FOUR ZOAS VIIA /87:28-60 (50) [5:28-87:60 (59)]


The Spectre of Urthona
emerged into the narra-
tive proper of Night IV
at the separation of Los
 and Enitharmon, who
had absorbed and trans-
 formed him from the
Spectre of Tharmas. See
 above, pp. 172-73.









 The Spectre is the
medium through which
the eating of the Tree's
fruit produces the reap-
pearance of the Lamb of
God to Los and Enithar-
mon in opposing forms
 (redeemer and
 destroyer).


fruit whose consumption creates this devouring appetite. This event
exactly intersects Urizen's fear that Enitharmon "By gratified desire by
strong devouring appetite" would fill "Los with ambitious fury"
(80:25-26). Then, after Los has eaten the fruit and is about to give himself
to "death Eternal," as mysteriously as the Spectre revived Los and Enithar-
mon in Night V (63:7-8), he enigmatically "comforts" Los by merely
re-enacting in only slightly altered or condensed form the action we have
just witnessed: he becomes a "medium" between Los and Enitharmon.
Though both Los and Enitharmon have been able to unite individually
with the Spectre, they are prohibited from uniting directly with one
another as long as the Spectre functions as a separate entity. In an uncharac-
teristic narrative gesture that both baffles and re-orients the reader's expec-
tations, the narrator factually predicts (refers at a narratively prior point to
events which to some degree materialize in the emergent narrative) that
the "Union" (presumably of Los and Enitharmon) "Was not to be Effected
without Cares & Sorrows & Troubles / Of six thousand Years ofself denial
and of bitter Contrition" (87:28-29).
 This alternative account of sexual division/union again produces the
appearance of the dead, this time explicitly "Spectres," again males with-
out counterparts. As in 85:22, the Spectre is "terrified" (87:30) but in
re-enacting the role of "medium" now reverses the view of the body he
articulated in the previous enactment. In his speech, which physically (on
the page) mediates between Enitharmon's statement and Los's answer, the
Spectre wants to create rather than destroy the body: "without a Created
body the Spectre is Eternal Death (87:39). The Spectre's terrified self-
accusation for the appearance of the Spectres simultaneously re-enacts
Enitharmon's self-accusation and Los's triumph over the Spectre from a
new perspective. In his role as "medium" the Spectre now incorporates
Enitharmon's desperate awareness of a need for a way to "Ransom &
Redeem." A need for (and possibility of) redemption occurs simultane-
ously with the eating of the poison "fruit" of the Tree of Mystery, and the
Spectre translates this need into the context of the Spectres of the Dead. It
is crucial that the Lamb of God suddenly appears here to Los and Enithar-
mon as a reflex to their need for redemption only after they have undergone
the act of eating the fruit. Just as Enion completed the Circle of Destiny in
an "intoxication of Repentance & Contrition" (5:28) so the characters in
VIIa are "intoxicated" with the fruit of the Tree of Mystery and begin to
feel "bitter Contrition" (87:29) and "stern repentance" (87:40), thus re-
creating the narrative preconditions for the creation of the woven Spectre
in Night I. And,just as in Night I, the Lamb of God appears14-but this
time in two opposing forms: as the redeemer to Los and the destroyer to
Enitharmon.
 In his speech (87:40-52), Los makes no reference to the crisis of Male
Spectres without counterparts that so disturbs Urthona's Spectre; rather
Los shifts to a glimpse of Enitharmon as a "shadow withering / As on the
outside of Existence" (87:42-43). This vision of the transformed "shadow"