SEXUAL CONVOLUTIONS OF LOS AND ENITHARMON'S WANDERING



Tharmas and Enion which focused on the terror and guilt associated with
sexual division in order to repress sexual union. The residual shame and
fear of the Tharmas/Enion plot (which Los and Enitharmon's actions are
analyzing) asserts itself in the present context to prevent the sexual activity
of which Los and Enitharmon are as ashamed and afraid as if they them-
selves had engaged in it.
 Thus, because the Los/Enitharmon plot functions as if it were stripping
away a layer of concealment from the Tharmas/Enion plot, Enitharmon
has "no power to weave a Veil of covering for her Sins" (9:29). In the
Tharmas/Enion plot, Enitharmon was associated with the "Sin" that En-
ion found and from which she wanted to hide; Enion could and did,
however, weave a "tabernacle" (5:7) or covering for "Jerusalem," also
associated with "Sin." This difference between the Tharmas/Enion and
Los/Enitharmon plots forces active jealousy to the surface: "She drave the
Females all away from Los /And Los drave all the Males from her away"
(9:30-31). The sudden reference to the absence of Males and Females
(whose presence was heretofore unsuspected) by virtue of their being dri-
ven away by jealousy sexually transcribes their repulsion of the maternal
Enion in the previous phase of narrative analysis. Enitharmon's inability
to cover her sins thus manifests itself in the form of multiple sexual divi-
sions of Los and Enitharmon, whose ostensible off-stage existence threat-
ens to act out in the narrative proper the sins Enitharmon cannot hide: her
desire and inability to hide sexual sins (which are in this context equivalent
to refraining from sexual activity) brings these sins into existence.
 These jealous divisions and frustrated attempts to hide constitute the
first analysis of Los and Enitharmon's power to attract and absorb the
spectrous life from Enion. They "wander" in "the Moony spaces of Eno"
until they return to the location of Night I's initial action, "upon the
margind sea," ironically fulfilling Tharmas' request, "Return O Wan-
derer" (5:12). A narrative tension between two simultaneous states of Los
and Enitharmon arises from the presence of the word "But" (9:34): they sit
and repose "upon the margind sea" while they wander "in the world of
Tharmas" (9:34), the world into which they were born. At the same time,
they are "Conversing with the visions ofBeulah in dark slumberous bliss"
(9:33),21 thus superimposing the transitional space of Beulah onto the
linear narrative action and allowing Beulah to function from this point on
as a more direct source of information. These "visions of Beulah in dark
slumberous bliss" are able to enter into the narrative because they cannot
be hidden by a woven veil, as Enion's were.
 Although Los and Enitharmon simultaneously converse with Beulah
and wander in Tharmas' world, the acts of sitting and wandering, like
Beulah and the world of Tharmas, seem to be different phases of their
journey. As soon as the narrator invokes the contrast between the visions
of Beulah and the world of Tharmas, Los verbalizes it in his first speech by
contrasting their parents'state with their own. He projects the qualities of
Beulah onto Enitharmon: "thy mild voice fills all these Caverns with
sweet harmony" (9:36), thus transferring the "Songs & loving blandish-


The irony of the "mazes
of delight" in which Los
and Enitharmon wander
in chastity and shame









Weaving as an allegory
for one aspect of The
Four Zoas text becomes
more explicit in the
Los/Enitharmon re-
enactment.



The labyrinthine logic
of the sudden materiali-
zation of multiple males
and females


























In line 9:36, Los is also
projecting onto Enithar-
mon the repressed voice
of the