SELF-REFLEXIVITY OF HIDING/SEARCHING


 In secret of soft wings. in mazes of delusive beauty
 I have looked into the secret soul of him I lovd
 And in the Dark recesses found Sin & cannot return
 (4:21-27)

In one construction of his speech, Tharmas had offered to hide Enion in a
"Labyrinth," as he had hidden Jerusalem; now Enion uses similar imagery
in asking that he hide himself from her, disguise himself, so that she "may
look upon [him] and live" (4:23). The context of this utterance-that she
wants to find a way to behold Tharmas and live-at first seems to dictate
that the "Shadowy semblance" is a disguised form of the terrifying Thar-
mas; yet she has just said that she will soon be "a Shadow in Oblivion"
(4:22) if she cannot behold him; thus "some Shadowy semblance" could
function as an appositive to Enion herself. Also, the clause, "Unless some
way can be found that I may look upon thee & live" (4:23) may syntacti-
cally conclude line 4:22 ("soon shall be a Shadow in Oblivion / Unless
..."), or it may introduce line 4:24 ("Unless some way can be found... /
Hide me..."). Depending on the syntactic link made here, the function of
hiding is radically altered: in the former reading, the act of hiding is a way
to prevent her diminishing into a Shadow; in the latter reading, the act of
hiding is a substitute for an authentic way for her to behold Tharmas and
live.
 It is in the context of this syntactic indeterminacy concerning the act of
hiding that Blake incorporates lines 4:24 and 4:25 into the text. These lines
seem, no matter how they are read, to have something crucial missing, as
if something is being hidden, not only from the reader, but from Tharmas
and perhaps Enion as well. These lines syntactically enact in the reader
Enion's divisive gaze upon Tharmas' interiors under the guise of her
request to be protected from gazing on him: "Hide me some Shadowy
semblance, secret whispring in my Ear / In secret of soft wings. in mazes
of delusive beauty." The repetition of "in" involutes the secrecy Enion is
attempting to invoke, while the intrusive periods segregate the phases of
secrecy from one another: the mazes of delusive beauty most immediately
refer to the textual complexities with which Blake is tempting the reader
at this point. By making it seem that Enion herself is in fact not gazing but
requesting to be exempt from gazing on Tharmas, Blake lures the reader
into feeling exempt from Enion's act of looking that retroactively pro-
duces the double form of terror (Tharmas' fear and horrible appearance to
her) from which she initially recoiled. The process is circular: her desire
for secrecy creates the need to look, and the need to look creates the desire
for secrecy. This circular dialectic of concealing and seeking manifests
itself to Enion as the terrifying yet impotent form ofTharmas whom she is
addressing as if he is separate from her. When, immediately following
these lines, Enion confesses to having made the decisive, apparently
irreversible gaze on Tharmas' interiors, she acts as if it happened before
she started to speak, when in fact, as with Tharmas, what she treats as
distant past has just been performed in the present.


The labyrinth: syntactic
indeterminacy in En-
ion's response




















Enion's self-reflexive
gaze