LOS RE-FICTIONALIZES THE PAST


this threat in part because "Pride" was a characteristic of Tharmas' rising
Spectre (Los's narrative father) in Night I (6:8), of Urizen as he verbally
subdued Los (12:24), and of Los and Enitharmon in their wanderings and
drawing in of the Spectre (9:7, 23). At this point Los (proudly) assumes
responsibility for "drinking up" the "Eternal Man," even though he does
not connect that process with Urizen's fall. He flatly refuses to acknowl-
edge (or is unaware) that Tharmas is, his father, ironically referring to
Tharmas twice as "father of worms & clay" (48:16, 18), a slip which soon
reflects back on Los as he becomes the corruptible human body he binds
later in Night IV. Los recognizes Tharmas as a contender for power, but he
does not call him by name, in contrast to the Spectre of Urthona who
immediately refers to Tharmas by name. Los unambiguously claims,
however, that "Our God is Urizen the King" (48:15).
 As his speech unfolds, Los dialectically shifts from the unequivocal,
 "Our God is Urizen the King. King of The Heavenly hosts" to the more
 ambiguous, "We have no other God but he," to the most ambiguous, "he is
 falln into the Deep rough Demon of the waters" (48:15-18). Los seems
 unaware that in Night III it was not Urizen as "King" but as "Prince" who
 fell, while the "King" folded himself in despair (43:23-31; 44:1-3). Los also
 seems unaware that he is overlapping Urizen with Tharmas syntactically
 by means of the phrase, "into the Deep rough Demon," which not only
 addresses Tharmas but also (because of the absence of a comma after
 "Deep") asserts that Urizen has fallen into the form of Tharmas, the
 "Deep rough Demon of the waters[.]" Los's claim that "Los remains God
 over all" (48:15-18) neatly dispenses with the fiction of a legitimate pass-
 ing of the sceptre: it depends on his lack of awareness not only of the
 difference between Urizen as Prince and as King but also of the way
 Tharmas and Urizen inversely interconstitute one another.
 In this confrontation with Tharmas, Los's desire for upward mobility
 suddenly materializes as he consciously identifies "Urthona" as his past
 self for the first time in the poem: "I know I was Urthona keeper of the
 gates of heaven / But now I am all powerful Los & Urthona is but my
 shadow" (48:19-20). In identifying his movement from gatekeeper to
 "God" with the transformation of "Urthona" into his "shadow," Los
 reveals that what he perceives to be an event in his own history re-enacts by
 inversion the triumph of the shadow over the Man in Night III. Because
 what Los perceives as his "shadow" is narratively the absorbed Spectre of
 Tharmas, Los's speech temporarily halts Tharmas' waves.
 Tharmas is torn between "wrath" and "pity" toward Los. Thus, from
 Tharmas' perspective, he does not stay his waves because he dreads Los's
 threat-"Beware lest we also drink up thee" (48:14)-but rather because
 he "pities" Los even while his wrath at Los's threat urges him to rear up his
 waves. Their relationship to one another is reversed in each other's eyes.
 More ironically, Tharmas stays his waves because Enitharmon shrieks out
 that Tharmas' fury is to blame for the fall of Urizen and Enitharmon's
 "sweet world / Built by the Architect divine" (48:27-28). Unlike Los, she


Los's blind spots

In Night IV Los makes
no reference to, and
acknowledges no role
for, Luvah: he seizes as
truth the narrative event
from which he was
absent by name -the
passing of the sceptre at
the outset of Night II
(23:5).


Relation between the
absence of Luvah from
Los's speech and his
claim that Urthona was
gatekeeper: in Night V,
Urizen claims that both
Luvah and Urthona
were gatekeepers (65:3).


Los's claim to be "God"
reifies Urizen's role as
Los's surrogate father in
Night I.


Los's sudden identifi-
cation of his former self
as gatekeeper, a charac-
ter who stands at a
threshold, just as the
poem is at a narrative
threshold: this identifi-
cation, which intersects
Urizen's "memory" in
Night V (65:3) couldjus-
 tify Los's expulsion from
 the poem at the end of
 Night IX (139:4-7),
 except in that context
 there is no reference to
 Urthona reassuming the
 role of gatekeeper.


 Tharmas' divided being,
 expressed as psychologi-
 cal conflict with regard
 to Los