RETURN TO TRANSFORMATIONAL DIALOGUE


on tears: then Los and Enitharmon fed on fruit, drank goat's milk, and ate
the flesh of Lambs. Now these forms of feeding are transformed into and
revealed to be a parasitic drawing out of the Spectre's life, which Enithar-
mon experiences as "sweet delights." The contrast between the narrator's
negative view of the Spectre and Enitharmon's positive view parallels the
contrast between the narrator's perception of Enion groaning while her
voice sang "Glory, delight: & sweet enjoyment" (7:12). The nearly sub-
merged food metaphor will undergo a transformation and leap into the
foreground in the imagery of the gigantic "Feast" in the next sub-
embedded phase of Night I.


 Interpolated Visions: Sub-Embedded Structure I: Enitharmon's "Song
 of Vala"

 Blake now includes two lines of important new information that pro-
vide the substructure for the otherwise random surface details throughout
the Feast and beyond. These lines also mark the surface boundary of the
first interpolated vision: "We hear the warlike clarions we view the turning
spheres / Yet Thou in indolence reposest holding me in bonds" (10:7-8).
Though Enitharmon calmly explicates what the narrator called the "vi-
sions of Beulah" with which they "converse," the information she presents
is new since it does not seem to constitute slumberouss bliss." The auditory
half (the warlike clarions) will reappear in Enitharmon's "Song" in which
she constantly focuses on hearing while Los constantly repeats what he sees
(like the turning spheres). On its surface her Song is an attempt to rouse
Los from the "indolence" and "repose" (associated with Beulah) that hold
her "in bonds," indicating the degree of their intertwining at this point in
contrast to their prior separateness.
 Enitharmon's Song suddenly compresses so much apparently new
information that it seems to be arbitrarily inserted into the poem; in fact,
however, her Song makes it possible for details which were absent from
previous perspectives to surface as transformations of prior narrative ele-
ments. Since Enitharmon sings this minutely particular Song about
"repose" to rouse Los from his repose, and since Los interprets and
responds to this vision acted out by other characters as such a direct and
personal threat to his own power, Enitharmon's "Song of Death" must
function both as an analysis of the submerged relations between Los/
Enitharmon and their parents and as a causal element in the forward
motion of the narrative. Four named characters-Tharmas, Enion, Los,
and Enitharmon -who have already appeared in the narrative proper gen-
erate four more characters in Enitharmon's interpolated vision: "The Fal-
len Man takes his repose: Urizen sleeps in the porch / Luvah and Vala woke
& flew up from the Human Heart / Into the Brain; from thence upon the
pillow Vala slumber'd" (10:10-12).
 Operating as a perspective transformation, Enitharmon's utterance
fictionalizes her own present situation in the narrative proper into a para-


Accretion of the food
metaphor's significance


Horns of war and turn-
ing spheres materialize
in Enitharmon's speech
as aspects of sexual divi-
sion.








Enitharmon's song gen-
erates four new charac-
ters as analyses of prior
narrative conditions.