Appendix: On the Embedding of
 Night VIIb in Night VIIa


 In the otherwise generally admirable 1982 Erdman edition of Blake's poetry and prose, one
glaring and uncharacteristically speculative decision (which reflects several smaller ones, espe-
cially in Night I) directly addresses the issues of Narrative Unbound. I refer to Erdman's decision,
suggested by Mark Lefebvre, to embed the rearranged version of Night VIIb in the middle of
Night VIIa. Erdman gave serious consideration to at least three different proposals for conflating
the two Nights-including Andrew Lincoln's hypothesis of embedding VIIa in the middle of
rearranged VIIb, and John Kilgore's recommendation that VIIb (in its original order) be
embedded in VIIa (E 836). Erdman's willingness to entertain these possibilities (with little
encouragement from Blake) reflects his deep concern for what he repeatedly calls "fit" between
the two Nights-an odd concern, it might seem, in a poet who refused to accept even the "fit"
between world and mind: "You shall not bring me down to believe such fitting and fitted I know
better" (Annotations to Wordsworth, E 667).
 Erdman's concern is real and justifiable, however. The existence of two Night VIIs poses a
serious challenge to the principle of the primacy of narrative sequential order: if the two Nights
are separate, to be read sequentially, then the order in which they are read is a fundamental aspect
of the being of their respective narratives; if they are to be somehow combined, how does this
new sequencing affect the temporal narrative order, as well as the underlying textual patterns?
Given the intense tendency of the narrative toward temporality and that of the woven textual
patterns toward spatiality, it seems unavoidable that, although embedding VIIb in VIIa must
radically alter both the narrative and textual fields, the impact of that embedding should be most
directly and dramatically evident in the transformation of the spatial/textual structure of VIIb
when it enters the field of VIIa.
 Considered as independent structural patterns, as we have seen in Region C, the two Night
VIIs constitute a narrative branching by means of which radically alternate paths or world-lines
both converge and diverge, make possible and undermine, issue in and cancel out, a finite set of
narrative happenings. That is, these two Nights are not different versions of how the same events
occur but are different ways they actually do occur-a branching of the narrative that allows Blake
to explore the implications of alternative fictional possibilities, each Night repressing key aspects
emphasized by the other Night VII while directly intersecting other crucial points. Mapped
independently of each other's controlling structural patterns, Nights VIIa and VIIb each reveal
strongly defined but orthogonally opposed spatial properties. Night VIIa is dominated by the
controlling image of the Tree of Mystery: Blake carefully coordinates every key event spatially in
reference to it. The events of VIIa are organized tightly within three horizontal tiers, marked off
along a vertical axis, and defined by the spaces above, outside, and beneath the Tree. Fig. X.1
schematizes Night VIIa (which is mapped more fully in Fig. C.1). In Night VIIb, however, the
Tree of Mystery is virtually absent except for two quite important direct references. It is as if in
Night VIIb the Tree has absorbed the characters and mystified the narrator so completely that
they are almost unaware of its presence and power. In the absence of the presiding image of the
Tree-indeed of any single controlling spatial image-Night VIIb is organized, in direct opposi-
tion to VIIa, through a series of discontinuous (though implicitly overlapping) parallel segments,
deployed along the horizontal axis as parallel, vertical, self-contained fragments whose details
nevertheless feed from one section to the next by means of shifting gaze and speech direction of