FOUR ZOAS V / 63:14-23


The bursting ofEnithar-
mon's heart gate is moni-
tored by Urizen's capa-
city for confronting his
 present state.





 The shift of perspective
 from Los/
 Enitharmon/Orc to
 Urizen


which Orc was born. Thus the cause of Urthona's division is seen as its
effect and allows the Demons' assertion that "the times return upon thee" to
carry double weight.
 Making the opening of Enitharmon's heart gate a narrative mechanism
for reintroducing Urizen is not in any sense arbitrary. Only after Orc is
embedded in the rock by the vegetation of the Chain can Enitharmon's
heart gate burst open and close. Urizen can still consciously vocalize and
act in contexts in which he is protected from awareness of the sexual
consequences of his creation. Though Enitharmon glimpses the simul-
taneity of various sequential moments of the surface plot, the very possi-
bility of her act of beholding shows just how far inside Urizen is; from his
point of view he is inexplicably connected with Orc who now embodies
in a single field of images Urizen's distorted sexual and sensual joy by
virtue of consolidating Los's perverse sexuality. In reintroducing Urizen,
Blake fuses the syntax which characterizes Orc with that which charac-
terizes Urizen:
 And when the Gate was open she beheld that dreary Deep
 Where bright Ahania wept. She also saw the infernal roots
 Of the chain ofJealousy & felt the rendings of fierce howling Ore
 Rending the Caverns like a mighty wind pent in the Earth
 Tho wide apart as furthest north is from the furthest south
 Urizen trembled where he lay to hear the howling terror
 The rocks shook the Eternal bars tuggd to & fro were rifted
 Outstretchd upon the stones of ice the ruins of his throne
 Urizen shuddring heard his trembling limbs shook the strong caves
 The Woes of Urizen shut up in the deep dens of Urthona
 (63:14-23)
This brief narrative sequence forces the Los/Enitharmon/Spectre/Orc
complex out of the poem's surface and shifts from Enitharmon, glancing
through her inmost heart gate, to the figure at the center of that vision
(whom she does not perceive as Urizen); the narrative will next turn to
Urizen's words themselves, his "Woes."
 Landscape details, such as "the steps of ice that froze around his throne"
(43:4) that occurredjust prior to Urizen's fall, reappear as "the stones of ice
the ruins of his throne," now projected into the place where Urizen, as
Prince, fell in Night III ("The Caverns of the Grave & places of Human
Seed /Where the impressions ofDespair & hope enroot forever" [44:3-4]);
and this composite is superimposed over the scene in Night IV where
Urizen's form "Stretchd over the immense heaves in strong shudders...
stretching out from North to South" (52:23-24). Since all of these details
are narratively re-enacted following Ore's binding and growing into one
with the Chain, this narrative moment (63:14-23) telescopes events of
Nights II, III, IV, and V into the same moment of vision. The narrative
mechanism that makes this telescoping possible is the transference, into
the female Enitharmon's heart, of the cycle of binding and releasing. This
cycle occurred in the Demons' song as a process within dark Urthona and