URIZEN RE-ENTERS AT RECURRENT RENDINGS


in the narrative proper as the exteriorized Chain ofJealousy which binds
down Orc and eventually migrates to the "Center" (63:2), spatially re-
appearing as the focus of Enitharmon's "inmost gate" (63:11).
 The syntax in lines 63:14-23 completely interlocks Orc's howlings with
Urizen's shuddering: when Enitharmon feels the "rendings" of Orc, the
immediate repetition of "rending" makes that word apposite to Urizen's
shudders as well. Read linearly, Urizen shakes and trembles the caverns
upon hearing the voice; but Enitharmonfeels, not hears, this rending of
Orc, and this clue returns us to the moment of Orc's birth, "from her heart
rending his way." The "Earth" (in conjunction with Enitharmon) gave
birth to the Child,just as here it is the "Earth" that the pent wind rends in
the simile. Both the Earth and Urizen are "wide apart" for very different
reasons. The simile thus becomes ontological: the shaking of the "Eternal
bars" re-enacts the shaking skies and laboring earth of Orc's birth, trans-
ferred through the interior gates of Enitharmon's heart thus transforming
the narrative perspective. The syntax of rending thus disguises a birth: the
rending (breaking forth) of Orc at his birth is the rending (division) of
Urizen at his re-emergence. At the line: "Urizen shuddring heard his
trembling limbs shook the strong caves" (63:22), the reader must rein-
terpret the syntax retroactively in the process of reading because of the
absence of punctuation (inverting the overpunctuation ofTharmas'speech
at the beginning of Night IV). If Blake had substituted "shake" for
"shook," the line could be read as a single utterance, which is in fact
suggested but undercut: "Urizen shuddring heard his trembling limbs
shake the strong caves."
 By repressing the connection between what he hears and what shakes the
cavern, Urizen can (ironically) project his fear outward onto "Luvah,"
assume a heroic stance, and, at the end of Night V, vow to quest for the
"deep pulsation / That shakes my caverns with strong shudders"
(65:9-10). Unknown to Urizen, the pulsation emanates from his own
trembling fear. The "memory" Urizen verbalizes concerning the "fall"
functions to obscure the internal syntactic relation between Urizen and
Orc. The ironic nature of Urizen's speech in Night V underlies the ironic
nature of his search in Night VI. When Urizen quests through the terrors
of Night VI, he is involved in a spatial and temporal journey akin to his
spatial fiction of Night II (The Golden Heavens) and his temporal fiction
in Night III ("futurity"). But since Urizen is much more vulnerable in
Night VI, functioning in a much more complex context than either Night
II or III, he must consciously accept the physical, cosmological, and social
consequences of his creation in order unconsciously to reject the sexual
implications. In questing for the "pulsation," he is unknowingly seeking
to become aware of his own fear and thereby to realize that he is the source
of the shuddering. Thus, though the narrator in Night V insists that the
Woes ofUrizen are "shut up in the deep dens ofUrthona," in Night VI, the
narrator, partially absorbed into Urizen's own perspective, announces that
Urizen is "Making a path toward the dark world of Urthona" (69:29).


The syntax that speaks
of rending is a syntax
that rends.