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ISSN 2278-9529 Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal www.galaxyimrj.com www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN: 0976-8165
The Creative Dominance: Probing the Presence of Black Colour as the Condition for Imaginative Activity in Wallace Stevens’Harmonium
Sruthi B Peet Memorial Training College Mavelikara, Kerala
The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the power of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded “Let there be light” –and light appeared. God was pleased with what he saw. Then he separated the light from darkness, and he named the day “light” and the darkness “night”. (Genesis 1:1-5)
In the biblical account of creation, black preceded the creation of light. Even the big bang theory won’t prove the precedence of darkness wrong. This primordial colour in mythologies is related to fertility.In Black: The History of a Color, Pastoureau mentions that: This originary black is also found in other mythologies, not only in Europe but also in Asia and Africa. It is often fertile and fecund, as the Egyptian black that symbolizes the silt deposited by the waters of the Nile, with its beneficial floods that are anticipated hopefully each year, it is opposite of the sterile red of the desert sand. Elsewhere, fertile black is simply represented by big black clouds, heavy with rain, ready to fall upon the earth to make it fruitful. In still other places it either graces the statuettes of the protohistorical mother-goddesses or adorns certain divinities associated with fertility (Cybele, Demeter, Ceres, Hecate, Isis, Kali); they may have dark skin, hold or receive black objects, and demand that animals be sacrificed to them. (21)
In the middle ages primordial black was associated with artisans, thus linking the colour with creativity. It was not too late before the colour black was attributed with negative dimensions. Black, darkness and night were soon linked with death, melancholy, mourning, and evil, a concept which has been carried over centuries by artists and writers. The red, white, and black triad1 became more and more popular during the Middle Ages. But soon more colours like blue, yellow and green came to the scene. They were soon followed by new colours, which were formed by the mixing of pigments.
1 About the year 1000 white signified the priestly class, red stood for warriors and black for
artisans. The black and white colours didn’t represent the contrasting colours then.
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These experiments along with the new theories of perception gave for Newton’s theory2 on colours. But the new order of colours didn’t elevate the status of black. It began to be regarded as a colourless colour. As Pastoureau describes in Black: The History of a color: In this new order of colours there was no longer a place either for black or for white. That constituted a revolution; black and white were no longer colors, and black perhaps even less so than white. White, in effect, was indirectly part of the spectrum since all the colors were contained within it. But black was not. Hence it was situated outside of any chromatic system, outside the world of color. (148) Black had to face a terrible set back which the Romantics tried to revive. But the earlier romantics were interested in blue and green in their eagerness to represent the various faces of nature. But black started finding a place for itself among these colours but only as a synonym for mourning, death and misery. It soon became the back drop for gothic3 novels and stories. Black carried on with a negative status till World War 1st, soon after which black was recognized a colour of authority and seriousness and was adopted as the color code for judges, magistrates, professors, lawyers, postmen, customs officers, sailors etc. But still there were oppositions4 over the use of black colour for artistic purposes; driven by the idea that black is not a colour as it doesn’t include any colours like white. This was based on the Newton’s theories of dispersion of light and the laws of spectrum. The whole attitude towards colours black and white again underwent a stimulating change with the birth of photography,which was soon followed by the
2 The entry on colour in the 11th edition of Britannica encyclopedia records that according to
Newton the white light can be decomposed by the prism into red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
indigo and violet. White is thus the colour of the sunlight and is the basis of all the other colours
formed by the spectrum.
3 In his book Black: The History of a Color (2008), Michel Pastoureau mentions that “The English
gothic novels had launched a trend in the macabre as early as the 1760s, with the castle of
Otranto by Horace Walpole, published in 1764. This trend continued into the turn of the century –
The Mysteries of Udolfo by Ann Radcliffe (1794), The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis (1795) –and
with it, black made its great comeback. This was the triumph of night and death, witches and
cemeteries, the strange and fantastic. Satan himself reappeared and became the hero of many
poems and stories”. (166)
4 According to Gauguin “Reject black and that mixture of black and white called gray. Nothing is
black and that mixture of black and white called gray”. (Pastoureau,177)
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medium of cinema. The literary world went on giving negative impressions to the colour black. Among the modern poets like Ezra Pound5 , Rainer Maria Rilke and Hilda Doolittle, who used black as an instrument to state symbolic relations, the poetry of Wallace Stevens6 stands out for his unique treatment of black colour. It was not just the colour black that Stevens was interested in. Rather he was mesmerized by the whole world of colours and experimented with different colours in the spectrum.His first collection of poems,Harmonium7 uses a wide spectrum of colours but has always tried to experiment with the colours. His poems clearly portray his knowledge of Newton’s
5 Refer to Pound’s poem In a Station of the Metro
6 Wallace Stevens attended the Armory show of 1913, where Marcel Duchamp’s Nude
Descending the staircase was exhibited. Stevens soon became a part of ‘Arsenburg Circle’. The
circle met to discuss the latest art, film, music and photography. Some of Stevens’s poems were
also read at the meetings. This gave him an opportunity to get introduced to the works of
Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Andre´ Derain, Francis
Picabia, Joseph Stella, Charles Sheeler, Constantin Brancusi, Henri
Rousseau,Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Marcel Duchamp.
