The Dao of Wallace Stevens

o florida, venereal soil, by wallace stevens

A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.

The dreadful sundry of this world,
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women,
The Negro undertaker
Killing time between corpses
Fishing for crayfish…
Virgin of boorish births,

Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas,
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting,
Insatiable,

When you might sit,
A scholar of darkness,
Sequestered over the sea,
Wearing a clear tiara
Of red and blue and red,
Sparkling, solitary, still,
In the high sea-shadow.

Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover -
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.

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

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I find this a very interesting poem, as are most of Stevens’ ‘Venus’ poems to me.  Venus represents pleasure and sexual love, for Stevens that would mean, women.  He writes, ‘a few things for themselves,/ convolvulus and coral.’  Convolvulus is a very twining vine and blossom, and ‘sounds like’ the word ‘vulva,’ suggesting Venus.  Coral, associated with Mars in Indian lore, is of a deep pink color, and in the West, this kind of sexual blush-pink is associated with Aphrodite/Venus, the goddess of love.  ‘Florida, venereal soil,’ moves our minds both towards Venus, and towards her ‘lower manifestation,’ the ‘venereal’ as in venereal disease, or simply, as ‘common, venal.’ 

This last connotation is carried on in the next verse: ‘The dreadful sundry of this world, / The Cuban, Polodowsky, /The Mexican women’: are these Stevens' observations of the poorer residents of Florida, refugees, or those who spend their life seeking pleasure, only to face abandonment and poverty when beauty if gone?  ‘The Negro undertaker /Killing time between corpses /Fishing for crayfish’ ; nota: crayfish are bottom-feeders.  ‘Virgin of boorish births.’

In esoteric lore, Venus is the noble teacher of demons, the icon of beauty and ordered harmony, but on the opposite side of the coin, represents the underside of the world: the colony of bordellos, the beach-shacks of the unemployed. 

In the last three verses, it seems as if he is talking about himself.  The feeling, after-hours, of the lure of Venus in her more venal form, or perhaps, less compromisingly, simply in her earthly form, as ‘Florida’, compared to Venus as Queen of Poetry, of all art and structure that is of a beautiful and ordered harmony.  This is her highest gift in the lore of India’s Jyotish, for example.  If he could relate to her in that highest form, he ‘might sit, / A scholar of darkness, / Sequestered over the sea, ‘….sparkling, solitary, still, / Iin the high sea-shadow.’

In the final verse, Stevens becomes the conjurer of word-magic, creating an incantator or spell, as per Anca Rosu’s brilliant insights into Stevens’ poetry.  He speaks to Venus, in her Florida incarnation:
“Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover -
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.”

I wonder why Stevens refers to women as ‘shade?’  In India , shade is considered to be something cooling and sacred, because it protects one from the all too violent sun.  But in the west, ‘shade’ refers to something negative, a ghost, or to ‘the shadows,’ something sinister, something to be concealed.

Another possible rendering might be that the fourth verse refers to his urge, which I presume he had, to ‘take off’ into pure abstract flight, unrelated to the earthy world at all.  Instead, this place, this dark woman Florida, seduces him to write about her.  But I don’t lean toward this interpretation, because Stevens seemed very clear about the significance of place in his work.  I prefer to see the poem as expressing his dilemma between the two Venuses.

I couldn't find a meaning for the word 'tiestas.'  As a young person growing up on the east coast, I knew other young people who moved to Florida, rather than to California, because they craved a sort of mindless enjoyment of the material world: of sun, sand and warm water, an easy-going life-style.  Some people thought that was to be found in California, but those who had made both trips preferred Florida.

from the misery of don joost, by wallace Stevens

I have finished my combat with the sun;
And my body, the old animal,
Knows nothing more.

The powerful seasons bred and killed,
And were themselves the genii
Of their own ends.

Oh, but the very self of the storm
Of sun and slaves, breeding and death,
The old animal,

The senses and feeling, the very sound
And sight, and all there was of the storm,
Knows nothing more.

