more on Ursula

As usual, Bill Ford has found a key linking this poem to Stevens’ muse, Sibyl Gage, whose birthday was the same as the feast-day of Ursula, the patron saint of educators, of which Sibyl was one. He also finds parallels between this poem and Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci.’ And it would seem as if Stevens’ experienced Sibyl as just such a cruel lady.

I looked back through Stevens' letters and journal entries for whatever might have been written around the time of his encounter with Sibyl in the Adirondacks in 1902. He gave her a poem, meant as a compliment, but that dissed her two favorite authorities in the field of education, after which there was no more to their story. (See my entries on Le Monocle de Mon Oncle, for more on this topic) That was in August of '02. Anyway, I found this entry, dated October 8, 1902, that seems to apply to the Sibyl Gage poem, and to his apparent feeling that he had been ‘cut’ by her in response to it.

“It is true, doubtless, as some one was saying to me to-day, that, though women are vain, men are vainer. I was told that if a woman met a man with an atrocious nose and said to him, “What fine lines your face has!” he would cry “Nonsense!” – and be found admiring his abominable proboscis in a mirror shortly after, wondering that he had never before noticed that the line were fine. Yes: that is probably true. An unattractive woman can draw almost any man to her by discreet flattery; but when a man flatters a woman the woman doesn’t feel any the kindlier toward the man but takes his praise as quite true + winds up by cutting him – as not quite good enough for so fair a creature. Flattery mollifies a man; elevates a woman. Voila!” (LWS, p.61)

Aside from the various possibilities as to the identity of Stevens' muse, etcetera, this poem has a ceremonial feel that shows Stevens attunement to ritual. This supports my theory that matters spiritual were more important to him than not. He is always trying to integrate the spiritual with the material. In our western tradition these are either separated or else matter stands in need of being consecrated, redeemed, etc. "'But here,' she said,/'Where none can see,/I make an offering, in the grass,/Of radishes and flowers.'/And then she wept/For fear the Lord would not accept." But why not simply see them as different aspects of the same thing? (Like radishes and flowers)

Comments

[essay writers]

This research that goes on in letters dated 1902... It must be great to do that job