The Dao of Wallace Stevens

the comedian as the letter c, canto 5, stanza 1, by wallace stevens

v

a nice shady home

Crispin as hermit, pure and capable,
Dwelt in the land.  Perhaps if discontent
Had kept him still the pricking realist,
Choosing his element from droll confect
Of was and is and shall or ought to be,
Beyond Bordeaux, beyond Havana, far
Beyond carked Yucatan, he might have come
To colonize his polar planterdom
And jig his chits upon a cloudy knee.
But his emprize to that idea soon sped.
Crispin dwelt in the land and dwelling there
Slid from his continent by slow recess
To things within his actual eye, alert
To the difficulty of rebellious thought
When the sky is blue.  The blue infected will.
It may be that the yarrow in his fields
Sealed pensive purple under its concern.
But day by day, now this thing and now that
Confined him, while it cosseted, condoned,
Little by little, as if the suzerain soil
Abashed him by carouse to humble yet
Attach.  It seemed haphazard denouement.
He first, as realist, admitted that
Whoever hunts a matinal continent
May, after all, stop short before a plum
And be content and still be realist.
The words of things entangle and confuse.
The plum survives its poems.  It may hang
In the sunshine placidly, colored by ground
Obliquities of those who pass beneath,
Harlequined and mazily dewed and mauved
In bloom.  Yet it survives in its own form,
Beyond these changes, good, fat, guzzly fruit.
So Crispin hasped on the surviving form,
For him, of shall or ought to be in is.

(from, Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 32-33)

*      *      *      *      *

"Parody, if it is to be read as such, requires that the reader be familiar with an original and thus places the work in a tradition, which in the case of 'The Comedian' is romanticism.  As Harold Bloom notes, "Its place in literary history is, in one sense, very clear, because it is the satyr-poem or parody that culminates and almost undoes the tradition of the High Romantic quest-poem.'  Helen Vendler and others join Bloom in identifying the romantic tradition of the narrative and philosophical poem not only as the target of Stevens' mockery but also as the model he emulates in 'The Comedian.'" (Anca Rosu in 'The Metaphysics of Sound in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens,' p. 118)

A friend was saying, the other day, that he much prefers the beat poets, and that I ought to read the essays of Pound.  Perhaps I will, but I understand my attraction to the poetry of Walllace Stevens in a new light.  I was raised in part by my grandmother who was a contemporary of Wallace Stevens' generation.  My parents were born around the time he was graduating from Harvard.  They brought me up in the atmosphere of their own era, with certain incursions into our Victorian 'terrarium' from the modern world, like television and rock n roll music.  Our local Roman Catholic, European immigrant society reinforced the traditional element, and so Stevens' issues are very 'live' to me. 

Anca Rosu also discusses the way Stevens purges the traditional meanings from key words, including any symbolic meaning, so that the word can be used afresh.  She is careful to make clear that this not simply for the purpose of allowing us to see the 'ding an sich' of that which is 'represented' by the word, because Stevens generally undoes that sense of the plum as a 'good, fat, guzzly fruit.'  She sees his use of words as similar to that used in "charms and incantations, many of his poems conjure up a reality instead of representing one." (ibid, p.34)

This represents my cutting-edge learning of Wallace Stevens.  Some of my already-gleaned insights into his poetics include the notion that adherence to reality was made difficult by the activity of the imagination.  "To things within his actual eye, alert / To the difficulty of rebellious thought / When the sky is blue.  The blue infected will."  The siren song of imagination.

I'd like to better understand 'It may be that the yarrow in his fields / sealed pensive purple under its concern.'  Would anyone like to offer an interpretation?

'Crispin as hermit' is an intriguing phrase, especially considering that many of his contemporaries saw Stevens as a kind of hermit, an ascetic in some sense of that word.  And certainly there have been portly monks before him.

And here's another interesting paragraph on 'of was and is and shall or ought to be,' and 'shall or ought to be in is.'  Joan Richardson writes in her essay, 'Learning Stevens' language: The Will & the Weather' in Teaching Wallace Stevens, Practical Essays, pp. 143-144, that William James 'significantly directs attention away from substantives and precisely to words like 'that' and other seemingly innocuous shifters as the sites where real meaning/feeling is expressed: 'There is not a conjuntion or a preposition, and hardly an adverbial phrase, syntatic form, or inflection of voice, in human speech, that does not express some shading or other of relation which we at some moment actualy feel to exist between the larger objects of our thought.  If we speak objectively, it is the real relations that appear revealed; if we speak subjectively, it is the stream of consciousness that matches each of them by an inward coloring of its own.  In either case, the relations are numberless, and no existing language is capable of doing justice to their shades.  We ought to say a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by, quite as readily as we say a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold." 

