SYNTACTIC CONVOLUTIONS AT THE SPECTRE'S RE-ENTRY


sparks" that issued from Los's hair; his eyes burning like furnaces are Orc's;
his Voice of Thunder is Urizen's. Further, the Club he wields condenses a
good deal of the spatial imagery through which Urizen has passed in this
Night: "like mountains frownd / Desart among the Stars them wither-
ing." These phrases seem to have something missing grammatically: the
phrase "knots like mountains" leads the reader to expect a consistent
completion of the simile: how are knots like mountains? Blake frustrates
this expectation in the last word of the line, "frownd," a personification
within a simile. Had he chosen to write "Whose knots frownd like moun-
tains" the effect would have been, perhaps, equally bizarre, but less syntac-
tically disjunctive. He has separated the verb -a highly unlikely semantic
selection to complete either "knots" or "mountains" -from its main sub-
ject and has attached it to the subject of the simile. Then he inserts at the
beginning of the next line, "Desart among the Stars," which could be a
metaphor for the mountains jutting up against the sky, or the Club poised
against the stars, or both. But it is syntactically extremely improbable that
this phrase would follow the previous one. Compounding this effect is the
way this imagery condenses the space of Urizen's journey-the "desarts"
of oppression and the "stars" implicit in the creation of the Vortexes, as
well as the "stars" which are his Sons in Night II in the Mundane Shell,
and in Urizen's councils of Night V.
 Finally, Blake jams the inverted syntax of "them withering with its
ridges cold" against the previous sequence of tenuously connected
descriptive elements. The reversal of syntax and the choice of a participial
form of the verb complicates this description even further. The syntax
freezes the moment, the staying of the flight of Tharmas, and the sequen-
tial linear movement of Night VI and signals a shift to a new mode of
narrative perspective. As we cut across this moment of the linear narra-
tion, the syntax and the imagery seem to be twisting as our point of view
undergoes a transformation. This is one of the most important shifts in the
poem, for it stands at the threshold of a new phase of Blake's vision which
makes possible the double version of Night VII." The remainder of the
description of the Spectre returns to relatively normal syntax, though the
image is stark, bizarre, and frightening. We are now in a new phase of
perception in which the images of Nights I-VI consolidate into clearly
visible forms, and the war that has been previously submerged becomes
the central focus of attention. The image of the Spectre's Club functions
like a change of key in music, a transposition of elements which is sig-
nalled by a shift in mode of perceptual organization.
 The final sections of Night VI depart from the cyclic whirl of Urizen
 and Tharmas, backwards through time to the point where Urizen meets
 himself at the intersection of Tharmas and the Spectre. The remainder of
 the poem occurs "within" the world of Urthona, though that world
 becomes exceedingly complex. Urizen's defensive "globe of fire," for
 example, undergoes transformation upon entering Urthona's world:
 "Dark grew his globe reddning with mists" (75:5). The state of the battle


The imagery at this
point incorporates the
war in the Feast Song of
Night I involving the
"stars," one of whose
results was: "The Moun-
tains fled away they
sought a place beneath /
Vala remained in desarts
of dark solitude"
(15:15-16).




















Urizen's globe of fire
assumes the "Dark"
characteristics of Ur-
thona's world.