FOUR ZOAS VIIA / 85:2-87:7 [6]


The equivocal nature of
 the Spectre's roles in
 relation to Urizen, the
 Shadow, Enitharmon,
 and Los


analysis and transformation by Blake's extensive additions to and revisions
of VIIa.
 The flood of apparently new information, couched in diction of self-
reflection and repentance, seems to mark off the possibility of some kind
of union, rather than division, and as such seems, for the first time, to be a
real advance in the world the narrative is constituting. Yet, since the
Spectre is a residual form of Los's jealousy, the Spectre's entering Los by
the agency of Enitharmon's groans also means that Los is jealous because
he hears Enitharmon groaning in labor. Prior to the pregnancy, the
Shadow embraced the Spectre (85:2); now Los embraces the Spectre. Out
of the present context, Los's abandoning his domineering lust would seem
beneficial, but this action is precisely what Urizen desires-to quell the
"devouring appetite" for sex which Urizen projects onto Los and which
the Spectre embodies. Los's pity here recapitulates the pity he felt for
Enitharmon in Night I after Urizen said "The Spectre is the Man" (12:29).
Because ofUrizen's lurking plot to destroy Los and because the Spectre has
admitted consciously desiring to overthrow "Demon Los," this confronta-
tion remains inherently suspect, even though a reunion of the components
of Urthona is the subject announced in the poem's pseudo-invocation.
Thus the Spectre begins his speech-which follows this embrace in the
text but narratively leads to it (i.e., makes it possible) -by tempting Los
with Enitharmon: "Thou never canst embrace sweet Enitharmon terrible
Demon. Till / Thou art united with thy Spectre" (85:32-33). The Spectre
appeals immediately to Los's frustrated sexual desire to embrace Enithar-
mon because the Spectre himself has just embraced Enitharmon's Shadow
(85:2-3). Enitharmon's groans (which carry Urthona's Spectre on their
wings [85:26-27]) are both her labor pains and her voice as she tells "the
tale / Of Urthona" (85:28-29). This tale must be the one the Spectre told
the Shadow concerning Urthona's sexual division; but the fact that it is
now Enitharmon who tells it presupposes a union between the Spectre and
the Shadow which has made possible the transfer of information from the
Spectre to the Shadow-and this union must be the verbal conference
which impregnated Enitharmon's Shadow and now resides in Enitharmon
herself. Now the Spectre himself tells another version of the tale of Ur-
thona. Like Urizen, the Spectre desires to destroy Los whom he reduc-
tively confuses with the mortal body (which he helped Los create in Night
IV). The Spectre's words sound as though they are privileged information,
as though the Spectre is unequivocally right about his plan. He speaks of
"Consummating by pains & labours / That mortal body & by Self annihi-
lation back returning / To Life Eternal" (85:33-35). However much the
reader may want to accept this as a voice of truth, the reader enters this
speech with a memory of the Spectre's inability to distinguish Eternity
from Beulah, and an awareness that, at some level, this speech is still an
attempt to deceive and destroy Los.
 Since the Spectre's words offer hope at the same time they are couched
in deception, it is significant that the narrator passes no clarifying judg-