Four Poetic Modes in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens

Four Poetic Modes in the Poetry of Wallace S tevens

Chong - kook Yoon

A Dis s ertation S ubmitted to the Faculty of the Graduate S chool of S og ang Univers ity in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Deg ree of Doctor of Philos ophy

T he Department of Eng lis h Lang uag e and Literature T he Graduate S chool of Sog ang Univ ers ity January 2000 Four Poetic Modes in the Poetry of Wallace S tevens

지도교수 이태동

이 논문을 영어영문학 박사학위논문으로 제출함

2000년 1월 7일

서강대학교 대학원

영어영문학과 ( 문학전공) 윤 종 국 Four Poetic Modes in the Poetry of Wallace S tevens

1999년

서강대학교 대학원

영어영문학과 ( 문학전공) 윤 종 국 논문인준서

윤종국의 영어영문학 박사학위 논문을 인준함

2000년 1월 7일

주심 : Prof. Daniel A. Kis ter

부심 : Prof. Anthony G. T eague

부심 : Prof. Chong Ho Lee

부심 : Prof. Wook Dong Kim

부심 : Prof. T ae Dong Lee T able of Contents

Abs tract i- iv

Introduction 1

Chapter One Mimetic T rans formation: H armonium 15

Chapter T w o De- creation: Ide as of Orde r and T he M an with the B lue Guitar 47

Chapter T hree Re- creation: N ote s toward a Supre me F iction 80

Chapter Four Meditation: T he A uroras of A utumn and T he R ock 111

Conclus ion 153

Works Cited 164 국문초록

본고의 목적은 Wallace Stevens 시의 본질과 특징을 이해하기 위해

그의 시에 특징적으로 나타나는 모방적 변용 (mimetic transformation), 해

체 (decreation), 재창조 (recreation), 및 명상 (meditation)의 네 가지 시

적 양식을 검토하는 것이다.

Stevens의 시적 의식은 네 시기를 거쳐 네 가지 시적 양식으로 변화

발전한다. 이 네 가지 양식은 또한 마음이나 시인의 자아의식의 주요기능과

일치하는 바 그 기능들은 변용적, 분석적, 상상적 및 명상적인 것이다.

제 1 장에서 Stevens 시 초기에 쓰여진 H arm onium (1923)시 선집에

주로 나타난 모방적 변용의 첫 번 양식을 검토한다. 본 양식의 Stevens의

시적 목적은 변하는 실재와 마음의 조화로운 일치 (union)를 추구하는 것이

다. 이를 위해 Stevens는 객관적 실재를 내적 실재로 변용시켜 유사작용의

한 영역 (one realm of resemblance)을 만들도록 노력한다. 여기서 Stevens

는 삶의 의미와 자연과 삶의 숨은 조화를 찾는다.

제 2 장에서 Stevens 시 중기에 쓰여진 Ideas of Order (1935)와 T he

M an with the B lue Guitar (1937) 두 선집에 나타난 두 번째 양식, 해체

(decreation)를 검토한다. 본 양식은 더욱 성숙한 시적 의식이 요구하는 대

로 낡은 실재와 허구를 해체하는 것이다. 이를 위해 Stevens는 지성중심의

분석적 상상력을 이용한다. 지성과 철학적 생각들이 보다 좋은 허구창조를

위하여 Stevens의 고도의 상상적 해체의 원동력이 된다. 해체는 창조와 재

창조의 전제가 된다.

- i - 제 3 장에서 Stevens 시 후기에 쓰여진 N otes toward a Supreme

Fiction (1942) 시 선집에 나타난 세 번째 양식 재창조를 검토한다. Stevens

는 보다 바람직한 허구의 창조를 위해 분별적 의식을 나타내는 해체 양식

과 모방적 변용 양식을 결합시킨다. 실재와 상상력, 변용 양식과 해체 양식

의 상반된 두 요소 속에서 Stevens가 결국 찾아내는 것이 두 개의 모순된

양식을 “총체적으로 조화” (“amassing harmony")시킨 재창조 양식이다. 재

창조의 시적 의식이 Stevens 시 후기에 완전히 성숙된다.

제 4 장에서 Stevens 시 말기에 발간된 T he A uroras of A utum n

(1950) 과 T he R ock (1954) 두 시 선집에 나타난 네 번째 양식 명상을 검

토한다. 명상적 양식은 합일의 존재 (Unity of Being) 또는 명상의 통일체

(Meditative Whole)를 성취하기 위해 마음 비우기와 마음을 실재로부터 분

리시키는 작업이다. 명상은 Stevens의 시적 성장의 마지막 단계이며 이 단

계에서 그의 시심은 비워지고 이 전의 상상력중심의 의식과 감수성으로부

터 분리된다. Stevens는 상상력의 부재 속에서 명상을 통하여 실재와 상상

력, 자아와 삶, 존재와 무 (Being and Nothingness)의 오랜 이중 세계를 합

일시키려 시도한다.

- ii - Abs tract

T he purpose of this dissertation is to study four poetic modes, mimetic transformation, decreation, recreation, and meditation in the poetry of Wallace Stevens in order to better understand its subtle nature and main features.

His poetic consciousness changes and develops over four phases into the four poetic modes. T he four poetic modes are also corresponding to the major faculties of the mind or the poet' s self- consciousness which would be considered transformative, analytic, imaginative and meditative.

Chapter One studies Stevens' first mode of mimetic transformation in the selected H arm onium (1923) poems written in his early period.

Stevens' poetic purpose of the first mode is to seek the harmonious union between changing reality and the mind. For this purpose, Stevens tries to create one realm of resemblance by transforming objective reality into an internal one, from which he finds life' s meaning and hidden harmony with nature.

Chapter T wo studies Stevens' second mode of decreation in Ideas of Order (1935) and T he M an with the B lue Guitar (1937) written in his middle period. T his mode aims to decreate old reality and fiction as the more mature poetic consciousness demands. Stevens employs the intellect- centered analytic imagination for this purpose. Intellectual and philosophical ideas are the motive for his highly imaginative decreation

- iii - for a better fiction creation. De- creation is a precondition to creation and recreation.

Chapter Three s tudies Stevens ' third mode of recreation in

Notes toward a S uprem e Fiction (1942) written in his late period.

Stevens tries to combine the dividing poetic cons cious nes s of decreation with the firs t mode of mimetic trans formation for the creation of a more des irable fiction. His final finding in the oppos ing elements of reality and imagination, the trans formation mode and the decreation mode, is the recreation mode, "the amas s ing harmony" of two conflicting modes . This re- creative poetic cons cious nes s is fully mature in his late period.

Chapter Four studies Stevens' fourth poetic mode of meditation in

T he A uroras of A utum n (1950) and T he R ock (1954) written in his final period. T he meditative mode is the process of mind- emptying and mind- detachment from reality to achieve the unity of Being or a meditative

Whole. Meditation is the last stage of his poetic growth where his poetic mind becomes empty and detached from the old imagination- centered consciousness and sensibility. He attempts to reconcile his lifelong dualities of reality and the imagination, the self and life, Being and

Nothingness, through meditation in the absence of the imagination.

- iv - Acknow ledgements

First of all, I wish to thank my director, Professor T ae Dong Lee.

His invaluable support and careful guidance enabled me to complete this thesis. I am also grateful to Professor Daniel A. Kister, Professor

Anthony G. T eague, Professor Chong Ho Lee, and Professor Wook Dong

Kim for their careful reading and helpful suggestions for improvement.

Moreover, I am greatly indebted to my friends for their encouragement of my belated dissertation.

Finally, I wish to dedicate this thesis to my wife who has whole- heartedly supported me for my lifelong study. I cannot forget my two sons and one daughter who have also stood behind me.

- v - Introduction

Kantian fictionalism places the prevalence of human self- consciousness, centrality of Humanism over God, and stresses episte- mology of cognitive process. T he human mind of Kantian fictionalists has demonstrated its superior power to control or represent reality as shown in the Romantic Idealist' s literary position. On the other hand, the modern fictionalists come to believe in their creative power of representing reality and their free re- interpretability of life' s truth.1)

T hey acknowledge the lawful right of human self- consciousness, the creative imagination, the creativity of human will and intelligence, and the fictive world view.

Wallace Stevens is not an exceptional poet out of the high current of contemporary modernis m. He has als o the features of fictionalis tic ontology and epis temology. His fictionalis m is bas ed on

1) Frank Lentricchia considers Stevens as the culmination of "the conservative fictionalist tradition in modern poetics and philosophy." For more details, see Frank Lentricchia, A fter the N ew Criticism (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980) 31. Moreover, Frank Kermode suggests that Stevens took "his general doctrine of fictions" from "Vaihinger, from Nietzsche, perhaps also from American pragmatism." Kermode further observes that it is closely related with "' life- furthering, life- preserving, species- preserving' " as he quotes Nietzsche. Kermode defines Stevens' fiction as "an imaginary moment when at last the world of fact and the m undo of fiction shall be one" as fully show n in "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction." For details, see Frank Kermode, "Fictions," T he Sense of an Ending Studies in the T heory of Fiction (London: Oxford UP, 1966) 36- 7.

- 6 - the dualities of fiction and reality, or imagination and reality.

Traditionally, criticis m on Stevens ' poetry has been bas ed on the

Imagination, the creative agent of fiction and Reality, the object of

Imagination.

Stevens' whole poetry shows the double features of a realist who enjoys life' s mysteries and poetic places in exclamation, and of a fictionalist who wants to re- create reality given. T he former often results in Stevens being an epicurean dandyist and physical/material realist in his early poetry. His philosophy is carpe diem . It is to transform the alienated world into the earthly paradise. T he latter is inclined to be the idealistic fictive mind for creation of his own poetic alter- ego as fictions. Stevens' idea of reality is basically to find the primary nature of things in reality. It strives to walk down to the circular origin of life truth. It is to go downward back to the "first idea" in reality. His idea of the imagination is to climb up to the seem- to- be supreme ideality. It is to find a supreme fiction which he can create to replace traditional supreme entities. Stevens' reality is the fundamental object for his fiction to make access to. Meantime his imagination is a basic intellectual tool to grasp truth in reality and ideality in the fictive poetic world.

Many critics point out the real face of Reality. For example, Marie

Borroff defines Stevens' reality into two categories: the outer fluctuating

- 7 - world of the season which is real objective reality in nature and the changing inner world of consciousness which is subjective reality.2)

Ellwood Johnson divides Stevens' reality into the dual ones, felt or tangent reality for phenomenal reality and alien reality for objective reality.3) Lentricchia suggests the objective reality for thing "as it is" and the subjective reality for thing "as" or "like."4) T hese two dualities are generally the correlation of the internal/conceived reality vs. the external objective reality, the bare reality vs. the fictive reality, etc.

Stevens' poetry is a voyage from bare reality to imagination, from imagination to a new reality5) beyond the mind.

Stevens starts as a realist in H arm onium (1923). But he entertains the antithetic duality of reality. He creates the double features of poetic identity: realist and fictionalist at the same time. Stevens tries to create many fictions through his imagination and to replace truths and facts of life with fictions. Stevens' imagination concentrates on the unitive

(integrating) function of resemblance by transformation. But his self-

2) Marie Borroff, "Wallace Stevens: T he World and the Poet" in W allace Stevens A Collection of Critical E ssays, ed. Marie Borroff (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice- Hall, 1963) 11. 3) Ellwood, Johnson, "Wallace Stevens' T ransforming Imagination," T he W allace Stevens J ournal 8.1 (Spring, 1984): 35- 6. 4) Lentricchia 32. 5) Jo- Anne Cappeluti, "T he Reality of Poetry: Wallace Stevens and C.E.M. Joad," T he W allace Stevens J ournal 23.1 (Spring, 1999): 61. Cappeluti suggests that there is not a new imagination but a ' "new reality' " (N A 22). T his new reality is external, "not dependent on a mind," Cappeluti writes.

- 8 - consciousness finds the limit of the imagination' s unitive function because it destroys Stevens' poetic identity. For the creation of a new poetic identity, he changes his strategy to the decreative process of creating new fiction. T his decreative process leads him to pursue the original route of reality, "the first idea," (CP 381) as a presumed basic cause of life truth. It is also Stevens' change of poetic consciousness and his desire to reach poetic truth in reality. T his desire of imagination comes from what Borroff calls subjective/felt inner world of consciousness against real objective reality in nature. T his poetic desire calls for the decreative consciousness to abstract reality for the creation of new fictions. T his poetic desire is best expressed in his late poetry in the form of a supreme fiction. T hus, the study of four modes will be an exploratory result of Stevens' inner poetic consciousness in contrast with real outer reality.

As Stevens says "poetic truth is an agreement with reality, brought about by the imagination" (N A 54), his poetry is the ceaseless acts of the poetic mind in search for the harmonious integration of fictions with hostile reality. He often appears to be pleased with "the mind in [ceaseless] act of finding" (CP 239) ideal fictions in reality or life. T his is his self- mockery of being a naturalist in H arm onium and of his pleasures in his later poetic periods. But behind his poetic pleasures comes somewhat different poetic sensibility. Stevens' complex feelings of

- 9 - strangeness, qualification, trembling uncertainty, evasions, and provisionality are lurking in his poetry. T he "epic of disbelief" becomes "deca- dence" which looks for something more. His "corridors of cloudy thoughts" always turn "to the central composition, / T he essential theme" (CP 135) "tranquilizing with this jewel [ultimate Plato] / T he torments of confusion" (CP 27). Stevens as a great poet seeks for the alternative poetic consciousness and sensibility to overcome these complex feelings. Many critics agree to these transitional poetic senses.

T heir common findings are meditative elements in Stevens' poetry.

William W. Bevis is one of the strong guardians for Stevens' medita- tiveness.

Stevens' meditative responsiveness is a result of self- correction against the limit of the excessive imagination which is powerfully introduced as the poetic tool of a fictionalist. It is a detachment of self- consciousness from reality. Stevens comes to be aware of the limit of fictive imagination and turns to alternative fictions in place of the established fictions. It is different from the generally- accepted imagination, the imaginative mode of consciousness. T his is sometimes called meditative mode of poetic consciousness. T his different stream of poetic consciousness and sensibility is intermittently found throughout his poetry but best characterized in his final poetry.

T his dissertation is to reexamine the relation between reality and

- 10 - fiction/imagination for a better understanding of general features of

Stevens' poetry, to detect his poetic consciousness of the limit of imagination, and, if any, to find out the alternative to the imagination. It is to trace his poetic meditative consciousness as represented transpar- ently in his final poetry. His self- consciousness would be his awareness of the limit of the imagination and the only possibility of seeking its alternative mode.

T he human consciousness, the act of the mind, always tends to fluctuate, never ceasing.6) It is indescribably changeable and fluent, responsive to the changes of his poetic consciousness. Due to its changeable variety, it is really hard to grasp the whole body of Stevens' poetic self- consciousness as he meant it to be. It is sneaky and elusive like the moving tail of auroras. But Stevens expresses it as part of life principles.

We understand Stevens' poetry as the poetry of process. It could be better understood as a whole process in the unity of self- consciousness. Stevens' poetic self- consciousness principle pursues the process of "reality- imagination complex" (LW S 792) and results in his awareness of the limit of the imagination and of the need to have an

6) Stevens quotes Henri Focillon, "Human consciousness is in perpetual pursuit of a language and a style. T o assume consciousness is at once to assume form. . . . T he chief characteristic of the mind is to be constantly describing itself" (N A 46).

- 11 - alternative mode for it.

We define here the four different poetic consciousness as four poetic modes in terms of change in Stevens' poetic consciousness. T hese four modes are mimetic transformation (creation or creative metamorphosis), decreation, recreation and meditation. T he early H arm onium poems show the first mode of mimetic creation into one realm of resemblance for the poetic integration between physical reality and the mind. For this reality- centered poetry, Stevens transforms bare reality into a desirable fiction. T his is the poetic metamorphosis that creates resemblance. It is the poetic self to be identified with reality. T he problem here is that reality is changing. How to grasp changing reality for a fiction- making is his big task. Stevens uses diverse and changing perspectives. He continuously de- creates old fiction and re- creates new fictions because Stevens still feels otherness and thereness in fictions created.

Stevens' second poetic mode is decreation. His first mode fails to disclose unknowable reality. De- creation is to subvert old reality and deconstruct the accepted truths as his new poetic consciousness demands.

Beginning with his middle poetry, Ideas of Order (1935), and T he

M an with the B lue Guitar (1937), his poetic consciousness turns toward decreative imagination in exploration of the clearer nature of reality in

- 12 - a more intellectual way. He introduces into his poetic consciousness the decreative way of finding reality by dismantling the old concepts of reality for the creation of new fictions. It is not just destroying old fictive traditions but reordering and re- structuring it in a positive way for the creation of new desirable fictions. It is a precondition to another recreation and the first step to go upward for another direction.

It is an interim downward move for a possible upward rise in poetic consciousness. It is the beginning part of the circular movement of the poetic consciousness toward the achievement of Supreme Fiction.

T he decreative mode of consciousness is the downward fall in "Down- ward to darkness, on extended wings" (CP 70) in "Sunday Morning."

T his mode promises to go upward like "Rising upward from a sea of ex [the past]" (CP 175) in "T he Man with the Blue Guitar."

T his rising poetic consciousness is termed the re- creative mode.

T his mode of rising recreation comes into full play only after decreation when the first mode of mimetic transformation interacts with the second mode of decreation for a better fiction making. Re- creation becomes available when the mind' s unconscious identification with reality gets along with its conscious abstraction which is in endless exploration of confined reality. In "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction,"

Stevens is still using the excessive imagination to find his own poetic mode of recreation. He proposes the possibility of finding a supreme

- 13 - "pleasure" (CP 398) or "elixir" (CP 382) by combining two ambivalent modes for making a Supreme Fiction. It is the fictive pleasure of a supreme fiction and the fruition of his imagination. He often observes a supreme state of intellectual self- satisfaction in his own fictions.

However, even after the combined state for a Supreme Fiction,

Stevens reveals somewhat lingering consciousness, trembling and uncertain, of life' s inscrutability which he has pursued thus far. T his consciousness cannot be redeemed by using more imagination and more indulgence in reality. It requires somewhat different quality in his poetic consciousness. It can be termed the mode of meditation which tries to go beyond the trembling consciousness and the fictive mind.

As suggested above, we find the process of four poetic modes in the consciousness of Stevens' poetry. T he study of four modes is in a sense to reflect Stevens' inner poetic consciousness in contrast with real outer reality. T hey are all invisibly spread throughout his whole poetry.

But it is also true that four modes are individually best characterized in each of his four corresponding poetic periods respectively.7)

T he traditional interpretations of his Grand Poem features as well as the criticisms on consciousness- development also talk of the different

7) Abbie F. Willard., W allace Stevens: T he P oet and H is critics (Chicago: ALA, 1978) 2- 4. Willard divides Stevens' poetic periods into four phases: the early period of H arm onium years (1915- 30): the middle period of violent years (1931- 40): the late period of later years (1941- 49): the final period of mellowed years (1951- 55).

- 14 - aspects in his poetic consciousness from Stevens' early to late and final poetry. Here for critical convenience' s sake, we apply the first mode of mimetic transformation to H arm onium, the second mode of decreation to Ideas of Order and T he M an with the B lue Guitar, and the third mode of recreation to N otes toward a Suprem e Fiction (1942), and the fourth mode of meditation to T he A uroras of A utum n (1950) and T he

R ock (1954).

T he four poetic modes are also corresponding to the major faculties of the mind or the poet' s self- consciousness which would be considered transformative, analytic, imaginative and meditative. Its transformative faculty creates resemblance for the poetic self to be identified with life' s truth in reality. Its analytic faculty mobilizes human intelligence or knowledge to dig into mysteries and life. Creative imaginative faculty fuses the first two faculties to re- create the poet' s supreme fictive world. Meditative faculty sheds off imaginative faculty for the mind to be calmer, less intelligent, and empty so that it can grasp true reality or pure being.

T he last meditative poetic perspective provides a deep insight into the totality of his poetic consciousness as much as to explain why he hesitates at the end of his long poetic journey. It also provides correction for his final fiction or alternative. By meditation Stevens' self- consciousness gets down to the bottom line of reality. Detachment

- 15 - of his poetic consciousness finds more real truth in it.

T his study of Stevens' four poetic modes will suggest a measuring rod to check drawbacks on the established criticisms on his poetry.

T he canonical Stevens' criticisms have focused on the shifting relations between reality and the imagination. Joseph Riddel, Harold Bloom, James

Baird, and Helen Vendler place more value on the imagination and

Stevens' Romantic strains.8) Roy Harvey Pearce, and Helen Requeiro emphasize reality more and even deny the value of the imagination in his final poetry. J. Hillis Miller, T homas J. Hines, and Richard Macksey make a Husserlian or Heideggerian phenomenological approach to solve their complex combination relationships.

T he critics can be divided roughly into two groups: emotion- stressing critics in favour of the attributes of the imagination or mind, denying logics and philosophy for his poetic subtlety, and intellect- emphasizing critics in favour of his philosophical poetics. Philosophical approach relies on Platonism, Idealism, Helgelian Dialectics, Symbolism,

Naturalism, and T heory of Abstraction to clarify Stevens' Meta- poetry or self- consciousness principle although it cannot channel his complicated intellectual chaos and paradox completely.9)

8) J. S. Leonard & C. E. Wharton, T he F luent M undo W allace Stevens and the Structure of R eality (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1988) x. 9) Harold Bloom locates "touches and traces" and "subtle evasions" in Stevens' poetry ahead of his time. But he thinks that Stevens' major phase of 1942- 1955 gives

- 16 - All these approaches have drawbacks to the full interpretation of

Stevens' poetry. Helen Reguiero points out the limit of imagination, suggesting that Stevens negates the self- centered imagination to experience reality directly and to perceive pure reality. But she also fails to understand meditative mind behind this self- negation. J. H. Miller further suggests Stevens' main theme of nothingness and being, focusing on his later poetry, but he also fails to elaborate on Stevens' meditative mode as a clue to interpretation of his final poetry.

William W. Bevis' meditative approach sheds a light on Stevens' meditative mind of detachment which overcomes the limit of imagination and solves the "imagination- reality complex" (LW S 792).10) He finds

Zen- meditation parallels in Stevens' meditative mode in his final poetry.

We agree with him that subtle evasions in Stevens' final poetry can be us "a canon of poem themselves more advanced as interpretation." See Harold Bloom, W allace Stevens T he P oems of Our Clim ate (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977) 168. A. Walton Litz discusses interaction between American reality and Oriental imagination in Introspective V oyager T he P oetic Developm ent of W allace Stevens (New York: Oxford UP, 1972) 57. T he following critics further discuss intellectual structure of paradox and contradiction in Stevens' poetry: M.E. Brown' s "Concordia Discors in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens," A m erican Literature 34 (May 1962) 246- 69.: Anthony Libby' s "oppositions and unities," M ythologies of N othing M ystical Death in A m erican P oetry 1940- 70 (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1984) 53: Roy Harvey Pearce' s "order" and "change" in Stevens' poetry in T he Continuity of A m erican P oetry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1961) 399- 400. 10) William W. Bevis, M ind of W inter: W allace Stevens, M editation, and Literature (Pittsburgh, Pa.: U of Pittsburgh P, 1988) 6.

- 17 - best understood in terms of the passive and serene meditative mind. But other critics are not sympathetic11) to his approach probably because of their western way of thinking and their unfamiliarity with oriental Zen.

In conclusion, the first central purpose of this dissertation is to trace in Stevens' selected poems four poetic modes of mimetic transformation, decreation, recreation, and meditation based on his self- consciousness developed over four major phases. We can best understand the subtle nature and the main features of his poetry by examining these four modes.

Chapter One will study Stevens' first poetic mode of mimetic transformation making one realm of resemblance in Stevens' seven

H arm onium poems selected including "Sunday Morning" and will show how Stevens demonstrates his poetic purpose of resemblance based on his self- consciousness principle.

Chapter T wo will look into Stevens' second mode of decreation in

"T he Idea of order at Key West" in Ideas of Order, "T he Man with the

Blue Guitar" in T he M an with the B lue Guitar, and "Landscape with

Boat" in T he P arts of a W orld (1942) in Stevens' middle period. T his chapter will also show how Stevens pursues his poetic purpose of de-

11) Willard 229. Willard reduces Bevis' s view to his own sense of mystical possibility in one' s consciousness and considers that Bevis' s approach fails to shed any light on Stevens and his poetry.

- 18 - creation for new fiction making based on his self- consciousness act.

Chapter T hree will examine Stevens' third mode of recreation in

"Notes towards a Supreme Fiction" to demonstrate how recreation contributes toward "the act of the mind" (CP 240) in the incessant exploration for a possibility of supreme fiction.

Chapter Four will study Stevens' fourth mode of meditation in

"T he Auroras of Autumn" in T he A uroras of A utum n and eleven other selected poems including "T o an Old Philosopher in Rome" in T he R ock.

T his chapter will also show how Stevens serves his poetic purpose of meditation which is to trace a "new reality" (N A 22) of Being or

Nothingness beyond the mind by the process of mind- emptying and mind- detachment.

