The Dao of Wallace Stevens

tea, by wallace stevens

tea

when the elephant's-ear in the park
shrivelled in frost,
and the leaves on the paths
ran like rats,
your lamp-light fell
on shining pillows,
of sea-shades and sky-shades,
like umbrellas in Java.

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Who is Stevens visiting here for 'tea?'  Escaping the ominous portents of the onset of winter, he finds a safe haven of penultimate intimacy where the charm and comfort of 'lamp-light' effortlessly falls on 'shining pillows' whose very shining promises - what?  dreams, sexual pleasures or simply the colors and terrain of the imagination - 'sea-shades and sky-shades,/like umbrellas in Java.'  The fact that we are interested in 'pillows' implies that this haven is for the head, so the imagination is favored as a referent, and the others are simply associate experiences that may enrich or even merely echo the pre-eminent Imagination for Stevens.

The word-music is present here too.  'Umbrellas' has a wonderfully feminine sound to it, recollective of floral forms, such an 'umbels,' as well as being resonant with 'umbra' (shade, that poetically important phenomenon for stevens), both joined together here with the ever-feminine 'ella.'  The word 'Java' too, exotic in its connotations, is, simply as a sound, both beautiful and satisfying for English-speakers.  We wish we had something more proprietary for this sound to mean, and so we've appropriated it for our 'java script,' and we use it to refer to our pedestrian and daily coffee, which also promises us oh-so-much more.  'Java' sounds like 'Jazz,' another intriguing word full of the promise of secrets and revelations, but the final syllable, 'va' carries us away to new horizons. 

i've indulged a life-long amateur interest in sounds - obviously or at least not surprisingly i write poetry too - and I hypothesize that the sound 'ja' or anything with the 'j' sound relates to the jaw and to eating.  'Va' as a sanskrit syllable is always related to movement, travelling, and is the root of our english words 'vehicle, vacate, vacation, vacant, etc.'  'Umbrellas in Java' is so soft as a sound-phrase, so full of movement, with its connotations of soft yet powerful southerly trade-winds, yet it's all about an inner movement, a movement towards the Imagination and an intimacy to be found within ourselves.

indian river, by wallace stevens

the trade-wind jingles the rings in the nets around the racks
     by the docks on Indian River.
it is the same jingle of the water among the roots under the
     banks of the palmettoes,
it is the same jingle of the red-bird breasting the orange-
     trees out of the cedars.
yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu,
     nor on the nunnery beaches.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 93)

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Another example of Stevens' 'Floridaphilia.'  How he loves it!  I can relate to his sense that there is some sort of subtle 'jingling' sound one can 'pick up' when one is in a very magical place in nature where there's a lot of life going on.  Even in the desert, where there isn't exactly a 'jingle,' there is some sort of ethereal sound you can detect when you tune in to all the life that is happening there.  But in a place like Florida, that is so wet, it must be very very musical.

Please read the comments associated with this post because they are very good. There is even a translation of the expression 'boskage perdu' which is quite interesting, and make this poem even more intriguing. I said above that Stevens 'loved' Florida - I may be wrong about this, but certainly he was fascinated by it, perhaps because it was so different from his beloved Berks County Pennsylvania. He titles another poem "O Florida, Venereal Soil,' (with venereal cognate for veneno, poison in Spanish) and describes its 'dark' pull for him. He makes various references also to the Spanish remnant culture of Florida (the guitar, the Cuban, tiestas [flowerpots], and calls Florida 'donna') which was so at odds with the puritan Anglo-German culture of parts of southeastern Pennsylvania, where he grew up. In my own family's history that tension still existed in my own mother's day, and in fact my maternal grandfather was born in the same year, and even month, as Stevens and only a matter of miles distant, in Weissport Pennsylvania. The fact that there is no 'Spring' in Florida must have seemed quite dire to Stevens, who seems to have valued Spring. On the other hand, perhaps the absence of winter might have attracted him. If there is no winter, there is no need for spring.

lunar paraphrase, by wallace stevens

the moon is the mother of pathos and pity

when, at the wearier end of november,
her old light moves along the branches,
feebly, slowly, depending upon them;
when the body of jesus hangs in a pallor,
humanly near, and the figure of mary,
touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter
made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen;
when over the houses, a golden illusion
brings back an earlier season of quiet
and quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness -

the moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, 89-90)

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One of the reasons why I love Stevens is that I can relate to his relationship with his own doldrums, his own 'fermentation' (aka rotting), the monastic 'dailyness' of his work and home-life.  It wasn't all booze-laced evenings with the Arensbergs, you know.

I've noticed that in all the alchemical literature there's a great deal of emphasis on the importance of 'fermentation,' 'rotting,' and generally lying in neglect until turning green (myth of Inanna). It's an important stage in the alchemical process, in the process of spiritualization and, I would assume, in the creative process.  Stevens writes beautifully of it.

