INTERNALIZATION OF WARFARE BY INTERFUSION OF COMBATANTS



"Father" to whom the first beam of morning called. Although this charac-
ter does "rush back," is this an act of departing (retreating from) or of
returning to the battle? And why does this figure "Siez[e] his bright
Sheephook"? In this context, the sheephook seems at best a makeshift
(albeit covertly phallic) weapon. The inclusion in this war of reference to a
tool primarily associated with mild peaceful herding of sheep or lambs
insinuates into this complex moment the otherwise excluded pastoral
world surrounding the Feast and by implication the sexual world of Beu-
lah created by the "Lamb of God." The fact that this sheephook weapon is
"studded with gems & gold" overlaps this "Mighty Father" with the
Spectre ofTharmas, who appeared as a "form of gold" in whose "depths /
The dazzling as of gems shone clear" (6:5-7). Finally, this ambiguous
figure who overlaps Tharmas, Luvah, Los, Urizen, and the Spectre of
Tharmas (by virtue of the particular associations with the sun, the gems,
and so forth) actually causes the Sun itself to "rush... down," as he had
rushede] back," by invoking the "shrill sounding" (15:14) of his whirling
sheephook.29
 By making the combatants aspects of each other, this confusing syn-
 tactic complex dramatically reveals the extent to which this warfare is
 internal to the characters. In bringing to the narrative surface the event-
 complex to which Tharmas elliptically referred in his opening speech
 (4:15), this section of the Song radically revises the initial conditions of the
 Tharmas/Enion interchange in the process of relating the plot of the
 Parent/Father to the emerging war plot. The next section of the Song
 continues to revise the relationship between the war and the sexual plots of
 Tharmas/Enion. As the Sun rushes down, the "Mountains" that had
 called out to each other in the first half of the Song, glorifying rebellion
 against "the harvest & the vintage," the source of natural food, of bread
 and wine, now have "fled away" (15:15). Vala, previously riding trium-
 phant in the bloody sky, now suddenly inhabits "desarts of dark solitude.
 nor Sun nor Moon / By night nor day to comfort her" (15:16-17). This
 development revises Los's lecture to Enitharmon that the Man seeks to
 comfort Vala, but she will not be comforted (11:6-7). This passage simul-
 taneously reveals how the desert issues from the war as well. Vala's role at
 this point in the Song intersects her status in Los's vision; the "trium-
 phant" Vala, on the other hand, explicates her role in Enitharmon's vision.
 The division of Tharmas and the emergence of the Circle of Destiny that
 launched the narrative proper are now redefined as subsidiary conse-
 quences of this war of confused identities: "Tharmas endurd not, he fled
 howling, then a barren waste sunk down / Conglobing in the dark confu-
 sion, Mean time Los was born / And Thou O Enitharmon" (15:18-20).
 The name "Tharmas" which appears at this juncture in the Song clearly
 signifies a perspective aspect of the total narrative field rather than a
 character with a univocally persistent identity: Blake overlaps crucial fea-
 tures from the earlier appearances of Tharmas in order to invert and
 contradict them. In the first segment of Night I, Tharmas "sunk down,"


Intrusion of the
sheephook as a weapon
of war displaces the
mildness of the pastoral
landscape beyond the
borders of the Song.














When the war plot is
embedded in the sexual
plot, isolated characters
merge most explicitly
into indeterminate
interfusion.






Cf. the Sun and Moon
flee in Night 11 (25:10)
and are pulled down in
Night IX (117:8-9).