- 19 - Chapter One

Mimetic T rans formation: H armonium

As Wallace Stevens says, reality "is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into" (OP 178). T his means the reality needs many different perspectives from which he can grasp its real face. It also urges him to transform it into his poetic consciousness for a new and better description. Since Stevens celebrates the carpe diem of the earthly life and the sensual reality from the naturalistic viewpoint in his early H arm onium period (1914- 30), he wants to provide the raison ' e of his poetic life. For this purpose, Stevens feels a strong need for a new literary mode in finding the reality.12)

As Sister M. Bernetta Quinn points out, Stevens' poetic theory has always emphasized the idea of "change."13) T his is a basic facet of the

12) Roy Harvey Pearce suggests that like Crispin, the protagonist in "T he Comedian as the Letter C." Stevens enters the period of "cautious skepticism, dubious about any acceptance of reality," and "he has made a successful ' adjustment.' " See Pearce, "Wallace Stevens: T he Life of Imagination" in W allace Stevens A Collection of Critical E ssays, ed. Marie Borroff 116. 13) Sister M. Bernetta Quinn, "Metamorphosis in Wallace Stevens" in W allace Stevens A Collection of Critical E ssays, ed. Marie Borroff 54. She suggests that "What is constant in Wallace Stevens' poetry as well as in his theory of poetry is emphasis on change, or . . . on metamorphosis." Stevens' idea of constant changes echoes Bergsonian principle whereby "becoming no longer signifies being changed but changing . . . in transforming himself man incessantly reinvents his own being: ' T o exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature to create oneself endlessly.' " For Stevens, changing is the endless creation of being, the self, reality. For details, see George Poulet, Studies In H um an T im es trans. Elliott Coleman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1956) 34- 7.

- 15 - idea of resemblance in the sense that change always induces resemblance. T o resemble something, one must change first. It is termed mimetic transformation. An aesthetic imagination transforms bare reality into his desirable reality through resemblance. It is the "creation of resemblance"14) by pure imagination. T o Stevens, resemblance is synonymous with metaphor, metamorphosis, and poetry. T he mode of resemblance is the first creative function of the pure imagination as best characterized in H arm onium .

His poetic theory always begins from the perception of change in the real world. For Stevens, life is a flux. Imagination is always changing, dependent on the changing mind and reality. Reality is "phe- noumenal and belongs to the world of becoming."15) Moreover, Stevens is aware that in the age of the absence of God, the imagination is the central force binding together the self and the changing world of contradiction16) and chaos; the world is in an incessant becoming not

14) Sister Quinn 60. Quinn quotes metamorphosis is "' the creation of resemblance" by the imagination . . . in metaphor, the resemblance may be, first, between two or more parts of reality; second, betw een something real and something imagined . . . and, third, between something imagined things' " (N A 72). 15) Northrop Frye, "Wallace Stevens and Variation Form," Spiritus M undi: E ssays on Literature, M yth, and Society (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1976) 282. 16) For Stevens, this world has been changed from its absolute and determined system to its tentative and relativisitic ground. Friedrich Schlegel calls his view of such world as contradiction. Wallace Stevens has the same view of the world. According to Schlegel, reality of the world is "contradiction, or more precisely becoming. For becoming is a type of contradiction. . . . In the process of becoming, then, everything is simultaneously itself and diverse." For more details, see Anne K. Mellor, English

- 16 - ruled by any absolute principle order, and man' s fictions are only fragmentary and provisional in replacement of an ultimate truth. If life is permanent and static, it will be dead for him. He, who holds the same view of poetry, refuses to define poetry as fixed. Hence Stevens thinks that change is the essential nature of reality and therefore, the poet' s role is to incessantly integrate the self with the changing world through the realm of resemblance. He must make imaginative efforts incessantly to reach new and true perception of reality. It is his poetic principle.

What is the quality of resemblance? Resemblance is another expression for metamorphosis that binds the discordant objects of reality with likeness or approximation. T his is a poetic device to achieve a convincible poetic agreement between two opposing elements. Mimetic transformation or transformative resemblance is the binding law which employs similes and metaphors for its poetic purpose. Poetry can be equated with metaphor, metamorphosis, resemblance and the act of pure

R om antic Irony (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980) 27. Mellor quotes Schegel' s above words. Mellor explains Schlegel' s thesis of contradiction that "[i]n the process where p becomes not- p, there must be a period when it must be considered to be both p and not- p. hence, p=not- p in- the- act- of- becoming." Mellor says that "Schlegel can unite phenomena realm with noumenal realm, the finite with the infinite . . . the contradiction betw een the infinite and the finite is only an appearance that arises when one fixes and kills life by making into a thing." Mellor argues that for Schlegel the finite- in- change is thus an analogue for, and a w ay into, infinity, which the human mind can apprehend as an unceasing activity, as pure energy for a process of becoming underlying all being.

- 17 - imagination. As metamorphosis/resemblance links the internal world of imagination with the external world of reality, they all are one realm of transformative resemblance.

T his metaphoric concept of resemblance is well discussed in

Stevens' two essays, "T hree Academic Pieces" and "Effects of Analogy."

In the first essay, Stevens asserts that reality is "the central reference for poetry" (N A 71), but reality is changed by metaphor, the chief tool of the illusion- creating imagination. Metaphor is the figure producing metamorphosis. Metaphor becomes a vital figure in poetry. Metaphor is a figurative tool to make reality resemble the self. Metaphor satisfies "a desire for resemblance" (N A 77). T hus the metaphor in Stevens' s poetry produces an illusion- - "longed- for lands" (CP 486). Also metaphor is a method of ordering reality by making enjoyable resemblance which only exists in the mind. So the function of metaphor is to transform the perceived reality into desirable resemblances and orders.

According to Donald Sheehan, Stevens' metaphor has two poles of realities: the reality as metaphor representing a coalescence of subject- perceiver and object- perceived, i.e. a metaphoric reality in which being and knowing are one, and the reality as unknowable external reality.17)

Stevens is oscillating between these two poles. T hrough metaphor, he

17) Donald Sheehan, "Stevens' T heory of Metaphor" in Critics on W allace Stevens R eadings in Literary Criticism , ed. Peter L. McNamara (Carol Gables: U of Miami P, 1972) 33- 4.

- 18 - creates fictions that help him to live his life.

He consistently implies that things as they are must be seen by a constantly moving perspective. Resemblance is the binding metaphor for the different views. Poetic knowledge comes from perceiving resemblance among differences, which is also the process of creating metaphor.

Metaphor is used as a means to reach and proliferate resemblance (N A

78). T he union achieved between discordant objects by metaphor expands the possibility of sensing reality and reveals new aspects of reality. Since the ultimate effect of metaphor is to give a heightened and extended sense of reality, the imaginative resemblances used in the poems under discussion in Chapter One help us find new aspects of reality by describing natural phenomena faithfully and imaginatively.

T his chapter will examine Stevens' poetic mode of mimetic transformation to show how he demonstrates this mode in his seven poems in H armonium - - "Sunday Morning," "Domination of Black," "T he Snow

Man," "T hirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "Sea Surface Full of

Clouds," "Metaphors of a Magnificio," and "Six Significant Landscapes."

T his chapter will also show how Stevens' poetic self- consciousness contributes to the understanding of his creative imagination of resemblance and of his later poetic world.18)

18) Lentricchia 32. Lentricchia points out that Stevens sets a "critical self- consciousness which incessantly subverts and dismantles his fictions and shows them for what they are." T his self- consciousness principle shows confrontation between

- 19 - His self- consciousness is "the governing third force in his poetic system which enables the desiring consciousness to step away from itself and watch its fictive projections fail to enclose the real in its transformative vision."19)

"Sunday Morning" effectively demonstrates transformative resemblance between the physical reality of the motherly earth and the mythic world of Heaven. Stevens tries to transform the good mother earth into the earthly paradise. Stevens suggests that resemblance is to find the immortal physical beauty in line with naturalism. He believes that "the great poem of the earth" (N A 142) should be written by regaining or creating the lost belief. As Walton A. Litz notes, the death of God is "a premise for Stevens to begin with" for a new belief.20) T o do that, resemblance is his first literary mode.

In order to demonstrate the resemblance mode, the poet opens

"Sunday Morning," using a lady' s poetic persona of her mythic mind in an ordinary Sunday morning. Content with the reality and wide awakening, she is ready to "test the reality / Of misty fields [worlds]"

(CP 68). She starts as one of the "wakened birds" with "their sweet questionings." He tries to compare the mythic world (everlasting world

fictions of desire (the creative power of "as" and "like" and "as if") and reality (commitment to face thing "as it is") and tension to his poetry. 19) Lentricchia 34. 20) A. Walton Litz, Introspective Voyager: T he P oetic Developm ent of W allace Stevens 44- 5.

- 20 - of no change) with the natural world (the ever- changing world).

Stevens employs many metaphors to make a poetic agreement or resemblance between them. Even "in contentment I [she] still feel / T he need of some imperishable bliss." Pondering on "passions" and "moods" "in any balm or beauty of the earth," the lady in the poem "brought such requital to desire" to resemble the lost faith. T he poet seeks for new faith in the nature itself. In other words he tries to transform the changing natural world into the earthly paradise in place of unchanging mythic heaven. As Albert Gelpi notes, they chant "paradise" regained by the transformative resemblance of the human imagination over a fallen world.21) T hrough this transformation, he seeks for one realm of resemblance, new fiction, new faith through which the poet can integrate his self with the changing world.

In this poem, she thinks about the presences of Jove or God and the possibility of new belief in making the earth as a new paradise through metaphoric resemblances. She still waits for "our earthly mothers" as her object of resemblance.

Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas

21) Albert Gelpi, A Coherent Splendor T he A m erican P oetic R enaissance, 1910- - 1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987) 53.

- 21 - T hey never find, the same receding shores T hat never touch with inarticulate pang? ...... Death is the mother of beauty, mystical Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly. (CP 69)

T he poet repents the dying presence of the traditional god- like entity in the absence of proper replacements for it. His first despondency is the earth or its beauty itself. T he external things cannot be of any help to his despondent poetic consciousness. His belief in "no change of death in paradise" in this world cannot relieve him of "inarticulate pangs." Her

Shelly- like poetic appeasement cannot remove her "grievings in loneli- ness." T he "mystical death, the mother of beauty," seems to be the first destination for his resemblance, but he also repulses it right away.

T he poet' s first desire for resemblance ends in "Not as a god, but as a god might be." Upon listening to "A voice that cries" the mythic existences and its fictionality, he once again shrinks back into the backward movement in his poetic consciousness. It is another facet of resemblance to the earth itself or the unknown life mystery, as in

"Downward to darkness, on extended wings."

T his poem is a frank representation of Stevens' lingering poetic consciousness that implicitly expresses his ambivalent desire for resemblance between the god- like entity and the earthly physical reality.22)

22) Frank Lentricchia, T he Gaiety of Language: A n E ssay on the R adical

- 22 - It is the prologue to the extended dialogue between his reality and fictions or metaphoric resemblances in later poetry. It is also the first complacent monologue in the mental space on earthly life and religious problem in "the need of some imperishable bliss" (CP 68).23)

But any contentment the lady feels will be brief and perish soon with her skepticism. As a dramatic answer to this brief bliss, the poet says: "Death is the mother of beauty." For him, death is the principle of mimetic transformation and makes the process of life possible. By death, he can be transformed into another resemblance, another poetic identification with other things. It also makes mortal life feel its beauty and value. Death causes the repetition of desire even after a desire has been fulfilled. Here death makes the cycle of desire and fulfillment possible.

T he principle of transformative resemblance also enables the creation of a new life.

Although the static world of paradise is not affected by the poet' s desire of transformative resemblance, its expressive mode looks up to

P oetics of W . B . Y eats and W allace Stevens (Berkeley: U of California P, 1968) 152- 5. Lentricchia observes that Stevens is caught between two conflicting w orlds, the good naturalistic world and the mythic world of permanence in "Sunday Morning." T he poet seems to try to attain poetic truth for agreement between the naturalistic world of change and the mythic world of permanence through metaphoric resemblance. 23) Lentricchia, T he Gaiety of Language 152- 9. Lentricchia finds "unresolved dialetic" in "Sunday Morning" betw een naturalistic world of change and a "realm of permanence." He notices the dualistic nature of Stevens' poetic world between these two conflicting elements in tension and conflicts.

- 23 - the "heavenly fellowship" among men and a primitive quality of "savage source." T he poetic will for transformative resemblance turns at first toward the "sky" and then "sink[s]" down to the land after "ambiguous undulations." T his is the circular movement of his poetic consciousness for transformative resemblance.

In "Sunday Morning," Stevens feels the particulars of physical world as transitory, m em ento m ori, and tries to develop a new possibility of myth- making, namely a fiction- creating poetic process in an age of disbelief and skepticism. His final chant is "a celebration of the nakedness of sensation."24) T his is the final metaphoric fiction of his mimetic transformation, which reflects the hardship of creating resemblance in this "unsponsored" world. Although we are free to "turn the

(poetic) mind to its own creations and examine them, not alone from the aesthetic point of view" (OP 159), we cannot create our own entirely free from this phenomenal world in need of transformative resemblance.

"Sunday Morning" demonstrates the paradigmatic nature of mimetic transformation and its poetic purpose to understand the changing reality, but it fails to produce Stevens' final form of perceiving the world. He is conscious that the world is so endlessly changing without direction, sometimes beyond his perception. T his desperate perception often provides a starting point for another flight "on extended wings." In other

24) Robert Rehder, T he P oetry of W allace Stevens (New York: St. Martin' s, 1988) 79.

- 24 - words it is the continuous forward movement of his poetic consciousness.

Now, how is the transformative resemblance related to metaphor?

For Stevens, the ultimate purpose of poetry is also to understand the structure of reality by finding resemblances among the objects that compose reality because all things resemble each other and such resemblance is one of the components of the structure of reality. If resemblance does not appear on the surface, the poet employs metaphor.

T o him, metaphor, another name for metamorphosis or transformative resemblance, is looking forward to "the creation of resemblance by the pure imagination" (N A 72).

If we desire to formulate an accurate theory of poetry, we find it necessary to examine the structure of reality, because reality is the central reference for poetry. By way of accomplishing this, suppose we examine one of the significant components of structure of reality- - that is to say, the resemblance between things. First, then, as to the resemblance between things in nature, it should be observed that resemblance constitutes a relation between them, in some sense, all things resemble each other. (N A 71)

When the discordant objects are related by metaphor, the creation of the imagination, "a new aspect of the thing,"25) is revealed. T hus metaphor is used to create resemblance between things by the pure imagination when resemblance is not found on surface.

25) J. Hillis Miller, "Wallace Stevens," P oets of R eality Six T wentieth- Century W riters (New York: Atheneum, 1974) 240.

- 25 - But resemblance is not always created by metaphor. As Jacqueline Vaught Brogan points out, simile is more suitable to find resemblance than metaphor. Stevens seems to minimize the use of similes because traditionally simile is "an inferior form of metaphor."26) But the poetic device designed to grasp reality by finding and creating resemblance should include simile rather than metaphor. T he main poetic purpose of transformative resemblance as in "Sunday Morning" and next poems to be examined is to understand the structure of changing reality.

In "Domination of Black," the poet also demonstrates the poetic purpose of transformative resemblance by means of simile. On the other hand, the poem implicitly expresses the poet' s consciousness of the limit of imagination.

T his poem seeks for resemblance between the changing world of external reality and the changing imagination. T he poem presents a night scene by the fire when the poet perceives the various objects move in colors and sound against a black night in chaos. T he movements and turnings of the items are described through association and resemblance. At night,27) the speaker of the poem watches in the room the movements of colors of the bushes by the light of the fire and the fallen leaves turning in the wind outside:

At night, by the fire,

26) Jacqueline Vaught Brogan, Stevens and Sim ile A T heory of Language (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986) 12- 15. 27) Night is a symbol of death and it has the same significance as the black colour. It also symbolizes the unconscious. See J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (London: Routledge, 1962) 228.

- 26 - T he colors of the bushes And of the fallen leaves, Repeating themselves, T urned in the room, Like the leaves themselves T urning in the wind Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks Came striding. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. (CP 8)

T he speaker has combined the internal reality of his consciousness with an external physical reality through creative resemblance. T he act of the imagination continues uninterrupted for further resemblance in

"turning." Everything is "turning" for transformative resemblance in the

Heraclitean flux.28) T he color opposition in the poem and the turning movement represent "the natural process"29) of life.

T he endless currents of "turning" that represent the transformative resemblance seem to dominate reality. But the speaker hears only what he remembered in stanza one- - the cry of the peacock. At first, it was a distant memory sparked by the colors turning in the room. Now it is actually heard and becomes a reality. T he peacocks' s cry is harsh, raucous, and dissonant. It suggests the intrusion of reality into the realm of imagination, producing tension. T he speaker wonders if the cry is

28) Edward Kessler, Im ages of W allace Stevens (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 1972) 219. Kessler explains the principle of unceasing change in the universe by which everything changes and dissolves. T his principle is a very old philosophy held by the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus (BC500). 29) Kesler 219.

- 27 - made against things being dissolved into nothingness. Since the act of turning30) is a merging of objects, all things seem to be confused.

Everything is turning into something else.

Was it a cry against the twilight Or against the leaves themselves T urning in the wind, T urning as the flames T urned in the fire, T urning as the tails of the peacocks T urned in the loud fire, Loud as the hemlocks Full of the cry of the peacocks? Or was it a cry against the hemlocks? (CP 9)

T he repetition of “as” in the above stanza represents both resemblance and fleeting temporality. T he word "as," as Brogan argues, plays the "double function" of finding resemblance between things and of suggesting that these are in the process of change.31) T he leaves

"turning in the wind" are also changing into the turning flames and these flames are also changing into the tails of peacocks in the "the loud fires" as acoustically described. T hat is, the "as" represents unstable temporality and the simultaneous turning movement of three things: the leaves, flames and the tails of the peacocks. Here Stevens intends to precisely grasp the "turning" world of change through the faithful resemblance of things.

30) T . S Eliot, A sh- W ednesday, Collected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1963) 95. 31) Brogan 20.

- 28 - T he speaker finds the external world changing without direction like the leaves "turning in the wind" and feels conscious of the overpowering imagination and its limit. T he act of "turning" is the poet' s imagination which shows both change and resemblance to the point where it is extended to the stars in the night sky which are also made to turn by the act of imagination and to dissolve into black. Here the speaker finds danger in the total metaphoric resemblance which vanishes into the domination of black and into nothingness. T he speaker implicitly expresses his fears towards the dissolution of indiscriminate unity by the total metaphoric device.

T he speaker' s fear is derived from his consciousness of man' s shaky destiny in facing the changing world and of the limitation in understanding reality. T he poet realizes that the overpowering imagination through the function of transformative resemblance is not enough to grasp changing reality fully. Stevens' poetic attitude of fearfulness and uneasiness toward the physical reality and the imagination changes into that of misery and nothingness in "T he Snow Man."

“T he Snow Man" shows another way of creating resemblance between the beholder and reality. It doesn' t require the beholder to transform himself in order to identify himself with the external bare and empty reality. T his bareness gives meditative elements to "T he Snow

Man" which could be dealt with in meditative way in Chapter Four. But

- 29 - I wish to deal with this poem in Chapter One instead in chronological order. We find his ironic attitude toward the uneasy relationship between the empty aspect of reality implied by the winter scene and man' s consciousness in the poem:

One must have a mind of winter T o regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine- trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time T o behold the junipers shagged with ice, T he 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 T hat is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds T hat is not there and the nothing that is. (CP 9- 10)

T he bare winter scene juxtaposes visual and auditory images. In particular, the repetitive use of "the sound" three times enchants the monotonous scene representing nothingness. T he poem tells the reader that one must be a snow man in order to perceive reality.

As Susan B. Weston points out, two verbs, "to regard" and "to behold", are used to express "an accuracy of perception possible to a wintry man."32) T he two verbs are involved with precise perception

- 30 - without the influence of the ordinary imagination. In addition, they have different connotations. While "regard" suggests to see things passively and closely as they are, "Behold" suggests to embrace things. T he two verbs mean precise perception of things or physical realities exactly as they are without any feelings. Stevens explains "T he Snow Man" as "an example of the necessity of identifying oneself with reality in order to understand it and enjoy it" (LW S 464).

Here, another quality of mimetic transformation or transformative resemblance is shown: emptying his poetic consciousness for a better finding of reality. T he snow man image shows the empty body in the absence of consciousness, representing "nothing himself."33) T he closing line, "Nothing that is not there," shows the world free from the self or human consciousness while "nothing that is" represents the bare world with the human feelings in a miserable winter scene. Reality here can exist only when the human mind perceives the winter scene and realizes it. Otherwise it becomes "nothing that is not there."

However, the man of consciousness cannot grasp the exact meaning of nothingness of the snowman without proper poetic consciousness. It may be possible only by the pure imagination itself. In

32) Susan B. Weston, W allace Stevens: A n Introduction to the P oetry (New York: Colombia UP, 1974) 8- 9. 33) Frank Dogget, Stevens' Poetry of T hought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1966) 129.

- 31 - other words, bare reality becomes available, even in the form of the imagined thing, only when no imagination is used as a means of knowledge. He understands it as an example of "the absence of the imagination had / Itself to be imagined" (CP 503). T he irony of this poem is that the act of bare perception is only a fiction created by the imagination that aims to grasp reality in absence of man' s consciousness.

Consequently, this poem ironically demonstrates another element of transformative resemblance: the absence of mind or self- consciousness is a better way to find the reality. Metaphoric resemblance or identification is possible by losing his self or self- consciousness for better attainment of reality. T his poem also paradoxically emphasizes the role/act of the mind in its participation in the composition of reality.

T he human consciousness is the key function to find a reality among many realities as the world is composed of many imagined things, changeable and unstable all the time. T he mind or the poetic consciousness must be used to be identified with reality.

"T he Snow Man" reveals man' s "misery" from the nothingness of bare winter scene he beholds and it paradoxically suggests that the power of the mind acts necessarily and inevitably upon understanding reality. On the other hand, the poem further shows another way of creating resemblance by ironically emptying the mind and detaching it

- 32 - from reality. It explores the extreme limits of the mind in the absence of the imagination to be imagined. T he resemblance mode is to empty the poetic consciousness for a better finding of true and bare reality. It is the prologue to the later poetry of the meditative mode.

"T hirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" presents 13 different aspects of transformative resemblance between the natural scene representing physical reality and a blackbird representing the dynamic self- consciousness. Here we can find clearly that the mind is the major agent for transformative resemblance. Poetic self- consciousness is the connector of the reality observed and the beholder in presence of things.

Finding a metaphoric structure in the poem, Price Caldwell argues that Stevens discusses a theory of metaphor based on resemblance.34)

T his poem is a collection of "sensations" (LW S 251). In the poem, the blackbird plays the role of imaginative consciousness that links the observer with the natural scene and shows itself as a central object for contemplation. T he poet contrasts the blackbird with twenty snowy mountains.

Among twenty snowy mountains, T he only moving thing Was the eye of blackbird. (CP 92)

T he static mountains are contrasted with the moving eye of black-

34) Price Caldwell, "Metaphoric Structures in Wallace Stevens' ' T hirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,' " J ournal of English and Germanic P hilology 71 (1972) 207.

- 33 - bird. T he speaker describes the moving eye of the bird and suggests at the same time the mood of the observer. T he two puns of "I" and "eye" and the word "moving" indicate that the "moving" eye is that of the bird and that the perceiver' s mind of "I" is emotional "mood."35) T hus the bird that represents the imagination functions to link the perceiver with the landscape.

"T he blackbird is involved / In what I know" in stanza eight shows that the poet' s mind reacts to the external scene centering around the blackbird. T he poet whose mind is stimulated by the blackbird says "I was of three minds, / Like a tree / In which there are three black birds" (CP 92). And he attempts to search for a possible meaning from the diversified aspects of the interaction between the blackbird and the surrounding scene. As a result, the poet perceives the flux of reality:

T he blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.

A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. (CP 93)

T he word "whirled" here signifies the wind of transformation and the flux of the world like "turning" of flux of reality in "Domination of

35) Weston 21.

- 34 - Black." T he movement of the whirling blackbird shows "part of the pantomime,“ and the line of "A man and a woman and a blackbird /

Are one." suggests that they are placed in the same world of resemblance after metamorphosis. After the poet finds the innuendoes of

"piercing reminder of human mortality"36) in the shadow of the blackbird, he rides in a glass coach imaginatively.

He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that we mistook the shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. (CP 94)

T he transparent glass coach symbolizes the poet' s mental desire to see through the reality. T he imaginative journey suggests the "passage of time"37) which makes man' s life subject to change. T he blackbird makes the poet feel fears piercing his mind. T he fears are caused by the innuendos of death hidden in the shadow. T he poet' s mind open to the ever- changing world is in contrast with the "thin men of Haddam" who imagine golden birds as permanence and eternity, which is Stevens' object of transformative resemblance.

O thin men of Haddam Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird

36) Joseph Riddel, T he Clairvoyant Eye: T he P oetry and P oetics of W allace Stevens (Baton Rouge: Louisiana UP, 1965) 87. 37) Weston 23.

- 35 - Walks around the feet Of the women about you? (CP 93)

T he poet finds the changing reality and human limitation in the process of perceiving the blackbird in relation with the surrounding scenes. He implicitly expresses the poetic meaning of life, the pause of his mind, and the human mortality in the world of chaos and change in the course of contrasting the blackbird.

T he blackbird is another trope for the last perception of transformative mind. It links the poet' s mind with the external world and changes its central object of perception into the omen of death.

Consequently what the poet' s mind finds in changing reality with the blackbird is ultimately the human being' s finiteness. T his might be the finality of self- consciousness to find the reality by transformative resemblance.

In this poem, we should focus on tracing the imaginative acts which make such findings possible. Stevens' pictorialism works out marvellously here. Such pictorial descriptions are other aesthetic elements in specific mimetic transformation or transformative resemblance, which includes suggestion, repetition, contrast, etc.