I love how, in a quiet moment, he recalls previous quiet moments, and 'season(s) of quiet.'  Only a true contemplative would think to do that.

Addendum:

These must be scenes from his daily life: the crucifix, a statue of our lady on some leaf-laden lawn.  Gives some credence to the story that he may have converted to Catholicism before he died.  It does seem that he had some kind of attraction to it, and as Christian religious sects go, it had perhaps more going for someone of Stevens’ sensibility and mentality.

Also, I love the vulnerability and dependency of these images of 'God'  - the Moon 'depends' upon the weary november  branches, 'the body of jesus hangs ('depends') in a pallor, humanly near,' and even mary, the mother of god,  must be sheltered as she shrinks back from the touch of frost.   My god, talk about 'pathos and pity' !

 

sea surface full of clouds, by wallace stevens

1
in that november off tehuantepec,
the slopping of the sea grew still one night
and in the morning summer hued the deck

and made one think of rosy chocolate
and gilt umbrellas.  paradaisal green
gave suavity to the perplexed machine

of ocean, which like limpid water lay.
who, then, in that ambrosial latitude
out of the light evolved the moving blooms,

who, then, evolved the sea-blooms from the clouds
diffusing balm in that pacific calm?
c'etait mon enfant, mon bijou, mon ame.

the sea-clouds whitened far below the calm
and moved, as blooms move, in the swimming green
and in its watery radiance, while the hue

of heaven in an antique reflection rolled
round those flotillas.  and sometimes the sea
poured brilliant iris on the glistening blue.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, 82-83)

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I read somewhere in my perusings of words about Stevens, that the morning in question was very likely the morning after Stevens' daughter was conceived.  Makes this poem very  special, what?

It's very nice to re-read this on a midsummer's night, under the light of Jupiter.

I will not be posting the poem in its entirety, so if you wish to read more, please seek a volume of Stevens' work.

the death of a soldier, by wallace stevens

life contracts and death is expected,
as in a season of autumn.
the soldier falls.

he does not become a three-days personage,
imposing his separation,
calling for pomp.

death is absolute and without memorial,
as in a season of autumn,
when the wind stops,

when the wind stops and, over the heavens,
the clouds go, nevertheless,
in their direction.

(from stevens, collected poetry & prose, p. 81)

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this is  timely for Fourth of July, although it is not perhaps joyous enough for the feastday.  It is a melancholy, if true, picture of what it means to be a soldier who doesn't return.

the man whose pharynx was bad

the time of year has grown indifferent.
mildew of summer and the deepening snow
are both alike in the routine i know.
i am too dumbly in my being pent.

the wind attendant on the solstices
blows on the shutters of the metropoles,
stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
the grand ideas of the villages.

the malady of the quotidian...
perhaps, if winter once could penetrate
through all its purples to the final slate,
persisting bleakly in an icy haze,

one might in turn become less diffident,
out of such mildew plucking neater mould
and spouting new orations of the cold.
one might. one might.  but time will not relent.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 81)

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Clearly Stevens was experiencing a bout of poetic acedie expressed in this poem.  maybe i like it because i can relate to it: the feeling of those periods where everything seems to stop, inside and outside.  i know what he means about the snow and the mildew, perhaps because I also hail from southeastern Pennsylvania, where we have these seasons.  and if only he could take some time out of his busy schedule, the routine of work, child-rearing and homelife, to articulate his feelings and penetrate his perceptions more fully.

This a poem that  was later added to Harmonium.

hymn from a watermelon pavilion, by wallace stevens

you dweller in the dark cabin,
to whom the watermelon is always purple,
whose garden is wind and moon,

of the two dreams, night and day,
what lover, what dreamer, would choose
the one obscured by sleep?

here is the plantain by your door
and the best cock of red feather
that crew before clocks.

a feme may come, leaf-green,
whose coming may give revel
beyond revelries of sleep,

yes, and the blackbird spread its tail,
so that the sun may speckle,
while it creaks hail.

you dweller in the dark cabin,
rise, since rising will not waken,
and hail, cry hail, cry hail.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 71-72)

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I love this poem, and characteristically, I can't find much on it.  But Ronald Sukenick reliably gives us the basic gist: "Both reality, 'day,' and dream, that of the 'dark cabin' of the mind, 'night,' are products of the imagination; both are dreams.  Why not, then, since 'rising will not waken,' choose the more tangible and various dream of reality,the real watermelon, rather than the imaginary one that is 'always purple?'" (WSMTO, pp.218-219)  Good question.

