted) the primordial origin, the structural nucleus or "Parent
 power" out of which the subsequent events of the narrative will be gener-
 ated.3 In this move, Blake undermines the prior arbitrariness of the point
 of departure but seems to provide something even more Newtonian
 instead: the primordial origin and identity of the narrative world itself,
 which appears to be neatly closed off by the intrusive period following
 "power." The second half of the line, however, turns back on both Newto-
 nian originary urges. While the arbitrariness of "Begin with" was
 immediately revised by the substantiality of"Tharmas Parent power," the
 second half of 4:6 (following the period) retroactively undermines the
 stability of the substantive identity/origin Tharmas (and the act of begin-
 ning itself) by characterizing this "Parent power" as an act of vanishing or
 terminating-"darkning in the West"-thereby problematizing the ori-
 gin (in both its arbitrary and substantive forms) by initiating here, at the
 verbal edge of the first explicitly spoken words of the poem (4:7ff), the
 possibility that the origin is (in its essence or being) constantly vanishing,
 asymptotically closing.
 Blake's final move in this line is thoroughly anti-Newtonian and
 retroactively clarifies the degree to which the line's prior gestures toward
 Newtonian origin and identity occur expressly for the purpose of drawing
 Newtonian consciousness into its own ontological vortex. This single line
 therefore displays the Janus-faced nature of text as flight and text as pat-
 tern, both of which now clearly have Newtonian as well as Four Zoas
 functions. "Begin with" enacts the Newtonian text as flight in that it
 gestures toward something absent or repressed by the present words; the
 entire statement prior to the period functions as the Newtonian text as
 pattern by its centering, organizational focus; while the words follow-
 ing the period act as anti-Newtonian or Four Zoas text as flight by retroac-
 tively interfering with (virtually ruling out) the prior narrative assump-
 tions concerning origin and identity and as text as pattern by implement-
 ing a new subversive process model of origin and identity.
 Blake takes a calculated risk in opening the narrative proper this way,
however, because the Newtonian temptations that he invokes to create the