INTERFERENCE: ECCENTRIC PLACEMENT


The narrative logic of
the Tharmas/Enion
 embrace


 4) repetitions of phrases and lines that do not define the boundaries of any
 of the primary embedded structures in Night IX, as they have done in
 previous Nights (especially Night I);
 5) discontinuous breakthroughs of apocalyptic imagery, placed by Blake with
 studied randomness, which can be seen as markers of different ways
 the "same" (apocalyptic) event emerges out of alternative narrative
 routes;
 6) doctrinal intrusions, philosophical/theological pronouncements which
 claim to state the unconditional underlying primordial truths of The
 Four Zoas world and which function as counterpoints to the disrup-
 tive apocalyptic breakthroughs in that they posit models of order,
 coherence, self-regulating system, and thus relief from strife.

 Structurally Eccentric Placement of Events

 The Tharmas/Enion Embrace. First, with regard to eccentric place-
ment, the union of Tharmas and Enion, which could be the positive
climax of Night IX (since their separation at the beginning of Night I
generated all of the characters and events of the poem), might appro-
priately occur with greatest symmetry either in the most deeply embedded
structure or in the least embedded structure which embraces Night IX in
its entirety. Neither expectation is completely fulfilled, however.
Although the deepest structure of Night IX does indeed focus on Tharmas
and Enion in their "innocence," this plot revives the evasive and interroga-
tive gestures that are presupposed in their initial division from one another
in Night I. Thus the sequence in Vala's garden tantalizes the reader (and the
narrator) with a pseudo-resolution of the Tharmas/Enion plot, making
the incipient adolescent sexual frustration ofTharmas and Enion mock the
reader's own perceptual frustration and perplexity. The other most likely
location for the embrace of Tharmas and Enion is in the Los/Urthona
structure which brackets the entire Night. The trumpet blast ofjudgment
which occurs (for the first time) near the beginning of IX (117:11) is later
revealed to coincide with the embrace of Tharmas and Enion. Blake
refuses to reveal that the trumpet call and the embrace interconstitute one
another until after the Tharmas/Enion childhood sequence and after their
embrace itself occurs about two-thirds of the way through Night IX
(132:36-38).
 If Blake were arranging the narrative with an eye toward satisfying
reader expectations with regard to embedded structures only, he would
have introduced the trumpet blast, as he does, at the beginning of IX but
then would have revealed the identity of trumpet blast and embrace (sym-
metrically) near the end of the poem in the final phase of the Los/Urthona
bracket. This gesture would have dramatized the simultaneity of the
beginning and end of Night IX and emphasized that the violent falling of
fires with shrill sound at the beginning is an unlikely aspect of the tender
embrace of lovers long since seeking one another. Blake completely