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OK, between your post here and Petrarch's post following, you've convinced me it is possible, and knowing Donne's personality, at least in his younger days, it's quite possible he did do it intentionally. Yes, the country pun fits better than the "f" substitution. I didn't catch the country pun.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Are we having fun with language, or what! :D
Is now a good time to post a new poem? Or should I have waited until Monday? Perhaps, if I've jumped the gun, we can wait until Monday to start talking about it.
I'm posting a poem I like, but barely understand:
Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz
by Wallace Stevens
The truth is that there comes a time
When we can mourn no more over music
That is so much motionless sound.
There comes a time when the waltz
Is no longer a mode of desire, a mode
Of revealing desire and is empty of shadows.
Too many waltzes have ended. And then
There’s that mountain-minded Hoon,
For whom desire was never that of the waltz,
Who found all form and order in solitude,
For whom the shapes were never the figures of men.
Now, for him, his forms have vanished.
There is order in neither sea nor sun.
The shapes have lost their glistening.
There are these sudden mobs of men,
These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
An immense suppression, freed,
These voices crying without knowing for what,
Except to be happy, without knowing how,
Imposing forms they cannot describe,
Requiring order beyond their speech.
Too many waltzes have ended. Yet the shapes
For which the voices cry, these, too, may be
Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire.
Too many waltzes–The epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant.
Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music
Will unite these figures of men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows.
Great blp. I was hoping someone would post. I love Wallace Stevens. He's probably in the top 2 or 3 poets of the 20th century for me. Let me read through this, since I don't recognize it and have some comments tonight.
hi blp I hope your day is good.
I haven't really sunk myself deeply into it yet, but upon skimming it seems to be a rather even blend of french symbolism=music and imagism=sculpture. Very precise and beautiful, it gave me shivers and a dreamy feeling all at the same time. great choice.
I can see exactly what you mean.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
I know Wallace didn't write most of his poetry until later life and there seems to be a theme of looking backwards from age here, "Too many waltzes have ended" starts 2 stanzas and the first 3 words a third. That was my immediate reaction, but I can see that I'm going to have to read it a few more times before I can offer much more.
Thanks for posting it, I'm not familiar with his work so it's completely new to me - I may need to look up some more of his work to build an overview of his themes.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hi Rachel. My day was OK, thanks. I was a bit sleepy for a lot of it. Hope yours was good.
Can you say a bit more about these symbolism/music, imagism/sculpture relationships?
Thanks for posting BLP. Well, I'll have to agree with you and some of the others who posted. I like the sound of this poem but I feel it is dancing around something I can't quite understand. For the moment a few disjointed impressions: Each of the stanzas has three lines, just like the three beat measure of a waltz. Despite this three beat form, the poem insistently, almost nihilistically seems to reject the notion of any form or stability. I find something profoundly chilling about a poem that can regard music as "so much motionless sound."
And a few questions: I know almost nothing about Steven's life and experiences, but this poem seems to refer to some great change (either personal or social) he experienced. Is it simply the experience of age? Could this poem have been written during the Depression era? Some of the images, such as the crowds of men,
make me think of the crowds of displaced and unemployed that must have suddenly arisen in this era just after the up times in the twenties. That sort of broad social change would certainly account for a sudden distrust in the power of art, music, dancing in the face of a harsh reality. Also, who or what is "Hoon"? I'd be interested to hear from anyone who knows more about the context of this poem or the life of its poet.Quote:
There are these sudden mobs of men,
These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
An immense suppression, freed,
These voices crying without knowing for what,
Just some thoughts. I'll sign off for now and maybe post something more coherent after additional thought.
Thanks Petrarch's Love. Your thoughts are similar to some of the so far vague guesswork I've been doing. I was wondering if the three-line stanzas related to the structure of a waltz and was also thinking about how it might relate to history. Don't know exactly when Stevens was writing, but this poem seems to me to have a similar relationship to chaos to that of other works from the first half of the twentieth century, especially Yeats' 'The Second Coming' (things fall apart, the centre cannot hold etc.) Another Stevens poem is actually called Connoisseur of Chaos and begins, 'A. A violent order is disorder; and/B. a great disorder is an order. These/Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations)'. I wondered if this sort of tendency might be more to do with Einstein and the sudden, shocking modernity of the twentieth century. But the Depression theory works for me too, maybe better - that bit you quoted is my favourite part of the poem, by the way.
I wanted to discuss just impressions for a while, but I know, because I stumbled on it when looking for the text of the poem, that there's an essay about it on the web, which may clear a few things up eventually. Glancing at that I found out that Hoon was a philosopher. Other than that, I know that Stevens was an insurance man for a lot of his life - and is therefore known as 'The insurance man of American Letters'.
I'll use this post to put out what I know of Stevens, and then perhaps tomorrow I'll tackle the poem itself.
