CONSEQUENCES: EATING THE FRUIT


markedly contrasts to the subversive "lovely shadow" who is simultane-
ously involved in luring out the dead (85:18-21), signifying Los's repres-
sion of the "shadow's" emergent power. Indeed, the fabricating activities
of Los and Enitharmon in late VIIa (and even in VIII) seem to proceed in
ignorance of the "shadow's" activities. In contrast to the outward vision of
Enitharmon as a "shadow," Los urges Enitharmon to look inward through
her heart gates to behold "the Lamb of God / Clothed in Luvahs robes of
blood descending to redeem" (87:44-45), as complete a version of this
"redemptive" image as ever occurs in the poem. Both Enitharmon and the
Spectre have uttered their obsession with being ransomed and redeemed,
but it is Los who sees the Lamb unequivocally as the redeemer here. He
concludes his speech by glorifying forgiveness and forgetfulness and by
asking for patient conversation.
 Enitharmon, in direct opposition, immediately re-acknowledges the
problem of the "Spectres of the Dead," which to Urthona's Spectre was the
ground for punishment, and in so acknowledging fearfully interprets the
Lamb as no redeemer at all by projecting an excessively anxiety-ridden
and self-conflicting vision of what will happen as "fit punishment" for
their "Hideous" deeds in the past (which have just entered her conscious-
ness upon eating the fruit):

 Uttermost extinction in eternal pain
 An ever dying life of stifling & obstruction shut out
 Of existence to be a sign & terror to all who behold
 (87:56-58)

This vision simultaneously enacts Los's glimpse of Enitharmon as a
"shadow" "on the outside of Existence" and intersects the description of
Urthona's "World" prior to Urizen's entering it in Night VI: "Shut up in
stifling obstruction rooted in dumb despair" (74:18). Enitharmon's vision
of the "Son of God" as destroyer implies an infiltration into her vision of
Urizen's hidden presence (anxiety about the future and his entrance into
the poem as "God the destroyer" in Night I). Los and Enitharmon's con-
tention over the status of the Lamb is a perspective transformation of the
Los/Spectre contention over the status of the body. The Spectre's reversal
of attitude toward the body (he now wants to create rather than destroy it)
occurs only after Los and Enitharmon have eaten the fruit: his reversed
attitude toward the body accompanies a sudden obsession to be redeemed
and ransomed, as if he had eaten the fruit. In functioning thus as
"medium," by infusing invisibly into the activities ofLos and Enitharmon
his compulsion to create bodily forms, the Spectre all but disappears as an
explicit separate narrative agent.
 The third and final account of the emergence of the dead into the nar-
rative proper is one of the most complex, compressed, and decisive
movements in the poem: it generates out of a sudden return to narrative
consciousness of the spatial/relational context in which this action is


Los and Enitharmon's
opposed interpretations
of the descending Lamb
derive from the shift in
their perspective
emphasis-Los on the
"shadow" and Enithar-
mon on the "spectres."















Los built Golgonooza in
Night V in fear of
"uttermost Extinction"
(60:2).





(87:60 [59])








The Spectre acts as if he
had eaten the fruit of the
Tree.