OVERRIDES: THE FEAST


The Eternal Man recalls
a joyous feast with Uri-
 zen and Ahania, lying
 beyond the boundaries
 of the poem.








 Urizen recalls the feast
 in Night I where Ahania
 emerged in a state of
 being forgotten
 (16:15-17), as Urizen
 represses her now.

 These conflicting
 interpretations of the
 feast recreate the gap in
 Urizen's memory in
 Night V-between the
feast as locus of his prior
glory (64:4) and as locus
 of the fall (65:5-8).


heavens with bread & delicate repasts" (125:15-16). (Urizen's daughters
later relinquish part of this role when the wine serving is taken over by
"the flames of Luvah" [132:12; 133:4]).
 As a linear plot, however, the feast stretches back even further in the
narrative to the Eternal Man's reference to the dissonant raging sound
of "Men drinking each others blood" instead of "nourishing wine"
(120:11-12) and to his first speech to Urizen, wherein he perceives the feast
as a pleasant memory:

 I behold thee [Urizen] not as once
 In those Eternal fields in clouds of morning stepping forth
 With harps & songs where bright Ahania sang before thy face
 And all thy sons & daughters gathered round my ample table
 (120:14-17)

The Eternal Man remembers the feast as a joyous communion, in part
because it is grounded in sexual organization and generation (Ahania, sons
and daughters); but Urizen completely ignores or denies all reference to
the sexual component of the feast, interpreting/perceiving it in a way
diametrically opposed to the Eternal Man's perspective. Urizen's first
words are: "O that I had never drank the wine nor eat the bread / Of dark
mortality" (121:3-4). The conflict between these two perspectives/
memories of the feast persists almost until the end of the poem, function-
ing as an independent strand of the linear plot. This conflict reappears
in the critical separation of the female from the Eternal Men at the feast
and infiltrates into the final details of the Eternal Man bracket-Luvah's
drunkenness as he rises from the feast to take charge of the wine
presses (135:21-23) and Tharmas and Urthona's parallel arising from the
feast at the request of the Eternal Man (137:7-8). Thus the linear progres-
sion of the feast spreads from almost the beginning to almost the end
of the Eternal Man embedded structure, and one of its multiple and con-
tradictory functions is to draw attention away from the operation of
nested structures in general and the "feast" as an embedded structure in
particular.
 Because its multiple roles are tightly interwoven with minute details of
other aspects of Night IX, the feast is central to the plot culminating in the
trumpet sound/embrace. After a brief absence from the narrative surface
and immediately following the trumpet sound (occasioned by the embrace
of Tharmas and Enion [132:36-39]) the feast suddenly reappears (133:1-4).
The context of the Tharmas/Enion union urges the appropriateness of this
feast being a wedding feast as well as (if not instead of) a harvest feast. As
soon as the Eternal Man invites Tharmas and Enion to join him at the
feast, however, the opposite of the sexual consummation occurs: the Eter-
nal Man temporarily vanishes as a distinct character and is replaced by (or
divided into) "Many Eternal Men... [who] see / The female form now
separate They shudderd at the horrible thing" (133:5-6). Although the
embrace between Tharmas and Enion has the potential to reverse, heal,