NARRATOR/NARRATIVE: INTERROGATIVES


 As Urthona's Lions "sport upon the plains," Urthona himself again
disappears from the poem's surface, as Tharmas has already disappeared.
The "Lions" now replace the "flocks" and by implication the "Animal
forms of wisdom night & day / That risen from the Sea of fire renewed
walk[.]" The Lions' act of "conversing" with the Man is made up of two
questions, to which no answer emerges in the text: "How is it we have
walkd thro fires & yet are not consumed / How is it that all things are
changed even as in ancient times[?]" These questions parallel those asked
throughout Night IX by the oppressed the moment they begin to experi-
ence liberation, as if interrogation were an aspect of or reflex to being
freed.
 Since at the beginning of this final section of the poem, the Sun had left
"his blackness," it is especially significant that the Lions' questions are
reminiscent of those that open the song of the African Black: "how came I
here so soon in my sweet native land / How came I here Methinks I am as I
was in my youth" (134:35-36). This connection is even deeper because the
present context is, like that of the Black, dominated by "flocks & herds"
and "tents." The absence of reference in the African Black's song to the
consuming fires, however, affirms that the rising of the Black's song to the
feast was a precondition of the terrible events at the wine presses. In the
present context those implications are not mentioned, not as if they have
been forgotten, but as if they could not exist under any circumstances
whatsoever. These two questions by the Lions also echo Vala's yearning in
the gardens for the evasive voice that lured her into wakefulness only to
disappear and deny her conversation. These questions definitely spring
from the dominant "mild" dimension of late Night IX, the "furious"
agitation of vengeance and retribution being condensed into the mo-
mentary appearances of "the Furnaces." Finally, by their very nature as
questions these lines covertly re-enact the underlying dialectic of conceal-
ment out of which the poem's "torments" emerge.
 These questioners are totally mystified concerning the nature of their
 existence, and rightly so: "How is it we have walkd thro fires & yet are not
 consumed / How is it that all things are changed even as in ancient times"
 (138:39-40). Since Man has walked "from midst of the fires" (138:22) and
 now finds himself in a landscape totally transformed into that which has
 always existed as characters' memories, these questions are exactly those
 the Man himself(and certainly the reader) wants answered; and yet there is
 no response to clarify the mystery unless the last lines of the poem are
 themselves intended to be an answer, an option which Blake does not rule
 out. In this reading the end of the poem could be narrated by the Man. It is
 also possible that 138:39 is asked by the creatures, while 138:40 is asked by
 the Man, which would implicate him in the questioning that the "convers-
 ing" seems to presuppose.
 Lines 138:20-40 thus exhibit a conflict between the tendency of charac-
 ters, events, and landscapes to achieve fully separate and distinct identities
 and the tendency of repetitive imagery, involuted syntax, and prior


"all things are changed
even as in ancient
times": does this mean
things were changed in
ancient times or that the
present coincides with
ancient times, that all
things have become
again as they were in
ancient times? The ellip-
sis is crucial here.