Today's glossary:
carked - burdened with anxiety
planterdom - neologism - plantation
emprize - neologism - enterprise
suzerain - a feudal lord to whom fealty was due
matinal - of or relating to matins or to the early part of the day - meaning, in this context, a new continent
obliquities - obscurities, or, the quality or condition of being oblique, a deviation from a vertical or horizontal line, plane, position, or direction, or the angle or extent of such a deviation
mazily - labyrinthine

I felt the need to include a glossary for this verse, there were just so many unfamiliar words in it.  I love the section on William James, and I think this passage gives us a lot of insight into Stevens' poetry.  Richardson surmises that Stevens had exposure to Williams' thought, whether directly or indirectly, perhaps through his association with Santayana.  Richardson's essay is a gem.

the snowman, (yet again), by wallace stevens

I think this is the best short piece on The Snowman, that I've read to date.  And since this is the season of snowmen, I thought I'd include it today.

The Snow Man, by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves.

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

commentary by Robert Pack:

In the remarkable poem "The Snow Man," Stevens dramatizes the action of a mind as it becomes one with the scene it perceives, and at that instant, the mind having ceased to bring something of itself to the scene, the scene then ceases to exist fully.

[. . . .]

We, with the "one" of the poem, begin by watching the winter scene while in our mind the connotations of misery and cold brought forth by the scene are stirring. But gradually, almost imperceptibly, we are divested of whatever it is that distinguishes us from the snow man. We become the snow man, and we see the winter world through his eyes of coal, and we know the cold without the thoughts of human discomfort. To perceive the winter scene truly, we must have the mind of the snow man, until correspondence becomes identification. Then we see with the sharpest eye the images of winter: "pine-trees crusted with snow," "junipers shagged with ice," "spruces rough in the distant glitter/ Of the January sun." We hear with the acutest ear the cold sibilants evoking the sense of barrenness and monotony: "sound of the wind," "sound of a few leaves," "sound of the land," "same wind," "same bare place," "For the listener, who listens in the snow." The "one" with whom the reader has identified himself has now become "the listener, who listens in the snow"; he has become the snow man, and he knows winter with a mind of winter, knows it in its strictest reality, stripped of all imagination and human feeling. But at that point when he sees the winter scene reduced to absolute fact, as the object not of the mind, but of the perfect perceptual eye that sees "nothing that is not there," then the scene, devoid of its imaginative correspondences, has become "the nothing that is."

From Wallace Stevens: An approach to his poetry and thought. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1958. Copyright © 1958 by Rutgers, The State University.

This article and more like it can be found on the Modern American Poetry site, here.

christmas, metaphor and ideal

In the last post, we looked at metaphor in the context of wallace stevens' essay, 'Three Academic Pieces' in The Necessary Angel.  In the final paragraph of that essay, on pages 81 and 82, he discusses metaphor and 'the ideal,' and I thought that in some ways what he says is appropriate to our yearly remembrance of the birth of Christ.

"In the fewest possible words since, as between resemblances, one is always a little more nearly perfect than another and since, from this, it is easy for perfectionism of a sort to evolve, it is not too extravagant to think of resemblances as a source of the ideal.  In short, metaphor has its aspect of the ideal.  This aspect of it cannot be dismissed merely because we think that we have long since outlived the ideal.  The truth is that we are constantly outliving it and yet the ideal itself remains alive with an enormous life."

the comedian as the letter c, part 4, stanza 4, by wallace stevens

These bland excursions into time to come,
Related in romance to backward flights,
However prodigal, however proud,
Contained in their afflatus the reproach
That first drove Crispin to his wandering.
He could not be content with counterfeit,
With masquerade of thought, with hapless words
That must belie the racking masquerade,
With fictive flourishes that preordained
His passion's permit, hang of coat, degree
of buttons, measure of his salt.  Such trash
might help the blind, not him, serenely sly.
It irked beyond his patience.  Hence it was,
Preferring text to gloss, he humbly served
Grotesque apprenticeship to chance event,
A clown, perhaps, but an aspiring clown.
There is a monotonous babbling in our dreams
That makes them our dependent heirs, the heirs
Of dreamers buried in our sleep, and not
The oncoming fantasies of better birth.
The apprentice knew these dreamers.  If he dreamed
Their dreams, he did it in a gingerly way.
All dreams are vexing.  Let them be expunged.
But let the rabbit run, the cock declaim.

