FOUR ZOAS I / 5:29-37


 This deleted conversa-
 tion was possibly
 reinstated by Blake. See
 note 15.






 The second re-
 enactment: vegetative
 bodily union


The Lamb of God as nar-
rative precondition for
 the sexual union of the
 Spectre and Enion






 Second transition: the
 shift to "Beulah"


re-enact their division as a violent physical union. This bodily union
brings into narrative existence the secret cause of (the avoided event
retroactively presupposed by) their primal hiding/searching dialectic.
This second Beulah-oriented transitional section is an even greater inter-
ruption, both experientially for the reader and compositionally for Blake,
who inserted it in the midst of the action and deleted a long verbal inter-
change between Ehion and the Spectre.'5
 In the first narrative re-enactment, Blake introduced a new phase of
analysis by superimposing imagery of dismemberment (from the Thar-
mas/Enion conversation) over the imagery of weaving (from the first
transition). In the second re-enactment a similar complex superimposition
occurs. The loom on which Enion weaves the Spectre ofTharmas does not
become a loom of "vegetation" until after the second transition, which
reintroduces the Daughters of Beulah, this time in the role of giving a
"form of vegetation" to the Spectre; as females ofBeulah and not of Eden,
they make no reference to weaving. The Lamb of God's creation of Beulah
as a "Universe feminine" therefore becomes deeply implicated in the
physical ravishing of Enion by the Spectre that is about to take place in the
narrative as the final re-enactment of the Tharmas/Enion conversation.
 The transition between the first and second re-enactment of the initial
Tharmas/Enion conversation (that is, between the emergence of the Cir-
cle of Destiny and the bodily union of Enion and the Spectre) is not the
relaxing interlude from the horrors ofdivisiveness and pain it seems to be.
Rather, it establishes two central relationships between the perspective
analyses and the transitional material itself. First, tonally, this transitional
section is polarized from the narrative, as was Tharmas' transitional utter-
ance beginning, "In Eden...." Second, just as that transition was
immediately absorbed into the narrative action, so the information in this
second transitional phase calls into existence the sexual basis of both the
spoken confrontation and the bodily Circle of Destiny.
 The transition begins:


There is from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant rest
Namd Beulah a Soft Moony Universe feminine lovely
Pure mild & Gentle given in Mercy to those who sleep
Eternally. Created by the Lamb of God around
On all sides within & without the Universal Man


(5:29-33)


Since the opening conversation explored acts of avoidance, the sudden
emergence of this soothing narrative voice seems itself to be a form of
evading the immediately surrounding narrative events. The repetition of
"mild" and the use of words like "pure" and "pleasant" appear almost
bizarre in this horrific context of dismemberment and psychic division.
"Great Eternity" is suddenly inserted into the poem as a region from
which "rest" is a merciful relief, and Beulah is defined as such a place of
rest "from" (either derived from, away from, or temporally extended