FOUR ZOAS V / 4:6-64:16


 Anticipating Night VI









 Urizen repeatedly dark-
 ened his light in Nights
 I, II, and III through
 faded radiance and
obscuring clouds: cf. the
"Darkning Man" (39:15)
and "dark" Urthona" in
 Night V and Tharmas
 "darkning in the West"
 (4:6).












 Urizen remembers the
Feast of Night I where he
 forgot Ahania, as he
 forgets her again here.







Of Urizen's sleep and the
 fall


Urizen is already where he wants to go, and the journey in Night VI is an
elaborate and inevitably self-defeating quest to disguise what he is already
aware of in part as he re-enters the poem. His speech in the last phase of
Night V dramatizes in his own words what the action of Night VI projects
spatially. By the end of his speech in Night V the dens of Urthona have
quite obviously, even blatantly dissolved in his perspective into "my
caverns."
 Urizen's speech in Night V is a tour de force of avoidance techniques.
He begins by only apparently recognizing his "fallen" state: "Ah how shall
Urizen the King submit to this dark mansion[?]" (63:24). Urizen con-
centrates on his role as "King," and sees the darkening of his mansion as an
affront to his authority. In Night III when Urizen the "King" cast out
Ahania, he was "folded in dark despair," while the "Prince" "Fell" (43:23;
43:31-44:2). Although Urizen's conscious perspective is that of "King"
(63:24), associated with "the stones of ice the ruins of his throne" (63:21),
Urizen's narrative location (and thus role) is that of the "Prince" who fell
from his throne into the "Caverns of the Grave & places of Human Seed"
(44:3). In Night V, however, Urizen (and the narrator) are aware only that
he is located in "Caverns," with "the Grave" (death) and "places of Human
Seed" (sexual reproduction) repressed. Urizen thus simultaneously
assumes two conflicting roles, and his confused speech act exteriorizes
that schizophrenic state. Urizen's repetition of "once" prefixing the
memories of his "once" beautiful universe indicates that his memory is a
mechanism for evading that which he wants to forget. The only real
insight in his speech appears to be:

 at my banquets of new wine my head was crownd withjoy
 Then in my ivory pavillions I slumberd in the noon
 And walked in the silent night among sweet smelling flowers
 Till on my silver bed I slept & sweet dreams round me hoverd
 (64:4-7)

Urizen usually has been described as sleeping "on the couch" or "in the
porch" when the "fall" occurred-as though sleeping exempts him from
(rather than implicates him in) the "fall." Similarly, on the two occasions
in his soliloquy at the end of Night V when Urizen acknowledges he was
sleeping, he opposes these events to the fall, recalling them as the essence
of his "once" pleasant life. Yet the contexts of Urizen's sleep are (by prior
narrative information) associated with the cataclysmic "fall" itself. The
"sweet dreams" that hover over Urizen are, on the one hand, his fantasy of
creating the Mundane Shell in Night II; on the other hand, his dreams are a
repression of sexuality associated with the garden and flowers where he
walked "in silent night." The sexual character of Urizen's desires almost
breaks through, but he immediately shifts from this recollection to the
present condition of his universe, a shift which allows him to concentrate
on something other than the garden or the dreams: "But now my land is
darkend & my wise men are departed" (64:8). Urizen purposely refuses to