The Complete Poems

by William Blake

  CHAPTER V

  The lament of Ahania concludes the poem. She recalls life in Eternity, where male and female were one. Then, Reason was vigorous and fructifying, and Ahania was fertile. Now she is deserted and barren. The conclusion recalls ‘Earth’s Answer’, SE, p. 118.

  The Book of Los

  Date of publication: 1795. Printed by the same method as Ahania. One copy – plus a single print of Pl. 4 – is known. The poem begins with a prelude on a Golden Age when ‘sins’ were not sinful because they were not forbidden. At 3.27, the narrative is interrupted, and the story intersects with BU IV, to give another treatment of the Creation from Los’s point of view.

  CHAPTER I

  Prelude; the rage of Los.

  P1. 3.31-Pl. 4.10 The Eternal Prophet… senses LOS is surrounded by flames of desire (his desire to act) but is chained and forced to guard the fallen Urizen. As he rejects the fires, they turn cold and congeal around him like marble.

  CHAPTER II

  The fall of Los; creation of the elements.

  19 The Prophetic wrath Los’s wrath is impatient and forceful, but lacks form and direction (he repelled his flames of desire), hence he falls.

  42 his downward-borne fall chang’d oblique In Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, creation starts when indefinitely falling atoms go through a clinamen or swerve.

  47 wafting Floating on water or air. In Paradise Lost 11.1041–2 Satan, emerging from chaos ‘with less toil, and now with ease/Wafts…’

  50–52 the Vacuum/Became element… to rise… fall… swim… fly The four elements fire, earth, water, air, appear in the vacuum.

  CHAPTER III

  Material creation continues: solid, liquid and fire divide.

  57 Polypus A floating, formless sea-creature such as a jellyfish.

  P1. 5.3 He rose on the floods ‘the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’, Genesis 1:2.

  CHAPTER IV

  Light appears; Los forges the sun; the binding of Urizen.

  10 Then Light first began ‘And there was light’, Genesis 1:3.

  34–5 An immense Orb of fire… he quench’d it Los creates the sun and starts it on its cycle of rising and setting.

  44–5 the sun… self-balanc’d ‘And Earth self-balanc’d on her Center hung’, Paradise Lost VII.242.

  48 the Deep fled away ‘The loud misrule of Chaos far remov’d’, Paradise Lost VII.271–2.

  53 four rivers The four rivers of Paradise (Genesis 2:10–14) are also Urizen’s major blood vessels.

  56 Human Illusion Our reality is only illusion from the point of view of Eternity.

  Vala, or the Four Zoas

  Blake’s first attempt at a long epic poem exists in the form of a much-revised manuscript of 132 pages inscribed on seventy large sheets (mostly drawing paper or proof sheets for Young’s Night Thoughts, which B. was commissioned to illustrate in 1794) plus two small sheets and a fragment. Its theme is a cosmic history of Mankind and his universe, from initial collapse and division among his primal energies, to final regeneration. In its first form the poem was called Vala, was in nine ‘Nights’ like Young’s Night Thoughts, and may be dated c. 1797–1803. Revisions, including both major and minor deletions, erasures, transpositions and additions, sometimes written in margins or squeezed between lines or in stanza-breaks, seem to have continued until 1808 or beyond, during which time the poem also became a quarry of ideas and passages for Milton and Jerusalem. Night VIII, and the alteration of the title to The Four Zoas, date at least from 1804, and may be considerably later. In general, the revisions reflect an expanded mythology and symbolism. The splicings, however, are not always smooth, and the correct order of the leaves is still conjectural in places. In the present text, although most of the legible deleted material is retained (in brackets and italicized), it is impossible to indicate the complexity of layers and phases of B.’s re-writing. For full discussion of this manuscript, see the following editions:

  H. M. Margoliouth (ed.), Vala (Oxford University Press, 1956); an attempt to disentangle the poem’s initial version from the later additions.

  G. E. Bentley, Jr (ed.), Vala, or The Four Zoas (Oxford University Press, 1963); a facsimile, transcript and commentary.

  David V. Erdman (ed.), The Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Doubleday, New York, 1970).

  NIGHT THE FIRST

  The Fall of Man: Chaos.

