DIALOGUE BECOMES WEAVING


As he confronts this contrast, the agony of his internal division becomes so
intolerable that for relief his voice suddenly undergoes transformation'3 as
he radically shifts the scene to "Eden," another realm entirely. He invokes
this "Eden" (which Blake revised from "Beulah") as a fictional, wished-
for male dominated realm to which he can flee in the guise of memory; it
significantly shares none of the properties of the "Eden" described in the
poem's pseudo-invocation. Tharmas' defensive shift to a version of Eden
that is designed to deflect his immediate distress retroactively calls into
question the grounds of the preceding conversation and brings into exis-
tence the conditions for the next phase of action, the weaving of the Circle
of Destiny from the anatomized threads of that conversation.

 Phase II: Re-enactments and transitions
 Two competing metaphors -weaving and bodily union-immediately
re-enact and transform the primary Tharmas/Enion conversation. Be-
tween these re-enactments, Blake inserts (by revision) transitions that
exploit pseudo-propositional syntax to introduce new information as if it
were decontextualized fact. These transitions are themselves alternative
enactments or interpretations of sexual division that significantly invert
and interfere with each other-a male patriarchal vision of Eden and a
feminine realm of Beulah. In the first transition, beginning "In Eden
Females sleep the winter...," Tharmas defines Eden as a world that exists
for the sake of males, where subservient "females" weave veils to "hide"
themselves, and from whose deaths "Males" are renewed. This speech,
which is generated from the contrast between organic Enion and atomic
Tharmas, introduces the image of weaving as a mediation between (and
precondition of) female sleep, death, and seasonal rebirth. As the conver-
sation suddenly takes on the characteristics of a pseudo-propositional
interruption, the weaving metaphor unobtrusively assimilates and virtu-
ally replaces the anatomization metaphor.
 Enion interprets Tharmas' shift to the language of Eden as an implicit
accusation of her failure to renew him by her death, for she replies,
"Farewell I die I hide from thy searching eyes": in this gesture Enion
reverses the initial poles of accusation in their conversation. Throughout
his utterance Tharmas has become increasingly aware that his hiding from
Enion's scrutiny is itself a form of examining or anatomizing the Emana-
tions that he initially perceived as being "Lost." Now this process of
dialogical self-revelation completely inverts the initial situation in which
Enion examined Tharmas' soul. Rather than searching him, she accuses
him of examining her with his "searching eyes": her act of anatomizing
Tharmas by examination is simultaneously a state of being anatomized by
Tharmas. Thus when Enion begins to weave, it is not Tharmas' fibrous
anatomy she uses but "Sinewy threads" "From her bosom"(5:6). After Thar-
mas "Turn[s] round [the first appearance of] the circle of Destiny" and
sinks into the sea (5:11-13), these fibres become those of Tharmas'
anatomized Spectre (5:14-18).


The voice in 5:1-4 could
be an unacknowledged
intrusion by the nar-
rator.


First transition: the shift
to "Eden"
(5:1-4)










(5:5)







Enion is explicitly
identified as female at
this point of intersection
(5:6).