THE PERSPECTIVE FIELD OF NIGHT II


the Tree of Mystery) no spoken gesture is requited in kind. In this sense
Nights II-VI trace the total breakdown of spoken dialogue as a means of
transforming narrative perspective. By the time Blake returns to conversa-
tion, his narrative will have been energized by the process of drawing out
and exhausting the perceptual implications of Night I's scheme of perspec-
tive possibilities. Just as Urizen does not find in Orc what he was expect-
ing, so we must be surprised, as Blake himself may have been, at the
sudden rush of narrative strategies that the first six (revised) Nights made
possible. Perhaps Blake's retroactive reconstruction of Night I was, in
part, born of his desire to prepare the reader for the long and arduous
journey on which he himself had embarked.


 Hierarchical Discontinuity in Night the [Second]


 In contrast to Night the First, which unfolded by linear embedding,
Night II focuses attention on Urizen, the most important figure to make
the transition from interpolated vision into the narrative proper in Night I
because his ponderous descent fundamentally redistributed the relation-
ships between the characters and events in Night I. Although all other
relationships in Night II are framed in terms of Urizen, Blake marks
radical perspective shifts by means of discontinuities within the narrative
voice itself. Night II operates through jumps between four fixed perspec-
tives on a single narrative pretext or event, Urizen's architectural creation
of the "golden Heavens." Each of these levels reveals and is constituted by
explicit knowledge excluded from one or more of the other levels.
 The perspective ofUrizen's creationas a redemptive act is the closest to the
 surface of Night II: it expresses (and is bound to) Urizen's consciousness
 that Albion has given him legitimate power to "rebuild" the universe from
 its present crisis state and his certainty that his aesthetic creation is positive
 and redemptive, despite the anxiety he feels and the suffering he glimpses
 on the fringes of his awareness. Urizen's intense attention to overseeing
 the massive details of this architectural wonder forces out of his conscious-
 ness the knowledge of all other aspects of his creation. Blake's narrative
 focus on Urizen as the great workmaster overwhelms the narrative with
 intricate details of his creation. This focus draws attention away from
 (represses) information that subverts Urizen's perspective.
 The subversion of Urizen's dominant narrative fantasy is accomplished
 on three levels: 1) the level of the Divine Vision which on three occasions
 abruptly intrudes in the narrator's voice, decreeing that Urizen's struggle
 to reconstruct the fallen universe is only ironically redemptive; 2) the level of
 the narrator's consciousness that identifies Urizen's grandiose attempt to
 respond to and correct the fall as equal to (the same event as) the fall itself-
 specifically, the physical, cosmological, and social consequences of divert-
 ing complete attention to creating a mathematical universe; and 3) the level
 of the sexual consequences of his creation, embodied by the characters Los


Fig. B.1 (pp. 138-39)
maps the textual pattern
of Night II.


Urizen is the focus of
Night II, while dis-
crepancies are products
of the narrator's frag-
mented voice.

The Four perspective
divisions of Night II



Urizen's creation as
genuine redemption











The Divine Vision: Uri-
zen's creation as ironi-
cally redemptive


Urizen's creation as
equal to the fall


The sexual consequences
of Urizen's creation