FOUR ZOAS IX / 138:36-40 (134:35-138:40)


 Syntactic/spatial
 ambiguities at the
emergence of Urthona



























Conversing: raising of
faces versus raising of
 voices


straightforward one. Nevertheless, because Urthona's hammer is poised
between "Among the wooly flocks" and "In the deep caves beneath," Ur-
thona may be located in that nether world where the consciousness of
gloomy depression, oppression, and anxiety resides. Extracting one pos-
sibility of this optical illusory syntax suggests that Urthona's hammer
sounds "in the deep caves beneath his limbs," a reading which makes it
impossible to fix Urthona's physical position, for then only the sounds
would be beneath his limbs. "Renewd" balances precariously between
"limbs" and "his Lions," thereby suspending the possibility of a univocal,
final decision concerning which (or both) is (are) renewed.
 The self-conscious parallel between the Children playing "Around
 the... tent" and the Lions roaring "Around the Furnaces" obscures these
 events as parodies of the wine press section: like those around the wine
 presses (136:28-137:2), the Children "play" and the Lions "sport." This
 explicit parallel allows the "Furnace" image to enter virtually unques-
 tioned. Unlike the "hammer"image, however, which has been predomi-
 nantly associated with "Urthona," "Furnaces" have been associated with
 Urizen (primarily in Night II), with Los (in Nights I, IV, and VIII), and
 with Orc (in Night V). The reappearance of "Furnaces" here and its strong
 association with Los suggests that it may be Los who is sounding "the
 hammer of Urthona[.]" This possibility is raised, however, only to be
 frustrated one final time.
 The act of "Conversing" that withdrew when Tharmas appeared now
returns, transforming the non-verbal "sounds" of Urthona's hammer into
forms of conversation: "They raise their faces from the Earth conversing
with the Man," who now appears for the last time in the poem, his "Eter-
nal" label once again dropped. As they converse, the Lions reiterate, in the
raising of theirfaces, the Sun/Man's raising of his voice. Because raising a
face requires an upward gaze (while raising a voice does not), "the Man"
must be spatially above them, as the Sun would be. Does this spatial
reference imply that the Eternal Man has become "the Man" again by
abandoning (his sitting in) the "Eternal Mans bright tent" in order to
"converse"? Unlike the Man or the Sun (like a New born Man) and
the "Animal forms of wisdom," all of whom "walk," the Lions "sport,"
just as the Children "play"-a faint residue of the wine press sequence.
The interplay and repetition of terms in this section permit multiple
x-structures to emerge. One simple one is:

 conversing raise


 raise converse

This tendency insists on the interlocking quality of the compulsively
repetitive landscape/text, a feature which continues to assert itself in spite
of a counter-movement to render things separate and distinct from one
another.