FOUR ZOAS III / 39:18-40:8


 Lining through these
 two lines serves to dis-
close them as if through
a cloud (as in the lining
 through of "shadow"
 and "Ahania").

 Erdman includes 39:18
 and 40:1 in italics and
 brackets prior to the
 1982 edition and un-
bracketed and in regular
 typeface in the 1982
 edition.


 The emergence of an
explicitly male Shadow:
the encroaching of the
 sexual plot into the
 political


anger breaks through at these three points because he glimpses that
Ahania's tale only thinly disguises his own culpability and impotence by:
1) transforming Urizen's action into a story that ostensibly places culpabil-
ity on other characters; and 2) specifically excluding Urizen from the
narrative surface, an implicit acknowledgment by Ahania of Urizen's
impotence. In short, Urizen faces a double-bind: if he takes her tale as an
allegory for his own actions, then he is culpable; if he takes her tale at face
value, then he has no active role whatsoever in the power struggle (since he
slumbers), implying that his visions of great power have been delusions of
grandeur in his sleep.
 It is uncertain whether or not Blake intended to leave lines 39:18 and
40:1 in the poem as they are lightly lined through in pencil (E750, 830):
"But saw not Los nor Enitharmon for Luvah hid them in shadow / In a soft
cloud Outstretch'd across, & Luvah dwelt in the cloud." If these lines
remain in the poem, they partially undermine the baffling quality of the
emergent delusion by bringing to narrative consciousness Luvah's pre-
sence prior to his descent from the cloud and by making explicit the
connection between the Man walking with Vala in Night III and the
moment in Night II (30:56) when Los and Enitharmon's presence sub-
stituted Vala for Ahania. If these lines are deleted, the reader becomes
much more a victim of the delusion to which the Man falls prey, even
though Blake has given sufficient clues to make it possible for the reader to
fill in these gaps. In these possibly deleted lines Blake explicitly
reintroduces the parallel images of "shadow" and "cloud" (inhabited,
respectively, by Los/Enitharmon and Luvah), which then constitute the
focus of Ahania's vision. Without these lines the reader is as bewildered as
the Man at the mysterious appearance:

 Above him rose a Shadow from his wearied intellect
 Of living gold, pure, perfect, holy; in white linen pure he hover'd
 A sweet entrancing self delusion, a watry vision of Man
 Soft exulting in existence all the Man absorbing
 (40:3-6)

Inclusion of lines 39:18 and 40:1 would reveal, prior to the Shadow's
rising, that what had previously appeared to be either a conscious plot of
Los and Enitharmon in Night II, or a distorted product of Urizen's cosmic
architecture, is now under the control ofLuvah. The "shadow" or "cloud"
of lines 39:18 and 40:1 reasserts the imagery of the "secret cloud" which
Los and Enitharmon desired to "rend" in Night II in order to divide
Urizen from Ahania. The "cloud" in Night II was Urizen's jealous reflex
to Enitharmon's disguising herself as Ahania. The imagery in Night III of
"living gold," "pure, perfect, holy; in white linen pure he hover'd" (40:4)
absorbs the central image of Urizen's heaven, "gold," but attaches to it new
implications that could not be seen in the limited hierarchical perspective
structure of Night II. The Man's shadowy creation now becomes a male
(instead of a female like Ahania or Vala) "self delusion," a narcissistic