Trinket pasticcio, flaunting skyey sheets,
With Crispin as the tiptoe cozener?
No, no; veracious page on page, exact.

(from, Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 31-32)

*     *      *     *     *

"He could not be content with counterfeit,/ with masquerade of thought...such trash/ might help the blind, not him, serenely sly./ It irked beyond his patience.  Hence it was, /preferring text to gloss, he humbly served."

C.S. Lewis allowed us non-scholars to learn that words change their meaning in time.  Such is the case with 'sly,' which I identify with the meaning, 'roguish,' but there is an older meaning, namely, 'to be adept in craft.'  I'm sure Stevens meant it in the latter sense.  It's fun to look up even the more ordinary words in Stevens' lexicon to identify his meaning 'exact,' (because he was)!  Then, there are the less familiar words, such as 'afflatus,' which means "A strong creative impulse, especially as a result of divine inspiration"  according to Dictionary.com.  I don't even want to tell you what I thought it meant!  At any rate, Stevens jogs us awake to a new interest in words.

More on the lines.  Stevens writes, in 'Three Academic Pieces', in The Necessary Angel, about METAPHOR, that bedrock of poetic expression.  "What the eye beholds may be the text of life.  It is, nevertheless, a text that we do not write.  The eye does not beget in resemblance.  It sees.  But the mind begets in resemblance as the painter begets in representation; that is to say, as the painter makes his world within a world; or as the musician begets in music, in the obvious small pieces having to do with gardens in the rain or the fountains of Rome and in the obvious larger pieces having to do with the sea, Brazilian night or those woods in the neighborhood of Vienna in which the hunter was accustomed to blow his horn," [this is the man's prose, for heaven's sake] "and in which, also, yesterday, the birds sang preludes to the atom bomb. 

"It is not difficult, having once predicated such an activity, to attribute it to a desire for resemblance.  The study of the activity of resemblance is an approach to the understanding of poetry.  Poetry is a satifying of the desire for resemblance.  As the mere satisfying of a desire, it is pleasurable.  But poetry if it did nothing but satisfy a desire would not rise above the level of many lesser things.  Its singularity is that in the act of satisfying the desire for resemblance it touches the sense of reality, it enhances the sense of reality, heightens it, intensifies it."  (pp.76, 77, The Necessary Angel)

His eschewing of the dreams of sleep is interesting, yet we know he used some of his dreams as fodder for his poetry.  But Stevens prefers 'reality' as the stuff of his poetry.  "Let the rabbit run, the cock declaim."

the comedian as the letter c, part 4, stanzas 2 & 3, by wallace stevens

His western voyage ended and began.
The torment of fastidious thought grew slack,
Another, still more bellicose, came on.
He, therefore, wrote his prolegomena,
And, being full of the caprice, inscribed
Commingled souvenirs and prophecies.
He made a singular collation. Thus:
The natives of the rain are rainy men.
Although they paint effulgent azure lakes,
And April hillsides wooded white and pink,
Their azure has a cloudy edge, their white
And pink, the water bright that dogwood bears.
And in their music showering sounds intone.
On what strange froth does the gross Indian dote,
What Eden sapling gum, what honeyed gore,
What pulpy dram distilled of innocence,
That streaking gold should speak in him
Or bask within his images and words?
If these rude instances impeach themselves
By force of rudeness, let the priniciple
Be plain. For application Crispin strove,
Abhorring Turk as Esquimau, the lute
As the marimba, the magnolia as rose.

