Wallace Stevens

[Lady Otter]

Greetings, Virgil - No, not lost, just very busy, although our lit forum is small and intimate:
http://www.literaturejunction.com/bo...eds-reads.html

The info about an insurance salesman fighting Hemingway just sounded wild!!!

This looks like an interesting place, too.

[Virgil]

Greetings, Virgil - No, not lost, just very busy, although our lit forum is small and intimate:
http://www.literaturejunction.com/bo...eds-reads.html

The info about an insurance salesman fighting Hemingway just sounded wild!!!

This looks like an interesting place, too.

It's a better place. Stick around.

[quasimodo1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/bo...Stevens&st=cse

[Virgil]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/bo...Stevens&st=cse

Quasi is back. Good article. Thanks Quasi.

[quasimodo1]

ANOTHER WEEPING WOMAN




Pour the unhappiness out



From your too bitter heart,



Which grieving does not sweeten.






Poison grows in this dark.



It is in the water of tears



Its black blooms rise.






The magnificent cause of being,



The imagination, the one reality



In this imagined world






Leaves you



With him for whom no phantasy moves,



And you are pierced by a death.



(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p.19)

[DanielBenoit]

Wallace Stevens, of the modernists, is my most ideal poet and one whom I can understand (or relate to) the most. He is also the one I find most fascinating, simply a genius.

I'm not sure if this was posted yet or not, but it's too good to ignore:

Not Ideas about the Thing, But the Thing Itself
By Wallace Stevens

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier mâché . . .
The sun was coming from outside.

. . . . .
[find the rest in Stevens collection of poems "The Rock"]


Though I'm not an expert on Stevens, here's a short essay I wrote for my blog:



This late poem by the philosophical poet of the imagination; Wallace Stevens, seems as an appropriate closing to his work, and yet there are some ambiguities.

Throughout this poem we encounter concepts of inside and outside, of internal and external, subjective and objective. It begins with the untimely ending of winter in March and with the uncanny sound of a “scrawny cry from outside”. Stevens then contradicts himself with the speculative “Seemed like a sound in his mind.”

Here already we have established confusion between the real and the imagination. Stevens never deliberately establishes an explanation of the source of the cry, though he seems to take its externality for granted in the second line, but then hesitating with the acknowledging phrase seemed.

In the next stanza, the occurrence of the cry is postulated, though the time frame seems even more ambiguous with the temporal conjecture “at daylight or before”.

In the next line, we learn that it is daybreak; a rather weary time for those waking up from the hypnotic hallucinations of sleep. Thus suggesting that the “early March wind” of the previous line and serve as an incarnate metaphor for the dreary hypnopoicacy the subjects’ early morning awakening, with all of the surreal ambiguities of the process.

Within this stanza and the one following it, the author attempts to establish a base of reasoning for knowledge of the source. Here, there is a forceful assurance of the externality of the sun, which has ceased to be a “battered panache above snow.” This paradoxical choice of adjectives seems to suggest the sun as once a failed ambition or over-bearer, once in the chaos and confusion of flamboyant youth, it has now matured and learned to sing, rather than scorch. This then gives the sun both subjective and objective meanings: It is seen as a mirror to the psychological development of the author, but, as we will soon see, it also acts as the complete opposite; that seemingly vast and distant external truth that we can never reach.

By the following stanza, Stevens dismisses hypnopoicacy; “It was not from the vast ventriloquism / Of sleeps faded papier mâché. . .” and makes the bold assertion that “it was coming from outside.”

Now building upon his postulations, Stevens turns his attention back to the thing-itself: “That scrawny cry[.]” Here we now find a symbolic summing up of everything said and considered in a pattern of c’s: we encounter chorister, choir, colossal, choral, all having subliminal ties to the sun. First we see that the root of the source in question is described as “a chorister whose c preceded the choir,” a chorister being the leader of a choir, who here begins the chorus in C. Stevens then enigmatically states that “[i]t was part of the colossal sun,” which in fact builds a bridge between two seemingly unrelated metaphors; that of the sun and the scrawny cry and the choir. This analogy of a chorister starting up the chorus and the scrawny cry allegedly coming from outside, is a vivid illustration of the entire epistemological problem following the reader throughout the course of the entire poem, and Steven’s life. Such a problem is that of the foundations of knowledge; how can the waking sleeper be certain of the source of the scrawny cry?

Throughout Stevens’ life he has expressed skepticism towards an answer to this question, but this poem, one of his last ones, ends on an optimistic note, which, despite its intelligence and elegancy, is, in the context of his life’s work, a bit of a cop-out, or at least the dying hopes of an old man.

