VERBAL FRICTION AT THE BOUNDARY OF VISION


moment she calls forth explicit war.
 With this auditory disappearance, Luvah and Vala, who were the focus
of contention in the interchange between Los and Enitharmon (indeed,
they are the characters who surreptitiously acted out the roles of Los and
Enitharmon in those visions) suddenly enter the narrative proper in the
form of "Spirits," thus inhabiting the role of "the rebellious Spirits of
Heaven" Enitharmon wished to repress by calling Urizen down
(11:23-24). At their entrance into the narrative proper in this form, Luvah
and Vala inhabit a space that condenses imagery of the Circle of Destiny
and superimposes it over that of Enitharmon's false morning: they "shud-
der" and are enclosed in an "Orb," a perspective transformation of the
"Globe" form of the Circle of Destiny; but, like the false morning, their
Orb is "an orb of blood." Since it was simultaneously a version and a
product of Enion's sexual union with the Spectre, the Circle of Destiny
was the "perverse & wayward" (5:22) form of Los and Enitharmon them-
selves. Since Luvah and Vala entered the poem covertly playing out the
roles of Los and Enitharmon, those earlier aspects of Los and Enitharmon
are now sealed up in an orb, a perspective transformation of the narratively
primary form of Enion's weaving-the Globe form of the Circle itself.
Further, Los's speech had emphasized the exceptionally bloody relation of
Luvah to Vala; thus, Los's ambiguous smiting of Enitharmon now crystal-
lizes in the narrative proper as an orb of blood (an image that is suppressed
as soon as it is registered,just as both Luvah and his knife are "invisible").
 This massive compression of transformed details immediately follow-
ing the Los/Enitharmon interchange ushers in a structurally crucial line-
"Eternity grand & was troubled at the Image of Eternal Death" (12:4)-
which is repeated almost exactly at line 18:9. In the present context it
marks the boundary that the subordinate characters transgress in migra-
ting out of the interpolated visions; at 18:9 it signals the major perspective
shift of Night I from the Tharmas/Enion bracket to the Eternity bracket.
At 12:4 Eternity seems to be responding to the entrance of subordinate
characters into the narrative proper, but most directly Eternity's groan
seems to be a reflex to the image of Luvah and Vala's bloody orb, an image
soon to be connected with Eternity as "One Man" (13:4-10); at 18:9,
however, Eternity seems to be groaning in response to Enion's lamenta-
tion and its corollary "Exudation" from the Man's limbs. While it is
unclear whether Eternity's groan in 12:4 is the "Groan... heard on high"
(12:2), it is clear that this Eternal groan immediately occasions the entrance
of the Man (called "Fallen" in Enitharmon's vision, now relabelled "Wan-
dering" as he takes on that aspect of Los and Enitharmon's prior identity)
and of Urizen: "The Wandering Man bow'd his faint head and Urizen
descended" (12:5). Associated with the brain in Los's speech, Urizen
seems literally to descend out of the "Wandering Man's" faint head as he
bows it (parodying Tharmas' bending from his clouds and stooping his
innocent head as he called for the "Wanderer" to return [5:9-12]). This
event completes the transition of characters out of the interpolated visions:


The entrance of Luvah
and Vala into the narra-
tive proper superim-
poses sequential textual
moments.
















The first appearance of
the line "Eternity
groand..." which stands
at crucial narrative
boundaries in Night I












The Man wanders out of
Enitharmon's song into
the narrative proper.