ENION'S REPULSION: ENO'S INTRUSION


perspective analysis of the Circle; the subsequent perspective analyses of
this eighteen-line sequence reveal, however, that Los and Enitharmon
cannot draw the spectrous life from Enion without detouring through
Urizen and Ahania, Luvah and Vala, and the Man, characters who come
into existence through Los and Enitharmon's subsequent conversations
and are thus excluded from this initial compressed account.


 Los/Enitharmon: Transition

 Following these eighteen lines, Blake inserts a transitional section that
bridges the gap between the condensed account of the Los/Enitharmon
plot preceding it and the extended perspective analyses of this eighteen-
line condensation that will occupy the next two and one-half Nights. As in
both previous transitions, the shift from the first to the second phase of the
Los/Enitharmon bracket employs pseudo-propositional syntax. As in the
second transition, this syntax is infused with a tone of softness and deli-
cacy emanating from "Beulah." The actions of all three of these transitions
seem to be occurring in another realm of being from that of the narrative
proper. In each case, however, the narrative proper immediately reacts to
the insertion of the transitional material: with each successive transition,
the transitional events become more and more directly implicated causally
in the events of the narrative proper.
 In this third intrusive transition, the singular "daughter of Beulah"
named "Eno"20 performs an act akin to the multiple Daughters' creation of
salutary spaces. It astonishes Eno's "Sisters of Beulah," however, to see her
"soft affections" directed toward "Enion & her children," characters in the
narrative proper closely aligned with the "Spectre of Tharmas" whom the
Daughters fear. Eno's taking "a Moment of Time /And [drawing] it out to
Seven thousand years" (9:9-10) makes possible a spatialization of time and
thus retroactively creates the conditions for Enion's narratively prior
anatomization of Tharmas: the examination of "Every moment of [his]
secret hours" (4:35) and the "fibre[s]" of his soul (4:29). Eno's drawing out
action makes possible not only Enion's drawing the Spectre from Thar-
mas but also Los and Enitharmon's drawing the Spectre from Enion.
 On the other hand, Eno's opening the center of an atom of space
 (9:12-13) is in opposition to the Daughters' "closing" of the Gate of the
 Tongue. If this "opening" reverses the conditions that have thus far limited
 verbal interchange, it must take the form of the increasing amount of
 information that appears, not in the linear narrative proper, but in the
 intersecting world of spoken interpolated visions. Yet Eno's action is
 independent of the mysterious "Hand Divine," which is mentioned only
 to be hidden, "not yet revealed" (9:17). Thus, within her well-intentioned
 action lurks an apparently benign form of the narrative proper's hiding/
 searching motif. Eno's twofold action of drawing out and opening up
 makes possible both the initial Tharmas/Enion conversation and the next
 phase of the Los/Enitharmon plot.


The essential detour
through the characters
generated by the Los/
Enitharmon plot


The dialectical progres-
sion of the three transi-
tional phases














Eno's action makes
"windows into Eden"
(9:11), connecting Beu-
lah (feminine) with
Eden (male-dominated).






The narratively sub-
sequent and ostensibly
providential action of
Eno creates the condi-
tions for the emergence
of the Spectre's power,
yet reverses the prohibi-
tion on verbal discourse
(which exists in only one
stage of the poem's revi-
sion, see Note 16).