THE VOICE WITHIN THE VISION


(10:15; 11:2) which is in turn the unconscious dream-state of the reposing
"Fallen Man." Luvah's and Urizen's vanishing from her story thrusts into
the foreground Enitharmon's relation to the Fallen One through the com-
plicating "visions of Vala" (10:16).
 Enitharmon's vision within a vision is comprised of the Fallen One's
words which, though they accept female dominance, reflect discredit on
Enitharmon herself: even in her own fictional tale, the characters take on a
wayward life of their own. The Fallen One's speech expresses aspects of
Enitharmon which she tries to repress but which force themselves out
through the words of her fictional character.24 The Fallen One first asks,
"Why is the light of Enitharmon darken'd in dewy morn" (10:17). His
question identifies this moment in the vision with the immediately prior
narrative context in which Enitharmon spoke to Los "Dark as a dewy
morning when the crimson light appears" (10:2). His subsequent ques-
tions incorporate into this vision details from earlier phases: "silence,"
"darkness," "terror," "Holy," "weep." His interrogation presupposes a
perceptual paradox, a confusion of knowing, which generates his ques-
tions: "Why dost thou weep as Vala? & wet thy veil with dewy tears, / In
slumbers of my night-repose, infusing a false morning?" (10:20-21).
 The Fallen One's confused questioning springs from key textual dis-
 crepancies. Enitharmon has just said that she laughed in her sleep (in
 visions of Vala) because she walked with the Fallen One (10:14-15), but he
 perceives her to be weeping. While Enitharmon tells Los she heard the
 voice among branches and flowers (a garden) the Fallen One sets the scene
 in his "halls" (10:19). Also, the narrator had said that Enitharmon could
 not weave a veil of covering, but the Fallen One perceives her hiding
 behind a veil. This latter perception derives from Enitharmon's power to
 hide (as if behind a veil) by fictionalizing her present situation through
 surrogate names. Her veil/false morning enacts her power of fictional
 substitution. And these interrogations feed indirectly into the narrative
 action and reveal in the last two lines of his speech how Enitharmon wants
 Los to relate to her:

 Why dost thou weep as Vala? & wet thy veil with dewy tears,
 In slumbers of my night-repose, infusing a false morning?
 Driving the Female Emanations all away from Los
 I have refused to look upon the Universal Vision
 And wilt thou slay with death him who devotes himself to thee
 Once born for the sport & amusement of Man now born to drink up
 all his Powers
 (10:20-25)

 The mighty Fallen One prefaces the sequence of events he describes by
asking Vala/Enitharmon why her "smile" "utters" darkness in his halls,
which parallels the darkening of Enitharmon's light in the morning: both
acts constitute a false darkness entering into presupposed light. Then her
act of weeping (as opposed to her previous laughing or smiling) con-


Gaps between Enithar-
mon's account and the
Fallen One's account
which she is quoting in
her Song








Substitution as a pri-
mary source of psychic/
narrative power: a simul-
taneous induction and
reduction of differences