FOUR ZOAS IX / 133:1-133:9 (4:27-133:9)


 The narrator is caught
 up in the division of the
Eternal Man into Eternal
Men at the separation of
 the female form.



















Differences between the
original form of the lines
in Night I and their near
 repetition in Night IX


this expectation, however, and instead abruptly changes scenes, back again
to the feast.
 In the same line that the reader is shunted back into the feast away from
 the apocalyptic hope ofTharmas' Embrace and trumpet call, the Regener-
 ate Man suddenly becomes the Eternal Man once again, and Tharmas and
 Enion disappear by name: "The Eternal Man arose He welcomed them to
 the Feast" (133:1) where the disturbing separation of the female will occur.
 It is important that Blake does not inject this separation immediately upon
 "their" joining the feast. Instead, Blake first interposes the repeated lines
 beginning, "The feast was spread..." (133:2-4) substituting the name
 "Eternal Man" for the term "Regenerate Man." With this shift, the feast
 suddenly acquires the "golden" character of Luvah and Vala's world
 (which, in turn, has been absorbed from Urizen's golden universe in
 Night II); all else in the lines remains virtually the same, especially the
 Eternal Man's repeated inertial sitting and Luvah's flames pervasively serv-
 ing the wine.
 The narrator immediately takes on the characteristics of the emergent
 "Eternal Men" because he acts as if the separate female is not perceivable
 (does not exist) prior to the repetition of these lines; yet this event almost
 duplicates, in the context of the Eternal Men at the feast, Urizen's
 "Astonishd & Confounded" beholding of Ahania's "shadowy form now
 Separate" at which "he shudderd" (30:45-46) in Night II. It is almost as if
 the repetition of the lines concealed (or enacted) some fundamental hap-
 pening that replaced the Eternal Man with "Many Eternal Men [who] sat
 at the golden feast to see / The female form now separate" (133:5-6). The
 syntax suggests both that they sat in order to see and that they sat and
 happened to see. Whether "separate" is a verb or adjective alters primarily
 only the immediacy of the happening. In either case the division of the
 Eternal Man into multiple Eternal Men is an aspect of the female's separa-
 tion (or the separate female). They all come into existence narratively
 through the same act of seeing/being seen.
 The response of the Eternal Men at the emergence of the separate female
 combines Urizen's shuddering response to his alienation from Ahania in
 Night II with a disturbing near-repetition of the Fallen One's final words
 in Enitharmon's vision in Night I: the Eternal Men "shudderd at the
 horrible thing / Not born for the sport and amusement of Man but born to
 drink up all his powers" (133:6-7). In Night I, the Fallen One had accused
 the female, saying: "Once born for the sport & amusement of Man now
 born to drink up all his Powers" (10:25). The textual near-identity be-
 tween lines 10:25 and 133:7 calls attention to their narrative differences.
 Line 10:25 was embedded in the Los/Enitharmon conversation, which
 brought Luvah, Vala, Urizen, and the Fallen Man/One into narrative
 existence in The Four Zoas. By contrast, Los and Enitharnon are specifi-
 cally absent from the context of 133:6-7, while Urizen, Luvah, Vala, and
 the (now) Eternal Man are, in varying degrees, participating in a harvest
feast which parallels (and inverts) the nuptial feast of Los and Enitharmon