NARRATOR/NARRATIVE: IMAGE SUBSTITUTION


where totally transparent syntax is an index of the degree to which the text
is pulling away from the narrative's perspective transformations toward an
absolute point of view. It is also significant in that it leads the reader to
assume unequivocally that Man's Eyes behold something positive,
"spheres arising," and then opens the possibility that what Man is behold-
ing is the fact of that image's disappearance, the utter extinction of all
heavenly light sources, "like a lamp blown out," an absolute absence and
eradication. Something of this sort recurs with the arising of Urthona and
the disappearance of Los in the final segment of Night IX (139:4-7).
 Because consumed reflects back immediately onto the narrator's asser-
tion that "the evil is all consumed it opens the possibility that the "con-
sumd" objects of Man's beholding in lines 138:23-24 may analyze or define
a consequence of the consumed evil. Just as the words "in their stead"
simply reaffirm the finality of the disappearance of the consumed percep-
tual objects and decree an obliterating replacement for them, however, the
repetition of "behold" pulls the narrator back toward the poem's involuted
syntax which the previous lines have been struggling to purge. If the
"behold" in 138:24 is not an exclamation (as in "behold[!] / The Expand-
ing Eyes of Man behold..."), but is a verb completing "His eyes...
behold," then there is a perceptual involution ("His eyes.. .behold / The
Expanding Eyes of Man behold..."), familiar throughout the poem. The
syntax wavers on the brink of complete self-consciousness: Man's eyes are
beholding his own act of expanded beholding as this act explicitly replaces
the consumed "stars" (and/or "the Angelic spheres") with "the depths of
the wonderous worlds[.]"
 This substitute image carries the heavy burden of precisely condensing
what the Expanding Eyes of Man behold; if it is to affirm an absolute
eradication of subversive readings, it should be as unequivocally positive
as possible. Yet this image invokes two words that have primarily negative
reverberations throughout The Four Zoas. The previous appearances of
"depths" have all been negative. "Depths" occurred most recently in
Tharmas' command to Mystery to "Go down into the depths go down &
hide yourselves beneath" (134:8), which potentially reintroduces the
above/beneath opposition into this "Expanding" context. Every other
occurrence of the word has been equally oppressive, describing the
interior of the Spectre of Tharmas in Night I (6:6), the place of Vala's bow
in the Demons' song in Night V (59:5), and the place where Urizen's
daughters "Knead bread of Sorrow" (79:22-23). "Wondrous" would
appear to be unambiguously positive; it has, however, occurred in two
diametrically opposed sets of narrative conditions. "Wondrous" appears
three times in positive contexts, describing Eno's ornamenting of her
opened atom of space in Night I (9:13), Jerusalem as a creation of Los and
Enitharmon in Night VIII (103:37), and the harvest in Night IX (132:7).
("Wondrously" [54:23] occurs in the context of "the Starry Wheels" feel-
ing "the divine hand" in Night IV.) Its most frequent appearances, how-
ever, cluster in Night II (seven times), describing Urizen's emergent


"a lamp blown out"
could imply a residual
glow, however.




















Tracing "depths" and
"wondrous"