OVERRIDES: THE LUVAH/VALA PLOT


during of Los and Enitharmon in Nights I, II, and VIIa and the evasive
dialectics of Tharmas and Enion in Night I. But there is no primary
intersection between the three successive versions of this world, though
two overlap-the narrator's assurance that Luvah/Vala's world is one of
"doubts" and the narrator's own confusion once he enters Luvah/Vala's
world in order to narrate it. The Immortal, however, insists on the non-
ambiguity of the self-regulating cyclic process of renewal. Even the pres-
ence of a sunny paradise in the initial description of the world from
within its actions belies the narrator's definition of their world as one of
"shadows." Shadows explicitly appear only when trees begin to sprout as
Vala's longing for human community intensifies. Does Luvah's invisible
presence in a cloud dissipate light and render shadows impossible, and are
shadows then aspects of his absence? The role of Luvah and Vala as "Ser-
vants" is progressively obscured by the second and third accounts of their
world, a progression which mirrors Luvah's hidden infiltration of the
narrative proper.
 After the narrative returns from examining the descent of Luvah and
Vala, a mystifying event occurs: Urizen suddenly becomes obsessed with
causing Luvah and Vala to be "exhald" by the "pouring" of his light (an
event which can be grasped only at a more detailed level of linear analysis).
Urizen's compulsion elevates Luvah to a position "Above on the bright
heavens in peace" (131:37), a position in the narrative proper directionally
parallel to Luvah's (invisible) location on a "golden cloud" in the narrative
"world" of Luvah and Vala. Luvah's role in the common space of the
narrative proper thus becomes a direct transformation of his role in the
embedded space of "delusions" and "doubts." Luvah's elevation, which
purports to unite him with Vala, actually separates her from him, as
mysteriously and unexpectedly as the female form separates from the
Eternal Men after Tharmas and Enion unite in the next narrative segment
of the poem. The separation of Luvah and Vala re-enacts in the narrative
proper their literal separation from one another which pervades and con-
stitutes their garden world.
 The Immortal's command that Luvah henceforth be a "Servant" (126:6,
17) is twice fulfilled in the context of the feast: "the wine of Eternity / Was
served round by the flames ofLuvah all Day & all the Night" (132:11-12,
133:3-4). It is initially surprising that by means ofhis re-activated "flames"
(associated, though not exclusively, with "Consummation") Luvah
assumes the role of flaming wine servant so soon after he has risen into the
heavens in peace. The Eternal Man "Darken[s]" (132:1), however, as soon
as Luvah rises into the heavens by means of Urizen's pouring of "light":
this transformation opens the possibility that the pouring/exhalation/
rising is yet another (heavily mystified) version ofLuvah acquiring power
over Urizen's (horses of) light; this time, however, the event occurs in the
narrative proper (not in an interpolated vision). The horses are conspicu-
ously absent, as they must be for Urizen to be fully caught up in Luvah's
perceptual delusion. Luvah's role as wine servant derives narratively from


Urizen succumbs to
Luvah's invisibility and
desires to have the spirits
of Luvah and Vala
exhaled by means of
pouring light. See
below, pp. 413-15.



















The exhalation passage
as a covert enactment, in
the narrative proper, of
the theft of light plot; see
below, pp. 413-15.