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.
Your site is inspirational
Posted by: Carpenter | January 04, 2005 at 09:51 AM