LUVAH'S INVISIBILITY: THE VOICE


it. So we must in general forego certain details in the service of seeing the
phenomenological characteristics of the passage.
 Informing the movement of this difficult section is a series of recurrent
phases that merge together almost imperceptibly and depend on a very
slippery recreation of the interrogative hiding/seeking dialectic that per-
vades the poem. In addition, confusion arises because there are two aspects
of Luvah's voice (or two distinct voices), two aspects of the sun, and two
aspects of Vala, none of which, as usual, is marked with punctuation or
any kind of visual/linguistic marker. The first voice, unequivocally Lu-
vah's according to the narrator, though totally unrecognized by Vala, calls
her from his "Cloud upon the breath of morning" to arise (thus re-
enacting the pervasive "false morning") saying the "Eternal Man is Risen"
(126:30, 32), a fact not granted by the narrative proper: though earlier the
"Falln Man" had been "arisen" viewing the Cloud (123:40-124:1), the
Eternal Man is presently sitting and viewing the visions that are unfold-
ing. The "voice" knows Vala's name and gradually reveals itself to be
tormenting her by the "unformd hopes" which the narrator earlier pred-
icated of this world (126:22). Her incessant questions emerge from a
radical gap in her consciousness (as though she just came into existence)
and from her opposing feelings of extended longing and yearning: both of
these derive directly from her being called forth from "sleep." The first
aspect of Luvah's mysterious voice taunts her for waking to a conscious-
ness of her own demise, identifying her existence as temporal, aimed
toward death. The voice reverses its original call to "Rise" and urges her to
"sit thee down" (127:14), passively (and unconsciously) mocking those
who sit lethargically viewing these visions. Sitting constitutes doubting
(another of the features the narrator perceives in Vala's garden [126:22]),
and as soon as she sits, "apple trees" (whose branching arms will become
the source of shadows) suddenly appear (127:19). These trees are a reified
aspect ofher sitting/doubtingjust as the Tree of Mystery was in relation to
Urizen in Night VIIa. Her verbal attack on the Sun (not the invisible
"voice" of Luvah?) reveals that her absorption into linear time (Urizen's
"futurity") derives from her sitting and causes her to utter a far from
paradisaical expression:

 O be thou blotted out thou Sun that raisedst me to trouble
 That gavest me a heart to crave & raisedst me thy phantom
 To feel thy heat & see thy light & wander here alone
 Hopeless if I am like the grass & so shall pass away
 (127:20-23)

 Vala begins to assume the characteristics of Enion and the other isolated
Emanations and finally begins to acquire in the narrative proper her own
epithet as "the wanderer." If the words "pass away" locate Vala in her
deathlike state prior to being awakened by the first aspect ofLuvah's voice,
they also occasion the appearance of a second aspect (or another voice) that
reverses the stance which depressed Vala so and reassures her, purely


Invoking a parallel but
inverted scene in Night
II where Vala failed to
recognize Luvah's voice
in the furnaces, at which
point she forgets what
only comes to narrative
consciousness at her
forgetting-that she had
walked with Luvah "in
bliss, in times of inno-
cence & youth" (26:2-3);
see above,p.122.








Trees appear in the con-
text of Vala's sitting
down.