FOUR ZOAS I / 15:9-15:20


Subliminal textual inde-
 terminacy








Overt textual indetermi-
 nacy













 Syntax and imagery at
 the boundary of false
 dawn interlock the
 combatants.


problems. What, for example, do the listeningg Stars" hear-the Spider's
call to awaken his "Hosts" or the sound of the bow string singing on the
hills? There is a further discrepancy here: the Spider's awakening call
presupposes that his "Hosts" are asleep; yet the Stars must already be
awake if they are listening. Does this conflict suggest that the "Hosts" are
not the "Stars," thus partially dismantling Urizen's easy reference to the
"starry hosts" (12:16) in his power struggle with Los? "The first beam of
morning" (emerging, apparently, in response to the calling of the [starry?]
hosts) cries out to his "Father" (unidentified but presumably the sun) to
"depart," apparently in response either to the Spider's cry, Luvah and
Vala's triumph, or the listeningg Stars" hearing the undetermined sound
they hear. At this crucial first moment of dawn, then, Blake has under-
mined the possibility of assigning causal relations between sequential nar-
rative events, even though the syntax here does not particularly call atten-
tion to itself as problematic.
 In the next phase, however, Blake blatantly omits critical syntactic
 information and makes pronoun references completely indeterminable. Is
 it the "Father" or the "first beam" that "sudden Siez'd"? And is this
 omitted subject "Siez'd" by someone or something, or does he himself
 seize something (which is also omitted)? The repetition here of the verb
 "Siez'd" which was so crucial in Enitharmon's first vision-when "Luvah
 siez'd the Horses of Light" (10:13) and laughter "siezd" Enitharmon in her
 sleep (10:14)--suggests that this double seizure is somehow a re-enact-
 ment of Enitharmon's vision. The reference, especially, to the "Horse"
 strengthens the possibility that this figure whose identity is obscure is
 Luvah: not only did he seize the "Horses of Light" in Enitharmon's vision,
 but he was seen most recently riding triumphant in the sky. Urizen,
 however, was commanded by Enitharmon to "descend with horse" into
 the narrative proper (11:21). Just as the indeterminant pronoun referents
 and the omitted subject of"Siez'd" conspire to overlap the "first beam"
 with the "Father," the obscure identity of the horseman covertly overlaps
 Luvah and Urizen though neither is named. Is it the Horse or the rider
 who "smelt the battle / Afar off"? Or do the two fuse into a single centau-
 rian figure at this point? In this baffling context, the horseman cannot be
 identified simply with Luvah or with Urizen or even with some com-
 posite of the two, for Blake complicates this situation even more: "he
 smelt the battle / Afar off, Rushing back, reddning with rage." This image
 invokes the sun, "reddning with rage" at the break of day, initiating the
 bloody false morning. As such, this mysterious horseman fuses Tharmas
 and Los -Tharmas having entered the poem as a metaphorical (or literal)
 sun and father, a "Parent power. darkning in the West" (4:6) and Los,
 whose name easily reverses to Sol, having the power, like the sun, to beam
 light from his head (9:26). Yet this sun-like image could refer to Luvah
 suspended in his bloody orb or even to Urizen "the Prince of Light." Blake
thus forces the implicit combatants in the battle to interlock in the syntax.
It is not even certain that the "Mighty Father" is the same character as the