NIGHT VIII: OVERLAPPING REPETITIONS


The interconnection of
information segments in
 Night VIII by phrase
 repetition


 Segment 1 feeds into
 segment 3.



 Segment 2 feeds into
 segment 3.






 Segment 3 feeds into
 segment 6.




 Segment 2 feeds into
 segment 4.












 Segment 5 feeds into
 segment 7.


of emphasis from the Los/Enitharmon/Urizen/Orc primary plot to
the derivative Satan/Lamb/Rahab/Jerusalem plot. Urizen's dragon-fall,
which results from this shift of emphasis, then: 1) absorbs the primary plot
by making that dragon-fall itself a precondition of key events of Nights
I-VIII, 2) elicits the narrator's reflex flash to the "Divine Lamb" in the face
of an imminent recycling of the entire narrative, and 3) generates the
speeches of Ahania and Enion, who are suddenly forced back into the
narrative proper. But this summary overlooks the way Blake intercon-
nects these narrative segments by means of overlapping repetitions. The
first phrase that is repeated in a subsequent segment occurs in the first
segment of Night VIII. Enitharmon is there "Singing lulling Cadences"
(100:4) as she weaves Bodies for the Spectres. This phrase connects her
weaving to Urizen's war and to the Female's temptation of Urizen because
in the third segment, Enitharmon appears "singing lulling cadences"
(101:45) as the "terrors," the spectres, ironically "humanize" as they rage
in the battle. Also in this third segment, the Shadowy Female's temptation
of Urizen results in her "Gathering the fruit of that Mysterious tree"
(103:29), "circling its root / She spread herself thro all the branches in the
power of Orc" (103:23-24). This reiterates her action in relation to Orc in
segment two in the context of Urizen's perplexity at the appearance of the
dual form ofLuvah: "Gathring the fruit of that mysterious tree circling its
root / She spread herself thro all the branches in the power of Orc"
(101:24-25).
 The Shadowy Female's temptation of Urizen in the third segment
causes Urizen to enter a state of"num[m]ing stupor" (103:30); after the
Lamb is crucified and Los speaks to Rahab in the sixth segment, Urizen
"felt...the numming stupor" (106:19). This luring of Urizen by the
"False Feminine Counterpart" Rahab is mapped onto the battle as the
"hermaphrodite" which appears on two distinct occasions of Night VIII.
It happens first as an aspect of Urizen's war machinery in the second
section: a hermaphrodite "hiding the Male / Within as in a Tabernacle
Abominable Deadly" (101:36-37). This hermaphrodite is named "Satan."
The image of the battle assuming a "Hermaphroditic" form appears again
in the context of the descent of the Lamb and inverts the previous her-
maphroditic image: "Satan" bursts from the "Hermaphroditic bosom" of
the war as a "male without a female counterpart... yet hiding the shadowy
female Vala as in an ark & Curtains" (104:20, 25, 27). This repetition and
inversion project Urizen's war of segment two onto the Lamb plot of
segment four. Taking the Lamb from the Cross occurs first in the context
of the False Feminine Counterpart torturing her beloved, nailing the
Lamb to the Tree, and Jerusalem perceiving the Body on the Cross
(106:14-16), and again after the Ahania/Enion interchange late in Night
VIII (110:29-33). Finally, two lines, which first occur at the end of the first
section (where the spectres are being woven bodies by Enitharmon), are
repeated in the beginning of the fourth section, in which the Lamb and
Satan simultaneously interfuse and polarize. Since these are two consecu-