In addition, the poem shows the poet' s consciousness that he endlessly utilizes in search for the diversified perspectives of poetic meaning despite the limitation in the imaginative acts: "When the

- 36 - blackbird flew out of sight, / It marked the edge / Of one of many circles" (CP 94). T his poetic statement reflects the poet' s consciousness that the result of the poetic perception of reality involving the blackbird is only one of many possibilities. Here we notice Stevens has tried to explore the real world from wide and diversified perspectives focusing upon the blackbird.

T he next poem, "Sea Surface Full of Clouds," shows the mimetic transformation or transformative resemblance of the mind in response to natural scenes as in "T hirteen Ways." T he poem displays five phases of the changing resemblance between the imaginative poet- observer and bare reality, and it depicts his emotions evoked by five different seascapes reflecting clouds in the sky in "that November off

T ehuantepec" when he observed the seascape:

In that November off T ehuantepec, deck T he slopping of the sea grew still one night And in the morning summer hued deck

And made one think of rosy chocolate And gilt umbrella. Paradisal green Gave suavity to the perplexed machine

Of ocean, which like limpid water lay. Who, then, in that ambrosial latitude Out of the light evolved the moving blooms,

Who, then, evolved the sea- blooms from the clouds, Diffusing balm in that Pacific calm? C'etai m on enfant, m on bijou, mon am e.

- 37 - T he sea- clouds whitened far below the calm And moved, as blooms move, in the swimming green And in its watery radiance, while the hue

Of heaven in an antique reflective rolled Round those flotillas. And sometimes the sea Poured brilliant iris on the glistening blue. (CP 98- 9)

T he first tercet of above section describes the poet' s observation of a deck hued by a summer morning light. T he poem has the single setting of a seascape in the morning in the first stanza of each section.

T hus the sun- lit, moon- lit deck changes into five different colors against the single setting of the seascape with five different adjectives.

Moreover, the mood of each seascape is expressed by varied adjectives such as "perplexed," "tense," and "tranced," and ample examples of metaphor are used in exploring the resemblance between the images.

In addition to his poetic use of resemblance in the poem, Stevens further suggests that poetry can be equated with metaphor, metamorphosis, resemblance and acts of the imagination. As metamorphosis links the internal world of imagination with the external world of reality, they are one realm of resemblance. Stevens further theorizes that poetry satisfies our desire for resemblance, and, what is more, poetry intensifies reality, even enhances and heightens it by the imagination' s resemblance in discovering likeness in things and concepts (N A 77). We have seen many examples of mimetic transformation in the poems so far examined.

- 38 - In the third and fourth tercets, the poet questions repeatedly who evolved sea- blooms from the sky clouds and then answers it is the imagination, "my child, my precious stone, my spirit." Clouds in the sky reflected on the sea- surface are changed into blooms by the poet' s consistent imaginative acts of finding resemblance. It is suggested by these two tercets that the sea surface represents the mental seascape responding to natural phenomena, and that the sea- blooms evolved from the clouds are the products of the poet' s imagination.

Section one is a good example which illustrates the poet' s theory of the imagination, showing its first function of mimetic transformation or transformative resemblance through metaphor. Here Stevens shows consistent attempts to explore new aspects of reality by using various colorful metaphors created in interaction between his imagination and the natural seascape. He affirms the power of the imagination from section one to four in personification: "Oh! C' etait mon extase et mon amour,"

(CP 100) "C' etait ma foi, la nonchalance divine" (CP 101).

On the other hand, the poet is conscious of the limit of his imagination in creating resemblance for reality through transformation, and he cautions outwardly against the limit in section five. T he poet' s self- conscious attitude toward the imagination' s limit in metaphoric transformation implies that it may distort true reality as we see the

"sham umbrella" in the second stanza of section two.

- 39 - What pistache one, ingenious and droll, Beheld the sovereign clouds as jugglery

And the sea turquoise- turbaned Samho, neat At tossing saucers- - cloudy- conjuring sea? C'etait m on esprit bastard, l'ignominie. (CP 102)

Section two and five show how the transformative resemblance turns out to be unsuccessful if it fails to harmonize reality with the imaginative self- consciousness. It suggests that simple and plain metaphors, real to reality, may produce poetic resemblance well, but unreal metaphors created by the arbitrary imagination may divorce poetry from reality.

T he aspects of the colorful clouds reflected on the sea surface are no longer sea- blooms but are changed into "the sovereign clouds as jugglery." "Sovereign" cloud suggests "the pressure of reality" and violence without" (N A 36) that overpower the poet' s imagination on the sea surface. T he poet criticizes himself as "bastard and disgrace" for his imagination in finding such unreal metaphors of "the sovereign clouds as jugglery" and of "the sea as turquoise turbaned Samho, neat / At tossing saucers- - cloudy- conjuring sea." "Sea Surface" characterizes the poet' s self- mocking tone, suggesting that he cautions against unreal imagination and the limitation of metaphor though he uses metaphor to sense fresh and heightened reality.

Similarly, "Metaphors of a Magnifico" and "Six Significant

- 40 - Landscapes" also best demonstrate the function of the metaphoric resemblance to capture reality while suggesting some sign of the poet' s consciousness of the limit embedded in the power of his imagination and metaphor. T hey are the poetry of "the ideas of universals and the particulars."38)

In "Metaphors," Stevens attempts to clarify the abstract meaning of mimetic transformation or transformative resemblance. He uses the technique of repetition, a quality of resemblance, to express his internal consciousness:

T wenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village.

T his is old song T hat will not declare itself . . .

T wenty men crossing a bridge Into a village, Are T wenty men crossing a bridge Into a village.

38) Anthony Whiting, T he N ever- R esting M ind: W allace Stevens' R om antic Irony (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996) 66- 7. Whiting argues: "If every person' s experience is unique, then twenty men cross a bridges into twenty villages. If the experience is universal, then each crossing is identical with every other crossing and twenty men crossing a bridge into a village can be thought of as one man crossing a single bridge into a village."

- 41 - T hat will not declare itself Yet is certain as meaning . . . (CP 19)

In the first stanza the poet argues that twenty men are crossing a bridge into a village. Moreover, the poet shows with one variation that twenty men are crossing twenty bridges into twenty villages, and in the third stanza, he continues to argue with another variation that one man is crossing a single bridge into a village. T hree statements are made in repetition and in variation. T he first statement emphasizes the individ- uality of twenty men crossing a bridge: the second statement argues that the uniformity of twenty men.

In other words the first statement suggests that man is the creator of what he sees. It is the thesis that "man is the intelligence of his soil"

(CP 27). T he second statement indicates that man is made by his place.

It is the antithesis that "man' s soil is his intelligence" (CP 36). T he third statement shows that both statements are equal.39) In this poem, the poet argues about the question of one and many, that is, the abstract and the concrete. In these three statements, he suggests a number of abstract possibilities which are unable to represent all diversified aspects in the crossing scene. T he message of this poem is that these statements imply not only the poet' s aim of abstracting this

39) Richard Allen Blessing, Wallace Stevens' "Whole Harmonium" (New York: Syracuse UP, 1970) 18.

- 42 - complex scene of crossing but also his consciousness of limitation in his use of metaphor to catch reality. It is also the unitive force of metaphoric resemblance for many differences.

T he similar awareness of such limitation in abstract thinking is revealed in the satirical description of "rationalists, wearing square hats" in the closing stanza of "Landscapes":

Rationalists, wearing square hats, T hink, in square rooms, Looking at the floor, Looking at the ceiling. T hey confine themselves T o right- angled triangles. (CP 75)

T he rationalists know many- sided reality by simplification and abstraction based on logics. T he repeated "square" expresses the logical attitude of the rationalists in ordering many- sided reality. But he confines himself in the unanswerable question: How "right- angled triangles" can be acceptable? T o be right- angled, it cannot be a triangle.

T o be a triangle, it cannot be right- angled. How can this paradox be reconciled? It is the last riddle for the coexistence of transformation and resemblance in a paradoxical transformative resemblance, or metaphoric metamorphosis.

Stevens cautions in the poem against the possibility that the visual scene from diversified perspectives might be reduced to a simple statement of abstract thinking. And he attempts to emphasize "concrete

- 43 - sensory experience" over "metaphysical musing."40)

T he boots of the men clump On the boards of the bridge. T he first white wall of the village Rises through fruit trees. Of what was it I was thinking? So the meaning escapes.

T he first white wall of the village . . . T he fruit- trees. . . . (CP 19)

T he crossing scene indicates metaphoric statements since the subject of twenty men is linked with the compliment through the coupler of "are." Stevens again warns against the limitations of metaphor. But the total escape from abstraction of metaphor to the concrete world of reality is a bewilderment to the poet as the two closing lines in the poem show.

As Anthony Whiting points out, Stevens describes the motive for metaphor as a need to escape from the pressure of reality.41) In this poem, we find that Stevens implies that reality [objective reality] alone cannot exist without abstraction of metaphor [abstract imagination] as the last two halting lines with dots suggest. Stevens means that sensory experiences should be combined with abstract thinking. T his is the guidepost for the transformative resemblance to comply with. Poetry should be abstract as well as concrete. T his is what the transformative

40) Blessing 19. 41) Whiting 68.

- 44 - resemblance is for.

T he opening part of the poem lists "men," "bridge," "village," simply in repetitive statements without any detailed description. T he closing part of the poem expands these statements into particular items such as "boots," "clump," "boards," "the first whitewall," "rises," and

"fruit- tree" through concrete images. T he abstract meaning that the repeated statements aim to achieve escapes when the poet' s mind returns to the external world of the detailed objects. Stevens puts constant emphasis here on the identification with physical reality by using the transformative resemblance mode. Ironically he also insists that the identification should closely interact with the abstract thinking of the imagination in order to capture many- sided, changing realities with plural perspectives. In other words, reality can be perceived in continuous oscillation between the two poles of abstract imagination and concrete and sensual reality.

In his perception of the changing physical reality, Stevens uses variable perspectives to catch many- sided reality through mimetic transformation or transformative resemblance. T he resemblance is his first working principle of transformation by the imagination in his early poetry. T he self- conscious act of the poet' s mind is the second working principle that drives his endless poetic search for new possibilities of fictions. Perception includes the perceiver (the self) and the perceived (the external world) which are unified by one realm of

- 45 - resemblance in representation of Stevens' poetic world of becoming and change.

All the seven poems that have been studied so far reveal Stevens' recognition of the need of the function of the metamorphic resemblance as well as of the limit of the imagination. T he resemblance is the first literary device for grasping many- sided reality in change. Moreover, his conscious attitude toward the limit of the imagination has enabled his poetic mode of resemblance to continuously search the physical reality of sensation in his H arm onium period.

Stevens' poetic use of resemblance in H arm onium suggests that poetry can be equated with metaphor, metamorphosis, resemblance and active imagination. As metamorphosis links the internal world of imagination with the external world of reality, they are also one realm of resemblance. Poetry satisfies our desire for resemblance and poetry intensifies reality, even enhances and heightens it by the imagination' s resemblance in discovering likeness in things and concepts (N A 77).

Furthermore, at the end of this early period, Stevens finds this mode of resemblance too ineffective and out- moded to confront the violent reality of the modern world. As Crispin in "T he Comedian as the

Letter C" found danger in his solipsistic subjective world of the imagination in his early period, Stevens changes his tactic to use a new mode of decreation to swing toward violent reality and aims to grasp more clearly reality as it is. His poetic consciousness has grown to be

- 46 - decreative and intellect- centered.

Chapter T w o

De- creation: Ide a of Orde r and T he M an with the B lue Guitar

Wallace Stevens tries to find truth in reality by using a new mode of decreation. His intelligent and philosophical insight is the basic tool for his decreative mode. He just does not sit idle in reality as a serene naturalist, but by decreating old fictions he created in H arm onium, he wants to be more aggressively participating in creating more desirable fictions as a philosophical activist. His middle- period poetry has different tone and sensibility. He cannot repeat the resemblance of the rounding works which were dominant in H arm onium because he fears that they may give him false perception of true reality. So he de- creates the old fictions of resemblance in his middle period to find true reality.

T he mode of decreation is to destroy all the old concepts and to purify his earlier realities of perception and sensation to the point of negating them.42) T he decreation of old orders or fictions is a

42) As Roy Harvey Pearce observes, Stevens describes modern reality as a "reality of decreation" in "T he Relations between Poetry and Painting" (1951): "T his [new] reality is, also, the momentous world of poetry. Its instantaneities are the familiar intelligence of poets, although it has been the intelligence of another ambiance. Silone Weil in La P esanteur et La Grace has a chapter on what she calls decreation. She says that decreation is making pass from the created to the uncreated, but that destruction is making pass from the created to nothingness. Modern reality is a reality of decreation, in which our revelations are not the revelations of belief, but the precious portents of our

- 47 - precondition to the creation of new ones as Helen Hennessy Vendler observes.43) He tries to decreate the pressures of reality in the 1930s, describing it as "modern reality," "a reality of decreation" (N A 175). In

"T he Man with the Blue Guitar," Stevens founds the ground work toward a supreme fiction through the self- conscious and self- reflective act of the mind. His decreative poetry becomes more active, assertive, self- centered, and society- oriented in poetic consciousness.

Stevens considers that the role of poetry is to decreate the chaotic world of disorder in the violent society of the 1930s in the USA 44) into the reality of order through the decreating power of imagination. As he insists, the imagination is "a violence from within that protects us from a violence without" (N A 36). And it is also the imagination "pressing back against the pressure of reality. . . . It seems to have something to

own powers." (N A 174- 5) For details, see Roy harvey Pearce, "T oward Decreation: Stevens and T he ' T heory of Poetry,' " in W allace Stevens: A Celebration, eds. Frank Doggett and Robert Buttel (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980) 297- 8. For a general study of Stevens criticism on decreation in his poetry, see Melita Schaum, W allace Stevens and the Critical Schools (T uscaloosa, Alabama: U of Alabama P, 1987) 100- 28. 43) Hellen Hennessy Vendler, W allace Stevens W ords Chosen Out of Desire (Knoxville: U of T ennessee P, 1984) 31. Vendler suggests that to create the new w e must first decreate the old. 44) Stevens says, "we think of changes occurring today as economic changes, involving political and social changes. . . . I believe that, in any society, the poet should be exponent of the imagination of that society. Ideas of Order attempts to illustrate the role of the imagination in life, and particularly in life at present. T he more realistic life may be, the more it needs the stimulus of the imagination" (N OP 222- 3). Stevens comments here in jacket statement from Ideas of Order on his social commitment of poetry and the role of imagination.

- 48 - do with our self- preservation" and "helps us to live our lives" (N A 36).

Stevens' imagination seeks to integrate the self with the real world by starting decreation and giving new order to it.45) T he poetry that has reordered chaotic reality through decreation runs the risk of becoming

"a violent order, a cliche that distorts reality" and the poetry can be "a falsification of it [reality]" because "the ego' s idea of reality imposes itself in our apprehension of reality."46) Stevens' consciousness of the role and the limit of poetry represents a literary burden in a modern age in which there is the absence of the absolute truth.

De- creation is to dismantle old fictions for the creation of new fictions and new orders. More specifically speaking, decreation shows two different functions: destruction and reordering.47) T he former is to destroy old fictions for new ones. It has two subordinating functions: the negation and fragmentation of the present reality. It is the negative statement of the reality at the first half stage of decreation. It is

45) Stevens comments that the habit of forming concepts is "a habit of the mind by which it probes for an integration. . . . T he habit of probing for an integration seems to be part of the general will to order" (N OP 276). 46) Ronald Sukenick, W allace Stevens: M using the Obscure (New York: New York UP, 1967) 14. 47) David Perkins, A H istory of M odern Poetry From the 1890s to the H igh M odernist M ode (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976) 544. As Perkins observes, perhaps the imagination was not the opposite but the reordering of reality, like the "mountainous coiffures of Bath."

- 49 - therefore the downward movement of Stevens' poetic consciousness so as to find the first idea in a tangent reality. T he latter is to reorder and construct a new fiction based on the first destroying process. It has also two subordinating functions: reduction into the first idea of the felt reality and making new fictions. It is the positive statement of the subjective reality at the second half stage of decreation. T his upward, rising movement of his poetic consciousness sometimes overlaps with the re- creative mode. But it is decreative because it places the priority on the first self- destroying process, while recreation, the third function of imagination, is considered to embrace the two modes of resemblance and decreation altogether.

T hus, we look into "T he Man with the Blue Guitar" to study the decreation mode of negation and fragmentation (separation). T hen, to examine the second part of decreative quality, we look into "T he Idea of Order at Key West," and "Landscape with Boat" in relation to reordering and destruction. T hese poems are a silver lining in harsh decreative violence. T hey are the selected poems to show how Stevens demonstrates the poetic mode of decreation in the incessant creation of credible fictions, based upon the self- consciousness. We also look into

Stevens' self- consciousness principle to see how it contributes toward subverting old fictions and making new fictions by establishing a desirable ambivalent relation between reality and the imagination.

- 50 - In his middle period (1931- 42), three books of poems illustrate

Wallace Stevens' changing view of reality and poetry: Ideas of Order

(1935), T he M an with the B lue Guitar (1937) and T he P arts of a W orld

(1942). T his middle period shows "the evolution of a poet who felt compelled to decreate a barbarous reality into a fictive order." Stevens says, "we live in a different time, and life means a good deal more to us nowadays than literature does" (LW S 288). Pure poetry is not a proper answer to the "political and social turmoil around him," and he is moved to react to the turmoil by defining the role of the poet in a socially troubled time. He thinks that the role of the poet in such a time is to produce new images of order for "mobs" (CP 122). T his middle period is an experience stage for Stevens' inner poet to experiment the decreative mode when he feels a need to invent new poetry grounded on the new world of consciousness, i.e. decreating the old world of the transformative resemblance in H arm onium (1923).

Declaring that the "past is dead" (CP 117) in "Farewell to Florida,"

Stevens tries to abandon the outworn mode of transformative and metaphoric resemblance which emphasized the green nature and the feminine muse that were predominant in his early period. T he law of the middle period is decreation; Stevens strips the past of its old symbolic fusion of the imagination and reality in order to see plain reality of things- as- they- are through a decreative method. He tries to reduce or

- 51 - annihilate everything in order to reach the "Ding an Sich" CP 29) as in

"Landscape with Boat." Stevens' emphasis shifts from transformative resemblance of physical reality in the early period to the decreative imagination in the middle period of "reflection."48) Briefly, Stevens starts to look inward instead of outward, using the abstract musical setting of a man playing a blue guitar as an appeal to the intellect rather than the senses.

In "Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz," Stevens bids a farewell to the

"dandyesque" poetic forms of H arm onium .49) Now these old forms have vanished. Hoon looks at a world besieged by the mobs who have been

"freed" from "the suppression" (CP 122) of "the social and economic institutions,"50) but he does not know what to do.

Who will produce new forms and order for "these sudden mobs of men"? It is certainly not solipsistic Hoon with "Gay Waltz" as "motionless sound"(CP 121). In a scientific age, "[t]he epic of disbelief" (CP

122) demands a new poet, a modern hero, a "harmonious skeptic" who can discover a music of motion "full of shadows" that will be our "mode of desire" (CP 121): this will "unite" people, not in a shared skepticism.

. . .T he epic of disbelief Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant.

48) Blessing 33. 49) Sexson 57 50) Milton J. Bates, W allace Stevens: A M ythology of Self (Berkeley: U of California P, 1985) 166- 7.

- 52 - Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music

Will unite these figures of men and their shapes Will glisten again with motion, the music Will be motion and full of shadows. 51) (CP 122)

Stevens de- creates "mountain- minded Hoon" (CP 121) by stripping him of his past form and order through negation. He needs to invent a new poetry to ennoble the imagination of "these figures of man." In this poem, he uses waltz as "a metaphor for dead forms."52)

First, let' s look at the typical poem of decreation, "Blue Guitar."

T his poem demonstrates the decreative mode more powerfully. Stevens always depends on the power of imagination for his meta- poetry theory as shown in "Poetry is the subject of the poem" (CP 176).53) T his poem is the archetype of his decreative theory. It shows part of his poetic efforts to demonstrate the negation and destruction of the old and chaotic reality. De- creation is the precondition to the creation of new order and new fictions. De- creation does not mean a total destruction as

10) T his passage recalls T .S. Eliot' s "T he Hollow Men" in separation of man, shape and shadow. See Eliot 89. 52) Lucy Beckett. W allace Stevens (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977) 106. 53) B.J. Leggett, W allace Stevens and P oetic T heory: Conceiving the Suprem e Fiction (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1987) 1. Leggett points out that Stevens laboured so earnestly to establish the premise that "poetry is the subject of the poem": poetry is meta- poetry. Mac. Hammond also notes "poetry about poetry is the key phrase to describe Stevens' later poetry." See Mac. Hamond, "On the Grammar of Wallace Stevens," in T he A ct of the M ind: Essays on the P oetry of W allace Stevens, eds. Roy Harvey Pearce and J. Hillis Miller (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965) 184.

- 53 - Stevens questions: "T hings as they are [reality] have been destroyed. /

Have I? Am I a man that is dead?" (CP 173).

It demonstrates the decreative process through "the incessant conjunctions between things as they are and things imagined" (N OP

233). Stevens explained his intention of the poem in his letter to Renato

Poggioli.54) Also decreation is part of the interrelated artistic function between the imagination and reality.

"Blue Guitar" serves Stevens' poetic purpose of decreating violent reality and separating or fragmenting it into a desirable poetic world of

"absence" and purity. For this purpose Stevens employs the decreative function of the imagination to separate reality to pieces and get down to the bottom of reality. In other words he de- creates the old form of metaphoric resemblance. It is to separate reality from the imagination.

It is to purify reality of false and old imagination. But the whole of reality cannot be grasped by fragmented pieces. Reality can be grasped only in part by approximation as if it is a whole. So it is a Stevens' strategy is to secure the middle way of a balance point, harmonious relationship between reality and the imagination.

T he poet describes 33 variations of interrelations between the

54) Stevens comments that "[t]he general intention of ' Blue Guitar' was to say a few things that I felt impelled to say 1. about reality; 2. about the imagination; 3. their interrelations; and 4. principally, my attitude toward each of these things" (LW S 788).

- 54 - imagination and reality. Stevens imaginatively expounds their relations with the blue guitar. He presents a guitar player as a symbol for a new hero "in an age in which disbelief is so profoundly prevalent" (N A 171).

For Stevens, "the old religious myths had crumbled and poetry had now to act as a means of redemption."55) Stevens declares that "poetry is that essence which takes its place as life' s redemption" (OP 158).

Using the guitarist as a symbol of the poet and his tune as a symbol of the on- going imagination process, Stevens de- creates an entire generation' s desires into a tune. T his decreation allows Stevens to cope with the importance of art in a time of violent reality. So he presents his favorite theme of the struggles between the imagination and reality, between art and people. De- creation is also the strife between the object to be expounded (reality) and the fiction to be made (art).

T he poet dramatizes his ambivalent feelings toward the conflicting relations between the audience (reality) and the player (imagination) in section one to six. He also expresses skepticism and his consciousness that the imagination cannot represent reality without distortion. T here is the tension between the two, an inner conflict for success or failure in his mind. T his tension induces his new decreative mode to work on.

55) Richard Gray, "Poetry and the Subject of the Poem: Wallace Stevens" in M odern A m erican P oetry, ed. R.W. (Herbie) Butterfield (London: Vision Press, 1984) 46.

- 55 - T he man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. T he day was green.

T hey said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are."

T he man replied, "T hings as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar Of things exactly as they are." (CP 165)

T he audience demands that the player should "play things as they are."

T his dialogue indicates the poet' s ambivalent attitude towards their relations. He knows that the way to grasp reality- as- it- is is to imagine it as a fiction. It is a phenomenological approach to the things in his inner mind. By way of the reality of the blue guitar, a tune of imagination comes out "beyond us, yet ourselves."

I cannot bring a world quite round, Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero' s head, large eye And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade

- 56 - Of a man that plays a blue guitar. (CP 165- 6)

T he blue guitarist, the poet, performs the full ego- consciousness,56) decreating through the persona of a shearsman or tailor. He tries to cut and patch them up in a fragmentary manner in order to see

"absence in reality / T hings as they are" (CP 176). T he speaker asserts that he can reach close to reality as it is by patching works, although the fragments of reality cannot represent the whole of reality as it is.

T he whole cannot be grasped in part. But the poet' s consciousness cannot give up, discouraged by the "seeming" impossibility. His poetic mission is to tackle the enigma of reality, or the indiscernible interrelations between reality and the imagination.

T hus, he can only start with patch work synecdochically in a decreative manner. As he finds that he cannot do the rounding of resemblance which was dominant in H armonium , he must be more aggressive in detecting the truth of reality. Stevens is keenly aware that

"[i]t is never possible for the artist to do more than approach almost to man" (LW S 789). So his last choice is the decreation mode starting with patch- up work. T his is a truth- finding approach. T he patch- up work is the first step to destroy reality. "No shadows" of truth can be

56) Erich Neumann, T he Origins and H istory of Consciousness (Princeton, Princeton UP, 1954) 121. Neumann suggests that the basic acts of consciousness by the mind are "to discriminate, to distinguish, to mark off, and to isolate oneself from the surrounding context."

- 57 - found anywhere as a whole or part yet. So he personifies the imagination (identified with reality) in the patched- up persona of decreative consciousness to create a new hero. He proposes a new solar poetry of the "flat and bare" reality.

Stevens continues his decreative act of mind in section three to six. In section three, he expresses the decreative imagination as a

"violence from within" which means imagination "pressing back against the pressure of reality." He uses violent verbs such as "to nail," "to strike,' " and "to bang" (CP 166) to decreate the romantic hero of

"serenade" and to murder him.

