FOUR ZOAS VI / 71:41-73:12


 The written journey



















 Cf. the Starry Wheels
feel the "divine hand" in
 Night IVjust prior to
 Los becoming what he
 beholds


point: "such a journey none but iron pens / Can write And adamantine
leaves recieve nor can the man who goes / Thejourney obstinate refuse to
write time after time" (71:41-72:1). Urizen is writing the journey in the
books (creating the journey by writing it), closely identifying Urizen
with the narrator, if not with Blake himself, for we must be reading the
journey that is travelled and created by being written (an analogue to
Tharmas creating the spaces through which he passes). And the writer
(whether Urizen, the narrator, or Blake himself) is apparently under
duress to write this nightmare journey: he cannot refuse. At this point our
sympathy for Urizen could well overwhelm the lessons in perspective we
should have learned by now.
 But Blake immediately complicates and interferes with the reader's
limited sympathy for Urizen's plight. Suddenly (as with the "ever pitying
one") "the Divine hand him led" (72:2), as if Urizen were groping com-
pletely in the dark, unable to carry out his own self-punishing program.
Although this momentary appearance of the Divine hand seems to reas-
sure the reader that Urizen will be protected in his quest, it actually serves
to distance the reader suddenly from the experience of Urizen's journey.
Even the inversion of verb and object faintly reflects this subtle inversion
of perspective. As with the even more elliptical appearance of "the Hand
Divine" in Night I-which was not yet seen by the Daughters of Beulah
because "it was not yet revealed" (9:17) and associated there with making
possible the linear analysis of the drawing out of the Spectre by Los and
Enitharmon through Nights I-III-the "Divine hand" in Night VI marks
the beginning ofa subtle, transformed re-enactment ofthejourney Urizen
has already made, a version which opens up other alternatives to his "End-
less" travel. Following the appearance of the "Divine hand" Urizen's
"books" recede in importance: "Oft would he sit in a dark rift & regulate
his books / Or sleep such sleep as spirits eternal wearied..." (72:6-7). This
is the final reference to Urizen's "books" as cosmological travel journals.
They are completely absent from Urizen's forthcoming extended sol-
iloquy and are even mocked by his memories of the time his universe
"wast all glorious" (72:36) and "books & instruments of song & pictures"
were all sources of "delight" (73:3). This key absence of the books from
the narrative surface indicates that Urizen's actions, desires, and especially
his spoken words express a perspective from which the "books" of his
laborious journey do not yet exist or, perhaps, a perspective which
emanates from the "books" themselves.
 The momentary appearance of the Divine hand and the receding con-
scious importance of Urizen's "books" accompanies the transforma-
tion of Luvah's (originally "empty" and then organically cyclic) world
into "the ruins of Urizens world" (72:5). Further, though the Divine hand
led Urizen because "infinite the distance & obscurd by Combustions dire"
(72:3), these obscuring combustions are in fact the first signs of the return
of Urizen's world, rendering providential help less necessary than before.
Thejourney he undertakes from this point forward is on his own turf, and