FOUR ZOAS IV / 48:5-28


 Tharmas' language also
 echoes Urizen's descrip-
 tion ofJesus as "the soft
 delusion of Eternity"
 (12:25) in extolling the
 virtues of the Spectre.












 Tharmas' reversal of po-
 sition regarding life and
 death













 Los's response re-enacts
 his struggle with Urizen
 in Night I: for one of the
 few times, a character
 "remembers" events that
have occurred in the nar-
 rative proper.


cipitated the Shadow, a self-delusion and reflection of the Man, it is the
smoky form of Tharmas that precipitates his confrontation with his own
self-analysis, Los. Tharmas' request is suffused with the imagery from
Enion's weaving of the Circle of Destiny in Night I and the episode
involving the Shadowy cloud of III: "Let Enitharmons hands / Weave soft
delusive forms of Man above my watry world" (48:5-6). The events of the
three previous Nights suddenly coalesce: the weaving of the Circle is the
ironic background for Tharmas' (pseudo-nostalgic) desire that Enithar-
mon weave him another self-deluding form; that the delusion is primarily
his is revealed by Blake's using "of" (not "for Man") and more directly by
Tharmas' inadvertent and unconscious reference to the shadowy delusion
of Ahania's vision. By fusing language from the cryptic confrontation in
Night III into the extended and undisguised confrontation of Night IV,
Blake reveals how the action that was perceived as and recognized to be a
self-delusion in Ahania's vision is experienced as not self-delusion at all by
the characters who were concealed in (repressed by) her vision.
 Tharmas' language is characteristically oxymoronic, marking not only
 his self-delusion but self-destruction as well. Tharmas desperately needs
 Enitharmon to create (by weaving) a "Universe of Death & Decay" (48:5).
 In reversing the order, placing the renewal ("Rebuild," 48:4) before the
 destruction, Tharmas reveals his unconscious parasitic internal depen-
 dence on Los. Tharmas is suddenly eager to involve himself in the cycle of
 death and rebirth that he so recently detested in his address to the vanished
 Enion. He hopes that such a cycle will return Enion to him in "some little
 semblance / To ease my pangs of heart & to restore some peace to Thar-
 mas" (48:9-10). In ordering Los to create the conditions for the cycle he has
 just bewailed, Tharmas inadvertently expresses his enjoyment of per-
 petual death and rebirth, though in implicitly associating such a cycle with
 the Circle of Destiny through the image of weaving, he lures himself into
 believing that the world he orders Los to create is an alternative to his
 cyclic death and rebirth. Narratively, however, this command imme-
 diately produces a Spectre bearing resemblance to one of the original
 key ingredients of the Circle of Destiny. This utterance inverts the
 weaving Enion began in Night I to "hide" from Tharmas'searching eyes;
 here Tharmas requests the weaving in order to find her, to bring her before
 his eyes.
 Los first answers Tharmas in gesture that is bodily as well as verbal:
 "Los answer in his furious pride sparks issuing from his hair" (48:11).
 While part of Los's appearance is reincarnated from the Los/Urizen con-
 frontation in Night I ("Los answer furious..." [12:18]), the light beam-
 ing from Los's head in Night I is diminished at this point to "sparks." Los
 is "furious" because he grasps Tharmas' words as an attempt to drown
 him: "Hitherto shalt thou come. no further, here thy proud waves cease"
 (48:12). Thus, by using a speech act that divides Tharmas from Enithar-
mon, from Urizen, and from Los himself, Los attempts to halt Tharmas'
threatening "proud" waves which are an aspect of Los himself. Los senses