  The basic mythology behind The Four Zoas is as follows: Man (the Ancient Man, or ALBION) lives in Eternity or EDEN, as one of a divine family of Eternals who collectively compose One Man, Christ. Man himself is composed of four ZOAS: URIZEN (his Reason), LUVAH (his Passion), THARMAS (his Sensation) and URTHONA (his Instinct). Each of these figures has a female counterpart or EMANATION, but in Eden male and female are one, and the Zoas live in unity.

  Prior to the poem’s opening, Man’s separation from Eden has already begun. Man has become passive instead of active. His Zoas are divided. Urizen and Luvah each have tried to seize absolute power – Urizen by refusing to serve Man, Luvah by seducing him with the female counterpart VALA, and by usurping Urizen’s steeds of light. Tharmas and Urthona are also drawn into the disastrous conflict. All four Zoas ‘fall’ and carry Man with them. Furthermore, Man and his Zoas become separated from their female counterparts. The whole of The Four Zoas will be occupied with the results of this initial trauma – periodically recalled in various versions by various figures involved – from which issues our entire cosmos, and all of human history until Man’s final regeneration and return to divine unity at the close of the final Night.

  It should be emphasized that the Fall is not a moral lapse from ‘good’ to ‘evil’. Morality, for Blake, is merely something Urizen attempts to impose on others. Rather, the Fall means a lapse from unity, vigour and the life of the imagination, to alienation, compulsion or passivity, and the deadness of material objects. Thus one final set of names must be mentioned: the names of those levels of human consciousness or potential which B. treats spatially as realms or lands, and through which his characters may ascend or descend. EDEN is his Heaven, Man’s permanent home. It is ‘fourfold’ and ‘human’. BEULAH, a step below, is a lower paradise, a passive resting place from the energetic life of Eden, humanity’s dreamland and the source of all poetic inspiration. It is ‘threefold’ and ‘sexual’. GENERATION is the cycle of life and death for all living things – our normal world. It is ‘twofold’ and ‘vegetative’. ULRO, finally, is Hell: the condition of dead and barren mechanism and materialism, inorganic, meaningless and hopeless.

  The poem itself begins in midst of catastrophe with the quarrelling division and fall of THARMAS and ENION. Tharmas becomes a sea of incoherence. Enion weaves the SPECTRE of Tharmas, while the Daughters of Beulah create a space for the Circle of Destiny and close Tharmas’s Gate of the Tongue. Enion, ravished by the spectre, gives birth to LOS and ENITHARMON. They are the fallen form of Urthona, and represent Prophecy and the Muse in the fallen world. They quarrel, she taunting him with a song of Vala which hints that Luvah and Vala have caused Man’s fall, and claiming female dominance. Los strikes her and prophesies suffering and punishment, but she allies herself with Urizen, who then assumes Godhead and presides over their discontented nuptial feast. The song at this feast celebrates War and prophesies future events. Meanwhile, the rejected Enion laments the sufferings endured by all natural creatures.

  The Night concludes with a full account of Man’s Fall given to the Council of God in Eternity, and the election of the SEVEN EYES OF GOD who are to guard Man, while Beulah guards Man’s emanation, JERUSALEM. Historically, this entire Night is to be understood as occurring prior to the Creation in Genesis 1.

  P. 3.6 Four Mighty Ones The Four Zoas, Man’s Energies. John 17:21–3: ‘That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and
thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.’ John 1:14: ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.’ The Greek quotation repeats: ‘and dwelt among us’.

  Four signifies perfection in B.’s numerology: Man is composed of four Zoas, Eden is fourfold, and ‘fourfold vision’ is the ‘supreme delight’ available to the visionary. The immediate reference is to the four beasts which surround the chariot of the Almighty in Ezekiel, and the four living creatures (Zα) around the throne of God in Revelation. But similar symbolism occurs in other traditions; for example, the sacred quaternion which is the source of eternal nature in Pythagoras, the fourfold worlds based on the Tetragrammaton (sacred name of God, composed of four letters) in Kaballah, the fourfold systems of Ptolemy’s gnosticism, of Rosicrucianism, and of Boehme, the four suits of the Tarot deck, the four elements, the four humours; and there are obvious correspondences to the four seasons and the four compass points.

  11 Los was the fourth immortal starry one In Daniel 3:25 ‘the form of the fourth is like the Son of God’, and is sent to save the three men cast into the fiery furnace. So Urthona–Los, the spirit of Poetry in this fallen world, will work to save it.