Yes, he was an insurance man, and rose to be vice president of the company. He wrote in his spare time and really didn't publish first book until his forties. I had a teacher who told a story that after he had passed away and a biographer went to some of the people who he worked with and they were startled and said something to the effect, "You mean old Wally wrote poems?" There's also a story about him getting into a fight with Hemingway down in the Florida Keys, I think. He lived from 1879-1955. This poem, "Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz" was published in 1936 in a collection he called Ideas of Order. I think title of the book reflects a lot of the themes in the poems. The most famous and often anthologized poem from that collection is called "The Idea of Order at Key West." One other note, in terms of reputation, Wallace Stevens is among the top American poets of the 20th century, and in some critics estimation the top American poet, surpassing even T.S. Eliot. He is very conscious of his American language ("mountain-minded Hoon" for instance), and a friend to that other very American poet of his era, William Carlos Williams.
I must say that as much as I love Stevens, and no matter how often I read him and the same poem over and over, I can never fully grasp him. The posts above reacting in this way are common. It's almost like trying to grasp water; it just flows away. And yes, Rachel I believe he was infleuenced by the Symbolists, at least stylistically.
There are two extreme styles that Stevens uses. One is very sensual (not in the sexual sense, but in the use of tangible hard imagery), spilled over profusely. The other, which is the case with "Sad Strains" is the extreme opposite, sparseness of imagery, almost purely using abstractions. You have to be a great poet writing almost purely with abstract words and get away with it. You almost never see Stevens fail. Even when he does here use tangible nouns, look at how he pushes them away from feeling them: "motionless sound," "empty of shadows," "shapes were never the figures of men," "clouds of faces and arms". The great word in this poem that is so characteristic of Stevens (he just comes up with these things) is "Hoon" and I can't find what the word means. But what's key here is that it's "mountain-minded". I think this means (since I've come across similar in other Stevens poems) is that the poem (or at least part of the poem) is looking through the eyes and mind of Hoon.
Other things about his work. A constant theme is music, as here. Another is understanding how we piece the outside world together in out minds. He shares that in common with Virginia Woolf, in that respect, but I don't know if he ever read her. There is a lot of color symbolism throughout his work, but none I think in this poem. He uses this three line iambic pentameter stanza (almost like an unrhymed terza rima) very frequently. I've never understood it. But there must be a reason for his format. He's constantly writing about aestheitics, so the shape of his works have to be thought through, but I get baffled by it. Plus he's too good a craftsman of poetry to not think that through.
As I look at this poem in my Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose I notice that the next poem (I believe laid out in the sequence of the original printing) is a counter piece to "Sad Strains" in the opposing style I mentioned above. It's short enough for me to copy it for your pleasure:
Quote:
Dance of the Macabre Mice
In the land of turkeys in turkey weather
At the base of the statue, we go round and round.
What a beautiful history, beautiful surprise!
Monsieur is on horseback. The horse is covered with mice.
This dance has no name. It is a hungry dance.
We dance it out to the tip of Monsieur's sword,
Reading the lordly language of the inscription,
Which is like zithers and tambourines combined:
The Founder of the State. Whoever founded
A state that was free, in the dead of winter, from mice?
What a beautiful tableau tinted and towering,
The arm of bronze outstretched against all evil!
Thanks Virgil.
Another bit about Stevens I would like to add is his interest in different perspectives. I've read a couple Stevens poems that play with the idea of multiple viewpoints (I can't remember the names of two, something about a blackbird, and another about men crossing a bridge; but also The Man with the Blue Guitar).
A reply to Petrarch: Where he mentions "so much motionless sound" I get the impression that he is talking about the waltzes of the past, and so if they are not being played currently there is no motion. This scientific understanding of music interests me, and I always figured Stevens to be influenced by Einstein and modern science, but never really thought about the Depression era influence. Something to think about. In his poem The man with the Blue Guitar, supposedly inspired by a Picasso painting, he is concerned with artistic creation and how this relates to the general society in which the art is created. I think Stevens was influenced by the modern art movement, so much of his work is centered around aesthetics; but also the pre-Existential vein of philosphy.
Also, in The Man with the Blue Guitar Stevens employs the sun, sea, and shadow symbolism. I'll have to get back here with what that means in relation to this poem though.
There's a trajectory to it that you can chart via 'shadows' and 'glistening'. We first learn that both have vanished. By the end, there's a promise that they will return. Shadows are seen as a good thing - perhaps because they provide definition, absent in the clouds, order required beyond speech etc. in the middle of the poem.
This is extremely complicated and does leave me rather cold to be honest. It’s a bit like something that would have been written by a cross between Wittgenstein and TS Eliot. Still, it’s nice to see a clever American. :D
Here’s how I see it:
1. Music has (for a reason I don’t understand) lost some vital quality/purpose that Stevens ascribes to it. It appears that it has simply been reduced to sound, no longer generating the kinds of social interaction that it does when in the form of, say, a waltz. In this sense it is no longer dynamically generating something more than itself. By this, I mean that it isn't just noise/sound but has a social purpose/function. I am assuming that Stevens thinks music should not be ‘motionless’. This is, presumably, a sad state of affairs. However, there comes a time when we must stop lamenting this loss (I don’t mean as in an order – such as ‘You must stop doing that’ but more as in ‘we must simply get on with our lives). He suggests why later (I think).