(from Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, 37-38)

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On the WS listserv there was a recent discussion linking this poem to the death of one of Stevens' favorite professors at Harvard, Barrett Wendell, who died early in the year of this poem's publication.  The name Wendell is related to the Dutch name Vondel, and "Joost van den Vondel, 1587-1679, poet, playwright (the Dutch Shakespeare)" and Vondel scholars were active at Columbia University early in the twentieth centuries.  Stevens was interested in his Dutch ancestry, and may have been aware of 'the Dutch Shakespeare,' and the relation between these names.  Anyway, there is a possibility of a link in Stevens' mind.  Yet although some of these 'micro-connections' seem quite believable to me, in Stevens' usage their meaning is not at all clear.  The intent behind most of his poems is open to interpretation.  But one thing is clear to me, and that is that in writing his poems, Stevens was engaging in his own process.  He was bringing forth what was within him, in his own way, following the dao, although, with the usual struggles.

I'm wondering if this is the first usage of the word 'animal' to express the body.  I know Mary Oliver writes 'the soft animal of the body' but she is later.  I like the phrase 'I have finished my combat with the sun,' with its suggestion of grappling with fate, with 'the world,' with life.  It's now the time of the end of life, when the 'body, the old animal' dies.  An interesting aside on how 'the powerful seasons bred and killed,/ and were themselves the genii / of their own ends.'  And that the body itself, with all its senses, is 'all there was of the storm.'  Very profound.   It's one of Stevens' poems that makes 'common' sense on the surface as well as at the deeper levels.

the comedian as the letter c, by wallace stevens, c'est fini!

To be perfectly honest, I am glad to be finished with this long poem, which has taken almost two months to plow through.  On the positive side, I've had the chance to read many insightful critiques of the poem; I've learned more about Stevens' poetics, which is the goal of this study.  On the opposite side, I have to say I feel I haven't gained clarity in many areas of this poem.  I have enjoyed its word-magic, nonetheless.

From the daoist perspective, it seems almost too lush, too prolific, as if possibly forced, in order to be baroque.  But it does seem as if this profusion of new ideas, new perspectives, (new seeing), and new verse was Stevens' actual experience when he turned his eye away from 'the continent' (the european tradition of poetry) to the new world of modernism, of realism, (to actual experience of the thing in itself, insofar as that is possible).  If so, then he expressed it 'as it was', and surely that is something in harmony with the dao.  Elementally speaking, lots of water and wood, jungly.  Sprouting.

Gyorgyi Voros writes in "Notations of the Wild, Ecology in the poetry of Wallace Stevens,"Poetic dwelling requires first and foremost an affirmation of things as they are.  The journey that Crispin, the introspective voyager, makes from sea to shingin 'C,' dropping anchor at a cabin in the Carolinas and finally embracing the landlubbing life, is an early experiment, for Stevens, in such poetic dwelling.  [in 'comic dwelling']  The poem celebrates, as Joan Richardson describes it, a 'secular sacrament of praise' in which 'not God but experience itself would be celebrated.'  (Early Years 521)" (p.94)

Read 'The Zen Poetry of Stonehouse' for another poetic account of 'dwelling' (and this one from the zen [daoist + buddhist] perspective).  Again, although not a comic knee-slapper, a good humored account of the joys of simple c-ing.

"'The Comedian as the Letter C' is among other things, an ingenious improvisation on the sense of sight, of seeing (C-ing), the sense by which Crispin seeks his destiny.  For example, the description of Crispin in the opening poem hinges on eye puns:
     An eye most apt in gelatines and jupes,
     Berries of villages, a barber's eye,
     An eye of land, of simple salad-beds,
     Of honest quilts, the eye of Crispin, hung
     On porpoises....
     .....[whose moustachios were]
     Inscrutable hair in an inscrutable world. (CP 27)

