NARRATOR/NARRATIVE: URTHONA AND LOS


the Mills and Ovens following that identification acting as the conse-
quences of that takeover, which must be reversed if Urthona is to arise
authentically. Most disturbingly, however, the identification of Los as a
"Spectre" opens the possibility that the speaker of these lines cannot dis-
tinguish between Los and the character who has been called "the Spectre
of Urthona"-a distinction crucial to the branching of narrative pos-
sibilities in Night VIIa which have made Nights VIII and IX possible.
 The reader/narrator's desire to embrace the triumph of Urthona is not
difficult to assess: Urthona is the character who has been most consistently
assigned the role of victim and not perpetrator of the "fall," being sexually
divided (in various contradictory accounts) as a result of the Urizen/
Luvah conflict or the fleeing of Tharmas. Nevertheless, Urthona's
activities in the Mills of Night IX were the most definitive actions per-
formed in the narrative proper in Urthona's own name. This nexus of
complexity invades the dilemma that faces the reader at the end of Night
IX: Nights I-VIII have moved toward concerning the reader, if not the
narrator, with the fate of Los and not with that of Urthona. Poising the
reader and narrator between narrative desire and the fiction of ontological
priority is central to Blake's strategy here.
 The narrative voice undergoes several shifts, first from the utterly posi-
tive assertions that open page 139 ("The Sun... strength"), to the surfac-
ing of negatives ("no longer... no longer"), and then to the appearance of
questions ("Where... where"). It is possible that the positive statements
are the voice of the narrator or the Man answering the Lion's questions
("How is it..."), while the negative statements are a division within that
speaker's voice, a return of the forces being repressed, and the questions
again emerge from the voices of the Lions. All these shifts could just as
well be in the narrator's voice itself. Just as the emergence of the first
negative invokes Urthona's division from Enitharmon in the process of
denying it, so the second negative calls attention back to Los in the process
of consigning him to the state of a "Spectre." Similarly, the questions,
"Where is the Spectre of Prophecy where the delusive Phantom" appear as
a reflex to the words, "the Spectre Los[.]" The sudden insertion of these
questions (with all their reverberating interrogative implications and
mechanisms) momentarily acknowledges residual interest in Los as they
cause Los to vanish by name. It is as if Urizen's plot to use the Spectre of
Urthona to make Los "Evaporate like smoke & be no more" (80:6) has
finally succeeded.
 The next word, "Departed," could be an answer, though a wholly
 evasive one, since the question is "where[?]" and "Departed" really only
 restates the question. If, on the other hand, "Departed" simply completes
 the question, "where the delusive Phantom / Departed," then the question
 is never answered, even evasively. The former reading (that "Departed"
 functions as an answer to the question "Where...") tends to be reinforced
 by the syntax that immediately follows: "Departed & Urthona rises from
 the ruinous walls[.]" Three lines earlier Urthona was said to be "arisen,"


The peripheral relation
of Urthona to the narra-
tive pretext of the "fall"
-Urthona's sexual divi-
sion in interpolated vis-
ions: as a consequence of
the Luvah/Urizen plot
in Night I, of Tharmas'
fleeing in Night IV, of
Vala's arrows in Night V,
or the separation of a
"female bright" in
Night VIIa.

Could it be that even if,
in the fiction of a world
existing prior to the nar-
rative, Urthona is onto-
logically prior to Los,
nevertheless Los (as
evolved through the Four
Zoas narrative) has
retroactively become the
more fundamental being
ontologically -that The
Four Zoas has revised its
narrative world such that
substituting Urthona for
Los enacts a retrograde,
repressive violence on
the poem?
Just prior to the point at
which Urthona first
enters the narrative
proper in Night VIII
(107:21), Blake deleted
the word "Urthona" and
replaced it with "the
Spectre" (106:39),
thereby making the
spreading of Urizen's
stony stupor the precon-
dition of Urthona's
entry and revealing an
interchangeability be-
tween Urthona and the
Spectre that is not true
for Los (whose name
remains unrevised in
line 106:39).