THE REAPPEARANCE OF THARMAS AND URTHONA


is reminiscent of the singing and ringing in the villages of Luvah prior to
the falling of the Legions of Mystery into the wine presses (135:30-32);
"Exultation" is a word that has been followed by disturbing consequences
throughout Night IX. The "Exultation" immediately occasions the reap-
pearance of the world "beneath" and contrasts the joyous music with the
discordant cries of the oppressed: "All beneath howld loud / With tenfold
rout & desolation roard the Chasms beneath" (137:15-16). This explicit
reinstatement of the above/beneath opposition is immediately undercut,
however, for the "wide woofflowd down" precisely "Where" the howling
and desolation is occurring (137:17). The musical weaving of the females,
a subordinant aspect of the Golden feast, thus breaches the gap between
the lower and upper worlds, making it seem as if the weaving is implicated
in the woe and opening the possibility that the "Nations" beneath might
ascend to the upper world by means of this connection.
 Instead, this narrative connection makes it possible for Tharmas to
descend to the wine presses. As he beholds the sons and daughters of
Luvah, to what extent does he become what he beholds? It is, after all, only
in the context of Tharmas' "beholding" them that Luvah's sons and
daughters begin consciously to "torment one another and to tread / The
weak" (137:20-21). The narrator notes, however, that "Luvah & Vala slept
on the floor o'erwearied" (137:21). Two things are surprising about this
revelation. First, there is never an indication throughout the entire wine
press section up to this point, that Vala herself is present to the action at the
wine presses. She seems simply not to be involved in the episode at all
(except indirectly with reference to the "Legions of Mystery"), yet she
appears here with Luvah, exhausted. Second, the narrator has just told us
that Vala is working at her loom with the rest of the females. Suddenly, she
is pulled out of that context to appear asleep on the floor of the wine
presses. Through this move, Blake opens the possibility that Luvah's sons
and daughters are narratively enacting the sadistic dreams of Luvah and
Vala: the children are expressions of Luvah and Vala's subconscious
desires, visualized by the downward direction of the wine presses.
 Urthona and Tharmas call their sons (as the Eternal Man had called
Urthona and Tharmas) to deal with the problem. Their sons act on the
residue of the wine-pressing process: "they took the wine they separated
the Lees" (137:23). In separating the bodily residue of the wine from its
form as spirits (though this term is absent), the sons implicitly re-enact
every separation in Night IX since Jesus separated body from Spirit at the
outset (117:4-5). The sons of Tharmas and Urthona virtually identify
Luvah with the separated Lees when they cast him in the role of bodily
sediment, ground for the next crop, completely embedding Luvah (as
dung, catalyst) in the cycle. The sons of Tharmas and Urthona comple-
ment their act of spreading dung in the lower world by building (again) an
upper world-"heavens of sweetest wo[o]d[s]" (137:25). The wine they
take away in "waggons" which, having absorbed the characteristics of the
upper landscape, have become "the waggons of heaven," is "the wine of


The musical weaving by
the four females pro-
vides a link between the
worlds above and
beneath.










This event is the closest
Tharmas and Luvah
come to confronting one
another in The Four
Zoas; but whereas Thar-
mas beholds Luvah's
sons and and daughters,,
the narrator only asserts
that "Luvah and Vala
slept on the floor
o'erwearied" (137:21),
not that Tharmas
beholds them.














It is the sons of Tharmas
and Urthona that act on
Luvah.