the doctor of geneva, by wallace stevens

The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand
That lay impounding the Pacific swell,
Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.

Lacustrine man had never been assailed
By such long-rolling opulent cataracts,
Unless Racine or Bossuet held the like.

He did not quail. A man so used to plumb
The multifarious heavens felt no awe
Before these visible, voluble delugings,

Which yet found means to set his simmering mind
Spinning and hissing with oracular
Notations of the wild, the ruinous waste,

Until the steeples of his city clanked and sprang
In an unburgherly apocalypse.
The doctor used his handkerchief and sighed.

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

* * * *

There is some debate about the identity of the doctor of

Geneva

. Perhaps Calvin is meant, but there are other possibilities as well. At any rate, the supposition seems to be that the european religion to which Stevens was heir, is provincial, 'lacustrine,' too narrowly contained, compared to the vast ocean of imagination and new cultural frontiers available when one 'crosses the great waters,' namely the ocean separating the new and old worlds, both geographically, and also in terms of the turn of the century, an era that seemed, at the time and since, to mark a distinct ideological change.  A major paradigm shift.  The present rise in religious fundamentalism would probably greatly surprise Stevens and his contemporaries.  As if that is not enough, there is next the great Pacific to encounter, along with its non-theistic and polytheistic cultures and philosophical principles. 

Stevens approaches his topic in a light-hearted, slightly comic, tone.  The climax of the poem demonstrates how discombobulating an experience the confrontation of lacustrine man by

unplummed

 

Ocean

really is: "the steeples of his city clanked and sprang/In an unburgherly apocalypse./" 

The last line of the poem, 'the doctor used his handkerchief and sighed,' is particularly opaque, but someone traced down the following quotation from Henry James, published in the July 1874 issue of Galaxy, (possibly read by WS in his youth), that reads as follows: "Will you hear how they pass Sundays in Geneva? ...as soon as the text is named the minister puts on his hat, in which he is followed by the whole congregation. At the proper point of the discourse the minister stops short and turns his back to you to blow his nose, which is a signal for the congregation to do the same, and a glorious concert it is for the weather is already severe and people have got colds."  Odd, but possibly enlightening as to the significance of this final line.

I must confess that as a child in church I often wondered at the concert of coughing, nose-blowing, harrumphing and sniffling that seemed to be considered appropriate behavior during the most solemn rites.  It seems to be a western thing.  Church as the fit occasion for cleaning out the pipes - !?  Or perhaps Stevens includes this gesture as an indicator that even 'the doctor' may subconsciously believe his 'provincial doctrine' to be 'a lot of hooey,' as noseblowing seems to signify.

As to the references to Racine and Bossuet; in a sense, the fact that these names are virtually meaningless, even when recognized, by people today, works well in this poem, which is basically saying that the Christian thought of the past is obsolete.  Bossuet was a proponent of the divine right of kings.  He died about a hundred years before the French Revolution. 

Racine

was a Jansenist.  Here is Wikipedia's definition of Jansenism: "

Jansenism emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination. In Jansenist thought, human beings were born bad, and without divine help a human being could never become good. This meant that one had to be very careful about one's choices, exhibit a high level of piety and moral rectitude, and prepare carefully through prayer and confession before receiving Communion (hence they favored less frequent reception). The Jansenist idea of predestination, based on Augustine's writing and close to that of Calvinism, was that only a small number of human beings, the "elect", were destined to be saved."  So these two cultural icons of seventeenth century France, who may have once upon a time represented "long-rolling opulent cataracts,' are now 'washed away' by 'these visible, voluble delugings,' of the present era, the wider world of the twentieth century, in search of a new 'enchantment' coherent with its new sciences, especially physics and psychology.

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