7 Wallace Stevens had started writing poems during his Harvard years (1897-1900). A new turn in
his poetic creation came when he started composing poems for Elsie Kachel, who later became
his wife. The seventy four poems that appear in Harmonium are not written before 1914 or 1915.
We are only familiar with the dates of publication as the date of creation remains unknown.
Harmonium, which was published in 1923 at the age of forty four doesn’t include the thirty nine
poems that he published between 1914 and 1919. They don’t appear in Collected poems as well,
which was published in 1953. He faced a lot of difficulty in collecting the poems for Harmonium
(refer the letter Wallace Stevens wrote to Harriet Monroe on December 21, 1922, that appear in
Letters of Wallace Stevens).
“Harmonium, the title that he finally chose, demonstrates the strength of this demand, not simply
for order, but for an order that establishes a peaceful and aesthetically pleasing concord among
the parts of a unified and consistent whole –harmony. This idea expresses Stevens’ feelings
about his work so completely that he wanted to call his collected poems The Whole of
Harmonium” (Serio,24)
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colour theories. Though he seems to follow them, it is not an end for him. George McFadden in his article “Probings for an Integration: Color Symbolism in Wallace Stevens” has stated that “Wallace Stevens requires a Newton of his own” (186). Black colour attains a distinct and unique standard in the poems that occur in Harmonium. McFadden in his article “Probings for an Integration: Color Symbolism in Wallace Stevens” states that“The change which was all important for Stevens begins in black and so does reality” (188)8. The change for Wallace Stevens lies in the imaginative faculty. He considers it as the only element that links one to reality. It is one of the “great human powers” (138) and embodies “the liberty of the mind” (138). In the essay “Imagination as Value” that is included in his Necessary Angel, Stevens talks extensively about imagination9. Imagination as metaphysics will lead us in one direction and, as art in another. When we consider the imagination as metaphysics, we realize that it is in the nature of the imagination itself that we should be quick to accept it as the only clue to reality. (137) For Stevens the black colour provides the condition for imaginative faculty to flourish. It forms the backdrop where imagination flourishes. Black occupies a place between reality and imagination and also forms a medium for the conception of new thoughts coloured by imagination. The blackness of the nights gives way for those who wish to dream and explore the secrets. Only those who can dream and imagine can endure the night. For others it still stands for death and evil. Wallace Stevens often brings in the moonlight that penetrates the darkness that persists.In The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens,John N. Serio mentions that “Moonlight stands for the imagination, because it belongs to the night and dreams and because it is at a remove, reflected and shadowy” (35) Black for Stevens is neither the absence of a colour or a presence of colour. It exists in reality and develops the imaginative. For him black is a dominant colour, which is synonymous to “night” and “darkness” in Harmonium. In the poem “Domination of Black” Stevens makes his perception of the colour clear. He seems to have carefully chosen the title, “Domination of Black” 10with an aim to introduce the readers to the setting right at the beginning. The predominance of black in the environment is reinstated by starting the poem with “At night” (1)
8 “Black Water breaking into reality” (line 100,Extracts from the Addresses to the Academy of Fine
Ideas)
9 Refer “Probings for an Integration : Color Symbolism in Wallace Stevens” 186
10 Towards the middle of the poem we can see the lines that start with “turning” or “turned”. This
seems to be Stevens’s experimentation that “lays the foundation for later works in which Stevens
would keep line numbers stable but loosen the meter and give full rein to enjambment and
caesura” as in “Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction” and “The Man with the Blue Guitar”.
