FOUR ZOAS IX / 134:7-135:10 (133:30-135:10)


 The dimension of the
 Black's song that corres-
 ponds to images
associated with Tharmas






Repetition of "The Eter-
 nal Man Rejoicd"
 invades the context of
 the Black's song.




 Reification of above/
beneath despite apparent
 liberation



























 The Eternal Man's
speech enacts dialectical
 confusion.


(associated with flocks and herds) is the only contender in the narrative
proper for the voice of the Black's father. In either case, the Black fails to
acknowledge Tharmas' prior voice of violent retribution because the
Black is himself on the verge of sitting (as the inertial Eternal Man pres-
ently is) if, by virtue of absorption into his memory, he is presently
re-enacting hearing in his own youth the hearingg voice" of his father/
Tharmas. The appearance of "Brethren," "flocks & herds," and "tents"
reincarnates much of the imagery indelibly associated throughout the
poem with the possibility of false dawn. Indeed, by the way he merges the
song of the Black into the feast, Blake invites a reading of this event that
constitutes it as a delusion: "The song arose to the Golden feast the Eternal
Man rejoicd" (135:4). "The Eternal Man rejoicd" most recently in the
narrative at precisely the moment Morning was called into Beulah
(133:30).
 Since the song of the African Black rises to the feast, it must originate
 "beneath," the space of all the groaning and misery. Tharmas' repeated
 commands to "Go down..." were gestures to localize guilt and
 unequivocally separate the oppressors from the oppressed. Yet at the transi-
 tion in his voice between fury and mildness he says, "Let the slave grind-
 ing at the mill run out into the field /Let him look up into the heavens..."
 (134:18-19), not something like, "Arise, slaves, and join us above." The
 dialectic of Tharmas' speech sustains the breach between above and
 beneath, and thereby prevents those of the lower world from joining him
 at his spatially privileged level. Thus, Tharmas' command to the mul-
 titudes of Mystery drives them metaphorically into a space directionally
 akin to that occupied by the liberated slaves. The fact that the freed slaves
 "believe it is a dream" (134:24) not only reflects on the outrageousness of
 the slaves' former lot, but also insinuates that dream is indistinguishable
 from reality for the slaves at the moment of their release. Could it be a
 dream? Blake carefully has the narrator say, "Then All the Slaves... Sing a
 New Song drowning confusion" (134:30-31). He does not say, "freed
 slaves," but simply "Slaves," reinforcing the oppressive dialectic of above
 and beneath: in this context, the disturbing uncertainty in the Black's
 "Methinks" opens up more sinister possibilities.
 Urizen's flail, which in counterpoint to the Black's song and Tharmas'
 winnowing, "sounded loud" (reiterating the "sounding loud" of the Eter-
 nals to call Morning into Beulah), reappears within the hearing of the
 Eternal Man at the feast (135:8), another surprising reference within a
 speech to a detail in the external narrative proper. Tharmas' winnowing is
 conspicuously absent from the Eternal Man's speech, however. Tharmas
 pastoral aspects (pushed into the foreground of the Black's song) are seem-
 ingly absorbed by the Eternal Man himself. As the last extended speech act
 by a character in the poem, the Eternal Man's speech to Luvah subtly
 confuses functions in the harvest and vintage, and this confusion issues in
a final prophecy uttered (apparently) by the shepherds within the Eternal
Man's speech concerning the pastoral paradise that will emerge if certain