Frank Doggett finds this poem sums Stevens up well enough to start off his book "Stevens' Poetry of Thought' with an exposition of it on page 2: "Imagination and reality, the blue guitar and things as they are, middling beast and mystic garden - all these dualities of his - are considerations of one kind or another of this theme of the mind and the world.  The world is the not-self, that which is reflected on the surface of his consciousness.  As for the mind, it is the conscious self, and Stevens usually takes this entity to be like a spirit and an indweller bound to the matter of its body.  'You dweller in the dark cabin,' he says, addressing himself to men of imagination, to poets, but thinking of the dweller as the self inhabiting the darkness of the body.  Thus he opens one of his early poems to earth and in his amused fashion, characterizing his own gusto for living, names it 'Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion.' 

"With earth a watermelon pavilion, with the mind a spirit, as dweller in the dark cabin, whose sense of reality is obscured as though in a dream but beside whose cabin is the vivid actual plantain of green reality and the sun: 'And the best cock of red feather/that crew before clocks...'  with all the variety of earth, experience for the indwelling spirit is its happiness.  'We stand in the tumult of a festival,' he says in one of the later poems.  In this way the self is 'the Dove in the Belly,' to whom 'the whole of appearance is a toy.'  And yet the self, for all this pleasure in experience is still something apart from the physical reality that underlies the nature of appearance."   

This sounds very close to Hindu philosophy to me, which teaches that we are 'here' to gather experience, in order to transcend it.    But first we must have it.                                                                                                                                                                                                           

to the one of fictive music, by wallace stevens

sister and mother and diviner love,
and of the sisterhood of the living dead
most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,
and of the fragrant mothers the most dear
and queen, and of diviner love the day
and flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread
of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown
its venom of renown, and on your head
no crown is simpler than the simple hair.

now, of the music summoned by the birth
that separates us from the wind and sea,
yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes,
by being so much of the things we are,
gross effigy and simulacrum, none
gives motion to perfection more serene
than yours, out of our imperfections wrought,
most rare, or ever of more kindred air
in the laborious weaving that you wear.

for so retentive of themselves are men
that music is intensest which proclaims
the near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom,
and of all vigils musing the obscure,
that apprehends the  most which sees and names,
as in your name, an image that is sure,
among the arrant spices of the sun,
o bough and bush and scented vine, in whom
we give ourselves our likest issuance.

yet not too like, yet not so like to be
too near, too clear, saving a little to endow
our feigning with the strange unlike, whence springs
the difference that heavenly pity brings.
for this, musician, in your girdle fixed
bear other perfumes.  on your pale head wear
a band entwining, set with fatal stones.
unreal, give back to us what once you gave:
the imagination that we spurned and crave.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 70-71)

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This is apparently one of Stevens' signature pieces.  From it Ronald Sukenik took the title of his book "Musing the Obscure."  And didn't someone else take, "Feigning with the Strange Unlike?"  I like this poem because I find echoes of Stevens' earlier, more 'classical' poetry blended with many of the notes of his own unique fugue.

I like that he sees poetry as 'out of our imperfections wrought,' and that it isn't 'renown' that is the motivation of the poet, rather 'on your head/no crown is simpler than the simple hair.'  This poem, like most of Stevens' poems, bears repeated reading.

I will attempt to read what some of the scholars have had to say about this poem, and will add to the post over the next couple of days.

theory, by wallace stevens

i am what is around me.

women understand this.
one is not duchess
a hundred yards from a carriage.

these, then are portraits:
a black vestibule;
a high bed sheltered by curtains.

these are merely instances.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 70)

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I agree with pat here.  he's got it.  but what a deep knowing it is, isn't it?

gubbinal, by wallace stevens

that strange flower, the sun,
is just what you say.
have it your way.

the world is ugly,
and the people are sad.

that tuft of jungle feathers,
that animal eye,
is just what you say.

that savage of fire,
that seed,
have it your way.

the world is ugly,
and the people are sad.

(from stevens, collected poetry & prose, p. 69)

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i think that for poets like stevens and williams, using ordinary language in poetry, and in this case, in rhymes, in repetitions and couplets, was innovative.  the theme of this poem was also counter-poetic in their day.  Poets were supposed to write about how beautiful, how exquisitely painful, how inspiring the world, life, love and death, and so forth, are. 

I love wallace stevens on 'the sun.'  In this case, it's 'that strange flower, the sun."  I can live with that phrase for many days, so you may not see me around for a while.  Who needs more?

i haven't had time to read the commentaries lately, you may have noticed.  will hope to return to that at some point in time, just not right now.

'the world is ugly and the people are sad.'  i remember, actually, feeling that when i visited some of the depressed mining communities in 'upstate' pennsylvania when i was a child.  certainly, wallace stevens must have encountered that attitude in his day, but it seems as if he was much more interested in 'that tuft of jungle feathers, that animal eye."