THARMAS GRAPPLES WITH HIS PRIOR ABSENCE FROM THE PLOT


a complex power struggle similar to that enacted by Los and Urizen
in Night I. The action of Night IV analyzes superimposed moments of
Night I: Los and Enitharmon's absorption of the Spectre and the descent of
Urizen into the "world ofTharmas." It is no accident that the now Spectre-
less Tharmas inadvertently identifies himself with the fallen Urizen in his
amazing account of his cyclic existence:
 if I plunge beneath
 Stifling I live. If dashd in pieces from a rocky height
 I reunite in endless torment, would I had never risen
 From deaths cold sleep beneath the bottom of the raging Ocean
 (47:13-16)

The phrase "dashd in pieces" is precisely the one the narrator used at the
end of Night III to characterize Urizen's collapse (44:20). As Tharmas
addresses the vanished Enion he reveals that that fall was merely one aspect
of his existence: what seemed in the linear narrative of Night III to be a
catastrophic, unique occurrence is now treated by Tharmas as one man-
ifestation of a recurrent, "endless" cycle. The manner in which Tharmas
dropped out of the poem in Night I-plunging beneath the waves-is
given as his other suicidal alternative. Neither jumping off a cliff nor
trying to drown himself can fulfill his quest for "oblivion." In this context
it becomes problematic how he rose "from deaths cold sleep." Since he has
just admitted that his flowing down into the water in Night I merely
produced another form of living-"stifling" -to what does he refer when
he mentions "deaths cold sleep" (47:16)? This state is the goal he con-
sciously seeks now but cannot achieve. How could it have ever been
obtained? This problem results directly from the fact that Tharmas re-
enters the narrative without his Spectre.
 Tharmas' search for "oblivion" and "death" is the inversion of his life-
impulse, his desire to recover Enion. When Tharmas directs his verbal
gesture toward Los he does not focus on his desire for "oblivion" as he did
when he addressed the vanished Enion (recreating the opening of Night I),
but rather on his desire for "some little semblance" of Enion "To ease my
pangs of heart" (48:9-10). The shift of address from Enion to Los occurs
immediately after the lines: "When dark despair comes over can I not /
Flow down into the sea & slumber in oblivion" (47:22-23). This rhetorical
question denies his prior assertion that if he plunges beneath the waves he
will continue to live "stifling." The disjunctive language of his utterance
reveals that the state of his being he exposed to Enion is incomplete. His
exclusive emphasis on "oblivion" forces him to shift the object of his
address. The language that leads to this realization is riddled with an
unusual number of periods and therefore calls attention to itself:
 Are those who love. like those who died. risen again from death
 Immortal. in immortal torment, never to be delivered
 Is it not possible that one risen again from Death
 Can die!
 (47:19-22)


Tharmas' perception of
having been in "deaths
cold sleep": the way he
remembers his suppres-
sion from the narrative
surface (his sinking into
the sea in Night I and
being excluded from the
plot); alternatively, the
way he remembers Uri-
zen's fantasy of domi-
nance-Tharmas desires
his prior (narratively
suppressed) status.

Tharmas' death impulse
represses his sexual
desire.




Tharmas is divided: he
knows he has been
absent from the plot, but
he cannot figure out how
that could have been
possible.