FOUR ZOAS VIIA / 77:27-80:43


 How contextually
 "new" elements make
possible the transforma-
tion and re-surfacing of
 prior elements


is dangerous to refer to any elements as wholly "new." In Nights VIIa,
VIIb, and VIII, however, new names appear, associated with decisive and
significantly new roles. These contextually new structures both evolve out
of prior interconnected transformed structures and are made possible by
means of the re-surfacing of the previously suppressed structures. The
principal new figures in these later Nights are the "Shadow of Enithar-
mon" (in her tryst with the Spectre of Urthona and in her ambiguous
transformation into the "Shadowy Female"); "Rahab" (and Tirzah); the
"Synagogue of Satan"; and the "hermaphrodite." These structures are
among the most difficult and perplexing in the poem. Though they
emerge out of the context of overlapping and re-surfaced structures, they
are simultaneously the cause and the effect of the pervasive perceptual
confusion and "delusion" that hover over these Nights. While the imagery
of the Tree of Mystery, the war, and weaving is tightly interlocked into a
structure, Orc's division into serpentine and spectrous forms develops
into a confusion between the Lamb of God and Satan and between
Jerusalem and Rahab. Now we must see how this confusion becomes
possible.


The Shadow of Enitharmon


 Urizen brings the
 Shadow of Enitharmon
into existence as he reads
 from his book of brass
 (see above, pp. 245-47).








 Orc's serpent form as
 one way Urizen per-
 ceives the Shadow of
 Enitharmon


 Perceptual Structures of the Shadow. The structural complex Blake
names "The Shadow of Enitharmon" enters the poem amid extreme nar-
rative and syntactic ambiguity. The Orc/Urizen confrontation, toward
which Urizen felt his journey in Night VI was proceeding as if it were to
be a monumental event, actually turns out to be an anti-climax in the
extended version of Night VIIa. Even in Blake's early version of VIIa,
which ended after the dead burst from the bottoms of their tombs and the
Spectre gives control of "howling Orc" to the "lovely shadow," the con-
frontation between Orc and Urizen is overshadowed by the meeting be-
tween the Spectre of Urthona and the Shadow of Enitharmon, which the
Orc/Urizen interchange makes possible. Ironically, but inevitably, the
Shadow ofEnitharmon first appears in Urizen's hypocritical speech to Orc
as a sexual aspect of Urizen's preaching his rules of morality: "let Moral
Duty tune your tongue / But be your hearts harder than the nether
millstone / To bring the shadow of Enitharmon beneath our wondrous
tree / That Los may Evaporate like smoke" (80:3-6). Urizen sees the
division between "tongue" and "heart" (which, as noted earlier, thrives on
the internal division of Urizen in simultaneously acknowledging and re-
pressing the book of iron) as a method of luring down the Shadow. There
is no evidence, however, that Urizen can perceive the descent of Enithar-
mon's Shadow as such: rather, he identifies Orc undialectically as Luvah
when he sees the serpent form of Orc.
 Structurally, Orc's serpent form and Enitharmon's Shadow are direct
aspects of each other, for both appear simultaneously as narrative reflexes
to Urizen's hypocritical morality. On the one hand, Orc's serpent form is