He de- creates romantic poetry. He strips the shearman (hero) of romantic images of depth, abundance and shadow. He rejects the greatness of old poetry which dealt with the past Romantic images of

"the torches wisping in the underground" (hell) and "the structure of vaults upon a point of light" (heaven).

Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry Of the torches wisping in the underground,

Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light. T here are no shadows in our sun,

Day is desire and night is sleep. T here are no shadows anywhere.

T he earth, for us, of flat and bare. T here are no shadows. Poetry

- 58 - Exceeding music must take the place Of empty heaven and its hymns,

Ourselves in poetry must take their place, Even in chattering of your guitar. (CP 167)

T he good mother earth is de- created "flat and bare" by the decreative imagination. Here are none of the "turnings" of resemblance dominant in the H arm onium poems. Stevens attempts to discuss the new role of poetry as a new belief in replacement of the old romantic or classic poetry. Echoing "Sunday Morning," he insists that poetry should serve a new faith. But we cannot find in this poem any of the affirmative tone of "Sunday Morning" which demonstrates transformative resemblance in celebration between physical reality of sensual beauty in nature and mythic heaven. Here poetry seems to be a negative hero who likes to destroy or "take the place of" the heaven itself.

T he decreative mode is different from the resemblance mode in that it is more intelligently squirming, imagination- centered, somewhat negative, and darker in poetic tone. As the audience demands, the poet tries to bare the world as it is. T his means going to the bottom of reality to find pure reality. It is to strip something of its falsifications, masks, outer skins, etc. Bareness or nakedness is the first element of decreation in preparation of finding the real reality. T his process of baring or emptying seems to be the same as the element of meditation

- 59 - at a glance. But the basic difference is that there is the presence of self- consciousness in the decreative mode whereas there is no self- consciousness in the meditative mode with the self negated. We can still find the self- centered poetic consciousness powerfully working in the decreative mode.

Reality of decreation is well demonstrated in the motif of section five. According to Pearce, Stevens' reality of decreation is equivalent to

Keat' s negative capability.57)

A tune beyond us as we are, Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;

Ourselves in the tune as if in space, Yet nothing changed, except the place

Of things as they are and only the place As you play them, on the blue guitar,

Placed, so, beyond the compass of change, Perceived in a final atmosphere;

For a moment final, in the way T he thinking of art seems final when

T he thinking of god is smoky dew.

57) Pearce argues that "Blue Guitar" is an affirmation of decreative condition leading to final realization and recreation. For details, see Pearce, "T oward Decreation" in W allace Stevens: A Celebration, eds. Doggett and Buttel, 292. Prof. Chong Ho Lee further suggests that negative capability is equivalent to Zen- like mind emptying process that entertains two opposing elements in coexistence without the one being dictated by the other. For more details, see Chong Ho Lee, "A Postmodernistic Approach to Oxymoron," in Oriental T hought and P ostm odernist R eadings of B ritish and A m erican Literature (Seoul: Seoul National UP, 1991) 68.

- 60 - T he tune is space. T he blue guitar

Becomes the place of things as they are, A composing of senses of the guitar. (CP 167- 8)

Here Stevens suggests the final destination of his decreative mode: appropriate distortion not to harm reality of decreation. It is

Sukenick' s "an adequate fiction."58) If reality is placed in "a final atmosphere" "beyond the compass of change," reality in flux will stop changing for a moment and present an aspect re- created in poetry as if it seems to be "final." T he imagination in this case is not the power of transforming but only a mental space for reality as mentioned: "T he tune is space. T he blue guitar / Becomes the place of things as they are." If this positioning is made possible, the consistent opposition between the imagination and reality will be resolved. T he use of the word "seems" here shows "the uncertainty of knowing"59) and an assumptive or wishful possibility. T hough Stevens tries to suggest the possibility of a harmonious relation between reality and imagination in restricted contexts, he also knows the hostile relationship of the two and their irreconcilability. T he recognition of final irreconcilability tends to

58) Sukenic 85. 59) Helen Vendler suggests that "seems" in the first quotation describes "the uncertainty of knowing" and "Becomes" in the second quotation qualifies the certainty of the possibility in the future sense. See Vendler, "T he Qualified Assertions of Wallace Stevens" in T he A ct of the M ind E ssays on the P oetry of W allace Stevens, eds. Roy Harvey Pearce and J. Hillis Miller (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965) 168- 9.

- 61 - spur more decreative desire or poetic consciousness.

T o be a good decreative poet, he must overcome the limit of the imagination. T he imagination is not to be detached from reality (OP

187). Imagination should be like a "candle" (section sixteen), not "a

German chandelier," which "glistens in essential dark" and lights "the world," reality. T he poem figuratively presents the function of the true imagination.60) T he imagination in poetry can create a "dream," (CP

174- 5) namely a possible fiction of the world. When the imagination creates the world of believable fiction out of reality by giving "the touch of senses" to it, reality is invested with meanings and sensations.61)

Stevens continues to show decreation through reduction in section nineteen. He proposes that the self, the imagination, be reduced to "the monster" representing nature (LW S 790). He introduces the metaphors of animals, natural things, and primitive and astrological cultures.62) He further identifies the monster with "life" (LW S 360), and defines the monster as "the chaos and barbarism of reality."63) After the decreative

60) As Stevens says, "I think that [the poet' s] function is to make his imagination theirs and that he fulfills himself only as he sees his imagination become the light in the minds of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives" (N A 29). 61) Wallace Stevens, LW S 783. Stevens comments that "ex- sea" (previous sea) is "purely negative sea. . .without interest and provocation." 62) T he lion pertains to the Element of Earth and the w inged lion to the Element of Fire . . . and of the sun; the young lion is the rising sun; the old is the setting sun. For more details, see Cirlot 189- 90. 63) Sukenick 93.

- 62 - reduction of the monstrous reality, the poet will mediate between the self and the monster. As Hines points out, this is "extremely compressed image of both the reductions to equality (lion vs. lion) and the necessary violence of both the mind and object."64)

T he main theme of Stevens' decreative mode here is reduction or reductionist' s viewpoint of imagination. He further exercises highly intellectual decreative acts of reducing the self and reality to equalizing monsters so that he can achieve a balance between the imagination and reality and produce the valid expression of poetry. T o be decreative means to be reductive in his imagination, i.e. the outward or inward direction of his poetic consciousness. If he gets down to the bottom of reality in poetic consciousness, he would be successful in creating his own imaginative fictions. When he creates a possible fiction by the decreative power of the imagination by full participation in reality, he can make "A substitute for all the gods" (CP 176).

T he process of decreation reaches a bottom or climax in section twenty two, reducing the images of the mind and reality to the barest levels and equalizing the imagination as reality.65) T he imagination takes

64) Hines 64. 65) Stevens paraphrases section twenty tw o: "Poetry is the spirit, as the poem is body. Crudely stated, poetry is the imagination. . . . T he imagination has no source except in reality, and ceases to have any value when it departs from reality. Here is a fundamental principle about the imagination; it does not create except as it transforms. T here is nothing that exists exclusively by reason of the imagination, or that does not

- 63 - the matter from reality and gives coherence and adds meanings to that reality in "universal intercourse." He defines the process of imagination as meta- poetry66) which expresses interactions between the self and the world, the imagination and reality. Here we can see the possibility of a supreme fiction in "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" which maintains an ideal balance in "the universal intercourse" between reality and the imagination in spite of his awareness that the two are essentially separate entities in opposition.

Poetry is the subject of the poem, From this the poem issues and

T o this returns. Between the two, Between issue and return, there is

An absence in reality, T hings as they are. Or so we say.

But are these separate? Is it An absence for the poem, which acquires

Its true appearance there, sun' s green, Cloud' s red, earth feeling, sky that thinks?

From these it takes. Perhaps it gives, In the universal intercourse. (CP 176- 7)

Stevens continues his decreative reduction in his meta- poetry.67) in some form in imagination gives, but gives in relation" (LW S 363- 4). 66) Hammond writes, "meta- poetry presents . . . a highly grammatic drama, for it consists of concept about poetic language itself of w hich grammar makes up a large part of the story." See Mac Hammond, "On the Grammar of Wallace Stevens" in T he A ct of the M ind, eds. Pearce and Miller 184.

- 64 - T he absence is a complete disappearance of the poetic consciousness in the "universal intercourse" between "issue and return." It is a reduction of conscious imagination to be identified with reality. It is possible to reduce reality in poetry by an equally strong power of the imagination.

Once reduced, the diverse aspects of reality will disappear. He asks himself if reality of things as they are and reality in poetry are

"separate." T hen he also questions if reality is an absence for the poem.

He implies that despite the imagination' s attributes of transformation, it can create a possible fiction "in the universal intercourse" with reality.

Although he finds "a few final solutions" (CP 177) through his decreation, the conflicting voices and ambivalent feelings are not reconciled yet.68) "T he voice of ether" and "the grunted breath serene and final" exist as "the imagined and the real, thought / And the truth." T he poet' s self- reflective act of mind aims to achieve a balance and offers a compromise by meta- poetry. Meta- poetry redeems Stevens' decreative process. T he vitality of decreation is maintained with incessant writings of meta- poetry, even if it turns toward "the swarm of dreams / Of

67) J. Hillis Miller, "T heoretical and Atheorectical in Stevens" in W allace Stevens: A Celebration, eds. Frank Doggett and Robert Buttel 275. Miller suggests that "Stevens' poetry is . . . not merely poetry about poetry. It is a poetry that is the battleground among theories of poetry." 68) Daniel R. Schw arz, N arrative & R epresentation in the P oetry of W allace Stevens (New York: St. Martin' s, 1993) 115. Schw arz argues that "Blue Guitar" needs to be considered as a poem "with several voices" and the sections response to one another "in a dialogic mode."

- 65 - inaccessible Utopia" (CP 179).

Stevens seems to find the intentionality of his decreation mode: reconciliation of the imagination (fiction) and reality after he reaches self- discovery.

It could not be a mind, the wave In which the watery grasses flow ...... Here I inhale profounder strength And as I am, I speak and move

And things are as I think they are And say they are on the blue guitar. (CP 180)

He suggests two occasions of reconciliation. One occasion is when the poet attaches significance to the mind with his self- discovery. T he other one is when he feels at home with reality as the source of his existence as stated in "I am a native in this world." T he opposition of the two can be reconciled by the poet' s self identified as a being in the world: "things [reality] are as I think they are." T hen, the new real world which poetry presents would become a desirable fiction created by the harmonious relation between the two- - not just the mere thing changed by the imagination. T he poet offers the hopeful prospect of reconciling the basic opposition of reality and the imagination. De- creation is a poetic medium for their reconciliation.

T he poetic mode of decreation is not final as in the closing couplet of section thirty three. Reconciliation would be only momentary.

- 66 - T he basic opposition of the imagination and reality cannot be reconciled, but he intimates that poetry is a device to forget pressures of the violent reality. He cannot give up his poetic mission/right to decreate for a better creation of his ideal fiction in presence of pure reality.

Finally, how does he try to achieve that? He shows the basic taste of its reconciliatory possibility in section twenty- nine.

"T hese degustations in the vaults Oppose the past and the festival,

What is beyond the cathedral, outside, Balances with nuptial song.

So it is to sit and to balance things T o and to and to the point of still,

T o say of one mask it is like, T o say of another it is like,

T o know that the balance does not quite rest, T hat the mask is strange, however like,"

T he shapes are wrong and the sounds are false. T he bells are the bellowing of bulls. (CP 181)

In order to taste (degustate) the balance of two opposing elements

(reality and imagination), Stevens sits to "balance things" "to the point of still." T his state is the bottom line of his decreation process, where he finds likeness and difference (strangeness) together. T he mask in reality is "strange, however like." In reality they are "wrong shapes and false sounds." He knows how to balance the two masks intelligently, but

- 67 - he sees "the balance does not quite rest" yet. T his shows the hanging mode of his decreative manner. It is still "a wrangling of two dreams"

(CP 183). He still waits for "the bread of time to come" for "its actual stone" (CP 184). T his is the real facet of the limit in imagination, the strong patron of the decreative mode in "Blue Guitar."

Stevens' poetic progress toward the first idea in the later poetry, needs to pass through the returning phase of his poetic consciousness after it gets down to the desirable "the point of still." It is the second part of decreative functions: negation and reordering for new fictions.

T his second part of decreative functions is well expounded in "T he

Idea of Order at Key West."

"Key West" is the "center piece" 69) of Ideas of Order as well as the prologue to an image of the hero which dominates T he M an with the B lue Guitar and T he Parts of a W orld in Stevens' middle period. In

"Key West," Stevens demonstrates the decreative consciousness 70) of the imagination by dismantling old Romantic idea of order and its masked imageries of sea at first, and then reducing them to mere and chaotic sea. He emphasizes the role of imagination in decreating old relation and establishing new one between the imagination and reality, art and

69) Sexson 74. 70) Sexson 76. As Sexson notes, the "controlling force" in "Key West" is the decreative consciousness which is the poetic persona, masculine. T he singer is no longer H arm onium ' s Hoon of the feminine unconscious that is doing resemblance.

- 68 - society, which is required in a changed social climate.

T he speaker personifies the decreative consciousness as a woman singing while she walks by the seaside and questions what relationship her song has to the sound of the sea. T hrough the speaker' s decreative consciousness, her song is separated from the natural sounds of the chaotic water because she rejects the old romantic idea of the sea, reducing it merely to "a body wholly body, fluttering / Its empty sleeves" (CP 128). But the sea makes a "constant cry," "inhuman."

Perhaps, one man can understand it because while it is a "mimic motion" which seems to ape man, it is the voice of the "veritable ocean," pure truth, pure reality.

T he sea was not a mask. No more was she. T he song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was what she heard, It may be that in all her phrases stirred T he grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. (CP 128- 9)

T he poet' s decreative consciousness negates the old relation between the imagination, the art and nature, the world, implicitly stressing the need of new relation in this stanza. T he old romantic concept of the sea and the past idea of woman are no longer a

"mystery" ("mask") for the poet.71) Even if the speaker sings her song

71) Hines 52. As Hines observes, Stevens stripped her; so she is unmasked and no longer a mystery.

- 69 - derived from the sea, her song is distinct from the sea. T he woman' s song cannot be identified with the sound of the sea. Stevens had insisted on this when he wrote about the summer maidens of

H arm onium whose songs and surroundings were made through the imagination' s act of resemblance. But when the poet says "She sang beyond the genius of the sea. / T he water never formed to mind or voice," he implies not only that there is the flux of reality beyond the human mind, but also that the imagination de- creates the physical reality in separation for reordering it. T he "cry" of the sea is heard by the listener as the "mimic motion" of the rhythmic waves.

As the speaker listens to the song, however, he finds that he must distinguish "between human song and its pathetic fallacy."72) T he song is the result of reordering an "inhuman" reality, "the veritable ocean."

Here Stevens shows the decreative process of separating the self

(song) from the sea (violent reality) as Hines notes.73) As "the constant cry" of the sea suggests, the empty sea waves seem to engender a reordering by the human mind, but the sea still remains unordered and inhuman. Here Stevens destroys the old Romantic idea of union between the lady' s song and sea by negative decreative statements.

In the first stanza, we find that Stevens is conscious of the

72) Hines 52 73) Hines 52.

- 70 - various decreative functions of dismantling old order, of creating new one, and of the limit of the decreative imagination by contrasting art with reality. T he actual reality unordered even by the power of art is again described in the second stanza; "the song and water were not medleyed sound." Despite the lady' s song, the sea is "not a mask" but it remains naked as it is, and the lady remains in separation from reality as a result of the speaker' s decreative consciousness. T he direct reason for this is "For she was the maker of the song she sang."

As Helen H. Vendler comments on Stevens' sentence structure74) of "Even if," "since." "it may be," "if," "or," this is a structural device to integrate the poetic images- - sea, girl, water, song, wind, air, sky, cloud, voices until they become indistinguishable. Here we also find the positive structure of decreation. T his hypothetic device for various possibilities of the art- reality relation represents Stevens' exploratory position as he begins to examine it in the following process of development.

For she was the maker of the song she sang. T he ever- hooded, tragic- gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew T hat we should ask this often as she sang. (CP 129)

T he poet studies a paradox in juxtaposition of positiveness and

74) Vendler, T he A ct of the M ind, ed. Pearce and Miller 175.

- 71 - negativeness of the imagination through the lady' s song. He is simultaneously aware of the fictive desire and the limit of imagination. He emphasizes the nature of reality separated from the human mind at the metaphor of "ever- hooded, tragic- gestured sea." T he essence of reality is "ever- hooded" and the human mind is always "tragic- gestured" in a hidden situation.75) T he sea and the lady' s song remain segregated and unreconciled. T he speaker' s "decreative statements"76) negate old ideas about self and imagination. T hen the speaker asks, "Whose spirit is this?" De- creative mode is part of reordering the lost faith or belief.

In answer to the above question, the speaker tries to confirm the true reality between his voice or her "sound" by repeating two "if" clauses. He discusses the significance of the lady' s song as "more than that" [the mere sound]:

But it was more than that More even than her voice, and ours, among T heatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped On high horizon, mountainous atmospheres Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made T he sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world

75) Hines 52. As Hines notes, the old romantic concept of the sea and the past idea of w oman are no longer a "mystery" and "mask" for the poet. Even if the speaker describes her song derived from the sea, her song is distant from the sea. Stevens is seeking new symbol to relate self with the world. 76) Hines 53.

- 72 - In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self T hat was her song, for she was the maker. T hen we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. (CP 129- 30)

T he spirit in the lady' s song represents the typical decreative mode of the human imagination striving to decreate chaotic reality for reordering it. T o be a positive creator of imagination, he needs a song of artifice for creativity. T he song is the imagination that de- creates chaotic reality into new order and creates the human association out of the meaningless natural scene. When the sea is reordered by her song, it becomes "whatever self it had." T he singer adds her self to the meaningless reality and reconstructs an imaginative world for new order through the song, an artifice, which provides the sea and sky with meaning.77) It is a new world of reality, added with the self, the song itself.

T his does not necessarily mean that the self and the sea (reality) are unified into a whole as claimed by many of Stevens' critics. In actuality the singer (self) and the sea (reality) are different and separate and these two are only brought together in the singer' s imaginative world of artistic new order. T hey become coexistent only in his poetic

77) Sexson 75. Sexson argues that this section is a stirring celebration of the poet' s ability through the decreative imagination to give order and meaning, pattern and coherence to a world which has lost its intimacy with nature.

- 73 - consciousness, which is the singing voice, or the song itself. When the song is over, their virtual union is also finite. T hus their temporal union is a partial and transient fiction.

In stanza six, the decreative imagination with its dividing and reordering principles comes into full play. T he woman' s song de- created an old Romantic order and imposed a fictive order on the environment while she sang by the sea.

Ramon Fernandez,78) tell me, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned T oward the town, tell why the glassy lights, T he lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, As the night descended, tilting in the air, Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. (CP 130)

In response to the question raised in stanza six, the speaker answers in the closing stanza that art is "Blessed rage for order" (CP

130); the art orders and dominates reality as represented by the sea through the imagination. T he blessed rage for order shows the poet' s desire to decreate chaotic reality into a new order in rhythms by using the decreative imagination and by the power of words. T his poetic order is designed to arrange poetry in "ghostlier demarcation, keener

78) Joan Richardson, W allace Stevens T he Later Y ears 1923- 1955 (New York: Beech T ree, 1988) 117- 78. Richardson writes that Stevens happened to use Fernandez as a Spanish critic in criticism of the critic' s sympathy toward the literary leftist movement that had prevailed in support of the proteletarian class in the 1930s.

- 74 - sounds" by using the power of the imagination. But the distant gap between art and reality still fails to be bridged in the closing stanza.

Helen Regueiro argues that "the virtual ordering of reality becomes an unfulfilled desire."79) Stevens becomes deeply aware of reality' s distance from the song in the progress of the poem. T he order the poem is going to impose is not the real order but only an aesthetic and arbitrary construct. T he poem ironically expresses Stevens' consciousness that poetry is only a fiction like the world and it does not represent changing reality exactly as it is. As implied by the title of the poem, it does not reveal any of his assurance of the order.

We have seen the antithesis between art and barbarous reality in the first half of the poem. In the second half, Stevens goes on with the decreative act of self- reflection in the mind to secure the position of poetry in the absence of any absolute truth. His incessant self- reflective act for decreation further progresses in subsequent poems.

Although Stevens understands the multi- functions of decreation

(negation, separation, reduction, and reordering), he further pushes himself for another way of finding pure reality. T o overcome a deadlock in

"T he Man with the Blue Guitar," the potential kindlings of "the point of still" in the poem and to secure the reordering right of decreative identification in "Key West", Stevens takes the decreation mode to the

79) Regueiro 166.

- 75 - extreme. It is a masculine decreative progress toward annihilation, nothingness in a hope to perceive pure reality in P arts of a W orld. His poetic persona totally rejects the feminine principle of the imagination which sought metaphoric connections through resemblances in

H arm onium. T his decreative imagination is experimentally employed to show where the absolute reality or the locale of truth is.

In "Landscape with Boat," "ascetic" Stevens conducts a pseudo- meditative way of decreation to find the exact location of truth. T his pseudo- meditative decreation is an overture to the later meditative mode.

His persona has stripped away everything, like an onion- peeling ritual, to reach the "core of nothingness"80) or "the veritable Ding an Sich"

(CP 29). His protagonist has conducted a quest for a "truth beyond all truths" (CP 242). His mental search for the absolute truth is to secure the pure and ultimate reality. T he man who is possessively seeking a world without the imagination and ignoring physical senses is satirized in the poem as an "anti- master- man, floribund ascetic" (CP 241)81):

He brushed away the thunder, then the clouds, T hen the colossal illusion of heaven. Yet still T he sky was blue. He wanted imperceptible air. He wanted to see. He wanted the eye to see And not be touched by blue. He wanted to know, A naked man who regarded himself in the glass Of air, who looked for the world beneath the blue,

80) Sexson 89. 81) Brown, T he P oem as A ct 134.

- 76 - Without blue, without any turquoise tint or phase, Any azure under- side or after- color, Nabob At the neutral centre, the ominous element, T he single- colored, colorless, primitive. (CP 241- 2)

Stevens uses the decreative mode ("beneath the blue") in a brushing way like a painter. In a decreative mode, he brushes away all illusions, romantic decorations in order to arrive at the absolute

"colorless" reality, the world without the imagination. T he speaker searches for "perfection" and "an inhuman reality."82) His persona has arrived at the point of total negation, the "nothingness that is not there"

(CP 10).

De- creative imagination leads to desirable fictions through a balanced relationship between reality and imagination, and it could also lead to the total negation of negative nothingness that is paradoxical and dangerous. As J. Hillis Miller points out, "man becomes a nihilist when

God and the creation become the objects of consciousness; nihilism is the nothingness of consciousness when consciousness become the foundation of nothingness."83) T he speaker tries to seek "A truth beyond all truths." In other words, he supposes a salvation in things and objects through the decreative power of the mind, consciousness. He knows that truth can be the antinomy of antinomy and that nothingness can be the negation of negation. T ruth is the opposite side of the truth itself.

82) Sexson 89. 83) Miller, Poets of R eality 3.

- 77 - De- creation is the process of this paradoxical double negation.84)

De- creative poetic consciousness annihilates itself in the absence of the metaphoric imagination of resemblance.85) Here also the possessive consciousness of the mind' s masculine principle becomes "sclerotic

(hardened)."86) Rejecting his life, his world and everything he saw and heard, the poetic persona of "Boat" thought he would arrive at the absolute truth beyond truths, nothingness. In so doing, he would become a nihilist. T he ascetic man was moribund since he rejected the imagination, senses, reality- - all the aspects of life. For him, nothingness was multiplied by nothingness.

Stevens' extreme decreation at last requires correctives to errors.

As Hines observes,87) the "floribund" ascetic reaffirms the need of both the rich physical reality and imaginative power in the resemblance mode.

Once again, the natural world and all things negated become divine, true, and holy. He needs the poetic features again which were dominant in the H arm onium poems. T he poem concludes that if man is "capable of imagining no transcendent reality,"88) he can regain a good reality- imagination relation. In the poem, Stevens self- consciously cautions

84) Pearce notes that Stevens' decreative mode "requires denial and doubt as a condition of achievement and certitude." See Pearce, "T oward Decreation" in W allace Stevens: A Celebration, eds. Frank Doggett and Robert Buttel 298. 85) Sexson 91. 86) Neumann 31. 87) Hines 111. 88) Hines 111.

- 78 - against the limit and danger of the mind' s possessive decreative act in trying to reach the absolute truth and ultimate reality. "Boat" warns against "false [decreation] and the false heaven."89)

T hree poems, "Blue Guitar," "Key West," and "Boat" have shown

Stevens' decreative poetic motion to go down to the bottom of the poetic consciousness to regain a desirable interrelationship between reality and the imagination. Stevens has demonstrated the four functions of decreation (negation, separation, reduction, and reordering) in the poems.

In total, Stevens employs decreation as the decreative proces s of abs traction that he learned from abs tract paintings in his bus ines s days . This decreative proces s is des igned to aim to gras p the es s ence of true and pure reality. Stevens dis mantles the old concepts of the thing and intuits its firs t idea by exercis ing the decreative power of the imagination in order to recover its fres hnes s . De- creation could be another facet of "creations ."90)

Intros pective downward movement into his inner poetic world is the decreative proces s of his s econd poetic mode. The end of decreation is to reach pure reality for s elf- dis covery.

89) Reguerio 196. 90) Pearce, T he Continuity of A m erican P oetry 412.

