FOUR ZOAS IX / 138:30-37 (8:22-138:37)


Tharmas and Urthona
return to the narrative,
 and Enitharmon will
soon be mentioned, but
 where is Enion?


 Such a landscape was
implicit, though under-
mined, in Los and Eni-
tharmon's wandering in
 Night I: "Lambs"
materialized to be eaten
 (9:22).


ing" begin to assume/transform characteristics of the renovated "Stars"
and even of the Sun/Man himself: "Animal forms of wisdom... That risen
from the Sea of fire renewed walk oer the Earth[.]" Subtle shifts have
occurred, however: before, the focus was "Stars / Of fire" rising from the
Ocean; now these animal forms have risen from "the Sea of fire," nearly
re-enacting Man's walking forth from the fires; the Sun/Man walked
"upon the Eternal Mountains," while these animals renewedd walk oer the
Earth[.]"
 The next six lines re-enact the previous transformations by reinstating
privilegingg) two characters (first Tharmas and then Urthona) and two
prior contexts of the poem (first "flocks" and "tent," and then "hammer"
and "Furnaces"). The first movement of this segment, dealing with Thar-
mas, establishes in the narrative proper itself those mild conditions often
"remembered" in interpolated speeches as being primordial, existing
"before" the "fall" or the vast breach in reality. Tharmas himself remem-
bered such conditions in Night IV as a reflex to recognizing his sexual
division from Enion (51:20-23). Los summed up the lethargic pull of such
a landscape in Night II: "those blessed fields / Where memory wishes to
repose among the flocks of Tharmas" (34:39-40). The Shadow of Enithar-
mon called attention to how this landscape constitutes a lure toward
forgetting or lapsing from consciousness: Urizen's Sons and daughters


 flourishd round the holy Tent of Man
Till he forgot Eternity delighted in his sweetjoy
Among his family his flocks & herds & tents & pastures


(83:20-23)


 The causal impact of
 Tharmas' entrance









 The transformation of
sweeping landscape into
pastoral hills and vales at
 Tharmas' entrance


Such a landscape has occurred in the narrative proper of Night IX only to
be undermined-in bloody destruction, "Shepherds their flocks their
tents / Roll down the mountains in black torrents" (119:8-9), and in
the extended sequence of sexual delusion with Vala and her flocks
(127:31-131:16). While lines 138:33-35 expand the emergence of the
"Shepherd" in 138:29 who appeared only to go "to his rest," the word that
connects this segment to the previous one opens up a crucial ambiguity:
"For Tharmas brought his flocks upon the hills & in the Vales[.]" It is
indeterminable whether "For" connects to 138:29-32 only or to the entire
section beginning at 138:20. In either case it implies an inverted causality.
In the former case the "Conversing" occurs because Tharmas appears with
his flocks; in the latter case, however, Tharmas' act of bringing his flocks
into the landscape is the ontological ground for all the prior transforma-
tions of Man in this section. In this latter reading, the narrator attempts,
retroactively, to bridge the abrupt causal (and physical) gap that opened up
in the text between Urthona's repose and the emergence of the Sun
(138:19-20) by consigning great transformative power to what appears to
be the simple act ofTharmas bringing his flocks into a pastoral landscape.
In either reading, Tharmas' entrance causes a transformation of the narra-
tive world, and the sweeping universal forms of Stars, Sun, Eternal Moun-