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The Four Zoas ARTICLE The Gates of Memory in Night VIIa of The Four Zoas Wayne Glausser Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 18, Issue 4, Spring 1985, pp. 196-203 PAGE 196 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY SPRING 1985 The Gates of Memory in Night Vila of The Four Zoas BY WAYNE GLAUSSER In Night IX of The Four Zoas, Urizen begins a movement is made much harder—if more urgent—by textual prob- toward redemption by delivering a speech of repentance. lems which have perplexed and divided Blake's editors. The speech is particularly interesting because Blake at The chronology of Nights Vila and Vllb has re- some time made an important revision in the nature of ceived much attention, and lingering uncertainties about Urizen's remarks. Changing five words in the text, he this double Night have made production of an FZ text redirects what was originally a telling rejection of mem- difficult. The controversy over how to treat these two ory. In revising Urizen's opening words—"O that I had Night VII's has just reached a new stage with the pub- never drank the wine nor eat the bread / Of dark mor- lication of Erdman's 1982 edition, which installs a Night tality nor cast my view into the past"1—Blake makes VII radically different from the version he originally anticipation rather than retrospection the object of his presented. In 1965, Erdman used only Vila in the se- condemnation: "O that I had never drank the wine nor quence of Nights, and relegated Vllb to an appendix. eat the bread / Of dark mortality nor cast my view into Other scholars objected to this treatment of Vllb, main- futurity" (121:3-4, E 390). Near the end of the speech, taining that the poem needs the material in that Night, Blake's first version includes this emphatic dismissal of and gradually refined their ideas about where to put it. memory: Three of them published theories in 1978 which all suggested the same general chronology—that Blake wrote Then Go O dark remembrance I will cast thee forth from these Heavens of my brain nor will I look upon remembrance more the first part of Vila, then Vllb, and finally some late I cast remembrance away & turn my back upon that void additions to Vila—and proposed new ways of ordering Which I have made for lo remembrance is in this moment the text.3 Two of these three proposals called for sepa- (121:19-22, E 390)2 rating Vila into two parts and inserting Vllb in be- tween. Erdman in his new edition has adopted one of In revising, he carefully went through the speech and 4 replaced "remembrance" in each line with "futurity." these proposals, although with some reservations, and Blake's change of opinion about these lines, when- thus established a version of Night VII with the old ever it occurred, indicates that he had some difficulty Vila pulled apart in the middle. with this crucial moment of repentence. Should Urizen For those who have grown accustomed to the old repent of having looked into the past, or into the future? Vila, and react with some alarm to its Zoa-like crisis The final version shifts blame from memory to anxiety of division, there may be more grounds for objection about the future. As we shall discover, the mental act than mere nostalgia. The following discussion of mem- which the poem originally repents of ultimately returns ory in Night Vila will eventually offer some interpretive as a principal redemptive power. But Urizen's or Blake's justification for considering Vila in one piece, even though confusion at this moment serves as a clue to some tem- it appears to have been written in at least two different poral difficulties in The Four Zoas. If there is a single, stages. Whatever its relation to Vllb, Blake clearly con- dominating temporal theme in the poem, it has to do centrated on making Vila a turning point in developing with the persistent significance of what has come before: the apocalypse of Night IX. Twice he "ends" the Night, the future will repeat the past, but only according to then decides to reopen it, as if he recognized that the how the past is understood. To investigate this theme enthusiastic conclusion of the epic still lacked some more carefully, we need to move backward somewhat important preparation. The second and final edition— from the conclusive Night IX, and consider Night Vila. and perhaps a very late one—begins with a surprising At this stage of the narrative, Blake made a series of appreciation of memory.' In order to understand the revisions which he considered indispensable to the prog- powers and dangers of this faculty in The Four Zoas, we ress of his epic. But the task of interpreting Night Vila must consider in some detail how memory works in SPRING 1985 BLAKE/AS ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY PAGE 197 Maist find a way to punish Vala in thy fiery South Night Vila. To bring her down subjected to the rage of my fierce boy The obvious ambition of The Four Zoas is to find (83:32-34, E 359) a passage into eternal life, and in Night Vila Blake forces his poem to study the means of passage as an The Shadow's call for revenge seems a petty gesture, urgent problem. The Spectre of Urthona twice an- reducing a complex story to a single enemy and a simple nounces the need for an entry into eternity; in both cases solution—but not really a solution, just a moment of he calls for a backward movement, for a re-passage or relief. She has drawn from her memory a source of injury, return: Vala, and fixed her with a punishable identity. When we juxtapose this with Enitharmon's first narrative For till these terrors planted round the Gates of Eternal life Are driven away & annihilated we never can repass the Gates memory, her "Song of Death" in Night I, the vengeful (84:41-42, E 360) memory of Enitharmon's Shadow seems highly suspi- cious: in that first version, delivered for different pur- Thou never canst embrace sweet Enitharmon terrible Demon. Till poses, Enitharmon presents herself as being mysteriously Thou art united with thy Spectre Consummating by pains & inside Vala—"For in the visions of Vala I walked with labours the mighty Fallen One" (10:15, E 305). The identities That mortal body & by Self annihilation back returning of Vala and Enitharmon are not as distinct and separable To Life Eternal as the vengeful memory would make them appear. (85:32-35, E 368) The Shadow's call for revenge, on the surface a Those "Gates of Eternal life" modulate into "the Gates gesture toward futurity, actually shows how the past can of Enitharmon's heart" (85:13, E 360), and finally into return in concealment. Apparently without knowing it, "the Gates of Memory": "Unbar the Gates of Memory she repeats a crucial event in the original crisis she has look upon me / Not as another but as they real Self" just described. She asks the Spectre to bring down Vala (85:37-38, E 368). If the gates of memory really deserve to her "fierce boy," Ore. The Shadow doesn't seem to comparison with the gates of eternal life, a number of know what Urizen has just discovered in Night Vila, terrors must first be driven away from the concept of that Ore is really Luvah. If we take this into account, memory. the Shadow in effect wants to punish Vala by pairing In its search for the one telling cause of human Vala and Luvah. In the crisis story she has just related, disorder, The Four Zoas finds not that explanations are the Eternal Man's fall first becomes apparent when he hard to come by, but that they appear in all too plentiful sees Luvah and Vala as separate forms: a supply. The Four Zoas contains too many versions of 6 Then behold a wonder to the Eyes the fall of the Ancient Man. Most of them enter the Of the now fallen Man a double form Vala appeard. A Male poem as narratives of remembered experience spoken by And female shuddring pale the Fallen Man recoild one of the Zoas or their Emanations; two are delivered From the Enormity & calld them Luvah & Vala by choric groups—"the Demons of the Deep" (14:7- (83:13-16, E 358) 16:12, E 308-09), and some "messengers from Beulah" The Shadow's plans to punish Vala amount to a (21:16-19:5, E 311—12)—and the epic narrator also recreation of the first scene perceived by the Eternal Man contributes in his own voice. The final two such nar- in his fallen state. Her vengeful motives, which come ratives occur in Night Vila, the first given by the Shadow to light after she has finished her story, give us a better of Enitharmon, the second by the Spectre of Urthona. idea of what that scene meant to the Eternal Man. His Studied in relation to the memory-narratives which pre- seeing Vala divide into a male and a female might well cede them, and in context with the dramatic situation have originated in a fear of Vala's power over him, and that surrounds them, these stories of the fall suggest an attendant feeling of jealousy. This fear expresses itself several ways in which memory may be viewed as an in a rival male, now seen as a competitor and a threat.
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