Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/20

8 makes the third stage always a bringing together of the first and second. Urizen enters external life in the first, Ore enters it in the second, not in his own form, but feminine, so considered in relation to Urizen, — and not here only so perceived (compare " Vala," Night VIII., 1. 82), and in the third they are fastened together, that the more living may vitalize the less.

In the first chapter of "Tiriel," Tiriel loses his emanation and so grows spectral; in the second he comes into contact with the emotional life ; and in the third he rests in a gentle vegetative f orgetf ulness for a while. In the fourth chapter he is sustained by Ijim, who fulfils for him an office like that of Los when Los makes Urizen personal, and then, reinforced by the personal fire of Ijim, Tiriel curses or casts the restrictions of space upon his sons in the fifth chapter. In the sixth chapter he curses his daughter Hela — sight — the only sense left to him, and his sight ceasing to be imaginative becomes vegetative. He is now wholly cut off from the spiritual world and stumbles on his way to the caves of Zazel — corporeal life in its absolute unredeemed form. He passes on in the next chapter, &c, to the same emotional life he had approved in the second, but now that he has ceased to be imaginative it drugs him into that sleep of outer things from which he can only wake when a last judgment has passed over him.

"Ahania" is a threefold book. In the first chapter Urizen wars with Fuzon, his more passionate side, compacting himself into a spectre. In the second he slays Fuzon with outer necessity, feminine nature, symbolized by a great stone — Sinai. In the third, Fuzon is nailed to that Tree of Mystery whose growth is described also in the last three nights of "Vala." "The Death of Abel," "The Visions of the Daughters of Albion." and "The Mental Traveller," not being divided into chapters are excluded from the chart, but they, like the various chapters of the foregoing books, could be divided and again divided according to the symbolism of Head, Heart, and Loins.