PSEUDO-SYMMETRICAL STRUCTURES


 Thus the Luvah/Vala linear override plot not only transcends several
embedded bracket markers but proceeds virtually unnoticed by the other
characters. Urizen especially seems singularly unaware when his control
of the conscious plot (and thus control of his light) shifts to Luvah. The
Eternal Man becomes so absorbed in his comfortable sitting in repose at
the feast that he delegates power to a drunken Luvah, the servant of wine
who becomes the perverse master of the terrible wine presses.

 Pseudo-symmetrical Structures

 The Luvah/Vala sequence in the garden and the Luvah/Vala sequence in
the wine presses function as pseudo-symmetrical structures. Although in
terms of their surface action these episodes invert one another, they are not
situated at analogous levels ofstructure. The boundaries of the sequence in
Vala's garden enclose the entire Luvah/Vala embedded structure, while the
wine press sequence functions directly as an aspect of the Eternal Man
embedded structure. The Tharmas/Enion "Eternal Childhood" plot also
seems naturally to contrast symmetrically with the Tharmas/Enion
"embrace" sequence. But these events likewise do not occur on the same
level of structure (Fig. D.2). The childhood plot constitutes the entire
innermost structure of Night IX, while the embrace happens as a detail in
the embedded structure of the feast. These pseudo-symmetries interfere
even further with the reader's ability to grasp the embedded structures of
Night IX consciously, throwing the reader deeper into the dialectic be-
tween conscious and unconscious, linear and embedded meaning.


Pseudo-symmetry: Lu-
vah is absent from the
later phases of the garden
sequence, while Vala is
absent from the early
stages of the wine press
sequence


FEAST FEAST

 LUVAH/VALA

 "Gorden
 sequence


 ETERNAL MAN

URIZEN
 -I


Wine
Presses
 __j


FEAST
I-


FEAST


LUVAH/VALA LUVAH/VALA

 THARMAS / ENION
 S Thormos/
 Childho En on
 Plot i embrace


Fig. D,2


ETERNAL MAN

 URIZEN
 I-