FOUR ZOAS IX / 125:29-126:5 (5:8-133:4)


 Ahania's arising from
death: the Eternal Man's
 "new risen body"




 Discrepancies between
 accounts of the Man's
 failed attempts to enter
 the flames


tion explicit. Blake has situated his narrative at this point in such a way
that a simple unequivocal decision is impossible. Even the phrase "Urizen
rose up from his couch" (125:29) cannot cancel the possibility of dream: he
(or the narrator) can dream that he arises.
 The narrative interference intensify as Urizen over-responds to
Ahania's reappearance, unlike his earlier under-response. While Ahania is
cautious (apparently having learned from her previous "Excess of joy")
and folds her death clothes "in care in silence," Urizen parodies Ahania's
earlier joyful anticipation in an action that becomes progressively absurd
as a visual image: he claps "his hands his feet his radiant wings" (125:30).
This joyful outburst is suddenly interrupted by one syntactically incom-
plete simile within another which distances the act: "as when the Sun
dances... A shout ofjubilee in lovely notes responding from daughter to
daughter / From son to Son as if the Stars... should sing soft" (125:31-34).
This diversionary musical simile narratively issues in two events. First,
Ahania takes "her seat by Urizen in songs &joy," and in sitting becomes so
totally absorbed into the narrative context that she completely disappears
from the poem to reappear only briefly near the end. Second, at just this
point the Eternal Man reappears, regaining his "Eternal" label as he (ap-
parently) joins Urizen and the others in sitting (he "also sat down"). His
reappearance reveals, however, that they are sitting on "Couches of Beu-
lah" (125:36), the space created by the Lamb of God in Night I (5:29-33).
This detail surfaces at the same time as the Eternal Man expresses no joy
over Ahania's return, only "Sorrow" at his inability to put off his "new
risen body" which explicitly comes into existence in the narrative only
after Ahania herself has newly risen from death and Beulah has returned to
narrative consciousness. Through this narrative coincidence Blake opens
the subversive possibility that the Eternal Man perceives the resurrection
of the female Ahania under the non-sexual aspect of his "new risen body."
 A more conventional possibility is that the Eternal Man is now perceiv-
ing the event of his arising from the rock as the "Falln Man" (123:40-124:1)
as the emergence of his new risen body. This latter, apparently less subver-
sive, reading suggests that when the Eternal Man joins the others on the
Couches he is returning from his previous failed attempt to enter the
Consummation: he is "Sorrowful that he could not put off his new risen
body / In mental flames the flames refused they drove him back to Beulah"
(125:37-38). If these lines refer to his earlier, rather than to a second,
attempt to enter the flames, however, "the Rock" to which he and Urizen
were repelled (124:3-4) has been perspectivally transformed into "Beulah"
through the agency of the intervening narrative events-the plowing, the
sowing, the appearance of the feast, and the return of Ahania. If this is a
second attempt to enter the flames, then the "new risen body" requires a
more subversive explanation such as its role as a perspective transforma-
tion of Ahania's rebirth, and his desire to "put off," rather than embrace,
this body suggests a parallel with Urizen who fails to achieve an embrace
with Ahania. This time the refusal by the flames is accompanied by the