FOUR ZOAS I / 14:5-18


 Repetition marks the
 Feast Song as the most
 deeply embedded
 structure
























 A new character,
Ahania, is generated by
 Urizen's forgetting.


mat doubly clear, it is virtually impossible to locate the precise point at
which the Song itself shifts from statement to response: Blake overlaps the
phases in such a way that in the center it is as if both groups are singing
simultaneously in order to obscure the fact that a transition is taking place.
Yet the narrator introduces the Song by saying that "Spirits of Flaming fire
on high, govern'd the mighty Song" (14:5) but concludes the Song by
simply saying, "Thus Sang the Demons of the Deep" (16:13), as if he is
unaware that as the Song ends it is being sung by singers different from
those with which it began. Blake frames the entire Song by returning,
after it is over, to an exact repetition of the phrase, "Los & Enitharmon sat
in discontent & scorn" (16:18), clearly marking the Song as the most
deeply embedded structure of Night I.
 Following the Song, the originally indefinite "Horns" of response
(14:3-4) have been transformed into the "Clarions of War" (16:13), instru-
ments that had "ceast" when Enitharmon stopped speaking (12:2). Now it
is not the "Organs" but the horns, the Clarions of War associated with the
Demons of the Deep, that produce the Feast (16:13-14). Following the
Song, Los and Enitharmon become "Enormous," as ifengorged by ingest-
ing it, while Urizen reappears only to sigh with "faded radiance"
(16:15-16). Both Los/Enitharmon and Urizen have been affected by the
Song as food, but in opposite ways. As the Song insensibly shifts from the
statement sung by the "spirits" and "Souls" obliquely associated with
Urizen to the response sung by the Demons, spatially associated with
Tharmas, Urizen's faded radiance brings into focus the fact that the Feast
celebrates Los and Enitharmon's marriage and not Urizen's "Victory." Los
and Enitharmon thus feed off the Demons' Song, while Urizen ("the
Prince of Light") is drained of radiance, much as Enion was drained of her
"Spectrous life" (9:7-8) while Los and Enitharmon grew enormous like a
wave (8:3-4). As if in reflex to this fading, the narrator suddenly reveals
that Urizen is "forgetful of the flowing wine / And of Ahania his Pure
Bride but She was distant far" (16:16-17). Only after the Song has closed
does it become known that the "Nuptial Song" was for Urizen as well: he,
too, has a Bride, a "Pure,"sexually unviolated Bride, who enters the poem
in the state of being forgotten and spatially distant from the Feast. Urizen's
explicit forgetfulness of his Bride (who, up to this point, Urizen had so
completely repressed that even the narrator could not refer to her) equals
his faded radiance. Urizen's sexuality-hidden beneath his stance as "God
the terrible destroyer" -surfaces (simultaneously with the "flowing wine"
that induces semi-consciousness) only after Urizen has forgotten it. Yet
the present Nuptial Feast should surely remind Urizen of his Bride: the
wine ironically helps him repress his sexuality, but the very act of forget-
ting (and the contents of what Urizen forgets) thereby becomes available
to the narrator.