MAPPING NIGHTS VIIA, VIIB, AND VIII


The Structures of Nights VIIa, VIIb, and VIII


 Like Nights I-VI, Nights VIIa, VIIb, and VIII each exhibits its own
perceptual grammar. The events of Night VIIa are organized by reference
to their spatial relation to the Tree of Mystery, which functions as the
primary perceptual clue connecting sequential phases of the narrative.
While VIIa begins prior to the existence of the Tree, Urizen's initial ina-
bility to cope with Orc immediately generates the Tree of Mystery as
a massive perceptual/narrative mystification. The remainder of VIIa gen-
erates, within the context of the Tree, three alternative perspective trans-
formations of the unconscious implications of the initial Urizen/Orc
confrontation; embedded substructures exist within each of these trans-
formations. The first perspective transformation (outside the Tree) acts
out a verbal confrontation between Urizen and Orc; the second perspec-
tive transformation (beneath the Tree) implicates Urizen sexually in an
interpolated vision the Shadow tells the Spectre; and the third perspective
transformation (above the Tree) eventually results in a transformation of
Urizen into a form of Orc.
 In contrast to Night VIIa, Night VIIb utilizes a continuous narrative
deflection or re-orientation of perspective: a series of discrete verbal or
bodily confrontations is connected through mediating transitions that
overlap names and/or imagery. As such, VIIb lies structurally between
Nights VIIa and VIII. Night VIII employs a narrative alternation between
vastly different discontinuous scenes of action (without the aid ofcontinu-
ous mediating transitions) while simultaneously employing near repeti-
tions of whole lines, indicating that if the same events recur, they do so
with constantly altered meaning, and that the overall structure infolds,
encloses, and embeds at the same time it alternates and progresses.
 The perceptual rules by which characters and events relationally inter-
constitute one another in Nights I-VI undergo radical changes in these
three later Nights. Blake's perceptual argument undermines the easy
assumption that Los and Enitharmon's action in fabricating "forms sub-
lime," indicates a change in their personal identities, as though they were
persistent characters even in the tenuous sense of Nights I-VI. It is only in
relation to the same nexus of activities that has been unfolding throughout the
poem that previously unconscious aspects of the narrative variables named
Los and Enitharmon are now becoming conscious under the guise of
characters that seem to be undergoing a fundamental change. In fact, there
remain aspects of terms, characters and events that still bear their former
status: Urizen still has an aspect that is making the journey of Night VI,
"ages after ages exploring / The fell destruction" (102:27-28), while Uri-
zen's dragon form becomes the precondition for setting prior events in
motion-notably, Tharmas' cyclic whirl through the cavernous worlds -
and for bringing previously remembered events into the narrative proper,
such as Urthona's assuming a fibrous form. In this same nexus, Enithar-
mon takes over the role of weaving the Spectre, the task abandoned by


Nights Vila, VIIb, and
VIII form a structural
complex.



























Rules of transformation
themselves undergo
transformation in these
three Nights, yet certain
features remain
constant.



While the emergence of
Urizen's dragon form
creates the preconditions
for prior events, it also
pulls Urthona (as dis-
tinct from "the Spectre"
or "the Shadow") into
the narrative proper for
the first time since his
appearance in the
pseudo-invocation
(4:11) preceded the open-
ing of the narrative
proper.