FOUR ZOAS I / 12:22-36


 Urizen's speech
reintroduces the Spectre
who had been repressed
 in the interpolated
 visions.




 Line 12:26: cf. Los and
 Enitharmon's debate
 concerning the Lamb
 (87:40-60); line 12:27:
 the Sons of Eden reap-
pear around the Lamb in
 Night VIII calling for
Jesus to "come quickly."
 (104:5-17)














Jesus enters the poem as
a "delusion" of Urizen's
 speech.


separate male identities who face off against one another. Urizen's
response is psychologically and ontologically appropriate. As soon as he
begins to exhibit the furious anger of Los ("Obey my voice young
Demon"), he withdraws into and compulsively repeats his initial utter-
ance of absolute separate identity: "I am God from Eternity to Eternity"
(12:23).
 In their conversation, Urizen and Los seem to repress Enitharmon com-
 pletely and focus instead on their separate competing male identities.
 Urizen's retreat into asserting, "I am God," consolidates his identity and
 returns him to his "complacent" power stance: "Thus Urizen spoke col-
 lected in himself in awful pride" (12:24). "Collected" here signifies not
 only self-possession and composure but also, in an economic sense, recov-
 ery of control or of possessions legally under Urizen's authority ("Obey
 my voice"). The "awful pride" that constitutes Urizen's subsequent speech
 recalls the "terrific Pride" (6:8) of the Spectre of Tharmas as he emerged
 from Enion's loom as a separate character. It is not surprising, then, that
 Urizen's speech returns the Spectre to consciousness, as Urizen's verbal
 battle tactic focuses on the dominant feature of Los and Enitharmon's
 wandering existence (drawing in the Spectre from Enion as sweet delight)
 which had been evaded in their interpolated visions:

 Art thou a visionary ofjesus the soft delusion of Eternity
 Lo I am God the terrible destroyer & not the Saviour
 Why should the Divine Vision compel the sons of Eden
 to forego each his own delight to war against his Spectre
 The Spectre is the Man the rest is only delusion & fancy
 (12:25-29)

Urizen's tactic is to undermine Los's claim to power by employing the
pseudo-propositional syntax and diction that align his utterance with the
earlier transitional phases of Night I which invoke Eden, Eternity, and
Beulah (created by the Lamb of God). Since this kind of voice seems to
come from beyond the framework of both the narrative proper and the
interpolated visions, it carries a substantial, ifinauthentic, authority. Sec-
ond, Urizen's speech suddenly introduces "Jesus," "delusion," and "the
Divine Vision" into the poem as aspects of the same structure. It is no
surprise that Urizen calls Los a "visionary," for Enitharmon has already
referred to Los as such at the moment she called Urizen down (11:21-22) -
in response to Los's claim that he could "see" the "invisible" Luvah and his
knife.
 When Urizen asks Los if he is "a visionary ofJesus the soft delusion of
Eternity," however, it seems like a rupture in the unfolding dialectical
mediation of terms, characters, and events; for neither "Jesus" nor "delu-
sion" has explicitly appeared before in the poem but both are introduced
by Urizen as if they were familiar and identical. Urizen continues using
definitions to separate "delight" from "Jesus" and from "the Divine Vi-
sion" while identifying "delight" with "the Spectre." Urizen thus opposes