THE THRESHOLD OF NIGHT IX


The confusion of iden-
 tities in the Shadowy
 Female's speech to Uri-
 zen and in Los's speech
 to Rahab




















Urizen's plot has in fact
 made possible Los's
 prolific sexuality: prior
 to the descent of the
Shadow ofEnitharmon
under Urizen's power,
 Los and Enitharmon
were living out a barren
 sex life.













 Matthew reads
 "Behold" not Awake."


 The Shadowy Female's first speech to Urizen complicates the meaning
 of the robes of blood by interpreting the figure clothed in them as the
 murderer of Luvah rather than as Luvah the murderer; Los's story, on the
 other hand, is literally about a confusion of identities-Satan with
 Palamabron (a perspective transformation of the confusion that emerges
 when Urizen and Thiriel become Rintrah and Palamabron at the end of
 VIIa). Los's speech is too cryptic and summary to make clear whether or
 not Los himself can make the distinction he demands of Rahab: to distin-
 guish "between States & Individuals of those States"(115:24)--for he
 seems to treat "Satan" both as a State into which Ore has entered and as an
 individual in the Satan/Palamabron/Rintrah story. The impenetrable
 opacity of Satan's dual identity prevents Rahab from successfully tempting
 Los by providing Los with aspects of Satan which undermine Rahab's
 understanding of narrative events. Yet the tendency of Los's account to
 confuse relations in the narrative proper by inverting causal priorities
 amplifies Rahab's subversive indefiniteness and thus increases her power
 to approach Urizen and tempt him into his lustful dragon form. Under the
 causal influence ofLos's speech, which he begins by recounting his sexual
 generations, this event (106:2ff) is more extended and analytically explicit
 in its images than the earlier, primarily political, temptation scene
 (102:23-103:31) which this present scene intersects and in which the
 Shadowy Female mystified Urizen's perception of the robes of blood.
 Urizen's fear of Los's "devouring" sexual appetite had all along been a
 projection of Urizen's own perversely repressed lust. Los's generations,
 which roll out for Rahab prior to her seduction of Urizen, expose the
 failure of Urizen's plot to thwart Los's prolific sexuality and immediately
 reflect back on Urizen who suddenly becomes sexually vulnerable as a
 result.
 Since the verbal exchange between Ahania and Enion lies on the
threshold of Night IX, it is significant that Blake would make it possible
and indeed necessary to read their interchange in two opposite ways at the
same time: as a signal of imminent redemption and as a sign of movement
into deeper delusion. Ahania's devastating lamentation expresses the
ghastliness ofa world obsessed with death as a universal devourer. As such
her speech graphically analyzes the extreme consequences of Urizen's de-
scent into the devouring dragon of lust; throughout the poem Urizen has
directed his entire being toward the suppression of this event. Enion says
that her "hope" has been triggered by an unidentified "voice" crying,
"Awake the bridegroom cometh I awoke to sleep no more" (109:21).
Though this approximate external Biblical reference (Matthew xxv 6)
seems to thrust Enion toward expecting a mode of redemption external to
herself, it produces the same sleeplessness which haunted Ahania in Night
II. But further, as an intrinsic reference, it points to Urizen, Ahania's
Bridegroom in Night I: there Urizen was "forgetful of the flowing wine /
And of Ahania his Pure Bride but She was distant far" (16:16-17). And the
situation in Night VIII which occasions Enion's speech emerges from