FOUR ZOAS IX / 117:10-118:40 (57:18-118:40)


The branching, fibrous
action of Los connects it
to the crucifixion of the
Lamb on the Tree, as the
syntax opens the possi-
bility that the vegetable
 hands are Jesus'.










The loss of the Spectres'
 bodies re-enacts Jesus'
 separation of the Spirit
 from the body.


























The harvest is going on
as the fires initially fall.

 The problematic
 brightening of the
 South, the presumed
 origin of the
 conflagration


(branches, roots) to which the Lamb was nailed in VIII and which virtually
disappeared to be replaced by the "Cross." Now, the reappearance of the
crucified body occasions Los's taking on the tree's characteristics and then
disappearing from the poem. Los's action effects thefalling of the "fires of
Eternity," signalling that what is transpiring here profoundly affects Eter-
nity, indeed causes it to fall, or brings a consciousness of its fall to the
reader and to Eternity itself.
 The shrill trumpet sound of the falling fires calls the dead from their
graves, rattles the scroll-like volumes of the heavens (which have been
cracked across by Los's act), and turns the class of oppressors into the
oppressed. This action proves, however, to produce an important, if
isolated, alternative effect. The "Spectre of Enitharmon" (117:24), a
unique confusion of male function and female name, enters the narrative as
an apparent contrast toJesus'separation of body from Spirit. This unusual
Spectre is "let loose on the troubled deep" only to be received by the
Spectre of Urthona (who vanished after Night VIIa) in "the darkning
South their bodies lost they stood / Trembling & weak a faint embrace"
(118:1-2). This event, disconcerting as it may be, recapitulates the opening
lines of IX and at the same time results from Los's response to those lines.
The Spectres of Enitharmon and Urthona have "lost" their bodies-as if
Jesus had separated their bodies from them-but when they embrace
(anticipating the embrace of Tharmas and Enion), they are fused together
as if completely but only two-dimensionally, "as when / Two shadows
mingle on a wall" (118:2-3). Their bodies are first "lost," as if they had
disappeared, and then are "buried in the ruins of the Universe" (118:5).
 At this point the Spectres ofUrthona and Enitharmon are assimilated to
the "Phantom" vision of Non Existence that so terrified them: there is
absolutely no hint of a "Spirit" that survives this total bodily burial. It is
unclear whether or not the narrator grasps the irony in his question which
closes this episode: "Who shall call them from the Grave" (118:6). If the
purpose of the trumpet's sound is to call the dead to judgment, it is effec-
tive only on the nameless "trembling millions" (118:18): it has produced
exactly the opposite effect (burial in the grave) on these characters, aspects
of Urthona, who are intimately connected with Los, who himself disap-
peared as soon as he cracked the heavens. The narrator inadvertently
acknowledges the perceptual state into which he has drawn his reader and
himself when he says of the bodies that they were "Mingled with the
confusion" (118:6).
 Three other local details of this section are especially relevant in recog-
nizing markers that allow the reader to anticipate aspects of the narrative/
perceptual field. The poor (and also the oppressors?) "awake up to the
harvest" (117:19), a reference that allows this opening moment to intersect
with the extensive harvest yet to unfold under the hand of Urizen later in
Night IX. Second, the reference to the components ofUrthona embracing
in the "darkning South" anticipates the increasingly deceptive role the
South plays in its apparently increasing "brightness," most specifically in