REPRESSION OF THE LAMB: EQUIVOCAL BROTHERHOOD



 The Eternal "One" who is speaking describes the primordial function
of the Eternals in relation to Man in syntax that inadvertently overlaps the
Eternals with the Man at precisely the point the Eternal tries to separate
them:

 Forsaking Brotherhood & Universal love in selfish clay
 Folding the pure wings of his mind seeking the places dark
 Abstracted from the roots of Science then inclosd around
 In walls of Gold we cast him like a Seed into the Earth
 (133:13-16)

Lines 133:13-14 seem to refer unambiguously to Man. The phrase
"Abstracted... Gold" is situated in the text such that it could modify
either Man or the Eternals: the pull of the Eternal's syntax suggests, in fact,
that it is primarily the Eternals (and only derivatively Man) who are
"Abstracted" and "inclosd around / In walls of Gold." The casting of Man
like a Seed obviously analyzes both Urizen's sowing earlier in Night IX
(125:3ff) and its subsequent analysis in the "Immortal's" speech (126:6-17).
In the action of "covering with a Veil the immortal seed" betrays the
secrecy of their repressed female aspects in contrast to the more conscious
masculine image of casting seeds: the appearance of the Veil converts the
simile ("like a Seed") into fact.
 As the speech draws near its conclusion, the Eternal says: "we cover him
& with walls / And hearths protect the Selfish terror till..." (133:19-20).
At this point Blake reactivates the reader's nearly abandoned hope (even at
this late point) that a phrase something like "till the terror sees his mistake,
repents, and is regenerated..." will follow. But in fact at this key point the
syntax suddenly turns on the Eternals: "till divided all / In families we see
our shadows born" (133:20-21). The attempt to exempt Eternals from this
process (which the Eternal does not grasp as sexual) fails, but only
momentarily. The Eternal's reflex is to turn toward an "embrace" of
"Brotherhood" (133:22-23), which purports to transcend the sexual divi-
sion that obscurely manifests itself in "families" and "shadows"
(133:20-21).
 The Eternal's verbal slip in the context of this embrace is an ontological
 one as well: "We fall on one another necks more closely we embrace"; the
 act of union is inadvertently but inevitably the act of falling. The speech
 concludes by denying the existence of the female even more completely.
 There seems to be no room in the "Eternal family" for any but males
 (brothers, Father), reifying their initial perception of the separate female as
 a "horrible thing." It is, however, only in that horrified context that the
 Eternals could acknowledge the female's castrating separateness at all
 ("born to drink up all his powers"). By the end of the speech the female has
 disappeared and the males are all lovingly congratulating one another,
 indeed "embracing" one another physically and (given one of the alterna-
 tive meanings of "embrace") probably sexually as well.
 As the act of seeing the separating female shatters the "Eternal Man"


The second of two places
in the poem where Blake
placed a Biblical refer-
ence in the margin
occurs here: in both
cases (the first occurring
in Night I), the marginal
gloss stands beside a
problematic attempt to
assert the unity of the
"Brotherhood."