Upon these premises propounding, he
Projected a colony that should extend
To the dusk of a whistling south below the south,
A comprehensive island hemisphere.
The man in Georgia waking among pines
Should be pine-spokesman. The responsive man,
Planting his pristine cores in Florida,
Should prick therof, not on the psaltery,
But on the banjo’s categorical gut,
Tuck tuck, while the flamingos flapped his bays.
Sepulchral senors, bibbing pale mescal,
Oblivious to the Aztec almanacs,
Should make the intricate Sierra scan.
And dark Brazilians in their cafes,
Musing immaculate, pampean dits,
Should scrawl a vigilant anthology,
To be their latest, lucent paramour.
These are the broadest instances. Crispin,
Progenitor of such extensive scope,
Was not indifferent to smart detail.
The melon should have apposite ritual,
Performed in verd apparel, and the peach,
When its black branches came to bud, belle day,
Should have an incantation. And again,
When piled on salvers its aroma steeped
The summer, it should have a sacrament
And celebration. Shrewd novitiates
Should be the clerks of our experience.

(from, Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, p.30, 31)

* * * * *

I’ve been searching for an essay that says it all, concisely, about this sprawling poem. I think I’ve finally found it in Hi Simons’ essay, “’The Comedian as the Letter C’: Its Sense and Significance”, published in the Southern Review, V, Winter 1940, and included in ‘The Achievement of Wallace Stevens,’ pp. 97-113.

“The hero’s development may be summarized as a passage from (1) juvenile romantic subjectivism, through (2) a realism almost without positive content, consisting merely in recognizing the stark realities of life, (3) an exotic realism, in which he sought reality in radical sensuousness," [this answers my question of December 6th, ‘what are these jungle scenes?’] "(4) a kind of grandiose objectivism, in which he speculated upon starting a sort of local-color movement in poetry," [which we see in these verses, where everyone should write about what they know from their own experience]" but which he presently saw as romantic, and finally, “ (p.98)…but we’ll get to the later developments in turn.

In these verses we find the famous phrase, ‘souvenirs and prophecies,’ chosen by Holly Stevens as the title for her book on her father’s early years. In verse three, there is also a pun, ‘on the banjo’s CATegorical GUT.’ Stevens’ work is full of these jokes, but I’m sure I’m missing most of them. I like the line ‘should make the intricate Sierra scan.’ I’ve done a lot of hiking in the Sierra, and their pale gray, and sometimes paper white, surfaces do seem to be ‘scriven’ upon. Their boulderous ridges and talus sheets seem almost arranged in the kinds of blocks we used to pencil around the ‘feet’ of poems in high school. I think Wallace Stevens’ powers of observation must have been remarkable. And his ability to relate his observations to his ideas is incredible.  This is especially visible to you, as reader, when you can recognize their aptness from your own experience.  Makes you wonder if every line has this incredible inner cohesiveness of layered meaning, 'if you only knew'.

Hi Simons goes on, "his conception seems to have been one of a local-color literary movement that should embrace all America.  Its first principle was, 'the natives of the rain are rainy men' - the inhabitants of each region have characteristics formed by the regional influences.  In retrospect, Crispin himself thought his prospectus a capricious document, 'a singular collation,' in which were inscribed/commingled souvenirs and prophecies.'  But the reasons why his projected regionalism came to nothing are more important than that.  Crispin eventually realized that 'These bland excursions into time to come' were 'Related in romance to backward flights...' " [our next verse] "They were fantasies of what poetry might be or ought to be.  However abundant in fancy and however grandiose they may have been, their inspiration was tainted with the same fault that had repelled Crispin from his original romanticism.  They were not a straightforward facing of reality." (pp.105-106) 

the comedian as the letter c, part 4, stanza 1, by wallace stevens

iv
the idea of a colony

Nota: his soil is man’s intelligence.
That’s better. That’s worth crossing seas to find.
Crispin in one laconic phrase laid bare
His cloudy drift and planned a colony.
Exit the mental moonlight, exit lex,
Rex and principium, exit the whole
Shebang. Exeunt omnes. Here was a prose
More exquisite than any tumbling verse:
A still new continent in which to dwell.
What was the purpose of his pilgrimage,
Whatever shape it took in Crispin’s mind,
If not, when all is said, to drive away
The shadow of his fellows from the skies,
And, from their stale intelligence released,
To make a new intelligence prevail?
Hence the reverberations in the words
Of his first central hymns, the celebrants
Of rankest trivia, tests of the strength
Of his aesthetic, his philosophy,
The more invidious, the more desired.
The florist asking aid from cabbages,
The rich man going bare, the paladin
Afraid, the blind man as astronomer,
The appointed power unwielded from disdain.

(from, Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, pp.29-30)

* * * * *
In this verse Stevens celebrates the modernist and postmodernist discoveries in literature.  (It's difficult, at least for me, to separate these in his work. Hopefully that will come clearer over the course of this study.)  Knowledge is constructed from one’s environment. ‘Nota: his soil is man’s intelligence. That’s better. That’s worth crossing seas to find.’