- 79 - Chapter T hree

Re- creation: N ote s T owards a Supre m e F iction

During his late period of 1942- 49, Wallace Stevens published two volumes, N otes towards a Suprem e Fiction (1942), and T ransport to

Sum mer (1947). Chapter T hree will examine "Notes towards a Supreme

Fiction" to show how Stevens demonstrates the third mode of recreation toward the mind' s act in search of a supreme fiction based on his self- consciousness. T his chapter will also see how Stevens' self- consciousness contributes towards the possibility of creating a supreme fiction.

In "It Must Be Abstract," Stevens uses the second decreative mode of the imaginative abstraction to perceive pure reality. In "It Must

Change," he employs the first poetic mode of the creative resemblance.

In "It Must Give Pleasure," he combines the two modes to make the third mode of recreation.

In the course of his poetic efforts, Stevens finds it impossible to grasp the essence of reality in his middle period if sticking to the first two functions of the imagination: resemblance and decreation. So he adopts a new strategy to use the third function of the imagination: recreation. T he recreation is the unitive power of the mind which aims

- 80 - to fuse two opposing elements, reality and the imagination, the self and the world in interaction. T his poetic mode combines the decreation with the mimetic transformation in search for the new possibility of desirable fictions. After the decreation completes the four processes of negation, separation, reduction, and reordering, Stevens wants to re- create a new supreme fiction, the decisive version of all fictions. T his re- creative mode comes into full play in "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction."

In "Notes," Stevens cautiously suggests the possibility of a supreme fiction through "mystic marriage" (CP 401), a symbol for the recreation, which reality and the imagination can make in a momentous intercourse. He names the marriage as "pure principle" (CP 418). He further explains it as reality and the imagination "being there together" and "making a dwelling" in "the central mind" (CP 524). T he pure principle produces the pure poetry.91) T he re- creative mode is to find the pure principle after the resemblance and decreation modes cannot depict

91) Joseph Carroll writes, "Pure poetry . . . presupposes and articulates a transcendent principle of pure sentient relation that comprehends both the mind and reality within the unity of ' the central mind.' " He further defines Stevens' pure poetry as "meditative, mythical, and visionary." He also notes that it "emerges at night and associates itself with sleep, dreams, and the unconscious." For more details, see Joseph Carroll, W allace Stevens' Suprem e F iction A N ew R om anticism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987) 19, and Joseph Carroll, "T eaching Stevens as a Late Romantic Poet," in T eaching W allace Stevens: P ractical E ssays T ennessee Studies in Literature V ol. 35, eds. John N. Serio and B.J. Leggett (Knoxville: U of T ennessee P, 1994) 246.

- 81 - it precisely yet.

In his late period, Stevens' poetic persona is fully engaged in finding the central mind, in which every opposing thing or element meets together. Glass or crystal is used as a metaphor for the reconciliation. As Miller points out, the reconciliation between reality and the imagination is achieved only briefly as "a momentary hallucination"92) and the "last illusion"(CP 468)93) which provides a temporary rest for the mind. T herefore, he needs a stable basis to secure the momentary euphoria in his poetic consciousness. It is the mode of recreation

(regeneration) to overcome the fleeting "pleasure." T he supreme fiction is his poetic ideal, an aesthetic form of order, and "the amassing harmony"

(CP 403). It is the object of the regenerative mode in his poetic consciousness.

In the previous chapters, we have examined Stevens' two poetic modes. Poetry is a tentative fiction/mode to define the real world. T he fictionality of poetry is an exclusive way to the integration of the self with the changing world and to the creation of "the supreme fiction without which we are unable to conceive of it [life]" (N A 31). T o

92) Miller, P oets of R eality 257. Millers argues that the glass man used in the poem suggests the idea that reality is part of the mind but it is necessary to put a temporary stop to endless conflict between reality and the imagination. It is "a momentary hallucination." 93) Miller 257. Miller points out the idea that reality is a thing seen by the mind is "inescapable choice / Of dreams, disillusion as the last illusion" (CP 468).

- 82 - achieve this end of a poetic equilibrium, three functions of the imagination (mimetic transformation, decreation, and regeneration) are simultaneously applied even for a momentary harmony in the poetic act of the mind.

T he re- creative function of the poetic imagination is to combine two functions of the imagination: the creative resemblance and the decreative abstraction. T he resemblance and the decreation together lead to the recreation. Here the integrating act of the mind is central to the recreation.

Stevens' supreme fiction is closely related to his mental aspect and poetic consciousness. However, his poetic efforts do not clearly define what it aims at, even in his letter to H. Simons (LW S 435). He says, "I don' t want to say what I don' t mean poetry," but also hold off from the enigmatic definition of it. Surely it is "the poetry of the idea," and his own fictive creation.

Stevens demonstrates a number of its characteristics, though. Here we can see his consistent skepticism that any of his poetic efforts to define the real world of changes remain only tentative and provisional.94)

T he essence of the real changing world may be distorted upon its definition. Accordingly, a supreme fiction, for Stevens, is the result of a

94) George Bornstein, T ransformations of R omanticism in Y eats, Eliot and Stevens (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976) 219. Bornstein points out that Stevens' skepticism is derived from his typical horror of any object definite definition.

- 83 - possibility explored by the creative process of poetry and it is not the fixed destination. Paradoxically, this limitation is his driving force for any forms of regeneration.

Likewise, Stevens seeks for the recreation of his fiction, the integration of the imagination and reality. His unifying symbol of the opposites is "a complete self,"95) the recreation of a mental equilibrium in reality. It is the symbolic synthesis. T his is the growth from the fragmentation or the decreation in Stevens' middle period to the synthesis of the recreation in his late period. T he recreation mode is a poetic consciousness which "re- creates, / Searches a possible for its possibleness"(CP 481).

"Notes" characterizes three functions of Stevens' imagination as three organizing principles of the mimetic transformation, the decreation, and the recreation in his poetry. T he three poetic modes appear criss- crossingly throughout the poem, but their goal is one: the collective regeneration of all three.

"It Must Be Abstract" asserts the abstraction (same as decreation) process as the first condition of achieving a supreme fiction, a trope for the pure and ultimate reality. T hrough this abstractive (same as decreative) process, Stevens dismantles the old ideas inherent deep in the

95) Sexson 118. Sexson points out the integration of the fragments of personality into "a complete self."

- 84 - poetic consciousness to intuit "the first idea" (CP 383) of reality. T he abstraction in "It Must Change" proposes that the first ideas should be dependent on the concrete images created by the transformative resemblance of the imagination. "It Must Give Pleasure" shows the final state of the attainment of a supreme fiction. It deals with the synthetic and regenerative power of the imagination.

"Notes" starts from finding the reality- as- it- is for a resemblance or identification between the self and reality and then it moves toward the decreating mode to find "the First Idea", and last, toward the regenerating mode to reach "a Supreme Fiction." Beginning from section one of part one, Stevens exercises the decreative act of the imagination to purify the old ideas. T he first step is to have a state of innocence

"with an ignorant eye" (CP 380- 1). It is to see "this invented world" as a "direct sense image."96)

Furthermore, Stevens proposes the possibility of perceiving the purest reality in a decreative way (LW S 426- 7). He starts with the first condition of "It Must Be Abstract" for a supreme fiction: a way to perceive the "first idea." T he way is not to conceptualize the real world.

Rather, it is the power to carry the image of the very thing alive and

96) Miller, P oets of R eality 248. Miller points out that Stevens uses the word "idea" in its original meaning of "direct sense image." Furthermore, Beverly Coyle defines "idea" as "the immediate product of direct perception." Beverly Coyle, "Defining the role of Aphorism in Wallace Stevens' Poetry," P M LA 91.2 (March 1976) 218.

- 85 - undistorted into the mind. T his is the way of his abstraction.

In the concept of the first idea revealed by the abstraction, Stevens shows the quality of the poet of the mind. As "the first idea is an imagined thing" (CP 387), his abstraction is a result of the imaginative efforts to reach "A new knowledge of reality" (CP 534). T hus reality perceived in its first idea takes a new appearance different from the old one.

Stevens enumerates the quality of recreation continuously. T he first quality of a re- creative mode in a poem is the refreshment of life.

T he poem refreshes life so that we share, For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies Belief in an immaculate beginning

And sends us, winged by an unconscious will, T o an immaculate end. We move between these points: From that ever- early candor to its late plural

And the candor of them is the strong exhilaration Of what we feel from what we think, of thought Beating in the heart, as if blood newly came. (CP 382)

T o refresh the life is the beginning and the end of his poetry. T o re- create means to know "an immaculate beginning" and "an immaculate end" together. T he immaculate beginning point is the first idea and the immaculate end is the supreme fiction. Supreme fiction is possible when one should endlessly intuit the first idea to reach "an immaculate end" of "its late plural." Once it is reached, everything is refreshed and the

- 86 - poem becomes "an elixir," the poem that "gives a candid kind to everything . . ." T hen, our life of "nonsense" will come back to its vitality.

T o accomplish the abstraction of the first idea, the metaphoric resemblance of the imagination should be embodied first. Abstraction

(thought) must be coupled with feeling (heart) in an exhilarating tone.

Resemblance is a state of the human images true and real to the first idea. De- creation is the movement of the images or poetic consciousness downward or upward to the First idea.

Stevens says about the second quality of the recreation mode: reason for reawakening. In section four, he accepts the historical myth first as the basis of recreation and then repulses it. Reason is a requisite for "the first idea," but also something to be discarded.

T he first idea was not our own. Adam In Eden was the father of Descartes And Eve made air the mirror of herself, ...... T here was a muddy centre before we breathed. T here was a myth before the myth began, Venerable and articulate and complete.

From this the poem springs: that we live in a place T hat is not our own and, much more, not ourselves And hard it is in spite of blazoned days. (CP 383)

Stevens, a poetic Adam, tries again to resemble the mythical entity as an archetype of his poetic desire. Adam is "a symbol of reason"

- 87 - (LW S 433) and his poetic father. Here Adam is the symbol of reason or even self- consciousness in perceiving reality. Since Adam is the first man carrying "the first idea," he must be "blazoned" to interpret the real world truthfully. T herefore, the Eden Garden is where the poetic consciousness of recreation must be directed at first. It could be "a second earth" or "the invented world." Reality is "not a mirror" that reflects the human mind but "bare board" (CP 384) that precedes the mirror. So the poet should secure the prospect of the pure reality described in "a muddy centre" by eliminating the myth invented by the imagination.

Repulsion is another quality of the recreation.

As Riddel observes, the fortunate fall from Eden gave man the growth of "self- consciousness," the will to name the world, and to

"possess it as it once possessed him."97) Stevens here declares poetry springs from the growth of this self- consciousness, which is also another motif of the poetic recreation for his later poetry. T his way, the self- consciousness is the third force to attain the ideal recreation.

T hus we find the significance of the poem in that the poet at first de- creates the existing myths. Here the decreation mode revives as a helping function for the recreation. T he decreation, a downward movement of the imagination, is a working agent for his intention to perceive the pure reality in opposition. T his opposition portends the must

97) Riddel 17l.

- 88 - of recreation (regeneration) in his poetic consciousness.

For the recreation of reality into the supreme fiction, "ephebe"

(the young poet) must pass through the instinctive life of the low animals only in union with the environment without perceiving their real world. He only tries to perceive reality conceptually and subsequently becomes the immature poet who fails to think "the first idea. As pointed out in section three, the poet' s endless act of the imagination is required to maintain the first idea since it is a result of a momentary intuition of the prospect of pure reality. T he role of the poet will be to keep thinking the first idea continuously as a way to perceive reality in order to present the real shape of reality either "visible or invisible" (CP

385).

So Stevens invents an ideal hero, "Major man," for ideal recreation. T he major man is capable of reaching the ultimate reality through the final function of the imagination, recreation. "Major man" is

"the pensive giant" (CP 386- 7) representing "the full grown- poet,"98) who can re- create himself into the higher dimension of reality or the more real imagination.

98) Bloom, T he P oems of Our Clim ate 190. On the other hand, Merle E. Brown defines "major man" as the exceptional man that struggles to unify the real world with imagination and as distinguished from "mere man" or the beasts that walks into the real world as the ground of their life in coexistence with time. For more details, see Merle E. Brown, "Concordia discourse in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens," A m erican Literature 34 (May 1962): 256.

- 89 - One of the Stevens' consistent poetic subjects is "the function of the imagination."99) According to Roy Harvey Pearce, the "major man" represents "a personification of the process of the imagination."100)

Moreover, the "major man" is "a manifestation of that balance between imagination and reality out of which alone the supreme fiction can be approached."101) As Milton J. Bates notes, Stevens personifies supreme fiction in "major man" or "the first idea" as his hero.102)

Stevens says clearly that the end of the abstraction is about the man himself. "T he major abstraction is the idea of man" (CP 388). T he abstraction must get along with the embodiment of a concrete image. In fact, the ' major man' (abstraction) is known through a man (the concrete particular man)."103) T he decreative imagination reveals the abstraction of reality through the concrete metaphor. It is to realize reality through the human abstraction. Stevens writes "it is easier to believe in something created by the imagination than to believe in the imagination itself" (LW S 370).

Stevens finds that the quality of the recreation is the fusion of the decreative imagination (abstraction) with the creative imagination

99) Pearce, "Wallace Stevens: T he Life of the Imagination" in W allace Stevens, ed. Marie Borroff 111. 100) Hines 175- 6. 101) Beckett 144. 102) Bates, W allace Stevens, A M ythology of Self 234- 65. 103) Pearce, ed. Borrof 123.

- 90 - (transformative resemblance) through the concrete words of the human imagery. For the recreation, the abstraction, if helped only by the masculine consciousness (in the middle period) cannot work effectively without the interaction with the feminine principle (in the early period).

The harmony of two opposing elements, like Yin and Yang, is the basic requirement of the successful abstraction of the recreation.

T hough Stevens uses the subjunctive clauses to show one possibility of integrating reality with the imagination, section four in part one is significant as a proposal for the prospect of a supreme fiction.

Furthermore, his repetitive uses of "as if" in the poem implies his philosophical base and his basic strategy for this poem. Stevens' major man creates the "as if" world104) or the possibile fictive world by exercising the power of the mind in order to protect himself from the threat of the hostile external world. He tries to understand the real world and to harmonize with it through the fiction. He further attempts to create the possible fictive world with which he intends to integrate the reality of chaos. T he recreation of the fictive idea, the first idea, is his last resort to the ultimate truth.

104) Brogan 129- 30. Brogan points out that Stevens' poetic world of "as if" has striking parallels with Vaihinger' s A ls Ob philosophy. According to Vaihinger, "as if" world is far more important than the real world . . . and becomes a world of values. In order to preserve itself from the hostile assault of the external world, the human organ is forced to seek every possible means of assistance, external as well as internal.

- 91 - As seen so far, Stevens examines the significance of "the first idea" and its possibility in part one. Moreover, to reach it, he shows the prospect of the "major man," the real agent of the recreation. Yet

Stevens must wait more until his re- creative mode comes into full play in part three to combine two modes for the recreation of the supreme fiction through the major man.

In "It Must Change," Stevens continues to assert that in order to reflect the changing aspect of reality, poetry should be made new continuously by the creative resemblance of the transformative imagination which functioned so well in his early poetry. T he creative resemblance is the most important element in his poetry. For the resemblance Stevens recurrently uses the archetypal symbols of antithesis: consciousness and the unconscious, man and woman, and day and night. T he creative resemblance is made possible by the harmonious functions of discordant imagery.

In section one, he describes the constancy in inconstancy and at the same time the inconstancy in constancy. Realities "[a]re inconstant objects of inconstant cause / In a universe of inconstancy" (CP 389).

T hey are all subject to temporality or death. Poetry is also subject to change. Among changes, repetition or constancy is found. In a larger wheel of fortune, something universal tends to repeat itself. It is called the truth of life, which the transformative resemblance wants to imitate

- 92 - or continues to revive. Even in the "inconstant cause," Stevens points out that an individual' s life is not merely "resuming" (CP 391) by repetitive cycles, but by "beginning" ever- fresh with the temporal

"distaste" that he feels for the mythic world of constancy.

He further asserts the object of the resemblance in section three: the symbol of eternity. Although human beings fear death, or the end of temporal change, they yearn for a statue of an immobile hero as a symbol of eternity. Such a statue is a legacy of the past, separated from the real changing world.

On Sundays, lawyers in their promenades Approached this strongly- heightened effigy T o study the past, and doctors, having bathed

T hemselves with care, sought out the nerveless frame Of a suspension, a permanence, so rigid T hat it made the General a bit absurd,

Changed his true flesh to an inhuman bronze. T here never had been, never could be, such A man. T he lawyers disbelieved, the doctors

Said that as keen, illustrious ornament, As a setting for geraniums, the General, T he very Place Du Puy, in fact, belonged

Among our more vestigial states of mind. Nothing had happened because nothing had changed. Yet the General was rubbish in the end. (CP 391- 2)

The lawyer and the doctor consider the look of the military general as a symbol for immobile and firm belief as well as for eternity, but

- 93 - Stevens looks at it as an "absurd" art form, inhuman, lifeless, and fixed.105)

T herefore the monotonous world of art, represented by the statue, remains only as the "rubbish" product of "more vestigial states of mind" which does not reflect the active imagination susceptive to changes. He has contrasted the characteristics of existential change, controlled by temporality, against the mythic world of the fixed art so far.

In section four, Stevens tells us how to combine two opposing elements in the recreation mode. He argues that the recreation does not simply come from the arbitrary integration of different things, but from the "things of opposite natures," depending "on one another" without losing an individual' s own nature. T his is not the simple physical integration but being together in the mind. As B. J. Leggett observes, the following section suggests that Heraclitus' polarities strive toward one another continually without consummating the struggle like lovers' relation of love and hatred.106)

He further says that "the particulars of rapture" come from "the partaker" partaking of "that which changes him."

T wo things of opposite natures seem to depend On one another, as a man depends On a woman, day on night, the imagined

105) Kessler 125. Kessler observes that Stevens "often uses the statue image to suggest fixity in a world of incessant change . . . the statue is almost seen as dead form . . . unappealing when seen against the backdrop of the vivid natural world." 106) B.J. Leggett, E arly Stevens T he N ietz schean Intertext (Duke UP, 1992) 157.

- 94 - On the real. T his is the origin of change. Winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace And forth the particulars of rapture come...... T he partaker partakes of that which changes him. T he child that touches takes character from the thing. T he body, it touches. T he captain and his men

Are one and the sailor and the sea are one. Follow after? O my companion, my fellow, my self, Sister and solace, brother and delight. (CP 392)

Stevens describes the partaking process for the future recreation of a supreme fiction. He is stressing the oneness between two opposites.

He writes that there are two kinds of faculties of the mind: consciousness and the unconscious. He re- creates the identification of two by means of his conscious will in the conscious mind. He says that the poet' s imagination (the conscious will of the mind) is "not wholly his own" and thus he, more often, has to rely on the unconscious activity, which has a larger source than consciousness for the more powerful play of the imagination (N A 115). T his conscious will of the mind supports the recreation which is part of the imagination.

Stevens continues to assert that it is the poet' s business to try to get at this kind of imagination. He must try to live "on the verge of consciousness" to do so. He goes on for their recreation, "[two] faculties of the mind co- exist and interact, and there is as much delight in this mere coexistence as a man and a woman find in each other' s

- 95 - company" (LW S 368).107) T he consciousness (abstraction) and the unconscious (concrete image) momentarily co- exist and interact, revealing the poetic truth. He describes such moments of truth obtained "on a walk around a lake,"108) the moments of "balance that happen, / As a man and woman meet and love forthwith" (CP 386), and the “moments of awakening, / Extreme, fortuitous, personal."

"T he imagined" depends on, and interacts with, "the real," and re- creates a desirable fictive world. With the inconstancy of reality in the mind and in recognition of fiction that may differ from the real thing as it is, the poet can explore a more proper relationship between the real and the imagined. When the imagination and reality interact continuously, such interaction gives the poet pleasure. Eventually, the existing fiction may be scrapped or modified, leading to the possibility of a new supreme fiction.

In order for the self to be integrated with the changing reality which lacks an absolute doctrine, Stevens requires his best re- creative efforts to produce the final prospect though it may hardly come true.

But he may feel the pleasure of a new start in process of recreation

107) Frank Doggett, W allace Stevens: T he M aking of the P oem (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980) 17. Doggett suggests that Stevens describes two halves in one person: the unconscious ("sister and solace") and the other half consciousness ("brother and delight"). 108) Lake is a symbol of abyss and a symbol of water deeps symbolizing mind. See Cirlot 175.

- 96 - toward such prospect. Accordingly, the inconstancy of reality that reflectively regenerates the "fluctuations of certainty" (CP 395) may be the principle to produce a supreme fiction. When he believes in the interdependence of "two things of opposite nature," this interdependence is the origin of change and recreation. In order to overcome the human conditions, Stevens points out the bird' s song in allusion109) to Percy

Bysshe Shelly' s "Ode to the West Wind" in section six. The bird' s song110) stands for the "self" longing for permanence or its recreation: namely, a wish for the recreation of a fictive world by imagination.

In section eight, Stevens allegorically presents a "dramatic confrontation"111) between the hero "Ozymandias" (the masculine consciousness) and the woman, "Nanzia Nunzio"112) (the feminine unconscious). It implies the re- creational process of two antinomies.

So that I tremble with such so known And myself am precious for your perfecting.

T hen Ozymandias said the spouse, the bride Is never naked. A fictive covering Weaves always glistening from the heart and mind. (CP 396)

109) Rajeev S. Patke, T he Long P oem s of W allace Stevens A n Interpretative Study (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) 152- 3. Patke points out the allusion to "Ode to the West Wind." 110) Doggett, Stevens' P oetry of T hought 2. 111) Sexson 131. 112) Sexson 131. Stevens obviously borrows the man' s name from Shelley' s poem of mutability suggesting man of change. T he woman reminds the under- world, removed, at each level, a piece of clothing until at last she was totally naked.

- 97 - T he strong Ozymandias, the personification of the conscious mind, holds his ground without being dissolved in front of the domineering woman, the unconscious mind. She strips herself of her present fictive covering and asks him to clothe her in the "spirit' s diamond coral" (the mind) (CP 396). As Lucy Beckett claims, the Ozymandias- Nanzio

Nunzio episode "amounts to a summary of the intention and the achievements of the whole "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction," indeed of the whole of Stevens' works."113) T herefore, the recreation mode is the central piece of his poetry.

In the above lines, the identification (oneness) by recreation comes true in an imaginative integration. Reality is always seen in some fictive version woven by "the heart and mind." Stevens terms this episode as

"fiction as an extension of reality or even a thing itself in which we believe" (LW S 431). T he creative imagination of resemblance here interacts with the abstraction, producing a fictive reality. T his is the hidden harmony between the creative imagination and the decreative one.

Stevens' imagination progresses in the re- creative mode toward a supreme fiction. T his positive process signifies the antinomic principle of the recreation: uniformity vs. diversity, sameness vs. difference, mono- tony vs. polytony, "a single text" vs. plural texts, fluctuations of reality vs. immobility, the absolute permanence vs. arbitrary fictions, etc. Its

113) Beckett 153.

- 98 - principle is the embracing power of antinomies. For example, it is also the relation of the first leaf with leaves like "an earth in which the first leaf is the tale of leaves." T he numberless leaves that we call leaf at our convenience may resemble each other but, precisely speaking, they do not have identical shape. T herefore, the word, "leaf," is the artificial concept, simplifying and disregarding the difference of the various leaves.114)

Similarly, the poetic recreation is only conducted in the boundary of language. Poetic fictions are re- created in the verbal work.

Imagination is the conceptual adventure into an unknown linguistic reality. Poems are fictions written within the existing linguistic framework. Stevens' poetry, or language, can further present the prospect of the supreme fiction that pursues "the first idea" in a converse way. His recreation, or supreme fiction- making, is conducted by stripping his language of the old ideas through the "peculiar combination of ordinary language"115) and the strange language of the imagination.

T his recreation mode is redeemed by the poetic language itself.

Pointing out the limit of the uniformed and monotonous imagination, Stevens makes his imaginative efforts to re- create a new perception of "iris frettings on the blank" in the closing section, using the

114) Friedrich W. Nietzsche, T he P ortable N ietz sche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954) 46. 115) Hines 193.

- 99 - various metaphors. T he principle of incessant imaginative efforts for a new recreation is to reach the new and true perception of reality.

Stevens asserts that only when he renews the imagination through such a process of the transformative resemblance and the decreation, he can obtain the fresh prospect of reality, i.e. the recreation of a new entity, a supreme fiction.

He recapitulates what he has discussed thus far as below:

T he west wind was the music, the motion, the force. T o which the swans curveted, a will to change, A will to make iris frettings on the blank.

T here was a will to change, a necessitous And present way, a presentation, a kind Of volatile world, too constant to be denied,

T he eye of a vagabond in metaphor T hat catches our own. T he casual is not Enough. T he freshness of transformation is

T he freshness of a world. It is our own, It is ourselves, the freshness of ourselves, And that necessity and that presentation

Are rubbings of a glass in which we peer Of these beginnings, gay and green, propose T he suitable amours. T ime will write them down. (CP 397- 8)

Mimetic transformation is the leading priority of the recreation. It is the beginning and the end of recreation. T he poet' s duty for a desirable recreation is to confirm "the freshness of a world" and

"ourselves" not "casual" but "necessitous / And present." T he human

- 100 - mind always changes like the west wind that represents "a will to change." T he wind asks the poet to make the "volatile world" of reality and to have the poet' s imagination react to the world. But he cannot stay satisfied with the description of the real world merely in many fleeting metaphors. T he imagination that is renewed fresh by its participation in the endless changes transforms the world with its metaphoric function of perceiving objects fresh. In the long run, the poet gets pleasure in integration of the self with the changing reality.

