THE (SYNTACTIC) BINDING OF ORC


journey "thro the Gloom of Entuthon Benithon" (62:15) to return to
release Orc.
 Upon being bound down Orc thrives as the "Demon" because his
physical binding attaches him (and gives him access) to the sensual warfare
repressed (unconsciously bound down) by the gloomy activities of Los,
Enitharmon, and the Spectre. The flames that burst forth as he is being
bound allow Orc to experience directly the action of "warring with the
waves of Tharmas & Snows of Urizen" (61:4). This submerged warfare,
eliminated from the narrative proper since the close of Night IV (though
obliquely present in the Demons' song), now reappears. Although much
of Orc's description is cast in similes rather than metaphors, it becomes
extremely difficult to visualize Orc. If we try to follow the simile describ-
ing Orc's "bosom" or, especially, his "loins," we inevitably get lost, as the
spatial orientation of our attention is shifted:

 His bosom is like starry heaven expanded all the stars
 Sing round. there waves the harvest & the vintage rejoices. the
 Springs
 Flow into rivers of delight. there the spontaneous flowers
 Drink laugh & sing. the grasshopper the Emmet & the Fly
 The golden Moth builds there a house & spreads her silken bed
 (61:27-31)

Blake turns our attention from the expanded heavens to the earth bearing
the harvest and vintage, but nevertheless "there" (in his bosom? among
the stars?), and to the rivers; "there" the flowers and the tiny insects (which
get tinier progressively) dance, laugh, and sing as did the stars; and finally
to the virtually invisible silken threads of the moth's (covertly sexual)
"bed." Then Blake immediately counterpoints this simile within a simile,
which progresses on the basis of size, to a simile that loses itself in internal
causal connections until the syntax dissolves:

 His loins inwove with silken fires are like a furnace fierce
 As the strong Bull in summer time when bees sing round the heath
 Where the herds low after the shadow & after the water spring
 The numerous flocks cover the mountain & shine along the valley
 (62:1-4)

The internal connections here are temporal as well as spatial: when,
where, after, along. By contrasting the form of his bosom with the form
of his loins, each of which involves a radical transformation of the initial
simile-bosom: starry heaven; loins: furnace-into pastoral and earthly
imagery, thereby undercutting the initial volume or intensity of the
similes, Blake again makes us aware of the differential relation between
these two parts of Orc's body which are confused in the narrative and
which are now confused and differentiated in even more precise ways by
the similes. In addition, the expansion and contraction of Orc's "eyes"
(consolidated in the forming of the body in Night IV) transforms the lost
expansion and contraction of Los and Enitharmon who, in Night II, were


"Entuthon Benithon":
the eruption of another
unprecedented place
name to mark the aliena-
tion of thisjourney


Subversive tropes in the
description of Orc





The similies describing
Orc's bosom enact a con-
traction of spatial
reference.





Orc's radically contrast-
ing bosom and loins are
connected by the word
"silken."





The similes describing
Ore's sexual region-his
loins -dissolve syntacti-
cally from a furnace to a
Beulah-like pastoral
landscape and enact an
expansion of spatial
reference.




The contrast between
Ore's bosom and loins