The pundits of poetry, the great masters, ‘the shadows of his fellows from the skies,’ may be driven away now, and Crispin may, ‘from their stale intelligence released, make a new intelligence prevail.’

This development in literature was probably analagous to the impact of the historical critical method on the study of theology.  It freed theologians from the gargantuan burden of 'authority,' and allowed us to look at each piece of significant literature (from various traditions), as situated within the context of their historical time and place.  It granted a new freedom, a new interest, and allowed theologians to take a fresh look at their own tradition, where most continued to find occasions of faith.

Back to poetry: 'Of his first central hymns, the celebrants/of rankest trivia, tests of the strength of his aesthetic, his philosophy,/the more invidious, the more desired./The florist asking aid from cabbages.' 

One thinks of such poems as 'The Load of Sugar-Cane,' 'Fabliau of Florida,' 'In the Carolinas,' Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores,' and others from Harmonium, as examples of his experimentation with his new aesthetic and philosophy.  He may feel he is dealing with cabbages, with 'things as they are,' but his poetry is not as cabbage-y as William Carlos Williams', for example.  Stevens is aware that his imagination still lends much to the creation of this poetry of ordinary things.  But he'll get to that.

Here is an example of Stevens' pre-conversion poetry, reflective of his days as 'lexicographer of mute and maidenly greenhorns':

Imitation of Sidney

Unnumbered thoughts my brain a captive holds:
The thought of splendid pastures by the sea
Whereon brave knights enact their chivalrie
For ladies soft applause: the thought of cold,
Cold steps to towers dim that do enfold
Sweet maidens in their forceless chastitie;
Of snowy skies above a Northern lea
In their bright shining tenderly unrolled;

Of roses peeping dimly from the green;
Of shady nooks, all thick with dull festoon
To hide the love of lovers faintly seen
By little birds upon a pleasant tree;
Of meadows looking meekly to the moon -
Yet these do all take flight at thought of thee.

Compare with the following poem by Williams:

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle.

the comedian as the letter c, part 3, stanza 4, by wallace stevens

He came.  The poetic hero without palms
Or jugglery, without regalia.
And as he came he saw that it was spring.
A time abhorrent to the nihilist
Or searcher for the fecund minimum.
The moonlight fiction disappeared.  The spring,
Although contending featly in its veils,
Irised in dew and early fragrancies,
Was gemmy marionette to him that sought
A sinewy nakedness.  A river bore
The vessel inward.  Tilting up his nose,
He inhaled the rancid rosin, burly smells
Of dampened lumber, emanations blown
From warehouse doors, the gustiness of ropes,
Decays of sacks, and all the arrant stinks
That helped him round his rude aesthetic out.
He savored rankness like a sensualist.
He marked the marshy ground around the dock,
The crawling railroad spur, the rotten fence,
Curriculum for the marvelous sophomore.
It purified.  It made him see how much
Of what he saw he never saw at all.
He gripped more closely the essential prose
As being, in a world so falsified,
The one integrity for him, the one
Discovery still possible to make,
To which all poems were incident, unless
That prose should wear a poem’s guise at last.

(from, Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, p.28)

*     *     *     *      *


So, the new poet has appeared on the scene, one without the trickery of the merely 'decorous' sleight-of-hand, but the 'modern' poet, who looks at 'things as they are.'  (remember, the 'ding an sich'?)  We are reminded of Williams, and his poem 'Smell!'  The novelty is that prose can now be poetry, and the subjects of prose - even of invoices, such as 'lumber,' 'sacks,' and 'docks' - can now become the fit subjects of 'poesy.'

the comedian as the letter c, by wallace stevens, an aside

J.V. Cunningham, in an essay titled ‘Tradition and Modernity’ printed in The Achievement of Wallace Stevens, specifically cites ‘The Comedian as the Letter C,’ in addressing these ‘two worlds,’ reality and imagination, that create ‘An up and down between two elements,/A fluctuating between sun and moon,/A sally into gold and crimson forms,/As on this voyage, out of goblinery.’  I’m going to reproduce it here, because Cunningham says well what I would like to say, that Stevens is having a religious experience without the religion.  This was an experience and an experiment of interest to many in the twentieth century, who recognized the role of imagination in religion.  As Cunningham writes, "For poetry is the supreme fiction of which religion is a manifestation." (p.132)

