NOTES


The moment the spectre "fled" intersects the moment his female portion fled, for
although Urthona's paralysis (he "stood") seems to imply time passing, Blake
makes it clear that as the spectre flees, he flees to Enion and in so doing Blake forces
us to a second perspective crisis: the spectre ofUrthona is here virtually identified
as the Spectre who ravished Enion, resulting in the birth of Los and Enitharmon.
The temporal sequence of events is drastically askew, however. If the spectre fled to
Enion after Enitharmon was embalmed as the story seems to imply, then Enithar-
mon's being murdered is an event incompatible with the sequence of events in
which Enitharmon is born from Enion's being impregnated by the Spectre of
Tharmas. Blake separates Tharmas from Urthona's spectre and yet gives enough
overlapping information to identify Tharmas' spectre with Urthona's. Urthona's
spectre "fled" to Enion, a literal inversion of Enion's drawing the spectre out of
Tharmas on her loom; the spectre's "body" is seen as a "raging serpent" (the "half
Spectre" of the sexual ravaging ["serpent" and "beast" being earlier versions of
"Spectre"]) and as a "Glittring monster," a nearly exact reference to the Spectre of
Tharmas upon a "glittering rock," a form of "gold" and "metals." Though there is
a complex relationship between various aspects of these spectres, there can be no
simple identity between them. This degree of overlapping between the spectres
ultimately intensifies Los and Enitharmon's role as analyses of the Tharmas/Enion
plot.
 6 In Erdman's 1982 edition of Blake's poetry, segments of The Four Zoas differ
significantly from his previous edition, which has been the primary text for the
analysis in Narrative Unbound. These changes occur primarily in Night I and the
two versions of Night VII. In most cases I try to note those differences that will
cause a reader using the 1982 Erdman edition to have difficulty following my
argument. One fairly large scale change between the two editions is the inclusion
in the text proper of what appear as lines 5:44-53 and 6:9-7:7 in the 1982 Erdman
but were relegated to textual notes in the previous editions. The arguments for
re-incorporating these lines-that they are deleted in pencil but circled in ink
(which Erdman says is a printer's symbol for reinstating text) and that Blake seems
to have attempted revisions on the slashed-out text at points that caused him to
erase parts of the slashes-are compelling but not decisive: it is as though Blake's
text leaves open or indeterminate the rules for interpreting what should be
excluded or included. In truth, the lines could only be included somewhat as
Keynes did it years ago, but this time accurately-using typographical signs to
mark the editorial decision that Blake had first deleted then restored and revised the
segment, not treating it typographically as if it were at the same level of composi-
tion as those lines never deleted or revised.
 What is crucial for our purposes is that inclusion of these lines utterly transforms
the narrative field of Night I. If Enion speaks immediately after the Daughters of
Beulah close the Gate of the Tongue, Blake directly disrupts the action in a way
that calls the gap in the text to the reader's attention rather than detouring it
through the Spectre/Enion union. Again, if Enion admits murdering her
"Childrens Souls" (7:3-4) then immediately gives birth to Los and Enitharmon,
this direct incommensurability in the narrative undermines the more distant and
subtle shock that would occur later in Night I if the 1982 additions were omitted,
as Blake at least at some point decided to do: the Messengers from Beulah speak of
Enion murdering Enitharmon (22:22-25) at the point at which the two primary
brackets of Night I intersect. The once deleted lines cannot be restored on the basis
of making the narrative more logical or fit together more unproblematically.


Note 6: page 36