Stevens has thus far studied the way of the recreation. He keeps asking himself through the methods of repetition and contrast whether he can successively get the first idea required for the fresh perception of reality. He exercises the transformative power of the imagination at first to participate in changing reality and then to interact with the decreative imagination.

Stevens maintains "It [a supreme fiction] Must Give Pleasure" as the third requirement. He shows us that the objective of the recreation is to obtain the pleasure from the integration of the imagination with reality. Stevens points out that "T he pleasure that the poet has . . . is a pleasure of agreement with radiant and productive world in which he lives" (N A 57). He means that as he pursues a supreme fiction, he can get pleasure from the renewed imagination: the recreation process of the poetic consciousness in perceiving reality from the fresh per-

- 101 - spectives.

In part one and two of the "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction,"

Stevens tries to demonstrate two paradoxical functions of the imagination: at first the creation for the transformative resemblance and then the decreation for abstraction. He asserts in part three that these two modes work together for their marriage, or the recreation of a supreme fiction. Here recreation is to use in combination two modes of the transformative resemblance and the decreation for the creation of a desirable fiction.

In section one, Stevens shows us how to "exult" "on the image of what we see." It is the song of pleasure after we find a recreation of

"more than sensual mode." It is a pleasure of catching "that / Irrational moment" and our non- rational response to the substance of reality (the first idea). T he "unreasoning" pleasure is the nakedness of the first idea caught in intuition at the irrational moment when consciousness momentarily makes an intercourse with the unconscious in the mind. T his recreation of "irrational moment" gives him a pure joy of harmony like "a sensible ecstasy" (CP 401).

T he recreation comes like the mystic marriage116) of "the hero

116) Harold Bloom, "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction: A Commentary" in W allace Stevens: A Collection of Critical E ssays, ed. Marie Borroff 91: From this marriage, Bloom observes, "proceeds the supreme fiction whose exponent, major man, now enters the poem in section five to eight in the exhilarating person of Canon

- 102 - (logos) and the female imagination"117) of the unconscious. Stevens shows the colorful imagery of the recreation in love and marriage. T he supreme fiction, the integration of reality and the imagination, re- creates the desirable prospect of the real world which is made fresh by the imagination. When the imagination takes reality as a sign, namely "the first idea," it foretells the appearance of the failed poet, Canon Aspirin, a persona of the limit of the imagination.

Even after he finds the limit of abstraction, Canon Aspirin chases the reality of facts to its full extent and tries to show the process of the recreation.

T he nothingness was a nakedness, a point

Beyond which thought could not progress as thought. He had to choose. But it was not a choice Between excluding things. It was not a choice

Between, but of. He chose to include the things T hat in each other are included, the whole, T he complicate, the amassing harmony. (CP 403)

He progres s es ("flies ") to the "orbits ' outer s tars " at night for

"the very material of his mind" on "the as cending wings " and s ometimes he goes "des cending" to "the utmos t crown" of nothingnes s , "a point" of "the firs t idea." From this utmos t bottom

Aspirin, Stevens' finest invention." Canon Aspirin is the man who explored all the projections of the mind, his own particularly, Stevens writes (LW S 445). 117) Weston 103. Weston means it as "the feminine unconscious."

- 103 - point, the recreation s tarts . It is where the imagination s tops functioning and the poetic cons cious nes s s tops exis ting. Only nothingnes s or nakednes s can be dis cernable, where a fact cannot exis t as a fact, where no dis tinction is pos s ible, where no choice of things is allowed, where things (reality) are inclus ive of each other, not exclus ive at all. The poet finds that there is a limit in both worlds , reality and the imagination. Therefore he has to choos e. But he finds the need to combine them both.

This is the initial s tage of the recreation: the firs t s tage is to as cend to the limit of the imagination; the s econd s tage is to des cend to the point of nothingnes s for reality.118) The third s tage of recreation is to combine thes e two s tages for "the amas s ing harmony" of "the whole."

Although he knows the channel of the recreation, he is afraid of the very s trong impos ition in the re- creating proces s s ince "But

118) T he movements of ascending and descending are closely associated with rise and fall. As Daniel J. Schneider suggests, "the symbolic associates of rise and fall in Stevens' poetry are up and down, to- and- from , and undulation, all of which are employed either to render the vital interdependence of reality and the imagination or to suggest the movement." T he movement of rise symbolizes imaginative transformation which enables us to throw off the harsh pressure of reality, and the movement of fall refers to "the descent of imaginative riches from heaven." Stevens' poetic purpose of such movements is to show the interdependence of reality and the imagination. For details, see Daniel J. Schneider, Sym bolism: T he M anichean V ison A Study in the A rt of J am es Conrad W oolf and Stevens (Lincoln: Nebraska: U of Nebraska P, 1975) 168.

- 104 - to impos e is not / To dis cover." Throughout the inceptive two s tages of as cending and des cending, the poet's cons cious nes s of recreation turns out to be more concrete. This initial proces s of as cending and des cending is a preparatory and long proces s of fiction- making. Canon As pirin decides to make an arbitrary fiction, the combination of the imagination and reality. His decis ion is to overcome nothingnes s .

It is possible, possible, possible. It must Be possible. It must be that in time T he real will from its crude compoundings come,

Seeming, at first, a beast disgorged, unlike, Warmed by a desperate milk. T o find the real, T o be stripped of every fiction except one,

T he fiction of an absolute- - Angel, Be silent in your luminous cloud and hear T he luminous melody of proper sound. (CP 404)

After Stevens points out that the imposition of the arbitrary order on reality is a sort of self- deception creating another fiction, he suggests a supreme fiction, "the fiction of an absolute" as Angel. Stevens says that it is possible without reasonings.

T he most important thing in the recreation is whether the supreme fiction is experiential or not. In section eight, Angel of the supreme fiction "leaps downward . . . / On his spredden wings" "in the motionless motion." T hen he "experience[s]" "an hour / Filled with ex-

- 105 - pressible bliss" (CP 404). At the moment of finding the real, he feels ecstasy and "hears / the luminous melody of proper sound."

He finds the answer to the question at last : What or who is experiencing "the majesty?" T he last finder of the recreation is "I am," since "majesty is a mirror of the self: / I have not but I am and as I am, I am" (CP 405). We can see that the beneficiary of the supreme fiction or his recreation is the self itself: the poetic self- consciousness.

Stevens names it as "the central of our being (CP 380) in the prologue to "Notes."

T his line echoes Coleridge' s famous definition of the imagination as

"a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am."119) T he greatness ("majesty") does not come from the heaven but from a "mirror of self." T his means that the heaven has no reality and that only the reality of our fictive experience is the reflection of ourselves. Stevens gives being to the intercourse between the mind and the world. T his psychic being is the only reality. "God, imagination and the self all come together" in his supreme poetic moment in celebration of this central marriage of two opposites: the decreative imagination and the creative one. "T his is the proper apotheosis of major man."120) T his is a climax of recreation.

119) Samuel T aylor Coleridge, B iographia Literaria, ed. George Watson (New York: Button, Everyman' s Library, 1956) 167. Also see Sexson 140. 120) Sexson 141.

- 106 - T hen, what is the nature of the final recreation, the supreme fiction? Stevens creates and re- creates the supreme fiction through the incessant repetition of imaginative and introspective efforts to feel pleasure in section nine.

A thing final in itself and, therefore, good One of the vast repetitions final in T hemselves and, therefore, good, the going round

And round and round, the merely going round, Until merely going round is a final good, T he way wine comes at a table in a wood.

And we enjoy like men, the way a leaf Above the table spins its constant spin, So that we look at it with pleasure, look

At it spinning its eccentric measure. Perhaps, T he man- hero is not the exceptional monster, But he that of repetition is most master. (CP 405- 6)

T he final re- creative mode, the supreme fiction, is "A thing final in itself and, therefore, good." It doesn' t come from a sudden happening like the bugle of a red robin. It is obtainable only through "the vast repetitions final in / T hemselves." T he "repetitions" or repeated "going round" of the act of imagination is the way of the renewal of the supreme fiction. T he only thing the "most master" can do is "the choice" in "its constant spin." Stevens seems to say that the repetitive act of the two- way imaginative process is the outward exploration, and the inward introspection which may result in the supreme fiction, the

- 107 - recreation of "a final good." T his is the fourth stage for the recreation after the first three stages of ascending, descending, and combining. T he repetitive act of the outward exploration and the inward introspection can be a pleasure as Stevens implies in section nine, part three.

Stevens tries to suggest finally that the supreme fiction named as

"a fat girl" is the recreation of the poetic feeling in section ten. He attempts to name her elusive unreality ["soft- footed phantom"] as "my green, my fluent m undo" "revolving in crystal."121)

(Fat girl) ...... You Become the soft- footed phantom, the irrational

Distortion, however fragrant, however dear. T hat' s it; the more than rational distortion, T he fiction that results from feeling. Yes, that.

T hey will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne. We shall return at twilight from the lecture Pleased that the irrational is rational,

Until flicked by feeling, in a gildered street, I call you by name, my green, my fluent mundo. You will have stopped revolving except in crystal. (CP 406)

As "a war between the mind / And sky" (CP 407) never ends, the true reality of "the irrational distortion" won' t be rationalized. Since the supreme fiction is just "the fiction that results from feeling," it can be

121) Crystal is a symbol of the spirit and of the intellect associated with the spirit. T he state of transparency is defined as one of the most effective and beautiful conjunctions of opposites: matter exists but it is as if it did not exist, because one can see through it. See Cirlot 74.

- 108 - just felt, not learned by intelligence or poetic will of consciousness. It is

"the more than the rational distortion." T hus, he suggests to throw away the imagination, words, self, and all rational. He also argues that

"the irrational is rational."122) You can find, or feel, the supreme fiction

"revolving in crystal" when "you have stopped even feeling itself in "my

(Stevens' s) fluent mundo!" T he transparency of his mind or the poetic consciousness is the final salvation for his recreation. T his re- creative mode obviously leads to the meditative mode for the later poetry.

As we have seen so far, Stevens proposes in "Notes" that, in order to attain a supreme fiction, the final product of the re- creative mode, the poet should remove the existing fictions through "abstraction blooded" and intuit "the first idea" that makes him perceive the fresh reality. He further proposes that, in order to successively repeat such a process, the imagination should be incessantly renewed in his poetic transition of time, which is the driving force of resemblance, decreation, and recreation, altogether.

Stevens' third mode of the recreation consists of four stages; first, ascending; second, descending; third, combining; fourth, two- way process of exploration and introspection. So Stevens combines the two modes

(resemblance and decreation) to re- create the supreme fiction through

122) Glen MacLeod relates Stevens' supreme fiction with surrealism by opposing "the mundo of imagination" with "the world of reason" (N A 58). See Glen MacLeod, W allace Stevens and M odern A rt F rom the A rm ory Show to A bstract E xpressionism (New Haven: Yale UP, 1994) 136.

- 109 - four stages. Resemblance is the state of the human images true and real to the first idea. De- creation is the movement of the images or poetic consciousness downward or upward to the First idea.

Although he finds the supreme fiction uncertain, tentative and momentary to attain, he also knows "How simply the fictive hero becomes the real" (CP 408). T he fictive recreation is always possible with mind' s transparency and blankness. T he poet expresses in the epilogue of "Notes" a moment of extreme joy in the supreme fiction which plays the "real persona of psyche- - logos 123)

In "Notes," Stevens proposes three requirements (change, abstraction and pleasure) for the recreation of the supreme fiction. In this proposal we have seen an apex of his persistent act of the mind which focuses on the mental reality of the incessant exploration/introspection and momentary intercourse between the conscious mind and the unconscious- - a comforting illusion that brings a momentary peace to the mind under the heavy pressure of reality. In spite of his pleasure in finding the supreme fiction, his poetic mind remains restless and unsettled. T his provisionality tends to turn toward another poetic mode in his consciousness.

In the subsequent poems in his final period that follow "Notes,"

123) Weston 103. Weston notes that the supreme fiction toward which Stevens is working rests on the marriage of the hero (logos) and the female imagination. Stevens seems to suggest that supreme fiction is the marriage between logos and reality.

- 110 - Stevens demonstrates a new poetic mode of meditation. T his deals with the realm of nothingness or Being which the imagination has failed to overcome because of its limit. Hence he works out a meditative mode in his final period to explore the meditative world.

Chapter Four

Meditation: T he A uroras of A utumn and T he R ock

In his final period between 1950 and 1955, Stevens uses a meditative mode designed to experience the unknown external world in its immediacy by emptying the mind in T he A uroras of A utum n (1950) and

T he R ock (1954). Stevens realizes the confines of his "imaginative world"124) in his late period and he tries to explore in his final period a new poetic world beyond the limit of his consciousness. Stevens feels a strong urge to pierce the veil of the invisible world of noumenon,125)

"the thing in itself." His fictive world up to his late period in "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" was composed of his self- consciousness, which is the product reflecting his desire, mind- confined knowledge namely the phenomenal world.

124) Regueiro 15. Regueiro argues that Stevens returns at the end to affirm a world outside the confines of the imagination and to point to "the inadequacies" of his "imaginative worlds." 125) In order to avoid misunderstanding and confusion, I wish to define noumenal realm simply as the unknowable world beyond the mind. It is to the contrary to the phenomenal realm of consciousness. It is reality alien to the imagination and the mind as Elw ood Johnson suggests. See Johnson 36- 8.

- 111 - He wishes to overcome this confined fictive world and to re- create it into a new dimension, which used to be called the world of nothingness. He names it a poetry of Being. T urning away from his habits of imagination- centered approach to reality, Stevens tries to reach the natural object in absence of the mind and unmediated experience in order to enter the threshold of being. Stevens calls it (the state) nothingness and pure being. Stevens' new poetic effort toward this end is only made possible by the meditative mode of mind- emptying, self- detachment, and self- negation instead of self- assertion and mind- clinging that his imagination has previously maintained.126) Stevens puts his bare feet directly into the core of reality by this meditative process. In his final poetry we can amply find Stevens' meditative state of the mind in expressions of nothingness, absence, whiteness, coldness, poverty, bareness, nakedness, plainness, etc.

Meditation is the poetic consciousness different from the three modes of imagination namely, mimetic transformation, decreation, and recreation. T he function of imagination is to pursue the poetic self- consciousness for more refined imaginative fictions. But the function and quality of meditation is to throw away consciously or unconsciously the

126) Charles M. Murphy, W allace Stevens: A Spiritual P oet in A Secular A ge (New York: Paulist Press, 1997) 74. Murphy observes that Stevens' meditation is a self- purgation in a Christian way.

- 112 - mind, consciousness or imagination itself. So the poetic style of meditation is less expressive than the imaginative three modes.

Meditation is a mind- emptying process. It is a detached state of calm consciousness in which the meditator ceases all thoughts and emotions through continuous concentration of one- pointedness that leads eventually to "a sense of ineffaceable enlightenment characterized not by joy or rapture or bliss, but by nothingness."127)

I will employ Bevis' methodology of Stevensian meditation. Bevis divides meditation into heightened religious experience as well as the complete disappearance of intellect, and momentary loss of the sense of self. Bevis further finds parallels in Stevensian meditation from Buddistic

Zen and divides Zen type meditation into four stages. T he first stage is relaxed detachment for thoughtless revery.128) Its primary object is the concentration to obtain equanimity in mind and to control thoughts and feelings. T he second stage is dramatic detachment with strange sensations: feelings of rapture, happiness and equanimity are obtained. In this state, physiological relaxation continues while passivity deepens with respect to body and intellect; the imagination and emotions may become exceptionally active. T he third stage is thoughtless detachment without thought but with feeling. T he fourth stage is pure detachment with last

127) Bevis, M ind of W inter 49. 128) Bevis 76.

- 113 - feeling gone. T he mental concentration deepens and finally leads to the mind' s emptiness. At this final stage, the meditator' s mind obtains equanimity, and all bliss, and all feelings of bodily pleasure cease. He reaches a state of pure being, pure perception without thinking and feeling. T he self is felt to be lost and the division between the self and the other disappears.129)

T hey can be summarized into four categories of meditation: (1) relaxation, (2) dramatic detachment with thought and feeling of ecstasy,

(3) detachment without thought, finally (4) detachment without feeling.

Beyond stage two everything moves toward passivity while mental concentration deepens. T he principle for stage three and four is progressive passivity and progressive self- loss.

From above discussion on Buddistic meditation, we find the inter- face in process of the meditation and imagination, i.e. creation of the self, and decreation of the self. T he difference is that the imagination stresses the self, but meditation negates the self. When the imagination reaches its highest level of concentration, one is placed in a state of meditation in the absence of the imagination because the imagination itself disappears. Sometimes the state of highly concentrated imagination and the state of meditation are hardly distinguishable in his many poems. But the basic demarcation line is the absence or presence of the

129) Bevis 81.

- 114 - poetic self- consciousness.

Meditation leads to stages where the meditator encounters nothingness in the empty mind without any thought and feeling. T his nothingness is a state of total- loss of self and the total emptied mind. T hen let us further discuss the concept of nothingness for the generic quality of the meditation mode.

T he world of nothingness is the unknown and hidden zone of darkness between "artistic space and real space"130)- - the world that the mind cannot reach. Candle lights (representing the imagination) illumi- nate the phenomenal world in his poetry. T here is the wider world of darkness, the inscrutable world of life mystery where the mind or the human imagination cannot penetrate. T his zone is named nothingness.

Stevens tries to enter this world through meditation in his final period.

T his is a third world, a bare and empty and pure world, the inscrutable world beyond the mind. In order to reach this world one must pass through nothingness. T his can be achieved by the mind' s act of meditation. Western critics call such a meditative state of emptiness the absence of consciousness,131) absence of emotions or feelings.132)

130) Regueiro 161. 131) Pearce suggests that the negation of consciousness or imagination is integral to the meditative mode. For more details, see Pearce, "T oward Decreation' " in W allace Stevens A Celebration, eds. Doggett and Buttel 298. Also see Regueiro 218. She suggests that absence in the mind brings us to pure being. 132) Bevis 76- 82.

- 115 - Stevens' absence is interpreted by some critics as negative fatalism from the perspective of death and nihilism, but it should be reinterpreted as positive from the meditative perspective of mind- emptying and detachment. Near his death Stevens overcomes all fears and sense of alienation through meditation that produces nothingness as implied by bare trees in the winter, snow- white, transparent glass and the blank mind, etc. Nothingness is one form of meditation to seek for the empty mind.

Stevens experiences the phenomenal world in his early, middle and late periods through the arbitrary and intellect- centered imagination but he finds this world confined, incomplete, futile and illusive. He de- creates all this existing world of confines, and reaches the state of nothingness and feels ecstasy in his mind. T his meditation is Stevens' final poetic phase when he seeks the poetic truth of the agreement between the mind and the thing itself. In his early H armonium years

Stevens tried to explore the poetic truth of the agreement between the mind and the thing by the arbitrary resemblance of the perceptive imagination. In his middle period Stevens sought the poetic truth of the agreement between the mind and the thing by the intellect- oriented and analytic imagination; in his late period, by the mind- clinging imagination or by "mystic marriage." But Stevens' mind remained unsettled with the limit of the imagination and the self. And the last solution was medi-

- 116 - tation to overcome such limits and to organize a meditative whole.

T his chapter will study "T he Auroras of Autumn," the title poem in T he A uroras of A utum n (1950) and eleven other poems including "T o an Old Philosopher in Rome," "T he Planet on the T able," "Not Ideas about the T hing But the T hing Itself," "T he Plain Sense of T hings,"

"Irish Cliffs of Moher," "T he World as Meditation," "Metaphor as

Degeneration," "T he River of Rivers in Connecticut," "Prologue to What is possible," "Lebensweisheitspielerei" in T he R ock (1954), and "Of Mere

Being" in T he P alm at the E nd of the M ind (1967). Looking into these twelve poems, this chapter will show how Stevens demonstrates his poetic mode of meditation in incessant exploration of nothingness and pure being. T his chapter will also briefly discuss Stevens' use of symbols and motifs for whole and circles in support for his meditative mode. T his chapter will further briefly show Stevens' way of perceiving

Being in a fleeting moment that immediately disappears after being seen.

"T he Auroras of Autumn" demonstrates Stevens' poetic mode of the mind- emptying meditation through various blank and empty scenes of farewell in autumnal vision for the purpose of finding pure and true reality. T he poet meditates on "tragic and desolate back ground" (LW S

852) of the unhappy human condition of autumnal departure, old age and imminent death. Stevens uses the meditative mode in the symbols of aurora borealis and the snake in order to express his fears and sense of

- 117 - alienation toward such subjects and he shows how he overcomes such tragic feelings by emptying his mind symbolically.

"Auroras" represents Stevens' poetic imagination of changes, resembling the snake image of ouroboros. But at the same time this symbol represents Stevens' endless meditation of "the drift of ideas"

(LW S 636) which results in the detached state of consciousness as characterized by blank mind, deserted white cabin, northern cold chill and naked wind in the poem.

In the three sections that begin with "Farewell to an idea . . ." the poet starts to empty his mind for meditation by bidding farewell to various old ideas and conventions that have satisfied us including the earlier three stages of mimetic transformation, decreation and recreation. T he poet also describes his meditative mood based on the desolate state of his mind in autumnal vision of departure with the imminence of his death. T he poet' s consciousness described in this desolate scene intimates the start of his meditative state.

Farewell to an idea . . . A cabin stands, Deserted, on a beach. it is white, As by a custom or according to

An ancestral theme or as a consequence Of an infinite course. . . .133) (CP 412)

133) Steven Shaviro suggests the "infinite course" as "an unending experience of dying." See Steven Shaviro, "' T hat Which Is Always Beginning' : Stevens' Poetry of Affirmation" in Critical E ssays on W allace Stevens, eds. Steven Gould Axelrod and

- 118 - A deserted cabin which is white also implies the meditator' s state of empty mind. As Carroll sees, it may suggest aging exhaustion, "a bleaching out of experience the dullness of old age."134) As Doggett says, it may intimate "to exist."135) As in the line of "Here, being visible is being white" (CP 412), the white color may suggest remaining life at an old age. But my interpretation is different. I think whiteness stands for purification which means the emptying process. In the next three tercets, white color foreshadows "the man . . . walking" of "a darkness" gathering to show the continuous mind- emptying process:

T he season changes. A wind chills the beach. T he long lines of it grow longer, emptier, A darkness gathers though it does not fall

And the whiteness grows less vivid on the wall. T he man who is walking turns blankly on the sand. He observes how the north is always enlarging change,

With its frigid brilliances, its blue- red sweeps And gusts of great enkindlings, its polar green T he color of ice and fire and solitude. (CP 412- 3)

Likewise, the scene in the above lines depict the detached state of the speaker' s consciousness in meditation on his old age and sad

Helen Deese (Boston: G.K.Hall, 1988) 200. 134) Carroll suggests that the "white cabin and the white flowers are both associative stimuli by means of which Stevens attempts to regenerate his memory of the visionary center, ' the whiteness that is the ultimate intellect.' " See Carroll, Suprem e F iction 241. 135) Doggett 14.

- 119 - departure in autumn. T he darkness that "gathers" suggest "the imminence of death" and the "cold wind chilling the beach" implies a

"relationship between the flowing of time and this imminence."136) T he walking man' s solitude and his blank mind is the result of his mind- emptying efforts. Like the snake, the mind should skin off its old notions and try to understand the meaning of change as in the last tercet of section two. T he man here meditates on the destruction of "our previous understanding of reality"137) and turns from the solitary scene of white sand. T hen he finds his feeble imagination is taken over by the mind- emptying meditation. He watches the dazzling scene in the sky of the aurora borealis in contrast with the gloomy black and white scene.

T he aurora takes on brighter colors, "blue- red" and "polar green." Patke agrees with me that the "interior of this particular abode of the imagination is as deserted and blank as the cabin of the previous section."138) T his empty mind of meditation annihilates the traditional ideas and values of the established system of knowledge and the old myths.

In section one, the poet meditates on the unhappy relation between man and the universe under the setting of the aurora borealis in the night sky. In section two, the poet meditates allusively on death as his

136) Doggett 14. 137) Du- hyung Kang, "Statis versus continuity," W SJ 13.1 (Spring 1989): 45. 138) Patke 201.

- 120 - main theme as he was convinced that the external forces of the universe would eventually bring it forth.

In the first half up to section five the poet shows the loss of his imagination power in a meditative way to confront the fearful alien forces of the "auroras" and "naked wind." T he poet further shows his hatred toward the foreign forces of the universe in hostile tone, meditating on the strained relation between man and the foreign universe.

T he speaker here exercises his meditation by bidding farewell one by one to "the comforting ideas of established order in the first half of the poem."139) T his farewell is a departure, a meditative element for mind- emptying and consciousness detachment.

Stevens seems to relate the foundations of the meditative mind for emptying process with the decreative mode of the aurora' s ever- changing reality and its re- creative mode as seen in Chapter T wo and

T hree. T he poet challenges the destructive power of the aurora and chooses its regenerating power:

T his is nothing until in a single man contained, Nothing until this named thing nameless is And is destroyed. He opens the door of his house

On flames. T he scholar of one candle sees An Arctic effulgence flaring on the frame Of everything he is. And he feels afraid. (CP 416- 7)

139) Leggett, W allace Stevens and P oetic T heory 183.

- 121 - T he poet describes "auroras" as the critical human dilemma. He should decreate the auroras' forces and re- create them into regenerative power through mind- emptying meditation. T he aurora stands for the meditative whole of the mind that de- creates the feeble and old imagination for its regeneration. He is now determined to internalize the violent forces of foreign reality by meditative power in order to escape from it.

T he auroras should be humanized by the meditation at first through decreation and then by recreation which results in the absence of consciousness. T he poet has to decreate his established order and harmony in order to receive the boundless regenerative energy of nature.

