THE MULTIVALENCE OF THE EVER PITYING ONE


 As Urizen begins to perceive Luvah's empty world in the way Tharmas
predicted-as an"Eternal falling" (69:20) -death and oblivion paralyze his
consciousness, an effect Tharmas very much desired when addressing
Enion in Night IV and Urizen in Night VI. Yet when Tharmas first
addressed Urizen he asked him: "Art thou like me risen again from death
or art thou deathless" (69:7). While one aspect of Tharmas flees the cycle of
death and rebirth Urizen is now beginning to undergo, another aspect of
Tharmas expresses the life impulse to see Enion.
 Except insofar as "pity" has occurred primarily in contexts of division,
beginning with Tharmas' "Pity" in Night I, it is unclear to what extent the
creation of the "bosom of clay" that permits both oblivion and rebirth in
the midst of emptiness is a "pitying" action. It locks Urizen into an
uncontrollable sexual cycle that dooms him to die and be reborn time after
time as if through masturbatory ejaculation "in another resurrection,"
rather than to achieve rest in permanent oblivion. (This development
retroactively imparts sexual significance to the initial reference to Los's
"Resurrection" in the poem's pseudo-invocation.) Yet the powerful drive
of Urizen's ego consciousness to survive, to retain some kind of life, even
if only a cyclic one, virtually aligns the radical action of the "ever pitying
one" with Urizen's own drive for self-preservation. Urizen's location at
the impossible intersection of Luvah and Tharmas -in Luvah's world that
is being created by Tharmas' flight-generates the "bosom of clay" from
nothing, as if it had been generated from Urizen's own unconscious will to
survive. Consequently, the "ever pitying one's" ability to see "all things"
(71:25), a power that allows Urizen's fall to be seen pathetically, will soon
reappear in Urizen's desire for a synoptic view of the world, to "view all
things" (72:24) as he begins to regain control over his universe .
 It is in the context of this threatening cycle that the "books" of Urizen
reappear. They emerge as a linear measure of his cyclic deaths and rebirths
and enjoy an absolute permanence and survival. His clothes rot but the
books remainedd still unconsumd / Still to be written" (71:39-40). These
metal books become Urizen's focus of absolute reference and future poten-
tial in a world where he is otherwise a totally passive victim. Urizen's
books, which function as defense mechanisms, return to the narrator's
consciousness in the context of endless death and rebirth, but Urizen
carries his compulsion to write books-as an unconscious remnant of his
need to survive-beyond the context of Night VI, with disastrous results.
Thus the permanence of Urizen's metal books is a transformation of his
astronomical heavens in Night II: they are the stay against his extinction.
 Urizen's absorption into the cycle of death and resurrection completely
fills his perceptual field. His intense concentration on writing his books
makes possible a shift in the narrative tone and the emergence of new
imagery. These transformations suddenly call attention to the fact that this
journey is, after all, inside Urizen himself; but the imagery of the obstruc-
tion Urizen has thrown in his own path is so arresting that we, too, are
likely to be unable to keep the evasive nature of the journey before our
minds. The narrator offers a quite sympathetic account of Urizen at this


The sexual dimensions
of Urizen's recurrent
resurrection


Sexual "resurrection":
pun on res erection?




The "ever pitying one"
partakes syntactically of
Luvah and narratively of
Urizen.







Urizen's books return to
consciousness as a reflex
to the cycle.
The books exist simul-
taneously as complete
and completely
potential.