FOUR ZOAS I / 4:15-25


Following one strand
through the labyrinth


 The second axis of
dialogical contradiction:
love/hate; liberty/duty


tion, while it was Tharmas who had voluntarily hidden Jerusalem (or
himself) in his own "inmost Soul."
 In the final phase of his initiatory speech, Tharmas projects his own
internal sexual division outward onto the separation of multiple Emana-
tions from multiple "Men"--ostensibly imported from the "Brother-
hood" of "The Universal Man" mentioned in the opening lines of the
poem (3:5-6) but structurally Tharmas' way of visualizing his own
divided identity: "The Men have received their death wounds & their
Emanations are fled / To me for refuge & I cannot turn them out for Pitys
sake" (4:15-16). This projection, however, completely inverts the initial
situation in which Tharmas' own Emanations were lost. This gesture also
retroactively revises the significance of Enitharmon, whose emergence
now reveals itself to have functioned as the turning point in Tharmas'
relation to the Emanations: contrary to the opening of his speech where he
called out for his lost Emanations, Tharmas now claims to have been
invaded by the Emanations of unnamed other "Men" (who, by virtue of
receiving "death wounds" share the fate but not the name of Los in the
poem's invocation [4:5]) and blames his inability to cast them out on the
"Pity" he asked for in 4:9-10.
 The words spoken by Enion following this elliptical speech do not
function as a response to Tharmas' words; rather they establish an alterna-
tive situation to which Tharmas was responding. Enion emphasizes the
breach between a presumed former state (which now seems to exist only
in her memory) and the present state of existence and locates the origin of
this rupture in what she perceives to be a radical change in Tharmas:

 All Love is lost Terror succeeds & Hatred instead of Love
 And stern demands of Right & Duty instead of Liberty.
 Once thou wast to Me the loveliest son of heaven-But now
 Why art thou Terrible
 (4:18-21)

What Tharmas characterized as a conflict between similar passions, Pity
and Love, Enion perceives as a drastic substitution of opposites-Love by
Hate and Liberty by Duty. In focusing on Tharmas' responsibility for the
situation, Enion not only turns attention away from her own involvement
(which Tharmas emphasized) but reveals, calls into narrative existence,
features totally unavailable through his utterance-Tharmas' fear and his
terrifying appearance. These features retroactively give an alternative
explanation for Tharmas' desire to hide Enion or to conceal himself from
her gaze. Yet as she proceeds to request what Tharmas seems already to
have offered her in his speech, their presumed separate identities begin to
overlap as syntactic categories again break down:
 and yet I love thee in thy terror till
 I am almost Extinct & soon shall be a Shadow in Oblivion
 Unless some way can be found that I may look upon thee & live
 Hide me some Shadowy semblance. secret whispring in my Ear