The Book of Urizen, Plate 15.
The Eternals peer into the abyss created by Los, trying to apprehend what is "now seen, now obscur'd" (15.6), the fallen world. Four figures look down (three in some version; the face in the upper left is painted over in some copies). The four figures may symbolize the four-fold human, the three, the incomplete human and the missing Urizen. In the upper left corner is an eagle (painted out in some copies). The central figure reaches down into the abyss with his left arm, stirring it with his fingers, as if trying to clear a place to see. His weight rests on his left arm, and he holds onto a cloud or boulder as he leans over as if he is reaching down into a river or a lake. The bottom left half of the picture shows a clearly demarcated curve of a globe, to the right things are stirred up and the curved boundary is not as clear. The figures expression show a combination of sorrow and curiosity.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 16.
Fire, the last of the four elements forming the foundation of the material world, is depicted here. There are full plate depictions of each of the elements (Plate 9, earth; Plate 12, water; and Plate 14, air) and a plate showing the birth of the elements (Plate 24). Fuzon, fire and the fourth son of Urizen, is depicted as sitting with his hands behind his head. This figure is not the energetic Eternal running through the fires of Eternity in Plate 3. This fire is an element of the material world. Although this fire is material, it is also a symbol of the energy of Eternity and of all that Urizen denies. Thus, as opposed to the other elements who look like Urizen, this figure looks like Los, the Eternal Prophet who represents Eternity in the fallen world.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 17.
Los leans over the globe of life blood that will become Enitharmon. He holds his two hands to his head, indicating the pain of the separation and/or birth. His blood vessels stand out on his back and extend down to and around the globe (the extend of this system varies from Copy to Copy). On the globe itself a system of arteries and veins is forming.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 18.
Los stands in the midst of the flames of his smithy, his arms stretched as if he is crucified. His hammer hangs from his left hand as if he has finished his work, but not put it down yet. He looks to the left with compassion or pity. Erdman suggests he is looking toward the globe of life blood in Plate 17 (which immediately precedes Plate 18 in Copies D and E and immediately follows in Copies B, C, E, and F) (Illuminated 200). Los may also be looking in pity at Urizen after he has finished his work. Then this would be the moment that divides his soul and a reminder of what brings about the separation of Enitharmon from Los.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 19.
Enitharmon, now separated, refuses Los "In perverse and cruel delight" (19.12). She turns away from him while he kneels and grasps his head in a posture of despair. The relationship between Los and Enitharmon here is fraught with the play of desire and denial that is for Blake the perversity of sexuality in the fallen world.
Erdman notes that Enitharmon's foot almost touches the word "Pity" (19.1) as if she arose out of that word (Illuminated 201).
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 20.
Orc is born into the world in the midst of flames. The image suggests that he is diving into the world. The flames may symbolize the fires of revolution rather than the fires of Los's forge which are now banked.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 21.
Enitharmon is embraced by the Orc, now a growing child. Los looks on in jealousy. Los's breast is bound with the girdle that he breaks every night, adding a new link to the chain of jealousy that stretches to the ground and which he will use to bind Orc on the mountain.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 22.
Urizen is bound in the chains that have given his world and him definite form. In Copies BCEF this is placed near Plate 13, the account of creation. Only in D does it follow Plate 21 which depicts Los chained by jealousy (Erdman, Illuminated 204).
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 23.
Urizen explores his world "With a globe of fire lighting his journey" (20.48), discovering "vast enormities" (23.2) and "Dread terrors! delighting in blood" (23.7). Urizen's left arm is extended out in front of him as if to guide him through an impenetrable darkness, suggesting his blindness to the true nature of his world. The globe of fire seems an insufficient light. A slightly bedraggled lion is forward and to the side of him, symbolizing perhaps the nature of the "Dread terrors." Erdman says: "The lion at the right is either extremely shaggy--or is wearing sheep's clothing: a bit of clowning that suggests that the artist himself is inside the lion, watching" (Illuminated 205).
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 24.
Urizen's first four sons, Thiriel, Utha, Grodna, and Fuzon, are born (23.11-18). Each elemental emblematically emerges from his element. Fuzon (fire) appears as the sun in the upper portion of the plate. Below him, Thiriel (air) emerges from the clouds. Grodna (earth) pushes himself up out of the earth in the lower right hand quarter of the plate. To his left, the head of Utha (water) rises out of the sea. In Copy D only Thiriel and Utha are present. A dark cloud covers the space where Fuzon appears, and below Thiriel is only a sea with a sun setting in the middle of the composition in the place of Grodna.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 25.
Two human forms, looking upward, are caught in the coils of a serpent. Various plants and insects, some of them having human features, surround the humans. All of these are the creatures of Urizen's world, his daughters and sons, half-formed or imperfectly formed according to Urizen, who cannot keep his "iron laws" (23.24). They gaze up toward the heavens where Urizen "wander'd on high, over their cities" (25.5) followed by "A cold shadow" (25.9), the "Net of Religion" (25.22) which entraps them.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 26.
"The dog at the wintry door" (25.2) lifts his head to heaven and howls. Beside him, a child, hands clasped in prayer and supplication, also looks upward. The door behind them is closed and offers no shelter. In this visionary tale of the fall/creation of the world, this is the only Plate that depicts the quotidian and mundane world. The world of Urizen is manifested to our sight in this way. Behind this scene are the spiritual and mythic forces bringing it into being which Blake describes in his poem.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 27.
Urizen seems to flee with his arms raised to his head, palms outward. The gesture may also be interpreted as pushing; Worrall suggests that "here is someone pushing nothing. This is an allegory on the illusion of religion" (54). The background varies from Copy to Copy, adding to the ambiguity of this plate.
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The Book of Urizen, Plate 28.
Urizen is seated, looking downward, perhaps inward as he always does. He is wrapped in a net, the Net of Religion that has made him the God of his self-created world. Erdman suggests that echoes of Plate 1 indicate that he has come back to where he started (Illuminated 210). The books that he was writing in Plate 1 have become the Net that entraps people in his world, in the Egypt that Fuzon and his followers flee.
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