FRUSTRATED RENOVATION: EVENTS


with howling/ And deep despair." (119:1-2). "Mystery" remains an
important consciously recurrent term throughout Night IX, referred to
twice by the Eternal Man (120:4; 46-47), denounced by Tharmas
(134:5-29), and entering into the wine press sequence in the form of the
tortured "Legions of Mystery" (135:34). The Synagogue of Satan disap-
pears, as does any reference to "Deism" or "Natural Religion": this does
not rule out the possibility of their hidden presence in the doctrinal state-
ments and actions of Night IX. Considering the events of Night IX as a
fulfillment of the Synagogue of Satan's burning of Mystery and the anima-
tion of a new version from her ashes ("Natural Religion as of old") would
expose the nostalgic/sexual/cyclic/regenerative-in short, "natural"-
aspects of Night IX's doctrinal speeches and linear agriculture plot as
features signifying the instatement of a new hegemony of completely
disguised "Satanic" forces. Such a reading is by no means necessary: that it
is possible at all testifies to the severe responsibility Blake places on the
reader in this Night of "The Last Judgment."
 Those events that might unambiguously satisfy the (Newtonian) read-
er's desire for a resolution of the poem's crises include, most obviously,
undiluted joyous unions of the male Zoas with their estranged female
Emanations, and, consequently, the union of the Eternal Man with his
Emanation,Jerusalem-though Blake has kept their sexual relationship to
one another strategically on the margins of the poem's narrative (in order
that the Lamb ofGod's "Create[d]" sexual relationship to Jerusalem might
insinuate/infiltrate into the narrative of Night IX).
 Another possible way of resolving the plot through an event would
involve the appearance of Jesus forgiving all errors or "Sins" of the pri-
mary characters, or the appearance of God and the slain Lamb explicitly
passing a "Last Judgment," dividing those who are to be condemned from
those who are to be saved. Alternatively, the narrative itself could dis-
tinctly and finally separate the "Satanic" from the "redemptive" forces by
disentangling the interconstitutive signals of Night VIII. If this scenario
were played out, hidden and mysterious events, connections, and relation-
ships would necessarily become clear, explicit, and readily understand-
able: the reader would expect, especially, to learn how to recognize the
"false morning," and the text would be free of any new disabling
obscurities, discontinuities, ambiguities, and problems.
 Yet another alternative resolution in the plot itself would find Los
emerging into an even more central role in the poem's action than he had
occupied in Nights VIIla and VIII. If this possibility were actualized, Los
would be recognized/acknowledged (at least by the narrator and the Eter-
nal Man) as a redemptive catalyst and agent, and the reader's developing
concern for Los would not be short-circuited.
 Not one of these possibilities actually materializes in an unambiguous
manner in Night IX, even though Blake provides tantalizing hints that
some of them may be happening (most notably the unions of the Zoas
with their Emanations and the apocalyptic imagery that would accom-
pany a "Last Judgment").


Considering the nostal-
gic desire to return to a
fantasized prior state as a
covert feature of the
invisible "Satanic"
forces and "Natural
Religion" in Night IX










Possible resolution
within the fictional
framework of The Four
Zoas






Possible resolution
within the conventional
framework of Christian
forgiveness and revela-
tion









Possible redemption
through the emergence
of Los as the poem's hero