The final three lines of the poem are overlooked by the overly-comforting and sentimental line “It was like / A new knowledge of reality[,]” which, outside the context of the poem (for it does work rather well within the poem), is quite weak. For, after two-thousand years of Aristotle and Plato, and four-hundred years of a slightly more reasonable Descartes and Kant, the world of philosophy and philosophical literature has grown weary and tired of such old and overused statements, to the point that to say it in Stevens’ time and certainly today, it is almost certainly an epistemological cliché.

But that is if one lets Stevens’ tonal error to allow you to neglect the most important piece of the puzzle. For despite this, Stevens does express his doubts, though much more subtly, with “Surrounded by its coral rings / Still far away,” the second line obviously possessing the maxim, being preceded by a rather mythical and fanciful, perhaps pious, image of a distant sun, which despite its truth and beauty, is still far away. This then brings us the answer to the double-meaning of the sun: it is a pun in the greatest sense of the word, for it is that vast and distant external truth which for two-thousand years no philosopher or thinker has been able to draw an epistemic bridge to, but, more importantly it is his attitude throughout his life towards this dreadful indifference, Stevens now becomes Hamlet and accepts it for what it is and recognizing the victory already won. Maybe this is his declaration of knowledge. Maybe this is his bridge to reality, or at least reality as it can be known. But more or less, Stevens has created a bridge that is not some impersonal, distant and useless form of transcendence, but rather, a bridge inward, to ourselves; for the true meaning of the pun lies not in the one that leads us to despair, but to self-realization. Stevens thus is unique among the philosophers; he is one of the only ones who could dare to utter the infinite aloofness of the sun and not sink in terror or evasion and declare it a curse or loss upon mankind, but instead declaring that the knowledge that we posses about ourselves is our victory.

[Virgil]

Looks like a fine essay Daniel. There is a growing number of Wallace Stevens lovers here on Lit Net. Stevens is an acquired taste, but once one understands him, at least somewhat, one just finds enormous depth and incredible poetic skill in his work. I consider him the best American poet of the 20th century. I will make a point to read that poem carefully tonight, before going to bed, and then try to come back to your essay. Thanks for all that.

[quasimodo1]

"Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom."

[Barbarous]

Looks like a fine essay Daniel. There is a growing number of Wallace Stevens lovers here on Lit Net. Stevens is an acquired taste, but once one understands him, at least somewhat, one just finds enormous depth and incredible poetic skill in his work. I consider him the best American poet of the 20th century.

And I agree. I recently dived into his works for the first time, and now I'm in love! I have lived in Connecticut all my life, and to have a vision of New Haven or Hartford in a poetic light is simply amazing, it's brilliant, something to be greatly admired for. He's very meticulous, which is great, thus proving poetry, when crafted right, is above the universal language and is suppose to synthesize all aspects of reality, which I think one tends to forget.

Here's a great one I like a lot.

Hibiscus by the Sleeping Shore

I say now, Fernando, that on that day
The mind roamed as a moth roams,
Among the blooms beyond the open sand;

And that whatever noise the motion of the waves
Made on the seaweeds and the covered stones
Disturbed not even the most idle ear.

Then it was that that monstered moth
Which had lain folded against the blue
And the colored purple of the lazy sea,

And which had drowsed along the bony shores,
Shut to the blather that the water made,
Rose up bespent and sought the flaming red

Dabbled with yellow pollen --- red as red
As the flag above the old cafe---
And roamed there all the stupid afternoon

[Virgil]

It's amazing. Poems I had just glossed over in the past once one is forced to focus on just shine with brilliance. That is a great poem Barbarous. I just never realized it. Look at how special this little triplet is:

Then it was that that monstered moth
Which had lain folded against the blue
And the colored purple of the lazy sea,

[quasimodo1]

OF MODERN POETRY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise. ... {excerpt, from the collection, Parts of a World}

[AuntShecky]

Thank you, quasi, for posting the link to the NYT article about W.S. which I have saved to read later. (BTW, I was glad to see the byline-- Helen Vendler, whose name has popped up before on the LitNet in a poem written by Prince.)

Since the Wallace Stevens thread appeared on the "New Posts" today, maybe now is the appropriate time to ask a question about Mr. Stevens that I've been wondering about with all the threads discussing literature + atheism lately. So maybe Virgil, Quasimodo, DanielB, and/or any other fan of Wallace Stevens can scratch this brain itch:

When we read Wallace Stevens even the most otiose* reader (such as yours truly) can sense the recurrent theme of appreciating "things as they are" in the world that exists by transforming such things through the imagination. In the modern world, imagination is supposedly a substitute for religion. I'm thinking of these beautifully-scannable lines from "Sunday Morning":

What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

and later, a denial of the Resurrection:

A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."

immediately followed by a denial of a Creator:

We live in an old chaos of the sun
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free

Here's the question finally:
Is this the philosophical stance of the speaker only, or do you think it reflects the religious views (or lack of them) of Wallace Stevens himself?