“(Crispin) found the sea overwhelming; he ‘was washed away by magnitude.’ He was cut off from his old self and hence from his environment. He was destitute and bare. From this experience he came to Yucatan. The poetasters of that land, like (those) at home, in spite of the vividness of experience around them, still wrote conventional verses about the nightingale, as if their environment were uncivilized. But Crispin’s conversion at sea – for it was obviously a conversion – had enlarged him, made him complicated until he could reduce his tension only be writing an original and personal poetry, different and unconventional.” (p.130)

“It was (this) experience that altered and reinvigorated (Stevens') poetry. The experience was of the type of a religious experience: ‘his mind was free/and more than free, elate, intent, profound/and studious of a self possessing him,/that was not in him in the crusty town/from which he sailed.’ The poetry he now wrote issued from this context. It was conditioned by the kind of dissatisfaction that drove Crispin to his wandering. This dissatisfaction lies behind a good many of Stevens’ poems, which deal, if one looks beneath the distracting surface, simply with the opposition between the aridities of middle-class convention and the vivid alertness of the unconventional, as in ‘Disillusionment at Ten O’clock.’ In other (poems) he attempts to deal directly with the experience of the sea, but this was a religious experience without the content of traditional religion. In fact, it had no content at all beyond the intuition of a bare reality behind conventional appearance, and hence was an unfertile subject for poetry since it was unproductive of detail. He treated it in one of his best short poems, ‘The Snow Man,’ but when he had stated it, there was nothing more to be done with it, except to say it over again in another place. This he has repeatedly done, though with a prodigality of invention in phrasing that is astounding.” (p.131)

“Most of what is interesting in Stevens issues from this problem. It can be put in various terms. It is the problem of traditional religion and modern life, of imagination and reality, but it can be best put for Stevens in the terms in which it is explicitly put in ‘The Comedian (as the Letter C).” (pp.131-132)

the comedian as the letter c, part 3, verse 3, by wallace stevens

Thus he conceived his voyaging to be
An up and down between two elements,
A fluctuating between sun and moon,
A sally into gold and crimson forms,
As on this voyage, out of goblinery,
And then retirement like a turning back
And sinking down to the indulgences
That in the moonlight have their habitude.
But let these backward lapses, if they would,
Grind their seductions on him, Crispin knew
It was a flourishing tropic he required
For his refreshment, an abundant zone,
Prickly and obdurate, dense harmonious
Yet with a harmony not rarefied
Nor fined for the inhibited instruments
Of over-civil stops.  And thus he tossed
Between a Carolina of old time,
A little juvenile, an ancient whim,
And the visible,circumspect presentment drawn
From what he saw across his vessel’s prow.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 28)

*    *    *    *    *

Stevens’ ‘Crispin’ needs the conflict of the poetic borderland between reality and imagination, although there may be occasional ‘backward lapses’ into petty verse.  Yes, the old poetry was measured, rhymed, and sometimes rather 'artificial' ('the indulgences that in the moonlight have their habitude'), but proper in terms of its manners.  But Crispin desires a poetry, “not rarefied/nor fined for the inhibited instruments/ of over-civil stops.”  Crispin wants a new poetry, vital, perhaps even flamboyant, that reflects reality, “the visible, circumspect presentment drawn/from what he saw across his vessel’s prow.”

The sacred lore of India declares that the place of the merging of two rivers is a sacred space.  But most of us require a respite from the intensity of living in that space, stimulating, evolutionary and revitalizing though it may be.  Crispin, and Stevens, accept the fact that ‘After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.’  In our verse, he is referring to 'lesser' poetry, of course, when he speaks of 'retirement like a turning back and sinking down,' but we know from other sources that he felt that way in his own life.  He even says in one of his letters, that after a night spent writing poetry, one is almost happy to hear the milkman at the door.  However, nothing but the quotidian is not the poet’s way.  “Crispin knew/it was a flourishing tropic he required/for his refreshment, an abundant zone,/ prickly and obdurate, dense, harmonious.’  There is no harmony without differing notes, some in conflict with one another, in this case 'sun and moon', 'an up and down between two elements.'