"Crispin in his loneliness is, contrary to John Donne, an 'eye-land,' and he is also the 'eye of land,' speculating on the inscrutable, 'A skinny sailor peering in the sea-glass' (CP 28).  This introspective voyager recognizes his blindness: 'It made him see how much / Of what he saw he never saw at all' (CP 36) " (pp.133-134)

the comedian as the letter c, canto 6, stanza 3 and coda, by wallace stevens

Crispin concocted doctrine from the rout.
The world, a turnip once so readily plucked,
Sacked up adn carried overseas, daubed out
Of its ancient purple, pruned to the fertile main,
And sown again by the stiffest realist,
Came reproduced in purple, family font,
The same insoluble lump.  The fatalist
Stepped in and dropped the chuckling down his craw,
Without grace or grumble.  Score this anecdote
Invented for its pith, not doctrinal
In form though in design, as Crispin willed,
Disguised pronunciamento, summary,
Autumn's compendium, strident in itself
But muted, mused, and perfectly revolved
In those portentous accents, syllables,
And sounds of music coming to accord
Upon his law, like their inherent sphere,
Seraphic proclamations of the pure
Delivered with a deluging onwardness.
Or if the music sticks, if the anecdote
Is false, if Crispn is a profitless
Philosopher, beginning with green brag,
Concluding fadedly, if as a man
Prone to distemper he abates in taste,
Fickle and fumbling, variable, obscure,
Glozing his life with after-shining flicks,
Illuminating, from a fancy gorged
By apparition, plain and common things,
Sequestering the the fluster from the year,
Making gulped potions from obstreperous drops,
And so distorting, proving what he proves
Is nothing, what can all this matter since
The relation comes, benignly, to its end?

So may the relation of each man be clipped.

(from,  Stevens, Collected Poetry & Prose, pp.36-37)

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the comedian as the letter c, canto vi, stanza 2, by wallace stevens

The chits came for his jigging, bluet-eyed,
Hands without touch yet touching poignantly,
Leaving no room upon his cloudy knee,
Prophetic joint, for its diviner young.
The return to social nature, once begun,
Anabasis or slump, ascent or chute,
Involved him in midwifery so dense
His cabin counted as phylactery,
Then place of vexing palankeens, then haunt
Of children nibbling at the sugared void,
Infants yet eminently old, then dome
And halidom for the unbraided femes,
Green crammers of the green fruits of the world,
Bidders and biders for its ecstasies,
True daughters both of Crispin and his clay.
All this with many mulctings of the man,
Effective colonizer sharply stopped
In the door-yard by his own capacious bloom.
But that this bloom grown riper, showing nibs
Of its eventual roundness, puerile tints
Of spiced and weathery rouges, should complex
The stopper to indulgent fatalist
Was unforeseen.  First Crispin smiled upon
His goldenest demoiselle, inhabitant,
She seemed, of a country of the capuchins,
So delicately blushed, so humby eyed,
Attentive to a coronal of things
Secret and singular.  Second, upon
A second similar coutnerpart, a maid
Most sisterly to the first, not yet awake
Excepting to the motherly footstep, but
Marvelling sometimes at the shaken sleep.
Then third, a thing still flaxen in the light,
A creeper under jaunty leaves.  And fourth,
Mere blusteriness that gewgaws jollified,
All din and gobble, blasphemously pink.
A few year more and the vermeil capuchin
Gave to the cabin, lordlier than it was,
The dulcet omen fit for such a house.
The second sister dallying was shy
To fetch the one full-pinioned one himself
Out of her botches, hot embosomer.
The third one gaping at the orioles
Lettered herself demurely as became
A pearly poetess, peaked for rhapsody.
The fourth, pent now, a digit curious.
Four daughters in a world too intricate
In the beginning, four blithe instruments
Of differing struts, four voices several
In couch, four more personae, intimate
As buffo, yet divers, four mirrors blue
That should be silver, four accustomed seeds
Hinting incredible hues, four self-same lights
That spread chromatic in hilarious dark,
Four questioners and four sure answerers.

