Four Zoas Summary 2

Four Zoas, Night ii, Page 36, (E 326)
"When Urizen slept on his couch. drawn thro unbounded space
Onto the margin of Non Entity the bright Female came
There she beheld the Spectrous form of Enion in the Void 
And never from that moment could she rest upon her pillow"

       Other accounts of this decisive event occur at various places throughout the poem. The most definitive is that of Ahania. Her dream relates the central event, the primary fall, to an idolatrous worship; just so Blake evaluated organized religion. Albion's worship of his shadow has two immediate consequences: he breaks out with the boils of Job, a biblical symbol of the Fall of Mankind, and he exiles Luvah and Vala from their rightful place in the psychic economy.

   

        This central event of the Fall gives the key to the meaning of The Four Zoas. Before we proceed with the outline of the poem, we need to look at one other central fact: the identity of Los, the fourth Zoa (in Eternity called Urthona). Whereas the central event gives the key to six thousand years of fallenness, the identity of Los gives the key to redemption. This becomes clear in the end when we read about Jesus, the Imagination, but from the beginning we should be aware that Los is the fourth who makes Man whole. Blake derived the first three Zoas in part from Daniel's three friends who were cast into the fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar. Los was the fourth, whom the king saw walking in the furnace "like the Son of God". Like the other Zoas Los has a chequered career, but he is always moving toward this ultimately revealed identity. Near the end of Jerusalem Blake put the finishing touches on Los's Eternal identity with these words:
"Therefore the Sons of Eden praise Urthona's Spectre in songs, 
Because he kept the Divine Vision in time of trouble." (Jerusalem, Plate 95, E 255)   

And on the following plate of Jerusalem:
"Then Jesus appeared.... And the Divine Appearance was the likeness and similitude of Los."     

The clue to this identity appears at the very beginning of 4Z where the poet states his theme:

"Four Mighty Ones are in every Man; a Perfect Unity 
Cannot Exist but from the Universal Brotherhood of Eden, 
The Universal Man, to Whom be Glory Evermore. Amen. 
.... Los was the fourth immortal starry one, and in the Earth 
Of a bright Universe, Empery attended day and night, 
Days and nights of revolving joy. Urthona was his name 
In Eden.... 
Daughters of Beulah, Sing 
His fall into Division and his Resurrection to Unity: 
His fall into the Generation of decay and death, and his Regeneration by the Resurrection from the dead."
(Four Zoas, Night i, E 301)

       Here Blake has made the antecedent of 'his' deliberately ambiguous: Albion, the Ancient Man, of course, but also Los. It is Los's career that we follow most intently. Blake deeply identified with Los, and so do we if we read the poem with imagination.

       But "Begin with Tharmas, Parent power dark'ning in the West". Tharmas represents the body, or in the psychic realm the instinct, and in Eternity he's a glorious shepherd. But "darkening in the West" beneath the jealous attack of his emanation, Enion, he sets in motion the Circle of Destiny (Four Zoas, Night i, E 302) and sinks into the sea where he becomes an insane old man. From his "corse" arises the ravening spectre, a most gruesome embodiment of pure egocentricity. A loveless embrace of Enion leads to the birth of Los and Enitharmon, the divided earthly form of Urthona. (Note that all this happens after the 'central event', although in the poem we read about it first.)

       This first earthly family displays the ubiquitous dialectic of Blake (and of universal experience): the angelic and demonic processes go on side by side. Enion's intense mother love turns her daughter, Enitharmon, into a teasing and heartless bitch and drives Enion to the abyss where she becomes a disembodied voice of pure consciousness. We hear her voice at the end of Nights i, ii, and viii sounding the purest prophetic judgment on what has transpired. In a real sense Enion is Blake. 

       When Enitharmon signs her Song of Death (quoted a few pages back), Los strkes her down and then gives his own, more prophetic account of the Fall. Enitharmon retaliates by calling down Urizen. This precipitates the first encounter between these two adversaries in one of the relationships that dominates the poem--and Blake's life as well. In this initial confrontation Los weakens through his pity or remorse over Enitharmon and joins the  Nuptial Feast of fallenness (FZ Night i, E 307). In the New Testament the marriage of the Lamb inaugurates the Kingdom of Heaven; this demonic parody of it announces the Kingdom of Satan. Enion responds with her first stirring prophetic utterance, concluding the first night in the earlier draft.

       At this point Blake, in a later revision of 4Z, made his first obvious attempt to Christianize his myth. The Daughters of Beulah in their "Wars of Eternal Death" give what is probably the most straightforward, impartial account of the Fall.

TO BE CONTINUED