FOUR ZOAS VIIA / 85:5-22


From this point on, new
 reading strategies are
 required.
















 The "wonder horrible"
 (85:17): a transforma-
tional residue in the nar-
 rative proper of two
 dimensions of the
 Shadow's vision: Uri-
 zen's birth as a male
without female counter-
part and the emergence of
"a wonder to the Eyes /
Of the now fallen Man
 a double form Vala"
 (83:12-14)


remains" of Orc whose serpent form is (in Urizen's perspective) writhing
around the Tree. But at this point it is impossible to judge the meaning of
the Spectre's plan. While it seems to be fulfilling Urizen's plot to destroy
Los, Urizen has himself become vulnerable in the process. In locating his
own sexual division in "the place of seed" (84:21) where he becomes an
"infant terror" -analogous to the place where Urizen fell in III (44:3) and
Vala meets Orc in VIIb (91:1)--the Spectre has inadvertently implicated
his fate in the form of the planted spectres and with the "terror" and the
"terrors" as well. Even if we understand the perspective structure of this
situation, Blake makes it impossible to judge fully the irony, self-
deception, or mutual deceit of the characters.
 Blake explicitly calls attention to the identity between the role of the
Spectre's and the Shadow's words as words and as enactments or disguises
of bodily gestures: "Thus they conferrd among the intoxicating fumes of
Mystery / Till Enitharmons shadow pregnant in the deeps beneath /
Brought forth a wonder horrible" (85:5-7). Their conferring thus is their
sexual intercourse, though the "intoxicating fumes" play a central role in
constituting this hallucinatory sexual context. Blake has involved us in
this delusive perceptual drama by inviting us to decipher those overlap-
ping clues that point toward the hidden identity between what the Spectre
and Shadow are saying and what they are doing; then, by suddenly mak-
ing this identity conscious, Blake reveals that having grasped this perspec-
tive lesson is a necessary but entirely insufficient basis for understanding
in this new context. As readers using previously developed perspective
skills, we have been struggling to unravel this new information and make
absolutely essential judgments, while Blake has given us enough clues to
make thejudgments seem necessary, but not enough to make them possi-
ble. The "delusion" and "intoxication" undergone by the characters are
also experienced by the reader, especially in the birth itself, for there is no
way we can fully decipher the emergence of "this wonder horrible." Is it
the "Cloud," or is it the dead bursting forth? It must be both at once. It is
the re-enactment of the "double form Vala," a male and female and the
birth of Urizen as well, who, exactly like the wonder horrible, was
brought forth out of a "pregnant" female, implicitly a male without a
female counterpart.
 Blake is extraordinarily careful in his treatment of the "shadow" in the
birth sequence, just as he is in his refusal to name the "Shadow" in VIIb
who is rent by Ore. Blake casts the birth in VIIa in the passive: Enithar-
mon lay "till her shadow was delivered This syntax could mean that
Enitharmon delivered, gave birth to, her own shadow, or that her shadow
itself "delivered" an offspring. "She burst the Gates of Enitharmons heart"
(85:13): is this "She" Enitharmon's shadow or a female offspring? The
narrator says that this action occurs "Beneath the tree of Mystery for the
immortal shadow shuddering / Brought forth this wonder horrible a
Cloud she grew & grew / Till many of the dead burst forth from the
bottoms of their tombs / In male forms without female counterparts or