FOUR ZOAS I / 9:37-10:12


 Spectre/Enion union:
"female voice warbling
upon the hollow vales."





Narrative polarization
and interconstitution of
Beulah and the world of
 Tharmas


 Enitharmon's speech
enacts a false morning.


ments" (5:40) of the Daughters into the spatial context of the "Caverns" of
Tharmas' world. Though like Los and Enitharmon, their "Parents sit,"
Los contrasts Enitharmon's song to their parents' state: sittingn] &
mourn[ing] in their silent secret bowers" (9:37). This statement presup-
poses that several narratively sequential actions must be aspects of the
present event. If we assume that Enion has already been driven into "Non
Entity," that Tharmas has sunk down into the sea, and that the Spectre has
been absorbed by Los and Enitharmon (as the linear narrative insists), then
Los's awareness of and concern over simultaneously contrasting music -
Enitharmon's "sweet harmony" as opposed to their parents' "mourning"
-comes as a surprise. If, on the other hand, Los and Enitharmon embody
a more deeply embedded level of their "Parents," then the opening conver-
sation between Tharmas and Enion is an implicit aspect of this present
verbal interchange between Los and Enitharmon. Los makes this dis-
guised reference to the poem's opening conference between Tharmas and
Enion at the same moment the poem itself returns to the mode of explicit
conversation and initiates a sub-embedding of information within the
Los/Enitharmon bracket itself.


 First Sub-Embedded Structure: The Enitharmon/Los
 Interpolated Visions

 Within the Los/Enitharmon bracket lies an analysis of the relation be-
tween the Tharmas/Enion (primary) structure and the Los/Enitharmon
(or first embedded) structure. Although Los initiates this sub-embedding
by explicitly referring to their "Parents," the narrator has already marked
the entrance of this new perspective by mentioning the "world of Thar-
mas." This sub-embedded phase opens by inverting both Tharmas'
"darkning in the West" (4:6) at the poem's beginning and the imagery
associated with Enion's weaving and weeping: "Enitharmon answer
with a dropping tear & frowning /Dark as a dewy morning when the
crimson light appears" (10:1-2).22 Instead of answering with a mild har-
monious voice, Enitharmon's response at first imitates the mourning of
her parents: "with a dropping tear & frowning." This phrase flows over
into the next line, "frowning /Dark as a dewy morning," and what starts
out as a simile immediately constitutes both the setting and the inner form
of her speech. Her way of answering becomes a central fact of her inter-
polated vision, the complex and pervasive "false morning." Although her
speech begins as a direct response to Los, which confirms prior narrative
information, it also complicates that information: the action the narrator
reported as their drawing in of the Spectre (9:3-8) is, from Enitharmon's
perspective, an absorption of "sweet delights": "we draw in their sweet
delights while we return them scorn / On scorn to feed our discontent"
(10:4-5). At this point the food metaphor begins to take on even more
importance than it has already accumulated. At first, Enion drank and fed