FOUR ZOAS IV / 51:21-53:24


The regressive desire for
 "sweet Science" reap-
 pears at the end of The
 Four Zoas.

 Like Ahania's in Night
III, Tharmas'memory of
a state of being prior to
The Four Zoas narrative
is nostalgia for his mar-
 ginal participation in
 Los and Enitharmon's
 pastoral wanderings
 (and sexual dialogue) in
 Night I.





 The Tharmas/Los
 power struggle: phase 2






 The dialectical relation
 of Tharmas and Urizen
 continues.














Los seems unaware that
he is in any way under
the power of Tharmas
but focuses instead oni
 his own vengeance.


 retreats from asserting his authority; second, in the way his verbal retreat
 enacts a version of spatial fleeing; third, in the way his memory of the
 "Eternal fields" (51:21) and "sweet Science" (51:30) constitutes a retreat
 from the complexity of the present narrative into a fantasized pastoral
 landscape; and fourth, in the way he projects, for the third time, all guilt
 upon Urizen and Luvah. His compulsion to repeat this latter gesture
 reveals its significance as a suppression ofhis awareness of his own respon-
 sibility for the present narrative situation.
 Tharmas' final command to Los reveals that this third confrontation is
 actually a version of the initial clash between Tharmas and Los. In order-
 ing Los to take the hammer of Urthona and "rebuild these furnaces,"
 reincarnating the most painful details of Urizen's architectural creation in
 Night II, the furnaces of affliction into which Luvah was cast, Tharmas
 asks, "Dost thou refuse mind I the sparks that issue from thy hair" (51:33).
 This image repeats Los's first response to Tharmas' advances: "Los
 answer in his furious pride sparks issuing from his hair" (48:11); "In
 scorn stood Los red sparks of blighting from his furious head" (48:25).
 Thus Tharmas first notices these sparks, which issue before the separation
 of Los and Enitharmon in the narrative proper, only after that separation
 has occurred.
 From Los's point of view Tharmas' blustering battle, which re-enacts
 the strife above the Body in Ahania's vision of Night II, is a fleeing.
 This departure of Tharmas from the narrative proper marks the return of
 Urizen, this time explicitly as a chaos. As Tharmas (the embodied
 character-form of Urizen's chaotic state) leaves, Urizen reappears to Los:
 "Los beheld the ruins of Urizen beneath / A horrible Chaos to his eyes. a
 formless unmeasurable Death" (52:11-12). The task that Los now begins
 -the rebuilding of the "furnaces," the final order Tharmas gave-is the
 way Los experiences his struggle with Tharmas: "he builded them anew /
 Labour of Ages in the Darkness & the war of Tharmas" (52:16-17). Los's
 action immediately returns the narrative to a strand of the action from
 Nights I and II: thejob of binding Urizen allows Los to fulfill the revenge
 he "plotted" against Urizen and Enitharmon in Night I (12:9), a revenge
 which has re-surfaced only once since then in Los's speech in Night II
 (34:50-53).
 A repressed aspect of Los has thus sought revenge against the formida-
ble adversaries he has faced: the sexually absorbing female (Enitharmon,
Vala) and the power-seeking male (Urizen, Luvah). Enitharmon's role as
sexual accomplice of Los in dividing Urizen from Ahania by drawing
Enion to Ahania dramatically turns back on her here. The male and female
forms, who by their strength have previously crystallized Los's weakness,
are now consolidated before the furnaces, equally at the mercy of Los. At
this point the vengeful Los cannot make a distinction between sexual
division and power division, but the Spectre, who is still haunted by
"jealousy," can perceive the difference. Chains of fire automatically lash on
to Enitharmon as Los begins to bind Urizen. Because he has vengefully