Now as allusively expressed in "he opens the door of his house on flames" (CP 416- 7), the poet de- creates his old system mentally.140)

T hen the poet' s empty mind joins the power of auroras and is regenerated by it. T hus the poet negates his self in his mind and completely joins the external form of auroras in section seven to re- create it into universal being.

In section seven, we see the poet' s full play of meditation in interaction between the imagination and reality for a recreation of the

140) Stevens hails the perpetual destruction that enables perpetual creation as Vendler observes. See Vendler, "Wallace Stevens," V oices and V isions T he P oet in A m erica, ed. Helen Vendler 151.

- 122 - aurora. T he poet' s imagination jumps freely from one season to the other. He thinks of the winter in the middle of summer for the meditative purpose of mind- emptying. And his meditative thought can transcend the physical death of nature in winter by finding its suitable place in the heavens of "north" "when leaves are dead." T o reflect on the auroras is "to know the coldness of an alien other, whose relation to human becomes a matter of anxiety in the face of an incomprehensible personal dissolution."141) Stevens meditates on "the idea of God, an imagination."142) T he poet meditates on the cosmic world which show indifference and coldness to the human. T his is a meditative world as suggested by "the serpent" or the master of the maze" in section one.

T he poet depicts everything as the object for meditation and extinction. T he poet himself, who is destined for death from life, is no exception. In section seven, the poet attempts to withdraw his intense emotion "he had attached to the natural phenomena."143) Withdrawal is part of emptying process. In this withdrawal, he meditates on his position and realizes his own "freedom" either to exercise such intensity of emotion or to refrain from exercising it as Patke rightly observes.144)

In this freedom lies the release from fear. T he poet realizes that his self

141) Patke 207. 142) Patke 207. 143) Patke 208. 144) Patke 208.

- 123 - had been imprisoned in the false world of fears which was "the impositions of man' s desires."145) T he poet liberates his self from fear by meditation.

From section one to nine, the poet demonstrates four functions of the mind in turn: mimetic transformation (creative metamorphosis), decreation, recreation, and meditation. Here he wraps them up in more specific imagery. T he final meditation in section ten offers a possibility of new supreme fiction different from that of "Notes."

First, the poet starts with a summary of four alternatives between people and the world: "An unhappy people in a happy world,"- - "An unhappy people in an unhappy world"- - "A happy people in an unhappy world"- - "A happy people in a happy world" (CP 420). T he poet

"solemnize[s]" the alternatives and concludes the relation of "An unhappy people in a happy world" as the only option. Hence the hostile reality that the poet has meditated on is that we live in a world where creation

(resemblance) and decreation interact with each other as pure principle.

T he pure principle is the meditation of the mind- emptying and self- loss to "contrive a whole"- - "the spectre of the sphere" (CP 420). In addition,

Stevens' poetic mind which was previously confined to "the mind' s fictive weavings"146) looks outward to "another image at the end of

145) Patke 209. 146) Whiting, T he N ever- R esting M ind 164.

- 124 - cave" (CP 411) of nothingness in his final poetry. Moreover, Stevens uses the meditation mode to explore a new relation between the larger universe of flux and his poetic activity in the absence of his imagination.

In the following three closing tercets, Stevens continues to

"contrive balance to contrive" his new poetic vision of a meditative whole consisting of fictional unity of "as if":

Contriving balance to contrive a whole, T he vital, the never- failing genius, Fulfilling his meditations, great and small.

In these unhappy he meditates a whole, T he full of fortune and the full of fate, As if he lived all lives, that he might know,

In hall harridan, not hushful paradise, T o a haggling of wind and weather, by these lights Like a blaze of summer straw, in winter' s nick. (CP 420- 1)

T he whole is symbolized by the sphere. T he spirit of the sphere is the sphere itself as Carroll insists.147) T he "spectre of the sphere," the universal mind of inhuman forces, is at once the object that is contrived, and the source of this contrivance. T he pure principle can be realized in the fiction of human meditation. T hrough the pure principle148) of

147) Carroll, W allace Stevens' Suprem e F iction 259. Carroll clearly defines pure principle as "contriving balance to contrive a whole." 148) Pearce' s dialectic approach to the end of "Auroras" is only confined to three modes of "Invention, Decreation and Re- creation). I wish to add one more mode of meditation which embraces all the three modes. See Roy Harvey Pearce, "T he Cry

- 125 - meditation, we, the human, can know "as if he lived all lives, that he might know" (CP 421).

Stevens' meditative whole is paradoxically symbolized by an "as if" clause to entertain all opposing possibilities.149) It is his inclusive whole- ness embracing the paradoxical oppositions into an indecisive boundary of blank state, or mindless depth of consciousness.

Stevens' poetic meditation150) in the northern lights of "auroras" that has started in tragic feeling has now been completed in a reconciliatory mood toward the "auroras." T he poem ends with the fictive world of the poet' s cosmic meditation that integrates the mind with "Auroras." T he aurora is a symbol of the unity of being that unifies the mind and the world in the absence of the imagination.

Absence is also the symbol of inscrutable being, nothingness, being

and the Occasion: Rereading Stevens," Gesta H um anorum Studies in the H istoricist M ode (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987) 148. 149) Brogan 133- 7. Brogan suggests that the "as if" phrases in Stevens' poetry brings together the unitive and disjunctive process of language. . . . Stevens uses the "as if" phrases as the vehicle of the interplay between two opposing elements to entertain opposing possibilities. 150) Rob Wilson suggests that the highest man, a whole, the will, a world- - such are the lofty goals of meditation as a process in Stevens' poems in the act of finding or inventing some fiction of majesty. In almost all the poems, the word "meditation" appears to define, implicitly, the process of composing poetry as "a never- ending meditation" (CP 465) which composes the mind and the self, ' [f]ulfilling his meditations, great and small' (CP 420). For more details, see Rob Wilson, "Wallace Stevens and Meditation," T he J ournal of E nglish Language & Literature (Seoul, Korea) 28.4 (Winter 1982) 707- 21.

- 126 - above the imagination.

T he poems in T he R ock (1954) consistently demonstrate Stevens' poetic purpose of meditation mode. T hough he is very conscious of alienation and death in his final period (LW S 679, 680, 690, 701), he is never frustrated with loss and nihilism. He realizes that "[life] is an illusion that we were ever alive" (CP 525), but he is convinced of the regeneration and the pleasure of life. T he calm and passive state of

Stevens' mind shows the poetic nothingness as a bright positive aspect rather than a dark and negative one, even after he loses everything. His meditative world is re- created into that of greater knowing that reality and the imagination are all nothingness. He is considered as an optimis- tic poet of the calm, passive, and meditative mind. All these are well described in T he R ock on the top of knowledge, reason, and sensibility he has built up over his life for the purpose of the greater knowing.

T he R ock displays the paradox that though his poetic world is imaginative or fictive, it is attached to the real world all the more. In his final period, his poetic mind has been shown as fully grown into a meditative state. His fully grown poetic mind means the self- realization of greater knowing that his mind is fully empty like "the rock" and he has achieved the supreme world by passively accepting himself as empty.

T he two worlds of reality and the imagination he has pursued all

- 127 - his life are "the self and the earth" in "An Old Man Asleep" (CP 501).

T hese two worlds are asleep, symbolically becoming one in a meditative state of the mind. T he poet ceases his thought and feelings to reach a pure detached state of consciousness. He sees "the drowsy motion of the river R" (CP 501). T he two worlds which interact actively and imaginatively in Stevens' early, middle and late periods are possessed by "A dumb sense." T his "dumb" state of consciousness shows no feelings but the poet' s meditative mind in his half sleep in recollection of his past that had flowed like a stream. T his mental state is neither motion nor statis; neither knowledge nor ignorance; neither consciousness nor the unconscious. T his is a Zen- like mediative state of poetic consciousness. T his is Stevens' realm of meditation where "your thoughts, your feelings, / Your beliefs and disbeliefs, your whole peculiar plot" (CP

501) are dissolving. All negations and contradictions are collapsing in a nirvana 151) state of the mind.

T he next poem, "T he Planet on the T able," also serves the meditative purpose to deal with cosmic being.152) His poetry in his early,

151) Nirvana means nothing but a condition of perfect freedom from desire. . . . It is a symbol of subjective state of consciousness on the buddhic plane, for a period during which the ego receives no impacts from without. . . . Where there is no desire in the heart, there is no attachment either. Where there is no attachment, there is also no parting, no sorrow. Where there is no sorrow, there is also no change. . . . In the state of nirvana there is no perception of the external world in body but there is consciousness in a state of bliss. . . . For details, See G.A. Gaskell, Dictionary of A ll Scriptures & M yths (New York: Avenel, 1960) 537- 8.

- 128 - middle and late period can be called "T he Earth on the T able" in comparison with that in his final period. T he planet here could be the earth 153) as several critics generally understand but the earth is not in isolation as before but part of the universe that includes the earth. In particular, "Ariel" suggests the planet is a being of cosmic nature. T he poet calls himself "Ariel" who lives not only in the earth but in the sky and even in the universe. In this poem, Stevens expresses his intention to depart from the conflicts and opposition which he had encountered between the two opposing worlds of reality and the imagination in his early and middle periods, and to move toward a reconciliation of conflicts and opposition in his final period through "Ariel," meditative spirit of the external nature beyond the confines of the mind.

In Shakespeare' s T he T em pest, "Ariel" plays the hero' s role in reconciliation of conflicts and opposition. Stevens' reconciliatory attitude implies the mental ability of meditation which drives the agonizing imagination toward higher mental states of meditation above the imagination. "Planet" reviews his poems written from an autobiographic perspective as George Lensing observes.154) T he first two tercets show

152) Stevens defines something cosmic as "the infinite" world and the infinite as a "whole," "not a part" (N OP 271). 153) Vendler, W ords Chosen Out of Desire 38: Reguiro, Lim its of Im agination 217: James Baird, T he Dom e and the R ock: Structure in the P oetry of W allace Stevens (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1968) 117. 154) George S. Lensing, W allace Stevens: A P oet's Growth (Baton Rouge:

- 129 - the poet confessing his fulfillment through "Ariel" for his poetry:

Ariel was glad he had written his poems T hey were of remembered time Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun Were waste and welter And the ripe shrub writhed. (CP 532) T he poet concludes in review that his works were "of a remembered time / or of something seen that he liked." He also positively recalls his past in the mind' s incessant probing for its integration with reality through poetry. Poetry alone continues to give warmth of the sun, the symbol of reality,155) as shown in "Other makings of the sun / Were waste and welter / and the rope shrub writhed" (CP 532). Poetry is the sun and "oxygen" that support the aged poet.

T he next tercet explains the re- creative oneness through meditation.

His self and the sun were one And his poems, although makings of his self, Were no less makings of the sun. (CP 532)

T he poet' s realization here that "[h]is self and the sun were one" is different from his previous solipsistic view that he could dominate reality by the mind alone independent of external and alien reality in his early

Louisiana State UP, 1986) ix. 155) Michel Benamou, W allace Stevens and the Sym bolist Im agination (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972) 33.

- 130 - poems in H arm onium .

In his early, middle and late poetry, reality was part of the imagination or part of the mind for the recreation of a possibility of a supreme fiction within the confines of consciousness. His realization in his final poetry is that his self is part of meditative reality as described in those poems in T he A uroras of A utum n and T he R ock. His poems are of the mind in the incessant acts of finding for an integration between the self and the world. In other words, his poems are endless meditative acts of the mind in the making and unmaking of "his self" in exploration for Being and nothingness. T he poet finds his self through

"the sun" that stands for the universe.

T he next two closing tercets shows how to be meditative; to be poor in affluence.

It was not important that they survive What mattered was that they should bear Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half- received, In the poverty of their words, Of the planet of which they were part. (CP 532- 3)

What is important here is that Stevens uses mediative elements of the mind- emptying process as expressed in "In the poverty of their words."

T he poet recalls in memory that "the self and the sun" were "one," implying a meditative whole.

- 131 - Stevens shows his pure meditative perception of the external reality of the sun coming from outside in "Not Ideas about the T hing but the T hing Itself," the closing poem in Collected P oem s. As said in

"no longer a battered panache," Stevens purges himself of all his thoughts and feelings in meditation and plainly perceives the rising sun from outside in a pure detached state of consciousness. T he poet confirms early in the morning in March that "[t]he sun was coming from outside, thus realizing that reality moves in the eternal cyclic form independent of his human mind "like a new knowledge of reality" (CP

534). T he poet is prepared to join the eternal ring of life by facing the thing itself instead of ideas about the thing. Stevens uses the word

"like" for the fictional world to overrule the closure of the poem and to express the cosmic being of infinite freedom. He wishes to return to the physical reality where he started in his early period. T his is the eternal ring of a whole that Stevens meditates in dream. As T heodore Sampson points out, "a bird' s cry" stands as a synecdoche for the meditation, the act of the mind, impelling him to experience "a new knowledge of reality."156) Stevens becomes "a sublime poet of dawn and inception" in this poem.157) "T he T hing Itself" gives his most "explicit reversal" of his earlier view in H arm onium.158)

156) T heodore Sampson, A Cure of the M ind: T he P oetics of W allace Stevens (Montreal: Black Rose, 2000) 189. 157) Helen Vendler, V oices & V isions, ed. Helen Vendler 151.

- 132 - T he next poem, "T he World as Meditation," also best demonstrates

Stevens' mediative mode. It is a cosmic meditation159) on the external reality beyond the confines of the mind. T he poet describes the mind- emptying and the self- negation for meditation on the universal mind of being. T he poet here discusses two selves: one is Penelope' s self, the other and larger one is Ulysses' self. T hese two selves interact with each other for meditation. According to Martz, Ulysses' self could also suggest the "meditation"160) that forms the larger mind and drives the imagination. What is more important is that the poet' s self and the cosmic self are not in opposition but become "companion" and dear friend" (CP 521) to each other. We learn from "[the] trees had been mended" (CP 520) that he has amended his views on reality very much- - the "trees" that stand for the earth. T he earth that has been isolated from the universe has joined the universe. T he trees "mended"

158) Hyatt H. Waggoner, A m erican P oets F rom the P uritans to the P ressent (New York: Delta, 1968) 441. 159) I wish to define cosmic meditation as meditation on the world of the "infinite" and a "whole." In other words, it means meditation on the unknowable world beyond our mind. Stevens defines something cosmic as the infinite world and the infinite world as a whole, not a part (N OP 271). 160) Louis L. Martz writes, there are two prominent terms in Stevens' writings: imagination and meditation; they are not synonymous. Meditation is the essential exercise which, constantly practiced, brings the imagination into play, releases creative power, enables the human being to compose a sensitive intelligent and generous self. T his process Martz describes here corresponds to Bevis' second stage of meditation, dramatic detachment. See Martz, "Wallace Stevens: T he World as Meditation" in W allace Stevens A Collection of Critical E ssays, ed. Marie Borroff 134.

- 133 - in "an inhuman meditation, larger than her own" (CP 521), symbolically meet with cosmic meditation or inhuman imagination as mentioned in

"Auroras."

With an emphasis on "inhuman imagination," Leggett points out that the difference between "Sunday Morning" and "Meditation" is that while the former moves inwards with "divinity" "within herself," the latter moves outward161) in recognition of an external reality larger than herself. T he 5th tercet shows Penelope preparing to receive the cosmic being approaching her by emptying her mind:

She wanted nothing he could not bring her by coming alone. She wanted no fetchings. His arms would be her necklace And her belt, the final fortune of their desire. (CP 521)

In section four of "Auroras," the poet describes in a meditative way the master of the universe who gave nothing to redeem humanity except for the "naked wind." Here Penelope also "wanted nothing" and empties her mind162) waiting only for the meeting with Ulysses as mentioned in "his arms would be her necklace / And her belt, the final fortune of their desire." T he two tercets six and seven describe Ulysses and Penelope in

161) Leggett, W allace Stevens and P oetic T heory 197. 162) Wilson 717. Wilson argues that for Stevens' meditation, there are three modes: first, composing a self, second, expanding a self for creation of major man, and third, emptying or decreating a self for purification. All modes are the acts of a central mind. Bevis 80. Bevis shows that his second stage for meditation is thoughtless detachment state of consciousness where all thoughts and feelings cease together with pain and pleasure and concentration deepens into fourth stage for pure perception of being.

- 134 - physical separation and forever waiting for their complete get- together though they become "companion" and "friend" in mind:

But was it Ulysses? Or was it only the warmth of the sun On her pillow? T he thought kept beating in her like her heart T he two kept beating together. It was only day.

It was Ulysses and it was not. Yet they had met, Friend and dear friend and a planet' s encouragement. T he barbarous strength within her would never fail. (CP 521)

T he perfect integration between Ulysses and Penelope, between reality and the imagination, between the self and the world, can be made possible only through meditation. T he dramatic act of two parties meeting together unfolds in the mind on the poetic stage as "the pure principle" as in "Auroras."

Bevis' first step for meditation starts with the poet' s concentration on thoughts of feelings on Ulysses. Penelope' s remaining vitality is felt in the uncertain sources of the approaching being and in Penelope' s

"thought" that "kept beating in her heart." T hey had met in the mind as

"friend" and "dear friend" with "a planet' s encouragement." Penelope has strong confidence that she has "barbarous strength within her which would never fail" because she has been regenerated by the external nature of the cosmic world. T his world of the cosmic Being is another euphoria of nothingness or meditative Being. Symbolically, Stevens emphasizes the physical reality of "barbarous strength" in pursuing

- 135 - spiritual meditation.

T he closing tercet depicts Penelope patiently waiting for Ulysses while she holds herself well off "barbarous strength," combing her hair.

She repeats "his name" patiently, never "forgetting him that kept coming constantly, so near" (CP 521). What Stevens aims at here is the possible world of meditation. As Riddel points out, "Penelope knows that her paramour is coming "constantly so near" but never to consum- mation.163) Here Stevens shows the full process of meditation as a mode of being. T he world that the poet meditates on in this poem is not partial reality confined to the earth but the infinite cosmic universe in which sea, the earth, and air become friends with "a planet' s encouragement," signifying a meditative whole.

With the imagination alone, the poet is unable to reach the pure being of the unknown world because of the imagination' s limit. So he has to use the meditative mind to seek the new noumenal world concealed.

In "Meditation," Penelope composes, decomposes, recomposes, and meditates, a self and a world "into a [cosmic] being."164) Being exists only in the forces which attract those opposites which can never quite meet. As J. Hillis Miller puts it, "man' s inability to see being as being

163) Riddel, T he Clairvoyant E ye 247. 164) Wilson 715.

- 136 - causes the poet to say of it: "It is and it / Is not, and, therefore, is"

(CP 441).165) Similarly, out of Penelope' s meditation comes the truth that

"It was Ulysses and it was not" (CP 521). T he moment of encounter is always too brief and it is a matter of "was" rather than "is," a presence which the eye is never quick enough to catch. Life is composed of a series of such encounters. As each encounter passes, nothing remains of the moment of being.

It is a "difficult apperception" (CP 440) as the perceiver sees the moment of being fleetingly sighted and then gone. So it' s being and absence at the same time. According to Stevens, "reality is vacuum"

(OP 168). All things, "seen and unseen," are "created from nothingness"

(CP 486: OP 100). J. Hillis Miller describes idea of Stevens' poetic being as

a universal nothing which includes beginning and ending in a moment. T his nothing is not nothing. It is. It is being. Being is the universal power, visible nowhere itself, and yet visible everywhere in all things. . . . It is what all things share through the fact that they are. Being is not a thing like other things, and therefore can appear to man only as nothing yet it is what all things participate in if they are to exist at all. All Stevens' later poetry has as its goal the releasing of the evanescent glimpse of being.166)

T he serpent in "Auroras" symbolizes "the nothingness of occulted

165) Miller, "Wallace Stevens' Poetry of Being" in T he A ct of the M ind, eds. Pearce and Miller 158. 166) Miller, "Wallace Stevens' Poetry of Being" 157.

- 137 - being" as J Hillis Miller observes.167) T he "necessary angel of earth" is being too, the figure half seen, or seen for a moment in "Angel

Surrounded by Paysans." Stevens says, "I am the angel of reality, /

Seen for a moment standing in the door . . . quickly, too quickly, I am gone?" (CP 496- 7).

Stevens sees being as a river,168) visible and invisible, as in

"Metaphor as Degeneration" and "River of Rivers in Connecticut." Being flows everywhere like a river, through all space and time. In two poems,

Stevens succinctly describes his apprehension of being.

Furthermore, the next poem "Of Mere Being"169) written in 1955 shows one of the best examples of meditative process in Stevens' final poetry. It also helps to confirm his final view on pure being.

T he poet empties his mind to imagine the absence of the imagination here. He plainly sees "A gold- feathered bird / Sings" a

"foreign song" "without human meaning, / without human feeling" (PM

398). All his human feelings and thoughts are purged. He continues to

167) Miller, P oets of R eality 280. 168) T he river is "a condition of being, short of its dissolution" as Denis Donoghue observes. See Donoghue, "Wallace Stevens," Connoisseurs of Chaos (New York: Columbia UP, 1984) 211- 2. 169) Stevens writes, "It is because common reality is being exhibited. It is being treated objectively." In late poems like "T he Plain Sense of T hings," "Not Ideas about the T hing but the T hing Itself," and "Of Mere Being," Milton J. Bates observes Stevens still pondering the difference between common reality and that same reality "on exhibit" in literature or art (SCB 4).

- 138 - deepen his concentration and sees plainly in a pure detached state of mind that the "bird sings" and its "feathers shine" independent of human

"reason" and human mind. As for the poem' s ultimate meaning,

T heodore Sampson observes that "bronze decor" is a trope for "statis, order, and permanence or final being."170)

Stevens builds another meditative world in "T he Irish Cliffs of

Moher" that have risen above the "real" clouds. T his is the world of

"likeness" that blurs the dividing line between the earth, air and sea becoming one and travels from "present time and place" (CP 502) to

"the head of the past" (CP 501). Moher Cliffs is the rock that represents the meditative world of a whole that Stevens has aspired to build in his final period. In this half- awake and half- asleep state of consciousness, one sees and hears only the thing itself plainly as in "T he Plain Sense of T hings." All the imaginations are eliminated, and the meditator is controlled by the greater knowing. T his is the world of "blank cold" where one encounters a life changing beyond description. It is the world of silence and absence where one has no desires and no imagination.

T his is the world of positive nothing that Stevens' meditative world aims to achieve.

"T he Plain Sense of T hings" also best demonstrates the process of

Stevens' pure perceptive meditation.171) Stevens concentrates on bare

170) Sampson 176.

- 139 - trees to start meditation for the first step of meditation. His mind then becomes passive and calm through the relaxed detachment in "Inanimate in an inert savoir" (CP 502). T he second step of "dramatic detachment

"172) deepens the process of eliminating thoughts and emotions. At this stage, Stevens' imagination is still acting driven by the meditation. But his mental climate becomes "blank cold" and "sadness" with "all the great structure" reduced to "a minor house" (CP 502).

As the poem goes on, Stevens' third stage of thoughtless detachment for meditation completes the total cessation of emotion and thoughts, and fully creates the mind' s passivity and non- feeling. So the imagination is completely eliminated and replaced with absence at this stage. Stevens' mind enters the fourth stage of "pure detachment"173) for the deepest meditation. He completely empties his mind and eliminates his self, enabling himself to perceive Being plainly without feeling and the imagination. Stevens uses the oriental metaphor of "T he great pond"

(CP 502) to describe his fourth state of meditative mind. T his state of the great pond implies silence and absence as "an inevitable knowledge" of nothingness. T his is the unknown world which the self- bound

171) David Humphries observes that Stevens uses meditative perception in this poem together with meditative language through pure images for his poetic purpose. See Humphries, "A New Kind of Meditation: Wallace Stevens' "T he Plain Sense of T hings," W SJ 23.1 (Spring, 1999): 30- 1. 172) Bevis 79. 173) Bevis 80.

- 140 - imagination fails to see, but only the self- emptied mind succeeds in perceiving being plainly as it is.

"Lebensweisspielerei" describes the meditative world of "indigence,"

"poverty," and "annihilation" (CP 505). T he poem presents the stoic nature and nobility that reduce the possible world to "a dwindled sphere by the aesthetics of negation."174) It further shows the world of nothingness where there is no need of conflicts and contradiction between two opposing elements. T he mental state of the empty mind is "the stale grandeur of annihilation" in oxymoron. T his world of nothingness is in the center of the mind as described in "The Hermitage at the

Center"- - the world where one hears the bell tolling for purity of nature and for life' s redemption. T his world is on the verge of departure from the existing world of knowledge "for unintelligible thought." We can only see and hear this world very briefly in the eyes of enlightenment. Two worlds briefly meet together in a center which becomes "a unified whole

"175) where "this end and this beginning are one" (CP 506).

T he poems examined in this chapter present the major characteristics of Stevens' meditative poetic world in his final period.

Stevens is awakened to life' s mutability in "poverty," hanging on the cliff at a moment when he feels "a blank cold." But he never stops in

174) Robert Buttel, W allace Stevens: T he M aking of H arm onium (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1967) 23. 175) Blessing. W allace Stevens' "W hole H armonium " 153.

- 141 - frustration and in negation. Rather, he is always determined to discover a new world of meditation.

T he next poem, "T o an Old Philosopher in Rome," also shows

Stevens' poetic purpose of meditation by juxtaposing Santayana' s life in

Rome with Stevens' aged life and death in his meditation.176) T he juxtaposition puts two worlds in contrast: the self and the world, life and death, the internal world and the external world, the known and the unknown, largeness and smallness, reality and the imagination. Stevens experiences the supreme state of consciousness in meditation on two divided worlds, stepping on the threshold of a new world. In this poem in memory of Santayana' s great life as a philosopher, Stevens conceptually shows the process of entering the threshold of "domes" where he can experience the supreme enlightenment in life in "the majestic movement" of "sleep“ and "waking."

