VOICES OF DESIRE: VALA AND THARMAS


neither Tharmas nor Enion responds verbally: they withhold conversa-
tion which, as noted elsewhere-perhaps most obviously in the Spectre/
Shadow conversation issuing in her pregnancy (85:5-6)-has strong
associations with sexual intercourse.
 The garden (which the narrator viewed as shadowy, delusive, and so
on), especially with Enion singing in it, is clearly threatening, even
castrating to Tharmas, who is forced into speaking when Vala tells him to
"Go to Enion" immediately after their descent into the garden. Tharmas'
speech suddenly intersects a moment so narratively alien to this garden
scene that the shock cannot be immediately absorbed by the reader,
though it fails to register at all with Tharmas and Vala. Tharmas' utterance
overlaps his speech in Night VIIb to the Shadowy Female who identifies
herself as "Vala" after deceiving Tharmas into staying his flight by disguis-
ing herself as Enion (93:38-39). In Night VIIb "Vala" anticipates her role
in Night IX: "Doth Enion avoid the sight of thy blue watry eyes" (93:40).
Tharmas replies:

 all the gardens of delight
 Swam like a dream before my eyes I went to seek the steps
 Of Enion in the gardens & the shadows compassd me
 And closed me in a watry world of woe
 (94:2-5)

The context of Night IX compounds the irony of Tharmas' statement in
Night VIIb, "I hear thy voice but not thy form see" (94:8). Although
Tharmas Child in Night IX has no consciousness of his watery identity as
the forlorn Tharmas of Night VIIb, the Child's vision of castration is more
precise and instructive: Tharmas experiences a cycle opposite to Vala's
more conventional one:

 He said O Vala I am sick & all this garden of Pleasure
 Swims like a dream before my eyes but the sweet smelling fruit
 Revives me to new deaths I fade even like a water lilly
 In the suns heat till in the night on the couch of Enion
 I drink new life & feel the breath of sleeping Enion
 But in the morning she arises to avoid my Eyes
 Then my loins fade & in the house I sit me down & weep
 (131:1-7)

 For Tharmas, "night" is the locus of "new life," for it is then that he
 drinks[s" life and feels the "breath" of Enion on her couch. Tharmas'
 vision directly parallels the cycle of the chain of jealousy in Night V and
 inverts Luvah's veiled sexual temptation upon "the breath of morning"
 (126:30). Tharmas' speech raises doubts concerning his earlier mournful
 request for Enion to bring him light, since it is the source of his own
 fading "loins"; and his closing words virtually identify his present long-
 ing with Vala's own earlier longing (127:16-17). Enion's daytime evasion
 -she arises "to avoid my Eyes"--again acts out the association between


Child Tharmas seems to
have no awareness of the
immediately preceding
lamentation by Tharmas
to Enion.




Cf. Los and Enithar-
mon's dying and reviv-
ing ritual in Night II
(34:23-96)





The conflict between the
sexual role of day and
night in Tharmas' two
speeches (129:20-27 and
131:1-6)