2. Is he here expanding on the idea of music’s relegation to mere sound? What has been lost from music are those things it signifies beyond the level of mere sound. I assume that to be ‘empty of shadows’ is a negative thing. Shadows are good because they provide the possibility of nuance and uncertainty, which, as long as they don’t become anarchic, are positive things. They are representative of the mysteries that prevent life from being merely mechanical. If we reduce music to sound as a physical phenomenon, as a series of waves (which I suppose it is), then we are left with some impersonal, physical fact. We endow sound with meaning and significance.
Side note - Desire – a longing for something you don’t yet have and shadows are a sign of something that is there but not actually present in the shadow itself.
3 and 4. I have no idea who Hoon is. To me, ‘mountain-minded’ suggests something unchanging, heavy and solid to the point of being impenetrably dense. Hoon is certainly an unusual name (unfortunately, there is a British politician called Geoff Hoon but this is only the second time I’ve seen the name). It’s almost pseudo-biblical, like Onan, to whom he seems similar. The significant thing about Hoon is that he appears to be utterly self-contained, perhaps even solipsistic. He does seem to be taking part in some search for “form and order” but for him, “desire was never that of the waltz”, which I take to mean that his search for “form and order” doesn’t involve social interaction, i.e. other people. This is also why for Hoon, “the shapes were never the figures of men.” He doesn’t register them as an existent other. They are merely shapes in Hoon’s solipsistic world. The passing of waltzes doesn’t affect him. In the past (‘found’) Hoon was able to find order, presumably because his success relied on nothing but himself.
However, even for Hoon the ‘forms have vanished’. Again, I don’t know why. To gather that together, neither the narrator, who registers a world beyond the self, nor Hoon, who doesn’t, is able to find form and order any longer.
5, 6 and 7 The first two end-stopped lines reiterate the loss that has occurred but then he next seven lines are one long, clause-heavy sentence. This has the effect of accelerating our progress through a series of suddenly quite threatening images. It’s as if something has been unleashed. Form and order are fractured.
8. This is where it gets really hard to understand. I think he is being optimistic (no wonder I ‘m having trouble). I think he’s saying that even these “mobs of men” are searching for form and order and, although it’s difficult to see it amid the apparent chaos, they do so in a way that is possibly generative of new forms and orders.
9 and 10 Is the fact that “Too many waltzes -” is not appended by ‘have ended’ a suggestion that he is accepting that there have been too many waltzes and now it’s time for a different mode? The chaos is approaching ever nearer and will soon have dominion (“The epic of disbelief/Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant”). However, there is hope. Someone who is aware of what’s at stake will find a method that enables the dynamic energies of the “mobs of men” to respond to and be channelled by a new mode of expression. Whether that “harmonious skeptic” is the poet and the “skeptical music” his poetry, I don’t know. I think I would favour more the idea that it’s someone or something else.
I take it as a poem about sadly acknowledging the passing of one kind of order for another. This doesn’t happen quietly and without alarm but Stevens nevertheless appears somehow reassured by the end.
As I say, it leaves me rather cold. I can admire it but I can’t warm to it. I have read a few of Stevens’ poems that I like but this was new to me.
Good, yes. I think you're right about most of this, but it's funny how exegisis can kill things a bit. There's another Stevens poems that I'd still rank one of my favourites - The Emperor of Icecream, but it was spoiled just a little for both me and a friend when his college poetry tutor told him what it was about. We'd thought it was all just itself, somehow.
I think I'll get back to liking this one for its language too and maybe I'll even realise there's more to it than you say, but for the moment a lot of that seems right - and a bit banal. Out of order, chaos, out of chaos, order. Ho hum. Still, the sudden mobs of men take it out of abstraction. They work for me for every historical moment in which such mobs arise and brilliantly evoke something seismic and sublime - in the sense of overwhelming, awe-inspiring and frightening. The reminder of that very chaos' desire for order hits me too. The emotion of this - and that, in relation to the sadness and solitude evoked elsewhere - are what hook me and save the thing from being some humdrum discussion of some eternal cycle. It reminds me a lot of the sound of rioting at the beginning of The Smiths' Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me and, I think, works in a very similar way to the way that plays off the sadness and longing of that song. And already I'm back to liking it.
Also, Unnamable, unless I've misunderstood you, I think you've missed a tiny bit at the beginning. Isn't the sound motionless simply because the waltzes have ended? As in All good things - love affairs, just politics etc. And, yes, at some point you get used to it - and become skeptical of the Waltz in general.
I found a reference to 'Hoon' as Stevens' personification of 'Man alone' in a search. But only in one site. I found another that says he is a philosopher, but I can't find a phiolosopher of that name.
Stevens wrote another poem called "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon", which is equally impenetrable.
I will keep digging. Who is Hoon really?