FOUR ZOAS IV / 47:1-23


The differences between
 Nights I and IV are
 superimposed.


exact phrase, "The bounds of Destiny were broken" (43:27), immediately
after Urizen casts out Ahania and after Tharmas casts out Enion, reveals
two prerequisites of the breaking of (the Circle of) Destiny, which are
aspects of one another. In saying "hatred now began / Instead of love to
Enion" the narrator echoes the more indeterminate first words of Enion's
response to Tharmas in Night I: "All Love is lost Terror succeeds & Hatred
instead of Love" (4:18). This moment at the end of Night III thus both
analyzes the beginning of Night I, prior to the first appearance of the
Circle ofDestiny, and institutes a radically different state in which Los and
Enitharmon as well as Urizen and Ahania are intimately involved.
Though the narrative returns to a situation analogous to that initial con-
text, the role of the Spectre (now absent from Tharmas and absorbed by
Los and Enitharmon) allows the narrative to move forward and not be
frozen in a closed cycle.
 Los and Enitharmon definitely appeared in Night III only in Urizen's
"decree," his futile attempt to thrust his present servitude into the future,
and possibly in the scene involving Luvah hiding in the cloud.7 Night IV
returns Los and Enitharmon to conscious narrative importance and thus
returns to the aspect of Los and Enitharmon that "draws out" or "drinks
up" the powers of other characters. Whereas Los unambiguously perceives
the various energies they have "drunk up" as being consolidated in "the
Eternal Man" (48:13), the narrator earlier identified the being they have
absorbed as "the Spectre" (9:3-8), making explicit one of the implications
of Urizen's identification, "the Spectre is the Man" (12:29). At first glance,
the landscape of Night IV, a "heaving deluge," seems contrary to the
context in which Los and Enitharmon last appeared in Night II, murmur-
ing in the flowers or stretching across from star to star. Yet, two options
the narrator gave them in Night II are directly related to the context of
Night IV: "Or standing on the Earth erect, or on the stormy waves /
Driving the storms before them" (34:13-14). These images constitute the
locus ofTharmas' reappearance in Night III when he "reard up his hands &
stood on the affrighted Ocean /...& stood on the resounding shore"
(44:21-22) as well as the stormy deluge on which Tharmas rides at the
opening of Night IV. In Night I Los and Enitharmon did not speak to one
another until, after the narrative emphasis on their pastoral, sexually
chaste wanderings through the moony spaces of Eno, "the two youthful
wonders wanderd in the world of Tharmas" (9:34). And Los, in his
response to Enitharmon there, separated "this bright world of all ourjoy"
from "this cold expanse where watry Tharmas mourns" (11:16 and 11:18),
yet implied their identity by the referential indeterminacy of "this" in the
absence of a concrete act of pointing. Urizen's descent from "this world"
of joy in the brain into "this cold expanse" in Night I is transformed
tragically for Urizen in his fall into the chaotic form of Tharmas here in
the context of Night IV. His initial utterance in Night I-"Now I am God
from Eternity to Eternity" (12:8) -seemed to emerge from a vacuum; now
in Night IV Los and Tharmas each alternately claim to be "God" and enact