WEAVING: THE DEAD


and Tharmas are equally desperate in seeking their loves; in both cases
they confront a form they perceive to be their female counterparts (at least
initially); and in both cases an evasive sexual union occurs that results
narratively in the bursting forth of the "dead." Through a complex net-
work of overlapping relations, Blake covertly reveals that these "dead"
function as the remains of Orc's human form (115:28) which had seemed
to dissipate in the two (overlapping and complementary) situations that
reduced Orc to a serpent form-the sexual rending of the Shadow by Orc
in VIIb and the hypocritical politics ofUrizen in VIIa. This central process
thus intersects all the major structures of these later Nights.
 In Night VIII, Blake develops in two directions at once the imagery of
weaving "Bodies" for these spectres of the dead: on the one hand, Los and
Enitharmon's work is able to consolidate into a total form (Jerusalem
containing the Lamb of God); on the other hand, through the agency of an
intrusive interpolated song sung by the "Sons of Eden," the action of
weaving exists as a much more complicated and internally divided three-
part process to most of which Los and Enitharmon seem blind.
 The work that was initiated in VIIa as the fabrication by Los of
"embodied semblances" or "forms sublime" for the dead, who in their
initial appearance are "male forms without female counterparts" (85:19),
is radically transformed in Night VIII: now Enitharmon both breathes
forth the spectres and weaves them bodies (99:24; 100:18-19). Then the
process folds back on itself-the woven females (analogous to the
"bodies") themselves become the weavers and the males (structurally
parallel to the spectres) go to work in "Golgonoozas Furnaces":

 Thus forming a Vast family wondrous in beauty & love
 And they appeared a Universal female form created
 From those who were dead in Ulro from the Spectres of the dead
 And Enitharmon namd the FemaleJerusa[le]m the holy
 Wondring she saw the Lamb of God within Jerusalems Veil
 (103:36-39; 104:1-2)

Although this action seems to be radically new, supported by phrases such
as "wondrous in beauty & love" which are laden with positive value
judgments of the sort which have been severely restricted in earlier
Nights, in fact it directly transforms Enion's narratively primordial weav-
ing. In Night I, as Enion began weaving, there issued "From her bosom
weaving soft in Sinewy threads / A tabernacle forJerusalem she sat among
the Rocks / Singing her lamentation" (5:6-8). In (perhaps unintentionally)
weaving the form ofJerusalem in the process of weaving forms that are,
from one perspective at least, sexual counterparts for the spectres in Night
VIII, Enitharmon (like Enion) "wove in tears Singing Songs of Lamenta-
tions" (103:32). The temporal distance of these two remarkably similar
situations from one another in the unfolding narrative surface compounds
the disturbing qualities of their similarity. While in Night I the only relief
from the lamentation was the interposition of the Daughters of Beulah,


Two divergent enact-
ments of the weaving
plot











Weaving as the origin of
Jerusalem in the Los/
Enitharmon plot (no
reference to Rahab and
Tirzah or the Shadowy
Female)














Both Enion in Night I
and Enitharmon in
Night VIII sing lamenta-
tions as they weave
spectres.