A blind friend, who is also a Buddhist nun, and I, went to see the film ‘Finding Neverland’ today, and we talked about our own interfacing between reality and imagination.  It was an apt subject relative to this film, in which imagination serves as counterpoint to tragedy and disappointment in life.  In our own conversation, we discussed how there is a way in which the freshness of the moment is overlaid by various crusty old ideas knocking about in our heads: memories of the past, old expectations and images, authoritative definitions we have internalized, etc; all of which are a confining use of the imagination, if we can even call that particular faculty of the mind by that name.  (My friend calls it the strait-jacketing of reality, while I prefer to call such old thought-forms the ‘pterodactyls,’ who fly about casting chilly shadows, while rattling bonily.  They prevent us from appreciating the present moment!)  But in contrast with the 'old mind', the real imagination, with its sense of possibility, invention, and playfulness, allows the freshness of the moment to be itself. 

For me the poetry of Wallace Stevens achieves that freshness.  Even when read over and over again.  It is quite remarkable. 

At one point in ‘Neverland’ the playwright, J.M. Barrie, says to his producer, after the opening night of a flop, ‘but it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.’  His producer says, ‘what is it called, this thing you’ve written and I’ve produced?’  ‘A play,’ replies Barrie.  ‘Exactly,’ answers the producer, ‘but the critics have made it ‘important.’’  Barrie goes on to solve the problem on the opening night of Peter Pan, by including children in the audience, because they know when to laugh.  The freshness happened, and the play was loved!

Like Barrie, Stevens wants both the ‘sun and moon’ to be present in his work: reality and imagination.

the comedian as the letter c, part 3, stanza 2, by wallace stevens

How many poems he denied himself
In his observant progress, lesser things
Than the relentless contact he desired;
How many sea-masks he ignored; what sounds
He shut out from his tempering ear; what thoughts,
Like jades affecting the sequestered bride;
And what descants, he sent to banishment!
Perhaps the Arctic moonlight really gave
The liaison, the blissful liaison,
Between himself and his environment,
Which was, and is, chief motive, first delight,
For him, and not for him alone.  It seemed
Illusive, faint, more mist than moon, perverse,
Wrong as a divagation to Peking,
To him that postulated as his theme
The vulgar, as his theme and hymn and flight,
A passionately niggling nightingale.
Moonlight was an evasion, or, if not,
A minor meeting, facile, delicate.

(from Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 27-28)

*     *     *     *

Crispin is looking for more than mere rhyme, mere versification.  What he is looking for, waiting for, is something more profound, more real, more deeply imaginative than that kind of 'poetry' or light verse.  He is looking for a language of poetry, not for pretty poems.  "Perhaps the Arctic moonlight really gave/The liaison, the blissful liaison, / between himself and his environment, / Which was, and is, chief motive, first delight/ For him, and not for him alone.  It seemed/" .

'Arctic moonlight' is some kind of 'ultimate poetry,' if we accept the generally held belief that Stevens used the word 'moonlight' as a trope for poetry. I was just reading where Stevens felt that religion is a kind of poetry, making poetry more ultimate in source even than religion.  How ultimate is that?  What is this 'liaison, the blissful liaison?'  With its suggestion of the meeting of lovers, there is also the suggestion of the mystic meeting with his god.  (See the poetry of Saint John of the Cross as an example of this usage.)

"On a dark night" by John of the Cross, Spanish mystic - (abridged)

On a dark night,
afflicted and aflame with love,
O joyful chance!
I went out unnoticed
my house lying silent at last.

O you my guide, the night,
O night more welcome than dawn,
night that drew together
the loved one and the lover
each transformed into the other!

On my blossoming breast,
kept untouched for him alone,
there he fell asleep,
and I caressed him
while boughs of cedar stirred the air.

On the ramparts
while I sat ruffling his hair,
the air struck my neck
with its gentle hand,
leaving my senses suspended.

I stayed; I surrendered,
resting my face on my Beloved.
Nothing mattered.
I left my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

~     ~     ~     ~   

I'm not suggesting here that Stevens read St. John of the Cross, just giving an example of a mystic's experience, written in the trope of a lover's liaison.  Certainly lovers, "drunkards, poets, widows, / and ladies soon to be married" (Homunculus et La Belle Etoile) and others who are living primarily 'in the imagination,' are having a similar experience to the mystic's.  But the mystic's and the poet's are the deepest, because they aim for a union with reality in as ultimate a degree as humanly possible.  They wish to 'know' reality in the biblical sense.