  P1. 3.13–Pl. 4.1 Urthona… In Eden In Eden, Man’s original home, Urthona was the creator of playful inventions (‘Fairies of Albion’) which were received by Man’s ear (‘Auricular Nerves’) as by a fertile earth. But in the fallen world these fairies become awesome and dreadful gods, systematically worshipped.

  4Daughter of Beulah Sing The epic invocation of the Muse.

  5 B. here announces the theme of his epic.

  8 Begin with Tharmas An epic opening in medias res. The quarrel between Tharmas and Enion is a by-product of the greater Fall of Man in which they are involuntarily trapped. Left to themselves Tharmas and Enion are Earth Father and Earth Mother, honest, simple, receptive and coherent. Beyond their ken, Urizen (Reason) and Luvah (Passion) are striving to control Man. Man is divided, and his feminine portions have fled to Tharmas for refuge. This produces panic in Tharmas and jealousy in Enion; their love turns to analysis and accusation, their self-respect to masochism, and they too are divided – not to reunite until the end of the epic.

  19 Thy fear… surrounded me (repeated in f 21.1) An ironic speech. Tharmas himself is fearful, and has infected Enion with fear. But she believes him to be a God, as in Psalm 88:14–17: ‘Lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?… while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted… thy terrors have cut me off. They came round about me daily like water; they compassed me about together.’ An additional irony is that Tharmas will degenerate into water as a result of this quarrel.

  20–35 Portions of these lines reappear in f 22.

  26 Hide me some shadowy semblance Enion begs a retreat from reality to illusion. Autobiographically the issue is B.’s confusion about publishing radical writings, and Catherine’s (or his own) fear of repercussions if he does so openly. ‘Shadowy semblance’ would mean a ‘literary’ disguise less terrifying and dangerous than plain speech (see Erdman, 272–8).

  P. 5.6 So saying Enion divides from Tharmas, and hereafter is purely passive.

  6–7 weaving soft… A tabernacle Enion weaves the generated body on a ‘Loom of Vegetation’ (6.1–2); the loom is a neo-Platonic symbol for generation.

  11 Turnd round the circle of Destiny Tharmas accepts his fate, sets Destiny in motion, and collapses from coherence into a formless sea. Hereafter he is Chaos or the Flood.

  17 lacteal Lymph vessel.

  23 Nine days In neo-Platonic commentary, ‘nine’ is a number of incompletion. Blake consistently uses ‘three’, ‘nine’ and their multiples to indicate phases of a fallen world.

  25–6 Round rolld the Sea… appeard ‘And God said, let the waters… be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear’ (Genesis 1:9); ‘And Earth self-balanc’d on her Center hung’ (Paradise Lost VII.242).

  29–43 This passage, introducing Beulah, is a late addition. It is rewritten and expanded in M 30.

  35 Creating Spaces The creation of protective spaces for fallen beings is the work of females throughout B.’s prophecies.

  38–9 The Spectre… Deformd The idea is repeated in FZ VII [a] 84.36–7. f 33.4.

  39 the three heavens Beulah is ‘threefold’ and restful and has three heavens. Eden, in contrast, is ‘fourfold’ and energetic.

  P. 7.21 they join in burning anguish The copulation of Enion and the spectre of Tharmas is a monstrous mingling of unlike physical bodies, rather than the complete union enjoyed by male and female in Eden.

  22 high she soard Compare Eve’s Satan-inspired dream of soaring to heaven (Paradise Lost v.86–7).

  31 Enion brooded She (1) pondered, (2) prepared children for birth. This ambiguous usage is from Paradise Lost 1.21: ‘Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss.’

  P. 8.2 Behold two little Infants The birth of Los and Enitharmon.

  8 But those in Great Eternity] This deleted scene returns on P. 21.

  12–19 Enion as Earth Mother produces ‘tree yielding fruit’, ‘winged fowl’ and ‘beasts of the earth’, as in Genesis 1:12–24.

  P. 9.9–13 This act recurs in f 48.30–39.

  19 But Los & Enitharmon delighted Los and Enitharmon now represent Creative Energy perverted by lack of social purpose. As a gloss on their characters at this stage one may consider the incestuous or quasi-incestuous, sullen and destructive lovers in such novels as Wuthering Heights, Women in Love and The Sound and the Fury.

  P. 10.9 Hear! I will sing a Song of Death! Enitharmon taunts Los with her version of Man’s Fall, in which the female takes dominance over the male.

