FOUR ZOAS III / 44:20-46:12


 Beulah as a feminine
 protector for sleepers
seems nowhere in sight.





The relation of Ahania
to Enion anticipates the
 return of Los and Eni-
tharmon to the narrative
 surface.











 Fig B.3 (pp. 182-83)
maps the textual pattern
 of Night IV.




The narrative residue of
the two different Circle
 of Destiny events in
 Night I


station thus completes the analysis of the cycle narratively initiated by their
confrontation in Night I. But Blake has also been progressing in a linear
fashion at the same time. The end of Night III reveals how the transference
of Enion's lament to Ahania has been accomplished in the narrative. There
is no mention of any of the males who have dominated this Night. The
final narrative gesture focuses on the females who incorporate the con-
sequences of the narrative's masculine tragedy:
 Where Enion, blind & age bent wanderd Ahania wanders now
 She wanders in Eternal fear of falling into the indefinite
 For her bright eyes behold the Abyss. Sometimes a little sleep
 Weighs down her eyelids then she falls then starting wakes in fears
 Sleepless to wander round repelld on the margin of Non Entity
 (46:8-12)

By placing Ahania in Enion's former role, Blake reveals a level of analysis
deeper than before. We can now expect to re-experience the fundamental
narrative action of Nights I-III by returning to the Los/Enitharmon plot,
the important narrative structure that has been suspended for almost all of
Night III. It is Los and Enitharmon, deceptively absent from Night III,
with whom the imagery of "repelling toward Non Entity" was originally
associated in Night I as they drew the "Spectre" from Enion, and it was
Los and Enitharmon whose agency in Night II made it possible for Ahania
to hear Enion's lament, issuing in the "fall" of Urizen (as "Prince") in Night
III. Night IV displays the return of Los, Enitharmon, and the "Spectre"-
now, in the context of a surfaced Tharmas (both on the surface of the text
and the surface of the water), separated out as a character who can interact
with Los and Enitharmon in the plot. Blake signals in the repetitive final
words of Night III that he is about to move forward.

 Telescopic Reduction in Night the Fourth

 When Urizen casts out Ahania in Night III, it drastically undoes the
Circle of Destiny, one of the earliest and most problematic elements in the
poem: "The bounds of Destiny were broken / The bounds of Destiny
crashed direful & the swelling Sea / Burst from its bonds" (43:27-29).
Although this catastrophic event might suggest a return to the pre-Circle
of Destiny state-the hiding/searching dialogue between Tharmas and
Enion-such a return is no simple matter, for the Circle of Destiny
emerged in two radically conflicting contexts in Night I, one in which it
appeared to be a pre-existent feature of the poem's world and one in which
it was created in the narrative by Enion out of prior textual details.
 In the Circle's first appearance in Night I Tharmas divided from Enion
by turning round the pre-existing Circle and plunging into the sea. Uri-
zen re-enacts this movement by inversion in casting out Ahania, which
not only divides him from her but results in his fall into a state that releases
Tharmas from the self-imposed "bonds" he originally invoked in turning