LIMBS, LOINS, HEART


replaced by an inweaving of his limbs-the inorganic rocky knees of his
image-by a swift vegetation. This action immediately reflects back to the
image of the polypuss" at the end of Night IV: "a Polypus / That vegetates
beneath the Sea the limbs of Man vegetated" (56:14-15). In the process, the
Chain becomes "one" with Orc. This image completes the narrative re-
enactment of dark Urthona's cyclic division as recounted in the Demons'
song, where the fiery sons released the "Enormous Spirit" who again
became enclosed in his ribs in the form of flaming serpents, laying the
foundation for the transformation of Orc's fiery energy into a serpent
body in Night VIIa.
 In coming full circle, the plot reintroduces the Spectre who in turn
allows the cycle to be re-enacted once again under the fiction of "reviving"
Los and Enitharmon who suddenly become unambiguous "Parents" as
they faint at the sight of Orc's enrooting into the Chain. As the Chain of
Jealousy (previously almost identified with the Spectre) merges with Orc,
who is the projected form of Los's repressed sexuality, the Spectre again
separates as an independent character. In "reviving" Los and Enitharmon,
the Spectre institutes a gloomy version of the sex play they performed in
dying and reviving one another from death in Night II. Now the context
seems more sinister. Just as they could perform their courtly love ritual of
dying and reviving only in the context of absorbing the Spectre, so it is
only the Spectre himself, once he is separated out, who can revive them.
 As Los and Enitharmon return to Golgonooza, a new name occurs that
Blake never uses again-the "road of Dranthon." The precise reason
Blake needs this specific name for the road they travel is obscure. If he had
used no name, however, it might have suggested no definite and urgent
direction; and if he had used a familiar name, it would have detracted from
the unfamiliar journey on which they embark at this point. It is on this
unfamiliar yet directional road that Enitharmon "felt the inmost gate / Of
her bright heart burst open & again close with a deadly pain / Within her
heart Vala began to reanimate in bursting sobs" (63:11-13).
 Thus the bursting and closing of Enitharmon's heart gates is a precise
counterpart to the forming and bursting of the Chain of Jealousy ("in
secret sobs / He burst it"). And the "pain" she feels in her "inmost gate"
transforms the "secret pain" of dark Urthona at Vala's shooting the secret
arrows. As Orc becomes the Chain and the Chain becomes Orc, this
process makes conscious what was latent; the subject and object of Los's
jealousy merge into a single image. Thus Los's two-fold response to Orc
-building Golgonooza and binding Orc with the Chain-are opposite
sides of the same event, and Orc's growing into the Chain simply makes
Los's self-destructive sexual repression inescapably evident to him. This
recognition transfers the imagery of division and of the cycle of the Chain
into Enitharmon who (in conjunction with the Earth) initially gave birth
to Ore. In the Demons'song, which has been sequentially analyzed by the
action of Night V, Vala, who was given primary responsibility for divid-
ing dark Urthona, now reanimates inside Enitharmon's heart, out of


Being Parents as a func-
tion of seeing the Child
bound down

The crisis of the
Spectre's power of revi-
val: the narrator, for the
only time in the poem,
refers to her/himself as
writer of the poem-"all
their lamentations / I
write not here" (63:8-9):
this action precedes Uri-
zen's writing his books
in Night VI.


"Dranthon": except in a
deleted line in Night
VIIa (90:following line
 25) (E757, 839)

Turning away from the
temptation to look for
references for
"Dranthon"