The Palty Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
But not on a shell, she starts,
Archaic, for the sea.
But on the first-found weed
She scuds the glitters,
Noiselessly, like one more wave.
She too is discontent
And would have purple stuff upon her arms,
Tired of the salty harbors,
Eager for the brine and bellowing
Of the high interiors of the sea.
The wind speeds her,
Blowing upon her hands
And watery back.
She touches the clouds, where she goes
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.
Yet this is meager play
In the scurry and water-shine,
As her heels foam —
Not as when the goldener nude
Of a later day
Will go, like the center of sea-green pomp,
In an intenser calm,
Scullion of fate,
Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly,
Upon her irretrievable way.
(from, Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 4-5)
* * * *
The juxtaposition of the words ‘paltry’ and the artistic word ‘nude’ are incongruous, a favorite device of Stevens’ good-natured humor, and one he employs frequently in his titles, as in his verse. Here, he treats of a theme oft-treated in art and literature, the Rising of Venus from the Waves, as per Botticelli. But Stevens’ Venus rises in Spring from weeds, which are common creatures, humble, plain, of no account, simply things among the other ordinary things of the world around him, in which Stevens’ found fodder for great poetry. ‘She scuds the glitters,’ – she is apparent in the first glittering scions of spring: a few weeds, perhaps poking through the vestiges of New England snow, reflecting sunlight on their grassy leaves. The Palty Nude Is Spring.
“Tired of the salty harbors, /Eager for the brine and bellowing/Of the high interiors of the sea.” In the north, boats are snugged into harbors for the winter. They, too, long for the high seas in Spring. But Stevens’ Venus longs for the ‘high interiors of the sea,’ (emphasis mine), an evocative phrase that suggests the longing to revisit the ‘soul’ and its ‘passions’, as for Stevens these two are not mutually exclusive, and he associates these more with Summer, which will only come later.
Stevens is a lover of the seasons, and sees each season as having its own fit purpose. Winter has a purpose, not Stevens’ favorite, but he makes his own form of peace with it, (as will be seen in other poems, eg The Snow Man). It is a part of life. Spring is welcome because it begins the return to Summer, ‘the goldener nude/ Of a later day’, his favorite season, the season of the full pleasures of Venus: verdant beauty, ease and sexuality. Ronald Sukenick writes about Stevens' poetry, “(A) pattern is repeated in the cycle of the seasons as they affect the emotions, with winter representing barrenness, spring, desire, summer, fulfillment, and autumn, the decay of desire, a kind of asceticism.” (R. Sukenick, WSMTO, p.7)
Spring is ‘paltry’ and ‘discontent’, thin and hungry as it were, and ‘would have purple stuff (rich cloth) upon her arms,’ like a maiden longing to be the lady of the household. But, rest assured, Summer, ‘the centre of sea-green pomp,’ will succeed Spring, and pass on, in turn, ‘upon her irretrievable way.’ Beautiful!
One comment of interest relates to the use of the word ‘spick’ as in ‘spick torrent’. R. Sukenick writes that Summer has a “comparatively wilder, lighter motion, making it ‘spick’.” (R. Sukenick, WSMTO, p.37) I wouldn’t have a clue where he got this idea if it weren’t for my recollection of Proctor and Gamble’s household product, ‘Spic and Span,’ which was, in my childhood home, a cleanser guaranteed to make things ‘shine.’ Looking also in my Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, I see there is a listing for: “Spick and Span-new, wholly new, (Scand.) Lit. ‘spike and spoon-new,’ where spike is a nail, and spoon is a splinter.” (p.507) Oh, Wallace. In other words, ‘like new.’
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