BURSTING: TOWARD THE CLOUD OF THE SON OF MAN


Nuptial Song in Night I, "rugged wintry rocks /Justling together in the
void suspended by inward fires" (16:6-7), to associate this event with
Luvah's "Bursting forth from the loins of Enitharmon" (16:9), out of Uri-
zen's control, even as Luvah is just about to make a deceptive, though
decidedly non-sexual, re-entrance into the poem in Night IX.
 The reification of Urizen's "remain[ing]" error in the marks of the
slaves and tyrants that still "remain" constitutes the persistent vengeance
motif of this section, a vengeance which in turn generates the image of the
"Cloud of the Son of Man." The internal conflict of the unfolding imagery
vacillates between the aggressive violence of the oppressed who have been
freed and their passive need for redemption: the "children... Who died in
infancy rage furious a mighty multitude rage furious / Naked & pale standing
on the expecting air to be delivered / Rend limb from limb the Warrior...
(123:7-10).
 Blake subtly overlaps the vengeance motif with a shift to a different
locale, for the heavenly bodies, which suddenly materialize and speak, can
ask each other what "flames" are "coming from the South" (123:17) only if
they are themselves apart from the conflagration and thus not in the South,
where the Eternal Man and Urizen dwell. Like the explosion of the uni-
verse in 122:26 that impinges on and interrupts Urizen's speech, these
questions by the heavenly bodies imply that the South is, again, the spatial
origin of the violent events. This narrative shift away from the South
dictates the absence of Urizen and the Eternal Man from the present scene
insofar as they constitute the perspective originating in the South: they are
the now invisible perpetrators of this apocalypse from which they invisi-
bly retreat.
 The trumpet (this time "As of fierce battle") reappears compounding
the confusion it beckons and signalling yet another crucial event. The
Eternal Man's vision of the Lamb of God "slain" yet "selfrenewd" before
Jerusalem's (sexual) Gates, decreeing thereby the cyclic life of male and
female, has not yet been confirmed in the narrative proper. Similarly,
Enion's speech in Night VIII, which called for the Lamb of God "to return /
In Clouds & Fires" (110:1-2), cries out for embodiment in the narrative
proper. These tantalizing hints, which point to the redemptive return of
the Lamb of God (who functions in distinction from "Jesus" in The Four
Zoas), seem just about to be fleshed out when, after the trumpet sounds,
"They see him whom they have piercd they wail because of him" (123:20).
As they "see" the crucified figure, those who have pierced him repent. The
"Judge" springs from his throne and begs the prisoner for forgiveness, but
is judged instead (at this precise moment, Blake's text makes a similar
unforgiving judgment on the reader). The Judge says, "Brother ofJesus
what have I done intreat thy lord for me / Perhaps I may be forgiven"
(123:25-26). At this moment, with theJudge's fate suspended, what might
have been the climax of Night IX is initiated and frustrated by a partial
fulfillment of Enion's and the Eternal Man's visions of the descending
Lamb:


As the scene shifts from
the South, Urizen and
the Eternal Man tem-
porarily disappear.