FOUR ZOAS VIIA / 90:25-43 (72:23-105:11)


At line 85:40 the word is
 spelled inspired. "





 More new words imply
 a definite break from
 prior contexts, while
familiar words carry out
 the re-enactment.
















 Covert re-enactment of
 the shooting up of the
 Tree of Mystery



 "springing up": see
OED for "springing" as
a synonym for vegeta-
 tive "shooting" or
"bursting forth"; cf. the
deleted line in Night I:
 "He spurnd Enion he
 sprang aloft in Clouds"
 (E740, 820).


into a process or system, a transformation into the same substance as that
to which the spectres assimilate. Indeed, in this sense, the act of assimila-
ting seems to be a mild or moderated form of being eaten or consumed,
inverting Los's initial complaint that the victims "feed upon our life."
 The remainder of this final re-enactment and perspective transforma-
tion of the initial Urizen/Orc confrontation of Night VIIa occurs within
the narrator's voice, ostensibly as an analysis or consequence of the
immediately preceding speeches by Los and Enitharmon: "So Enithar-
mon spoke & Los his hands divine inspired began / To modulate his fires"
(90:25-26). Yet the narrative re-enactments that follow infold and invert
multiple prior contexts. This is certainly not the first time "divine" or
"inspired" has appeared (the Spectre himself used them earlier in this
Night [86:3; 85:40], and the narrator used them in the context of the
Spectre beholding the "Center opened" [87:3]). It is, however, the first and
only time in all of Blake's writings that "modulate" appears. It seems more
than appropriate here, for it means not only to adjust, regulate in definite
proportions, soften, temper, but also to attune or make melodious.
 As Los begins his work, more new and rarely used words flood into the
narrative: "studious," "vanquishd," "points." The fire Los is modulating is
itself, however, constituted of or has the characteristics of "iron," a term
previously contextualized massively. Los modulates his fire: "studious the
loud roaring flames / He vanquishd with the strength of Art bending their
iron points / And drawing them forth delighted upon the winds of Gol-
gonooza" (90:26-28). Iron was an image that connected Orc to Urizen
early in VIIa through the "rock of iron" and the "book of iron" (and the
only occurrence in the poem of the rare "studious" enhances this sublimi-
nal connection). The fact that the flames' "points" (suggesting fiery spears
or arrows, Vala's "quiver of secret fires" [59:4]) are "iron" allows Los to
draw them simultaneously "From out the ranks of Urizens war & from the
fiery lake / Of Orc" (90:29-30), a composite of images which thrusts the
narrative back to the close of Night VI when Urizen's war was explicitly
occurring in the surface of the plot and Orc was chained in fire (75:20 ff)
rather than back to the beginning ofVIIa where Urizen descended to view
Orc. This context would imply a narrative retreat to a point prior to the
conscious existence of the Tree of Mystery, and this narrative regress
makes it possible to grasp Los's labors as a radically transformed version of
the coming to consciousness of the Tree itself. Blake provides subliminal
clues to this effect: Los gathers iron-pointed flames by "bending down"
and "planting his right foot firm / Upon the Iron crag of Urizen thence
springing up aloft / Into the heavens of Enitharmon in a mighty circle"
(90:30-34). All of these images bear covert relations to the Tree's branches
"bending down," enrooting in the "rock" (which became the "iron rock"
and then an "iron crag"), and "shooting up" (in this context a historically
precise synonym for "springing up") "into the heaven of Los" (78:5-7;
14-16). Of course Blake is also playing off the sense of "springing" as a
reflex or recoil from Los's bending the iron points of the fire. The "circle"