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Dennis Saurat stresses the intuitive nature of Blake's compositional techniques when he maintains the structural model of the poem was "built in a ramshackle manner upon intuitions and visions." And Martin K. Nurmi considers the "dream structure of the work accounts for much of its difficulty," for to him

the work proceeds not so much by narration as by dramatic scenes, speeches, songs and choruses. In fact it is more like a fantastic opera than any­thing else.17

This leads Nurmi to conclude that

more than the prophecies written up to that time The Four Zoas resists allegorization. Any attempt to read it, or understand it, by conceptual trans­lation results in frustration.18

These views indicate a belief that Blake did not design a formal literary structure for the poem, with the result that it does not achieve acceptable creative coherence. To me, such views are difficult to reconcile with Blake's insistence upon compositional pre­cision as the key to great art.

The opinions that Blake's manuscript lacks formal literary

structure were challenged by such critics as Milton 0. Percival, Kathleen Raine

and Northrop Frye, who share a view that Blake developed a coherent mythology.

To Percival, one must turn to ancient myth to understand the poem:

Denis Saurat, Blake and Milton (London: Stanley Nott, 1935), p. 137.

Martin K. Nurmi, William Blake ("London: Hutchinson University Library, 1975), p. 122.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 122.

¹ ^Ibid., p. 123.