In stanza one, the philosopher is described to be "on the threshold of heaven." As Vendler argues, "threshold" implies the first stage leading to Stevens' "sublime poetry of inception."177) T he threshold is a starting

176) Holly Stevens notes that George Santayana had a lifelong influence on her father and she quotes the entry of her father' s journal: "I grieve to hear of the death of George Santayana in Rome. Fifty years ago, I knew him well, in Cambridge, where he often asked me to come and see him. T his was before he had definitely decided not to be a poet. . . . He seems to have gone to life at the convent, in which he died, in his sixties, probably gave them all he had and asked them to keep him, body and soul" (SP 69- 70). 177) Vendler, On E xtended W ings 310.

- 142 - point of the lowest sensual level of perception which eventually leads to spiritual height. Stevens means here that the threshold is the first step leading to the highest meditation of nirvana. T he second half of the poem presents the sublime dome as the world of nirvana and describes awakening as the world of "as if."

On the threshold of heaven, figures in the street Become the figures of heaven, the majestic movement Of men growing small in the distances of space, Singing, with smaller and still smaller sound, Unintelligible absolution and an end- -

T he threshold, Rome, and that more merciful Rome Beyond, the two alike in the make of the mind. It is as if in a human dignity T wo parallels become one, a perspective, of which Men are part both in the inch and in the mile. (CP 508)

"T he threshold" divides Rome into two worlds in Stevens' mind: the actual world of Rome on the threshold and "that more merciful Rome /

Beyond" but at once these real and imaginary become "the two alike in the make of the mind." T hese two worlds "become one," in the mind "as if in dignity."

T he following stanza suggests the way to the humanistic perception of meditation:

How easily the blown banners change to wings . . . T hings dark on the horizons of perception Became accompaniments of fortune, but Of the fortune of the spirit, beyond the eye, Not of its sphere, and yet not far beyond.

- 143 - T he human end in the spirit' s greatest reach, T he extreme of the known in the presence of the extreme Of the unknown. (CP 508)

Stevens realizes the difficulty in harmonizing these two worlds and sends his mind "on wings" to reach "banners" of the meditative state.

T he unknown world beyond the end of the mind is reached by the encounter of chance, by intuition of luck. Such an encounter of the spirit is awakening. T he spirit is existent in the world in the not distant place beyond. T he peak of the spirit' s height is perception of the "extreme of the unknown" world. T his perception is only made possible in realization of "the extreme of the known" man can reach and in harmonizing the known world with the unknown. T he human end is in harmonizing the two worlds. T his is an awakening of life in Zen. T his harmony is made by coincidence.

In a confusion on bed and books, a portent On their chair, a moving transparence on the nuns, A light on the candle tearing against the wick T o join a hovering excellence, to escape From fire and be part only of that of which

Fire is the symbol: the celestial possible. Speak to your pillow as if it was yourself. Be orator but with an accurate tongue And without eloquence, O, half- asleep, Of the pity that is the memorial of this room,

So that we feel, in this illumined large, T he veritable small, so that each of us

- 144 - Beholds himself in you and hears his voice In yours, master and commiserable man, Intent on your particles of nether- do, (CP 509)

T he words of "bed," "books," "chair," "candle" serve as "a portent of an ascetic or a meditative philosopher. He tears "against the wick" to find "a moving transparence." T his is to participate in Reality which can be perceived in actuality beyond reality. T his is an effort to find the state of "the celestial possible" where fire exists as a symbol, not as fire itself. Man must know its being not rhetorically but in a half- asleep meditation in exact language. At this moment man realizes that he can discover everything in the "veritable small" world of the self which is the "illumined large" universe. T hen he hears a voice of the self in reality. Here Stevens finds nirvana in reality:

' In its ordinary acceptation, as an adjective, nirvana signifies extinct, as a fire which has gone out; set, as a luminary which has gone down; defunct, as a saint who has passed away; its etymology is from va, to blow as wind, with the preposition nir used in a negative sense; it means calm and unruffled.' 178)

We read of Nirvana related with the symbol of fire, with the meaning of

"nether" and "afflatus." Stevens suggests the detailed and concrete way

178) Bevis quotes T homas Henry Colebrooke, son of Sir George Colebrooke, chairman of the court of directors of the East India Company. He went to Berngal as a civil service employee. He returned to England as a professor of Sanskrit and Hindu law. Colebrooke explained to the members of the Royal Asiatic Society of London in 1827 the extreme of the state of mind sought in Buddhist meditative practice as "nirvana, profound calm." See Bevis 19.

- 145 - to realize the highest level of meditation. Meditation of "sleep and waking" leads to the threshold of awakening to "mercy" of "[mysterious] silence" that man finds in "poverty' s speech," "nakedness" and "dome."

Your dozing in the depths of wakefulness, In the warmth of your bed, at the edge of your chair, alive Yet living in two worlds, impenitent As to one, and, as to one, most penitent, Impatient for the grandeur that you need

In so much misery; and yet finding it Only in misery, the afflatus of ruin, Profound poetry of the poor and of the dead, As in the last drop of the deepest blood, As it falls from the heart and lies there to be seen. (CP 509)

T hese stanzas shows Stevens' poetics of contrast: "dozing" and

"wakefulness," "penitent and impenitent," "to be seen" and "to be unseen." "Dozing" and "wakefulness" are significant in the symbolic aspect of meditation and the elevated spirit, and of earthly life and spiritual life. T he wakefulness which is divided into four stages in representation of the advanced state of consciousness resembles

Atmanian consciousness.179) T hese are physical (waking state), astro- mental (dream sleep), casual (deep sleep) and buddhistic (blissful sleep) bodies.180) T his Atmanian consciousness discusses "the known" and "the

179) Gaskell 82. It' s a Brahman' s term symbolizing the Supreme- - the logos or self which enters upon manifestation and indwells in the universe and soul. 180) Gaskell 698- 9. As Gaskell notes, sleep is related with death. T he self can form all imagination, thought and light, desire and pleasure in "dream sleep“ state after physical death. T his state leads to higher state of bliss rather than limited to misery of

- 146 - unknown," the "seen" and "unseen," "the penitent" and "impertinent" in

"the afflatus of ruin" and results in "poverty' s speech," "the naked majesty" of the most elevated state. T he poet who has realized such an elevated state of consciousness creates "dwellings" and "churches."181)

Stevens names the world as "domes" of Rome.

T he sounds drift in. T he buildings are remembered. T he life of the city never lets go, nor do you Ever want it to. It is part of the life in your room. Its domes are the architecture of your bed. T he bells keep on repeating solemn names

In choruses and choirs of choruses, Unwilling that mercy should be a mystery Of silence, that any solitude of sense Should give you more than their peculiar chords And reverberations clinging to whisper still. (CP 510)

T he world is full of music and pleasure with bell- tolling and choir- song of bliss as always. "A mystery of silence" conveys "mercy."

T otal grandeur of a total edifice, Chosen by an inquisitor of structures

For himself. He stops upon this threshold, As if the design of all his words takes form And frame from thinking and is realized. (CP 510- 1)

When one reaches enlightenment through silence and contradiction, this world of awakening could be a "Dome" in heaven and the "T otal

Grandeur of a total edifice" as Baird observes.182) T hus the poet stops death. 181) Gaskell 699.

- 147 - on the threshold of meditation for awakening. But he fails to pass through it because he fears his world of "as if" may break down if he passes through it for completion. Stevens uses incompleteness in this poem and overrules the round- off of the poem. He only shows the way to completion of awakening. T his poem is the prologue to realization of enlightenment. As Brogan argues, Stevens uses the vehicle of "as if" to equate two opposing worlds of reality and imagination. T his final "as if" itself is the meaning of the poem as Brogan notes.183) T his fiction of "as if" is to make his fiction an open form which integrates two opposing elements.

"Prologue to What is Possible" further describes the state of meditative nirvana. T he meditator enters the state of dozing and calm consciousness where the boat and the self become one. T he "stone" boat carries no weight. His mind goes into thingness and intuits the First

Idea and jumps beyond "the familiar" and the actual world in order to become one with the object and to stay in a "far- foreign departure."

As he traveled alone, like man lured on by a syllable without any meaning, A syllable of which he felt, with an appointed sureness, T hat it contained the meaning into which he wanted to enter, A meaning which, as he entered it, would shatter the boat and leave the oarsmen quiet As at a point of central arrival, an instant moment, much or little,

182) James Baird, T he Dom e and the R ock 9. 183) Brogan 135.

- 148 - Removed from any shore, from any man or woman, and needing none. (CP 516)

Stevens uses the metaphor of a voyage toward the world of awakening. He only chases what is possible but when he feels something possible and he finds himself "on a point of central arrival" for awakening, he sees the feelings disappear and he remains speechless to see all his present knowing shattered like the boat. So he quietly distances himself from the actual world of human beings. He is briefly awakened to the world which he intellectually pursued but he could not realize. T he world of "the this and that" in division is perceived to be the world of "resemblance" hypothesized in a half- asleep state of meditation. T his world is seeking the highest nobility, humanity- centered.

What self, for example, did he contain that had not yet been loosed Snarling in him for discovery as his attentions spread, As if all his hereditary lights were suddenly increased By an access of color, a new and unobserved, slight dithering, T he smallest lamp, which added its puissant flick, to which he gave A name and privilege over the ordinary of his commonplace- - (CP 516- 7)

T hese lines demonstrate the self- loss of the mind- emptying after the initial self- creation. T he poet is asking himself if anyone has yet to abandon his self. For awakening, the poet tries to seek the basis of

- 149 - truth. He feels the meditating moment of awakening comes like

"dithering" and "flick" in commonplaces. It is felt emotionally like the flicking flame of the candlelight. T he greater knowing of the awakening exceeds all the ordinary things, distinction, reason and desire, etc. T his awakening state shows meditation of mystic ecstasy.

Adds to them the whole vocabulary of the South, T he way the earliest single light in the evening sky, in spring, Creates a fresh universe out of nothingness by adding itself, T he way a look or a touch reveals its unexpected magnitudes. (CP 517)

T he momentary awakening that touches man emotionally appears in things in all actuality and in the human language. It appears like spring air to Northern trees after winter. T he awakening is showing itself in the securest form like sprouting leaves in spring- time. T his tree of knowing grows energetically like trees in the sub- tropical South. T his looks like Venus light creating "a fresh universe out of nothingness by adding itself." T his addition of the self, the projection of the self into the greater world brings the greater knowing ("magnitude"). T his is the principle of nothingness that brings the greater knowing for the creation of a new universe. T he poet uses ordinary words in this poem of

"touch," "look," "speech." T hese words reflect a Zen- like consciousness.

Bevis calls it a meditative perception. T his meditation makes man' s perception pure and plain and enables him to experience "pure being."

- 150 - In conclusion, this chapter has attempted to examine Stevens' poetic mode of meditation that demonstrates mind- emptying and self- negation in his final poetry. T he examination of Stevens' selected twelve poems shows as in "T he Plain Sense of T hing" and "Of Mere Being" that his mode aims to perceive pure Being or nothingness as new poetic ideal of a meditative whole. T hese meditative fictions entertain all opposing possibilities in apposition rather than in opposition. Stevens' mind- emptying process is expressed in void, empty, bare, white, cold, and transparent images, etc.

Furthermore, we find that Stevens uses the endless cycles of decreation and recreation in support of the meditative mode as in "T he

Auroras of Autumn." He is the poet of recurrent imagery and repetition of same poetic modes. He is also always decreating the old modes for the recreation of a better one.

It is also noticeable that T he A uroras of A utum n and T he R ock were intended to be a meditative whole in order to make his Collected

P oem s an organic whole.184) T hese two meditative books are quite detached and distinguished from those three other modes, imagination- centered, in the sense of mind- emptying, detachment, bareness, and the

184) Janet McCann, W allace Stevens R evisited: "T he Celestial P ossible" (New York: T wane, 1995) 105. McCann suggests that the last phase of Stevens' work begins with T he A uroras of A utumn (1950): Stevens thought of his Collected P oem s as an organic whole; he originally wanted to call it T he W hole of H arm onium (LW S 834).

- 151 - absence of poetic consciousness, and the transparency of fictive desires.

Finally, Stevens depicts his poetic vision through the meditative mode as in "T o an Old Philosopher in Rome" so that two conflicting worlds, the real world of Rome and the imaginary world of Rome on the thres hold of Heaven look as if they are one. Thus we find that his final meditative world unfolds in an open- ended form 185) of "as if" which entertains all oppos ing pos s ibilities together.

Furthermore, David Perkins obs erves that there is no finality in all Stevens ' meditation and that it is "never- ending becaus e it is pleas urable." 186)

185) Melita Schaum suggests that Stevens uses open- ended and processual style in long poems so that he can step beyond the closed text of high modernism into "existential disclosure." See Schaum, W allace Stevens and the Critical Schools 170. 186) David Perkins, A H istory of M odern P oetry M odernism and A fter (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987) 299.

- 152 - Conclus ion

Most of past Western critical approaches to W Being beyond the human mind. It is another poetic survival tactics stepping over the limit of literary imagination. Stevens thought that his unknowable world should be included in his new world of Being or

Nothingness (a new reality) so that it could "complete the circle of existence."187) For this purpose Stevens contrives a meditative whole to symbolically integrate the mind with the infinite and inscrutable world by the mind- emptying method of meditation. Meditation redeems imagination and reality in his final period. It is a meditative whole to bring forth Stevens' greater knowing and enlightenment.

T he results of this study show the difference between imagination and meditation. T he imagination is self- centered and arbitrary, dynamic and active; meditation is self- negated, passive and calm. Meditation is the repulsion of insatiable and self- centered imagination. It is also the invocation of a new poetic redemption to answer his dilemma in the absence of the imagination Stevens has faced at his old age. T his difference shows the different poetic consciousness and sensibility at his final poetic phase.

Stevens seems to suggest in his final meditative poetry that if the ultimate reality or supreme Being could not be perceived by the

187) Riddel 7- 8. Riddel observes that Stevens' Collected Poems was at one time to be called "T he Whole of Harmonium." T his indicates that he view ed his total Poem as something more than a collect of poems. Stevens conducted "an aesthetic adventure in search of form or wholness."

- 154 - imagination, it could be known by the mind- emptying meditation.

Stevens' realities are empirical and finite by the self- centered imagination in three periods of early, middle and late. But his "new reality" (N A 22) is of meditative, infinite, holistic, and cosmic being which Stevens encounters through his meditation, especially in his final poetry. He admits in his final period that "certainly a sense of the infinity of the world is a sense of something cosmic."188)

According to the different phases of his poetic consciousness, this dissertation has categorized them into four poetic modes; mimetic transformation (creation), decreation, recreation and meditation over four phases of his poetic career respectively. T he study of these four poetic modes has been helpful to better grasp the changing nature and features of Stevens' poetic world and the gradual changes in his poetics. It has been also convenient to understand his inscrutable poetic ideas of the ultimate reality, the first idea, the supreme fiction, the imagination, Being and Nothingness, etc.

By examining these four modes, this paper has found that his poetry undergoes four phases of poetic development. At first, broadly speaking, his poetry starts with his consciousness in his early period

188) Stevens continues to say, "It is cosmic poetry because it makes us realize in the same way in which an escape from all our limitations would make us realize that w e are creatures, not of a part, which is our every day limitation, but of a whole to which, for the most part, we have as yet no language. T his sudden change of a lesser life for a greater one is like a change of winter for spring or any other transmutation of poetry" (N OP 271).

- 155 - that the ultimate reality cannot be grasped solely by the imagination without the help of fictions. But it ends with his meditative vision in his final period that the mystery of reality could be known by the meditation of mind- emptying and mind- detachment process.

More specifically speaking, Stevens' early poetic self- consciousness mostly comes from the poetic purpose of resemblance, his faithfulness to the reality itself with his participation in perceptive imagination, the central force binding the man and the chaotic world of disorder. His early poetry is of an incessant becoming, not ruled by any absolute principle or order, and is not governed by any absolute fictions of his own yet. However, gradually, his poetry tends to show fragmentary and provisional fictions. His poetic mind endlessly seeks its agreement with the changing reality through imagination- created fictions. T he imagination begins to have a power to transform his early bare reality into more meaningful fiction for resemblance. T hen the imagination de- creates the changing reality for a better recreation of fiction as an exploratory agent for perceiving reality. In his middle period, his imagination excessively squirms out of his strenuous poetic intelligence.

Passing over this wriggling middle period, he has perceived the limit of imagination and fiction. T his perception has driven him into a new poetic exploration for the supreme fiction which could function as a firm basis to overcome his self- skepticism over the limit of imagination.

- 156 - It is a new trial for the recreation of a desirable fiction or a new poetic perfection of self- consciousness. He has made ceaseless efforts to create his own supreme fiction to redeem his reality. However, it is impossible to reach any perfect ideal reality or find life' s truth from the beginning. T herefore, he turns to the new poetic consciousness, the meditative mode, in order to find a clue to his lifelong enigmas or truths of the reality.

So far, this dissertation has attempted to study four poetic modes in order to better understand the subtle nature of Stevens' poetry.

First of all, what are Stevens' four poetic modes trying to pursue? His poetry is the results of his intellectual efforts to find life' s truth in a correct way in the finite reality. It is the answer to his self- reflection on life. However, truth or reality is a non- linguistic and non- referential state as it is. Resemblance or likeness of truth fails to bring any revelation of it. Hence the only means to grasp truth should be either an evasion or a new challenge. In other words, it should be a question of creation of new fiction as a life' s motif or as an agent of truth- evadings.

Stevens' poetry is characterized by his frequent evasions of truth in his poetic dictions: fictions of desire for creation. We often see one of the main features in Stevens' poetry, such as linguistic lingerings, darkness, anxiety, and uncertainty as expressed in "ex.", "the the," and

- 157 - "seem," etc. On the other hand, Stevens creates new fictions for himself in the Adamic spirit of America rather than in nihilistic evasions.

Stevens often describes revelations of a moment when he reaches a poetic agreement with a supreme spiritual state, even in non- representation. T his is a point of poetic identification between truth and reality. It is also the union and harmony between Reality and the

Imagination which acts as an agent for fictions. T his is his recreation of a supreme being in his own idea.

Such poetic common features are prevalently spread from his early period through his final period. T hey are varied in tones or in weight, depending upon the heavy pressures of his contemporary reality in each of his four poetic periods. But his constants are that his poetry always aims to attain the Supreme Being of truth; it is his poetic truth in the endless search by the mind for an agreement between reality and the imagination.

It is very difficult to define his poetry in the view of its paradoxical elements which negate and contradict the opposing elements.

T his is why we conduct this study on four poetic modes in a collective way. His early poetry in H arm onium is represented mainly by the mode of mimetic transformation or transformative resemblance as one of his poetic purposes of attaining the truth of a supreme being inherent in

Reality. His early poetry does not simply try to represent reality and

- 158 - truth as it is in the classical mimetic way through the act of the mind, but he makes his best efforts to pursue resemblance through poetic metamorphosis. We termed the phenomena of such poetic efforts as poetic consciousness or self- consciousness since the poet' s self- consciousness is the most responsible agent for poetic metamorphosis.

His poetic self- consciousness pursues fictive transformations aiming at poetic resemblance. Such consciousness has been named "mimetic transformation" or transformative resemblance working as the main principle for Stevens' early period.

However, his early period is the embryonic phase of his poetic self when he somewhat lyrically concentrates as young on the beauty of physical reality and sensations without the complete departure from the traditional aesthetics and mythic elements. His poetic self, self- consciousness in his middle period, has grown strong enough to pursue his own world of fictions in departure from the old tradition. Such fictive desire of Stevens to decreate the truth in reality for new fictions turn up more powerfully in the mode of decreation through the intellect- centered imagination.

T his decreation mode is Stevens' abstraction technique189) he learned from modern paintings in his early days. It shows a state of

189) MacLeod xxviii. MacLeod relates the evolution of Stevens' poetry with Abstract Expressionism, the first American art movement of international importance from 1930s to 1955.

- 159 - subversion of established value system, deconstruction of self- consciousness, self- negation, etc. T his self- decreation is a precondition to the later recreation. We termed this intelligence- oriented and self- analytic state of Reality as the decreation mode in Stevens' middle poetry. It is difficult to define such state of poetic consciousness by linguistic representation. But we can see it as the poetic consciousness of a strong downward flight into abyss in order to find the "first idea" as the first perceived of Reality. Meantime, it appears that the poetic consciousness engrossed in self- analytic strains fails to solve problems of life. T he causal primer of the ineffective self- analysis is the imagination. At last, Stevens remains unsettled at the imagination- created fictions, lifeless and inhuman, and divorced from reality. Quite in contradiction to his early poetic assertion in H arm onium days that he must perceive the real face of reality "as it is," his intellectual indulgence in fiction- making paradoxically comes to hurt his poetic vitality.

T herefore, he contrives his new poetic consciousness which can stress its contribution toward harmony between reality and the imagination, reunion instead of division and decreation. Such new poetic efforts result in lifting his poetic consciousness to the higher level of new fiction- makings. Such state of reunion represents the main feature of Stevens' late poetry. We termed this state of poetic consciousness as

- 160 - the recreation mode. T his recreation mode describes one aspect of the poetic consciousness, different from two other earlier modes in the sense that it directs at combinational reunification of two other modes in "a third eye."190) But it pursues the same target of attaining his poetic truth in agreement with reality through new fictions like two other modes.

T he common feature of the three poetic modes is that they intensify the poetic imagination power in order to perceive true reality through fiction. Mimetic transformation, self- analytic decreation for new creation, and self- sublimating recreation are all marked by their same motivation to pursue the poetic self- consciousness which is chiefly represented by the imagination. T hese three modes are the reflectors of the various poetic consciousness of the mind in response to the same real and true state of reality. Linguistically, his imagination does not readily reveal the truth of life at its highest level. Here Stevens feels the limit of the imagination. So his self- consciousness changes toward a state of self- emptying and mind- detachment which is slightly in deviation from the western poetic tradition emphasizing more imagination.

T his poetic attitude can be named meditative. It demonstrates a state of self- consciousness that keeps his own mind and self at a

190) Gaskell 260. Gaskell describes it as a clairvoyant faculty on the astral plane which precedes physical sight.

- 161 - distance to observe and contemplate the essence of reality through meditation in the "third eye" or the third self. T his state is differentiated from mimetic transformation which is indulged in reality, and from decreation which is to separate imagination from reality, and from recreation which is to harmonize the two. Getting aged, Stevens keeps the imagination at a theatrical distance. T hroughout his early and middle ages, the imagination has been the only means to grasp the life truth.

T his state of mind- emptying in meditation characterizes his final poetry as calmness and passivity inherent in the bottom line of the mind. Such state of mind- emptying and detachment is termed as the meditation mode. Of Stevens' four poetic modes, I find meditation mode the most valuable and meaningful. T his meditation mode enables us to feel more values and meanings of life from poverty in emptying self- consciousness rather than affluence in gaining poetic self in the imagination- centered physical reality, from detachment from things rather than commitment, from coldness from the North rather than the epicureanism from the warm and fertile South.

Stevens' four poetic modes can be also categorized into two modes of imagination and meditation as three other earlier modes of mimetic transformation, decreation, and recreation are all the direct offsprings of imagination. Western criticism has mostly focused on the imagination- centered reality, but has overlooked meditative elements

- 162 - which are vital to understanding the subtle, evasive nature of Stevens' poetry. T he meditative mode in Stevens' poetry can suggest a clue to explicate the subtle evasions and provisionality predominant in his early imagination- oriented poems.

T hus, with this meditative mode fully geared up for our understanding, his poetic reality would be open to the "elixir" and "pleasure" in "Notes." Poetry, either imagination- centered or meditation- geared, provides the means to liberate Stevens' poetic self- consciousness from the confined reality even for a moment. T hese three poetic modes are assimilated with the meditative trend in his final poetry. T he poetic supreme fictionality proves to be the same crystal- clear aspect of reality with his own version of variations which are the diverse perspectives on the same Reality.

T hrough this meditative mode, Stevens tries to show a way to a meditative whole that blurs the dividing line between the mind and changing world. But he always refuses to produce finished product of poetry and tries to create poetry only as process representing changing reality and as a tentative and open- ended191) form in a world "without gods and lacking any teleological base."192)

191) John T imberman Newcomb, W allace Stevens and Literary Canons (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1992) 216. As Newcomb notes, Stevens "asserted that life was an open- ended process of ' meditation' on the flux of the world whose only possible closure was death." 192) David M. LaGuardia, A dvance on Chaos T he Sanctifying Imagination of

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Abbrev iations

CP T he Collected Poems of W allace Stevens. New York: Knopf, 1954; rpt. 1975. LW S Letters of W allace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens with New Foreword by Richard Howard. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. N A T he N ecessary A ngel: E ssays on R eality and the Imagination. New York: Knopf, 1957. OP Opus P osthumous by W allace Stevens. Ed. Samuel French Morse. New York: Knopf, 1957. N OP Opus P osthumous by W allace Stevens R evised, E nlarged, and Corrected E dition. Ed. Milton J. Bates. New York: Vintage, 1989. P M T he P alm at the E nd of the M ind: Selected P oem s A nd a P lay. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Vintage, 1990. SCB Sur Plusieurs B eaux Sujets: W allace Stevens' Com monplace B ook. Ed. by Milton J. Bates Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989. SP Souvenirs and P rophecies: T he Y oung W allace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Knopf, 1977.

- 169 -