FOUR ZOAS VIIB / 91:2-92:31 (34:49-103:28)


The residual presence of
Urizen's web in the war
 of Night VIlb


















Three phases of the first
account of the confron-
tation between Ore and
 the Shadow


 Phase 1: the female
 tempts Ore;



phase 2: syntactic inter-
 ruption enacts sexual
 interruption;


dominant motifs: in this sense the Prester Serpent opposes the emerging
serpent form of Orc. The "war song" that sounds at the close of the Prester
Serpent's speech and vibrates "Urizens Web...torment on torment"
(98:31) is a milder version of the shriek that ran through the Abysses in VI
similarly "rending the web torment on torment" (74:8). These disloca-
tions of Urizen's web are eventually grounded in the power the Shadowy
Female absorbs in her sexual confrontation with Orc immediately follow-
ing the Prester Serpent's departure, dislocations which Blake later forces
more drastically into the open (103:24-28). The "war song" that vibrates
Urizen's web, a weapon of war and a woven form, surrounds and interpen-
etrates Orc's confrontation with the Shadow.5 As such, this war song is
technically a version of the Shadowy Female/Orc confrontation itself, for it
is implicated in the same action of undermining Urizen's web.
 In Night VIIa an analogy emerges between the Tree's bearing fruit and
the birth of the "wonder horrible" through the "shadow" of Enitharmon,
a birth that is itself an aspect of Orc's assuming a serpent form. In Night
VIIb Blake rearranges the pages in order to place the warlike tree imagery
narratively prior to the loosing of the creatures/Prester Serpent into the
narrative-thereby forcing us to perceive the reappearance of Orc in a
radically different way from the original ordering of pages. When the
"nameless shadowy Vortex" confronts Orc, she attempts to transform his
powerful "rage" into "meekness" by embracing his fire. There are three
crucial movements to the passage. First, the "Shadow"sighs howling with
deep sobs (just as Los had done over the dead body ofEnitharmon in Night
II [34:49-54]) "that he [Orc] might lose his rage / And with it lose himself
in meekness she embraced his fire" (91:4-5). This first action analyzes from
a completely different perspective the event of Ore rising as a worm "in
peace unbound" in VIIa. There the action seemed to be caused solely by
Urizen's hypocrisy.
 Blake initiates the second movement of this passage in Night VIIb by
interrupting the action, injecting at this decisive point an extended simile
of the "Earthquake" (91:6-9) that anticipates the bursting of Satan from
the hermaphrodite in VIII "like an Earthquake" (104:21). But Blake com-
plicates the simile of the Earthquake in VIIb by first completely undercut-
ting our expectations, and then partially fulfilling them. We expect that
the second half of the "As... So..." simile will complete the image
initiated by the phrase, "[the Earthquake's] shoulders huge appear," but
we are forced to wait a moment until "horror belches from the Center" -
precisely where the Chain of Jealousy enwrapped its roots in Night V
(63:2). But the second half of the simile does not immediately parallel the
eruption of the Earthquake; rather, it trails off into confusion about who
has caused Orc to assume the serpent form: "So Orc rolld round his clouds
upon the deeps of dark Urthona / Knowing the arts of Urizen were Pity &
Meek affection / And that by these arts the Serpent form exuded from his
limbs" (91:10-12). At this point, where the horror should have burst forth,
as in the Earthquake, the narrator has shifted into Orc's mind for a glimpse