The Book of Los follows the format William Blake established in The First Book of Urizen, utilizing shorter lines divided into two columns of text on his illuminated plates, with numbered chapters and verses in Biblical fashion. But The Book of Los is a considerably shorter work, with its text occupying only three of its five plates, and this brevity reflects its sharpness of focus.
Blake Retells the Binding of Urizen
Where The First Book of Urizen was a sprawling retelling of the book of Genesis from the Bible, The Book of Los focuses in detail on one specific event from its predecessor’s narrative: Los, the “Eternal Prophet” representing creativity, binding Urizen, the sterile deity of division and regulation. In many respects, it recapitulates the themes of the preceding poem, but with the emphasis shifted to Los and his experience of the fallen world.
The Book of Los opens with a figure unseen in Blake’s previous poetry, “Eno aged Mother”, who laments the state of the world after Urizen divided it and imposed his materialist fallacies in the previous poem. Blake once again situates the connection between the material world and the spiritual in nature, as Eno sits beneath “the eternal Oak”; so even in this fallen state, the eternal is still present, and Eno is able to perceive it.
Eno Laments the Fall from Innocence
Her lament speaks of “Times remote!/When Love & Joy were adoration:/And none impure were deemed”, as the idea of impurity only enters into the world once Urizen has divided it and Enitharmon, the female emanation of Los depicted in detail in Europe: A Prophecy, introduced the idea that female sexuality is sinful. This was an age devoid of covetousness and envy, when all mankind was still united with its divine nature.
But Urizen’s division of the universe allows darker emotions to come forth, and this corruption is depicted as a literal feeding upon the natural world: “Envy fed with fat of lambs:/Wrath with lions gore”. No longer in harmony with nature, man no longer recognizes his place in the cycle and attempts to assert supremacy over all things, including his fellow man.
Los Becomes a Prisoner Himself
Eno’s lament gives way to the image of Los as he was seen in The First Book of Urizen. Urizen’s efforts to flee the natural world have left him isolated in a “dark globe”, and Los forges chains to bind him so that he can do no further harm.
But this requires Los to remain in Urizen’s prison as well, “in the void between fire and fire”- fire having a dual nature in The Book of Los, representing both the apocalyptic plagues that consume the world of the living and the potential for creative energy to be liberated from the confines imposed upon it by Urizen.
But that light of creativity is unable to penetrate the void where Urizen lies bound, and the way Blake portrays the void reinforces the notion of Urizen as a purely material entity, divorced from the divine nature: “a Solid/Without fluctuation./hard as adamant/Black as marble of Egypt”.
What Blake describes is physically impossible, but this very impossibility is suggestive of his idea that the physical is merely illusion. Its solidity represents Urizen’s mistaken belief in the absolute nature of the material, but the seemingly solid entity is actually a void, and so its apparent permanence is illusory.
Los Falls into Material Division
Chapter II concerns the fall of Los, who rages against the boundaries imposed by Urizen’s void but, instead of breaking out of his prison, finds himself “as a falling Rock”. As Los falls, he is defined by a concrete material form, representing his removal from the infinite.
Blake equates the fall of Los with the fall of mankind as a whole, for as he falls, his body is organized “into finite inflexible organs”- the boundaries of the five senses as described at the start of The First Book of Urizen.
As his mind organizes itself towards the end of his fall, what appeared to be vacuum takes on the appearance of reality. Los now perceives the void as the world itself, “pliant to rise./Or to fall, or to swim, or to fly”. Los has fallen into the same misunderstanding as Urizen himself, and now views the void of Urizen’s world as the sole reality.
But his fall is not yet complete. Chapter III finds Los with only his lungs fully formed, and as that part of him that is not yet tied to the material attempts to sleep, the lungs sink beneath the water. What follows is a violent vision of the descent into materiality, as Los’ remaining organs form as he struggles with the waves, and Los attempts to break free. But it is too late: Los has already fallen, and is now confined to the organic senses alone.
Urizen's Illusion Triumphs
The fourth and final chapter begins with Urizen awakened from his slumber and Los building furnaces to make chains to bind him. Though Los has fallen from his divine state, the fires of his furnaces are still associated with creativity, even if what he creates are chains to bind the God of materiality.
Los creates an orb to encompass Urizen (which takes nine ages in this poem, as opposed to the seven of The First Book of Urizen; perhaps Blake felt the need to adjust it to correlate with Urizen’s ninefold division of the darkness at the start of that work), and binds Urizen’s spine to it. But even in captivity, Urizen’s illusion triumphs, as his “fleshy slough” obscures the orb from sight and conceals the fires of creativity.
It’s a bleak and pessimistic ending, but in the figure of Los, Blake still finds some hope that man can ultimately overcome Urizen’s illusions. The grim conclusion of The Book of Los is merely a prelude to the more hopeful visions of Blake’s subsequent works.
Paul Brown - Paul Ferrell Brown graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1994 with a B.A. in English literature, and completed his M.A. in ...
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