(from Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, pp.35-36)

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Glossary of the day: (and I think this entire comment will be nothing but glossary today):

cantilene - same as cantilena, a sustained, smooth-flowing melodic line (stanza 1)
chits - children or notes
bluets - a wildflower with blue blossoms
anabasis - an expedition, a large-scale military advance
phylactery - a storage place for sacred scriptures
palankeens - same as palanquin, a covered litter carried on poles on the shoulders of four or more bearers, formerly used in eastern Asia
halidom - sanctuary
femes - obsolete, wives
mulctings - fines or swindles
capuchins - a kind of Franciscan monk, known for their pointed cowls, and cloistered as opposed to mendicant in lifestyle
buffo - one who sings comic opera
vermeil - related to vermillion, gilded: coppery, silver, gold

This stanza is interesting as it seems to describe the emergence of four styles or threads within Crispin's poetic style.  He is almost overcome with the sheer profusion of verse or parts of verse that arise within him, but eventually it starts to organize itself.  The poems were "Hands without touch yet touching poignantly"  - how nicely said.  "His cabin counted as phylactery" also a memorable line.  The second sister is curious.  I'm surprised not to find more written about these four sisters in the various books of Stevens criticism I'm perusing.  I like the phrase 'blasphemously pink,' because I've often felt that pink is rather a blasphemous color from the perspective of the strand within the christian tradition of 'the sober christians' in which Stevens' family found itself.  Also among intellectuals, pink is definitely eschewed.  It's not a serious color.  I also particularly like the lines about the first daughter: "she seemed, of a country of the capuchins, / so delicately blushed, so humbly eyed, / attentive to a coronal of things / secret and singular."   This is the office of the poet, and also of the monk.

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

vi

and daughters with curls

Portentous enunciation, syllable
To blessed syllable affined, and sound
Bubbling felicity in cantilene,
Prolific and tormenting tenderness
Of music, as it comes to unison,
Forgather and bell boldly Crispin's last
Deduction.  Thrum with a proud douceur
His grand prununciamento and devise.

(From Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, p 35)

the comedian as the letter c, canto 5, stanza 3, by Wallace stevens

In the presto of the morning, Crispin trod,
Each day, still curious, but in a round
Less prickly and much more condign than that
He once thought necessary.  Like Candide,
Yeoman and grub, but with a fig in sight,
And cream for the fig and silver for the cream,
A blonde to tip the silver and to taste
The rapey gouts.  Good star, how that to be
Annealed them in their cabin ribaldries!
Yet the quotidian saps philosophers
And men like Crispin like them in intent,
If not in will, to track the knaves of thought.
But the quotidian composed as his,
Of breakfast ribands, fruits laid in their leaves,
The tomtit and the cassia and the rose,
Although the rose was not the noble thorn
Of crinoline spread, but of a pining sweet,
Composed of evenings like cracked shutters flung
Upon the rumpling bottomness, and nights
In which those frail custodians watched,
Indifferent to the tepid summer cold,
While he poured out upon the lips of her
That lay beside him, the quotidian
Like this, saps like the sun, true fortuner.
For all it takes it gives a humped return
Exchequering from piebald fiscs unkeyed.

(From, Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, p. 34)

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There's so much in this verse.  'The presto of the morning' - isn't it like that every morning, a sort of re-creation, like magic, like the snap of fingers, the opening of an eye?  As Stevens goes on about the silver and blonde and the 'rapey gouts' of figs, he combines his thoughts about writing poetry and about the intimacies of marriage at the same time.  'The quotidian' has become his subject, and his verse is filled with the sounds of 'see-ing', the c-sounds, culminating with his bravura line: exchequering from piebald fiscs unkeyed.

