NOTES


 By means of the order in which Blake has disclosed information up to this point,
we first focus on the term "Los," which is successively complicated by relation-
ships that hover on, yet violate, the brink of normal experience; then we are
constrained to shift to the new term "Urthona." It is as if this word somehow
cleared up the prior askew relationships. "Urthona" is a stanger looking name
than "Los" (despite the auditory pun on earth-owner): telling us that this was Los's
name in Eden throws us back into semantic confusion. Is "Eden" the "bright
Universe"? If so, why is the "fourth immortal starry one" named Los at all? If we
conclude that Eden must, therefore, not be the bright Universe in which Los rules
over or is servant to Earth, this assumption is undercut by the extremely complex:
"in the Auricular Nerves of Human life / Which is the Earth of Eden[.]" The
recognized term of the first sentence (Earth) overlaps that of the second (Eden),
though semantically they have been separated, identifying this overlapping with
the "Auricular Nerves of Human life[.]" It is sufficient to note here that this
complex overlapping sets up a confused expectation concerning what connection
there may be between "Auricular Nerves" (ear or heart) and "Earth of Eden[.]"
 The syntax from this point runs on in one continuous stream of information
immediately in the text, and the verb "propagated," which implies sexual genera-
tion, seems to generate the verbal stream as well. Syntax seems to demand that this
propagation take place in the Auricular Nerves and that the obscure "Emanations"
(which suddenly appear) flow out to become "Fairies of Albion afterwards Gods of
the Heathen[.]" What starts out as the term "Nerves," associated with the inside of
the physical body, is modulated into terms displaced from the body: "Gods of the
Heathen." And these non-Christian Gods emerge directly out of the Earth of Eden
associated with theJudeo-Christian tradition.
 The final section of the pseudo-invocation not only connects the Daughter with
the Mother but presumably states the theme of the poem in two different ways.
While the lines prior to this pseudo-invocation equivocated concerning the possi-
ble unity of the "Four," one of the Four is now said to "fall into Division," and the
poem will supposedly sing "his Resurrection to Unity / His fall into the Genera-
tion of Decay & Death & his Regeneration by the Resurrection from the dead[.]"
Though these lines seem to be decidedly Christian, they do not exclude the prop-
agating of Gods of the Heathen, subject to cyclic regeneration. We are, however,
thrown into an indeterminate state, questioning how this Division, Regeneration,
and Resurrection could be related to the propagation of Emanations and, indeed,
to the entire series of statements that previously appeared. These last phrases serve
to obliterate what has gone before: the sudden emergence of emphasis on Resur-
rection, in a double-length line, tends to make us forget the convolutions through
which we havejust passed. If we try to decipher the relations between the aspects of
the term "Los" we have been given, we realize that we do not know enough; and
since we entered this sequence with an admonition from a narrative voice asserting
the unknowability of the Four, this information initially operates to arrest the
forward narrative motion. We have moved from Los as "immortal" to the last
word "dead." The relation between these end points is embedded in the halting but
progressive syntax that occurs between them. Because a Daughter of Beulah has
been called on to sing this song of Division, Regeneration, and Resurrection, we
must take into account the possibility that the perspective of this Daughter is
involved with the narrative voice from this point on. While "Eno a daughter of
Beulah" (9:9) seems to have powers of expansive vision, the extreme limitation of
the other Daughters of Beulah in the body of the poem itself tends to make