Not that it diminishes the power of his work at all, but was Wallace Stevens an atheist, an agnostic, or what?


*"otiose" cf. an song old parody by Stan Freburg: "Otiose, Muchachos."

[quasimodo1]

The question has come up concerning Stevens point of view on the deity and/or religion. After reading almost all of his poetry and all of his prose, at least what is available to date, one gets the feeling that he at least did not espouse atheism. It is not clear if he was religious in a formal sense although no biographies are taken into account here. In his writing Stevens seems to make opposite points and in fact declares god the supreme leap of imagination. From his UNCOLLECTED PROSE and the essay “A Collect of Philosophy” Stevens quotes Leibniz… “We know a very small part of eternity, which is immeasurable in its extent… Nevertheless from so slight an experience we rashly judge regarding the immeasurable and eternal, like men who, having been born and brought up in prison, or perhaps in the subterranean salt mines of the Sarmatians, should think that there is no other light in the world than that of the feeble lamp which hardly suffices to direct their steps.” Within the essay Stevens quotes Bertrand Russell, Victor Hugo, Copernican theory, Nietzche, Lucretius, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Socrates, Plato, Schopenhauer, Kant and others. The least common denominator of all these philosophies is a bit of higher math I won’t attempt. Stevens writes “I suppose that some kinds of faith require logical, even though fantastic, structures of this kind to support them on the way of that ascent. The number of ways of passing between the traditional two fixed points of man’s life, that is to say, of passing from the self to God, is fixed only be the limitations of space, which is limitless. The eternal philosopher is the eternal pilgrim on that road.” God, Stevens says, is the ultimate poetic idea, and quotes Samuel Alexander’s SPACE, TIME AND DEITY to validate this point. Stevens: “The most significant deduction possible relates to the question of supremacy as between philosophy and poetry. If we say that philosophy is supreme, this means that the reason is supreme over the imagination. But is it? Does not philosophy carry us to a point at which there is nothing left except the imagination? If we rely on the imagination (or, say, intuition), to carry us beyond that point, and if the imagination succeeds in carrying us beyond that point (as in respect to the idea of God, if we conceive of the idea of God as this world’s capital idea), then the imagination is supreme, because its powers have shown themselves to be greater than the powers of the reason. … I might have cited the idea of God when I was speaking of the infinity of the world, of the infinite spaces, which terrified Pascal, the most devout of believers and, in the same abandonment to the superlative, the most profound of thinkers: and it would have been possible, in that case, to conclude what I have to say by placing here at the end a figure which would leave the question of supremacy a question too difficult to attempt to solve. In his words about the sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere, which I quoted a moment ago, we have an instance of words in which traces of the reason and traces of the imagination are mingled together.” After this passage Stevens defers to Max Planck which only underscores the ambivalence which in the end captures his view of both heaven and earth. {a few of Stevens' poems which relate to this... "God is Good, It is a Beautiful Night" -- "The Men That are Falling" -- "Cathedrals are not Built Along the Sea" -- "Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb" -- "Saint Armorer's Church from the Outside"}

[AuntShecky]

Thank you for such a thoughtful and enlightening answer, Quasi. Now that you've whet my appetite for Stevens's prose writings, I'm going to go back and try to locate/read this particular essay. Also, I should read a biography as well.

My instinct tells me that since W.S. was so prominent in his community, he probably did attend some kind of church services in Hartford, at least in a pro forma sort of way,but his core beliefs? Hmm. Poems such as the one I cited "Sunday Morning" and "Air Without Angels"-- the operative word being "without"-- might lead one to believe that W.S. might have stuck his toe in the heathen waters and stopped short of taking the plunge. On the other hand, the theme of reconciling belief with science (the bulk of human knowledge of the time) occurs nearly everywhere in literature -- even with poets who zealously profess their religion faith: from T.S. Eliot all the way back to John "Justify God's ways to Man" Milton (whom you mentioned) and John Donne " 'Tis all in peeces, all coherence gone."

So, when you said that Stevens never blatantly expressed an atheistic belief, I tend to agree with you. But I do think he tended toward agnosticim -- not disbelief in, but "not knowing" God. But far from being comfortable in that stance, there is a constant searching, a quest for reconciliation, an all-out effort to know ("The mind can never be satisfied, never.")

I'm also glad that you brought up an extremely important aspect of Stevens's themes: the imagination. Thanks again for your answer.

[quasimodo1]

"Gray Room" (1917)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.