TRANSITION TO NIGHT V


reflected back onto Los and Enitharmon themselves the sexually divisive
actions (dividing Urizen from Ahania) in which they had previously been
engaged and simultaneously issued in the "Spectre"-whose absorption
had been the ostensible motive for Los and Enitharmon's actions-divid-
ing and becoming a separate character in the narrative.
 Tharmas' immediate assumption that he has a legitimate right to order
Los to rebuild the universe reveals the degree to which he lives out an
inversion of the set of relationships embodied in Urizen. Tharmas initially
seemed unaware of (and made no reference to) Urizen's fantasy that Uri-
zen himself had legitimately received the sceptre from Albion in Night II;
on the contrary, Tharmas repeatedly projected all guilt for the present state
of division onto the Urizen/Luvah plot. Tharmas revealed his one-sided
grasp of narrative relations by interpreting or perceiving the political
struggle between Urizen and Luvah as the exclusive cause of sexual divi-
sion, whereas from the perspective of the narrative sequence in Night I,
Tharmas' own sexual division began and generated the political struggle.
Because these competing accounts of the fall--the sexual (male/female)
and the political (male/male) -comprise mutually incommensurable and
internally self-subverting narrative pretexts, Los was able to reject Thar-
mas' reductive account, substituting for Tharmas' tale a variation of the
linear narrative version of the fall. Making an uncharacteristic reference to
events in the narrative proper, Los claimed to have seized power because
there was no one else to do so, since Urizen, the legitimate "King," had
now fallen.
 The way the confusion concerning the passing of power is experienced
by Urizen in the context of the emergence into the narrative of the "body"
as bound anatomy is the ultimate consequence of Night the Fifth. Though
the first two-thirds of Night V focus on sexual division, jealousy, and
bondage, the concluding action of this Night makes possible Urizen's
verbal struggle with his dawning consciousness that his own perspective is
now dominated by an aspect of his creation that he had successfully re-
pressed in Night II-its identity with the "fall" itself and the slavery con-
sequent upon that fall. The birth and binding of the male Orc in Night V
releases to Urizen's awareness the metaphysical and social levels of his
massive repression in Night II but permits him to evade their destructive
sexual implications. Urizen's actual confrontation with Orc in Night VIIa
will, however, superimpose the political (male/male) plot over the sexual
(male/female) and pave the way for Urizen's sexual fall in Night VIII
through his direct contact with the female Rahab. Later in Night V Urizen
will "remember" his legitimate assumption of power in the narrative
proper at the beginning of Night II as both failure to assume power and as
a rebellion against legitimate authority. Urizen's defensive memory thus
transfers the confusion of authority enacted by Los and Tharmas in the
narrative proper of Night IV into the context of Urizen's soliloquy, which
provides even stronger evidence of Urizen's subtle ability to repress the
sexual consequences of his creation. By focusing on the physical and social


In Night IV, Tharmas is
aware only of Urizen's
role in the usurpation
plot: he is unaware of the
fiction that Urizen is
legitimate king;







Los, however, is aware
only of Urizen's
legitimate authority and
makes no reference to
the Luvah plot he helped
bring into existence in
his dialogue with Eni-
tharmon in Night I.






The narrative ofNight V
segregates the sexual
plot concerning Ore
from Urizen's reappear-
ance, allowing Urizen to
repress his sexual divi-
sion by focusing on the
social and physical
dimensions of his "fall"
in Night III.