FOUR ZOAS I / 4:26-5:18


The interconstitution of
 Tharmas and Enion


 Although her visualization of his soul precisely recreates the Labyrinth,
complete with "Dark recesses," just as Tharmas had offered, her refusal or
inability to utter specific character names transforms the nature of their
confrontation. Enion places "Sin," instead ofJerusalem or Enitharmon, in
his secret soul, but is Enion herself closed in the recesses or closed
out? (Can she not return from the recesses or to them?) If it is she who is
closed in his soul, then she herself inhabits the role of Jerusalem/
Enitharmon/Emanation toward whom Tharmas implied she bore such
jealousy. This tacit identification could lie behind her inability to utter the
names of the other female characters whose role she virtually inhabits
here. (The revisions imply the same thing: "Jerusalem" was initially a
substitution by Blake for "thee Enion.") Blake climaxes his interfusing
of the two voices as one voice dividing by making explicit the extent to
which they presuppose each other: the decisive fact is that Tharmas and
Enion accuse each other of what they themselves are doing. The events are
interlocked aspects of each other and not simply independent events
whose partial aspects are grasped by Tharmas and Enion. Enion, for
example, accuses Tharmas of exhibiting a horrible appearance which she
perceives to derive from "Sin" in his "secret soul." Yet without her search-
ing there would be no secret; it is her looking that produced the secret.
Again, when Tharmas immediately accuses Enion of anatomizing him, he
is declaring that it is in fact her way of"Examin[ing] every little fibre of
my soul / Spreading them out before the Sun like Stalks of flax to dry"
(4:29-30) that creates the need for his secrecy. Her anatomization of Thar-
mas turns the "infant joy" -here initially a metaphor, but one which will
soon directly manifest itself in the narrative proper as the infant Los and
Enitharmon-into a vision "Horrible Ghast & Deadly," precisely the hor-
rible appearance she accused Tharmas of in her opening speech. As he
continues accusing her, saying she will "go mad" if she examines "Every
moment of my secret hours" (4:34-35), his gesture suddenly turns back on
him: now he is the one examining in a way that leads to his own madness
and suicide:

 I know
 That I have sinnd & that my Emanations are become harlots
 I am already distracted at their deeds & if I look
 Upon them more Despair will bring self murder on my soul
 (4:35-38)


 In the process of accusing Enion, Tharmas himself becomes self-accused.
 His accusation of Enion equals his own examination of his Emanations.
 The final irony ofTharmas'speech makes explicit how the internal dialec-
 tic reveals the conversation as emerging from one voice in the process of
 dividing.
 Tharmas expresses the crisis of his internal being in terms of the con-
 trast between what he perceives as Enion's temporal organic transforma-
(4:41-44) tion ("root," "flower," "fruit") and his own static atom/Nothing identity.