glossary of the day:
condign - well-merited
yeoman - a servant or free-holder who is a diligent worker

grub - one who toils arduously
rapey - hurried, hasty or seized
gouts - clot or blob, but seems to suggest the french word 'goute' (sp?) meaning taste
anneal - " to heat and then cool (nucleic acid) in order to separate strands and induce combination at lower temperatures especially with complementary strands of a different species" in biology; to "toughen (steel or glass) by a process of gradually heating and cooling; "temper glass"
ribaldries - " 1: ribald humor 2: behavior or language bordering on indelicacy, Vulgar, lewdly humorous language or joking or an instance of it."
quotidian - everyday
knaves - "an unprincipled, crafty fellow, A male servant, a man of humble birth"
ribands - decorative ribbons
crinoline - " coarse stiff fabric of cotton or horsehair used especially to line and stiffen hats and garments"

piebald - spotted
fiscs - treasuries

and aren't those custodians the crickets we read about, who beat their tambours in the wind, in the previous verse?

the comedian as the letter, canto v, stanza 2, by wallace stevens

Was he to bray this in profoundest brass
Arointing his dreams with fugal requiems?
Was he to company vastest things defunct
With a blubber of tom-toms harrowing the sky?
Scrawl a tragedians' testament?  Prolong
His active force in an inactive dirge,
Which, let the tall musicians call and call,
Should merely call him dead?  Pronounce amen
Through choirs infolded to the outmost clouds?
Because he built a cabin who once planned
Loquacious columns by the ructive sea?
Because he turned to salad beds again?
Jovial Crispin, in calamitous crape?
Should he lay by the personal and make
Of his own fate an instance of all fate?
What is one man among so many men?
What are so many men in such a world?
Can one man think one thing and think it long?
Can one man be one thing and be it long?
The very man despising honest quilts
Lies quilted to his poll in his despite.
For realists, what is is what should be.
And so it came, his cabin shuffled up,
His trees were planeted, his duenna brought
Her prismy blonde and clapped her in his hands,
THe curtains flittered and the door was closed.
Crispin, magister of a single room,
Latched up the night.  So deep a sound fell down
It was as if the solitude concealed
And covered him and his congenial sleep.
So deep a sound fell down it grew to be
A long soothsaying silence down and down.
The crickets beat their tambours in the wind,
Marching a motionless march, custodians.

(From, Stevens Collected Poetry & Prose, pp. 33-34)

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Glossary: 'arointing' - banishing

'With a blubber of tom-toms harrowing the sky?' reminds me of 'Ploughing on Sunday', lines 'Tum-ti tum, Ti-tum-tum-tum!' and 'Water in the fields.  The wind pours down.'  He hears drums in the sky, and transfers them to 'skyey sheets'.

glossary: 'ructive' - ruffled or pleated, as in 'ruches'
'poll' - reckoning, top of head (as in pate), resolve, inquiry, scrutiny, screed, arrangment, sampling, tally - egads, there are many synonyms for 'poll,' but I take it to mean 'resolve.'

I think the three verses of this canto need to be looked at together.  For example, in stanza 1, Crispin gives up his greater ambitions for a more humble one.  He cannot found a colony, a continent, but he can create a nice shady home for himself.  He is not the purist champion of 'realism,' because he still sees the imaginative possibilities - the imaginative realities - that interpenetrate the real.  The plum survives the 'fancy' poetic language (as deconstructed by Anca Rosu in her book, and cited in my post of 12/30/04) that can represent it, but that leaves the poet with a 'real plum' or at any rate a 'fresh plum' that can plumbed for its creative potential, that can be 'seen' ('c'-en) for itself in newness.  I call that the 'possibilities' of 'shall or ought to be in is.'

But how can he make a major movement out of this insight?  He can't stay with the poetic forms of the past, or his work will simply be 'dead.'  But he's not strictly a 'realist,' either.  Anca Rosu sees his use of language as 'creative' in the sense that magical incantations create a reality, a use and a meaning all their own.  Stevens writes of a mystical marriage of the poet, where Crispin may be 'magister of a single room,' (his own work, performed in relative obscurity, as indeed Stevens worked for his first twenty-odd years), deeply enmeshed in 'the quotidian,' and yet 'So deep a sound fell down it grew to be/ A long soothsaying silence down and down.'   This is a deep, magical incantation that Stevens writes.

I like the closing lines: 'The crickets beat their tambours in the wind, / Marching a motionless march, custodians.'