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Notes: The Book of Urizen,
Chapter 3






they saw his pale visage / Emerge from the darkness
We now see from the Eternals view Urizen's act of opening his book and proclaiming his laws. This action is illustrated by Plate 5.

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cataracts of fire blood & gall
The imagery used to describe the Eternals rage again suggests the Apocalypse: "The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood" (Rev. 8: 7).

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enormous forms of energy
The Eternals are enormous forms of energy which in their rage appear to be the seven deadly sins to Urizen.

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Eternity roll'd wide apart
Eternity is divided by Urizen's laws.

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Departing; departing; departing:
Urizen departs from Eternity, closing himself off from the community of the Eternals. From his point of view, Eternity is departing.

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voidness unfathomable
For Blake being is a plenum. The void within Urizen's universe, the void which separates it from Eternity, indicates its fallen nature.

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fires
The Eternals' disagreement with Urizen manifests itself in the passion and fury of argument, which to Urizen are the "unquenchable burnings" he wants to stop. (4.13).

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self-begotten armies
Urizen's armies are generated out of himself, not armies of Eternals who have joined with him to uphold his vision.

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He dug mountains & hills
To escape the "flame of Eternal fury" (5.18), Urizen tries to pile mountains on top of himself. This line also alludes to the attempts of Milton's fallen angels, who in attempting to escape the wrath of the Son of God, "wish't the Mountains now might be again / Thrown on them as a shelter from his ire" (Paradise Lost 6.842-43).

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womb
The mountains Urizen piles on himself become a rocky womb--the "solid without fluctuation" (4.11)--to protect him from the fires of the Eternals.

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black globe
From the point of view of the Eternals, Urizen is a "black globe," a completely self-enclosed and solid world from which no light, no communication escape.

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obscure separation alone
This line emphasizes that Urizen's act is isolating, of narcissistic, and solipsistic.

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dark Demon
"Dark Demon" emphasizes the parallel between Urizen and Satan.

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rent from his side
Urizen being rent from Los's side suggests the creation of Eve from the side of Adam in the second version of creation in Genesis (2:21-24). This rending also indicates that Los and Urizen were originally parts of one being.

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stony sleep
Urizen's sleep is stony because his energy is petrified; he is now "a solid without fluctuation" (4.11). See 10.2 and see Plate 9 for a depiction of a Urizenic figure entrapped in stone.

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Unorganiz'd
From the point of view of the Eternals, Urizen's seemingly rational single vision is a chaos where reason has usurped the place and play of the imagination.

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rent from Eternity
In addition to being rent from Los, Urizen is torn from Eternity. He leaves a tear in the fabric of the community of Eternals.

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Death
For the Eternals, Urizen's solidity, his lack of change, and his lack of fire are signs of death.

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Los howld in a dismal stupor
See the design on Plate 7

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Urizen heal'd not
Although Los heals, Urizen does not. He does not see himself as having been torn from Los or from Eternity.

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his fires
Los's fires are the fires of the imagination. In his role as blacksmith, these fires are the fires of his forge.

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unmeasurable death
Urizen is so unorganized that he cannot be measured in space or time. His world does not yet have a space/time structure.

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