  10 The Fallen Man Albion. His sleep of Reason, turning away from ‘the Universal Vision’ (1.23), allowed Passion to triumph. His following speech shows submission to the female.

  13 Luvah siez’d the Horses of Light The usurpation of the head (Reason) by the heart (Passion) parallels the myth of Phaethon disastrously driving the chariot of the Sun.

  P. 11.21–3 I see… Luvah… the shower of blood Los prophesies the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ in the form of Luvah.

  30–31 Descend O Urizen… Threaten not me O visionary Enitharmon invokes Reason as ally, and rejects Prophecy.

  P. 12.8 Now I am God Here begins Urizen’s reign, confirming the Fall of Man.

  14 The prince of Love the murderer Urizen claims that Luvah has slain Man.

  32–3 Ten thousand thousand… hosts… Chariots In Paradise Lost VI.767–70, God’s victory over the rebel angels is ‘Attended with ten thousand thousand Saints… And twenty thousand… Chariots’.

  35 Rejoicing in the Victory The victory of Urizen over the other Zoas, and his dominance of Man.

  37 the golden feast The marriage feast of Los and Enitharmon.

  38–9 But the bright Sun… blue shell ‘… for yet the Sun/Was not; she in a cloudy Tabernacle/Sojourn’d the while’ (Paradise Lost VII.247–9).

  44 A black and cannibalistic Mass; Los and Enitharmon are feasting upon Humanity.

  P. 13.8–9 Eternity… One Man… In Luvahs robes of blood A vision of Christ incarnate and crucified.

  P. 14.6 And This the Song! The wedding feast of Los and Enitharmon is celebrated by a song of the values of War triumphant.

  7 Ephraim… Zion The two mountains represent the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Biblical allusions are a relatively late addition to FZ and develop from B.’s idea that all nations were originally one in Albion. Thus the ‘Promised Land’ of the Bible becomes a separate geographical entity only because of the Fall.

  20 plat Plait.

  P. 15.7–8 Luvah & Vala ride/Triumphant War is Passion uncontrolled.

  8 the Human form is no more This concludes the rejoicing of Mount Ephraim. The Demons of
the Deep then continue the song, first with their version of strife and collapse among the Zoas, then with a prophecy of the future.

  9–19 The listning Stars… dark confusion A condensed and confused version of the Fall: the Stars (Urizen’s troops) hear the rejoicing at Luvah’s War. Urizen prepares for battle (the sun prepares to rise). Tharmas the shepherd (‘Mighty Father’) angrily swings his sheephook through the sky, and all rushes downwards to devastation.

  11–12 his Horse… smelt the battle/Afar off In Job 39:25 the horse ‘smelleth the battle afar off’.

  P. 15.20-P. 16.12 Hark I hear the hammers… rage in vain The song now predicts the suffering of Luvah in the ‘Furnaces of Affliction’ (11 pp. 25–40); his birth in the form of Orc from Enitharmon’s womb (v.P.58.17); and his subsequent fettering (v.P60.6-P61.9).

  15–16 Urizen/With faded radiance sighed Parallels the description of the fallen Satan, Paradise Lost 1. 591–602.

  P. 18.11–12 Now Man was come… Beulah A palm tree (Judges 4:5) and an Oak of Weeping (Genesis 35:8) are mentioned in connection with Bethel, where the journeying patriarch Jacob rested his head on a stone, dreamed of the ladder of angels, and received God’s promise to him. Man at the edge of Beulah is likewise at the border of the land of divine dreams. He sinks outside it into Generation.

  13–15 Albion’s decline to the Rock of Ages is also in f 48. 1–4.

  P. 21.2–6 As one Man… in Eden the land of life A parallel description of the Divine Family is in f 34.17–20.

  7 Snowdon A mountain in Wales, home of traditional bards. Erdman (288, n. 9) notes that a group of English radicals retired under pressure to Wales in 1797. (The rejected reading, ‘Mount Gilead’, indicates that in Eternity the holy nations of Albion and Israel were one. Thus British and biblical place-names are interchangeable.)

  12 Luvah & Urizen contend in war The Fall of Man was produced by conflict between Reason and Passion. However, here and hereafter, so far as the political allegory of The Four Zoas is concerned, one sense of Luvah is ‘France’, one sense of Urizen is ‘England’. The two nations were at war almost continuously from 1793 to 1815.