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It is the burning fire alone that pierces the darkness that pertains in the room. The fire brings back to the room the colours of the bushes, falling leaves and hemlocks. There is a play of yellow, brown and red colours of the fall mixed with the evergreen colour of the hemlocks in the backdrop of the black colour. The colours appear like the colourful drawings on a blackboard. This description suddenly takes a turn by the out of place description of the “cry of the peacocks” (10). Peacocks “flying down from the boughs of the hemlocks” (16) is something unrealistic, stating that it is just the creation of the poetic imagination like the other colours in the room. The existing colours are now mixed with the dark blue and green colours of the tails of the peacocks. These dark colours are closer to the black colour which reasserts the prominence of the colour black. The comparison of the arrival of night with the dark green colour of the “heavy hemlocks” (8) in the last stanza proves this. It is in the background created by the colour black that the poetic imagination visualizes the play of different colours in the fire. These colours will lose their identity in the light of the day. Each colour assumes its real quality in the presence of black. The colours of the bushes and fallen leaves “repeating themselves” (4) suggest the poet’s recollection of the colours. So does the word “remembered” (10), which is repeated twice in the poem. Throughout the poem there is a frequent reference to the cry of the peacocks which the poet assumes to be against “the twilight” or against the approaching darkness. The cry comes piercing the darkness like the other colours. Here the black colour absorbs and recreates the colours of the day. Black gives life to imagination and creativity in the poem. “Domination of Black” places the colour black at the center of the spectrum. It is no more a colourless colour but a colour where all the other colours reside. Newton’s colour theory talks about black as a colour which absorbs all the colours of the spectrum and reflects none. The theory itself proves the presence of all other colours and thus makes it more predominant a colour than anything else. This domination of colour black was propagated by Kazimir Malevich through his black square. Malevich launched a new movement called Suprematismin Russia in December 1915. He placed his black square on the top corner of his display. This place is normally occupied by the icon in a traditional, orthodox Russian home. This position made the square, the first Suprematist painting, a representative of a transcendental truth. The painting is based on a mechanism where the non-objective11 painting transforms itself into a figurative one.
11 Malevich tried to create an abstract style through the movement called Suprematism, which
was aimed at proving that “the supreme reality in this world is pure feeling which attaches to no
object” (Gardner, 404). According to Malevich “under Suprematism I understand the supremacy
of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world
are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as which quite apart from the
environment in which it is called forth.” (Gardner,404)
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Figure 1. Black Square, Oil and Canvas from Kazimir Malevich, http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/kazimir-malevich/black-square-1915
The Black Square12 of Malevich13 is embedded on a white background, which also takes the form of a square. The black square appears distinct and stands out compared to the white canvas on which it is painted. It appears as if the white background on which the black square is embossed, is completely absorbed by the blackness. The flat surface of the black square merges with the white background, thus producing a contrast between the two. The white background appears void and seems to lack the presence of any other component. It is being absorbed in by the blackness of the black square, from which all the residue of illusion has been removed. While the black
12 The Black Square was first displayed in December 1915. Over the next twenty years he
repeated the black square almost three times. The techniques used in painting were the same,
which is oil and canvas. The idea of the Black Square originated from the scenery for the
production of the opera, Victory over the Sun, 1913.
13 Refer to Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying.
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square that is painted on the white background absorbs the whiteness of the white and seems to contain a wide array of colours, which gives it its blackness. It seems to be the center, like a black hole, to which all the other colours get attracted and resides. What is aimed at is an imaginative transcendence in the mind’s eye, through the mediation of black colour. Here the objective world ceases to exist and states the predominance of colour black as in Wallace Stevens poem “Domination of Black”. Like Malevich, for whom the Black Square becomes the center or medium for the transcendence mind to embrace creativity through imagination, Wallace Stevens also tries to state the imaginative transcendence with black forming a back drop or the physical condition. The relation of the black, as a medium for imaginative transcendence appears in the later works of Stevens where he talks extensively about the importance of the imaginative faculty. He considers the imagination as one reality on which we can depend. Blackness, a physical reality links us to the imaginative, becoming one with the imaginative, making the unreal appearing real. Wallace Stevens examines the merging of the reality with imagination in his poems “Another Weeping Woman” and “Valley Candle”. Though the poem “Another Weeping Woman” addresses a woman who is grieving over the death of someone she loved, the poet uses this context to comment on the significance of imagination rather than consoling the weeping woman. For the poet she is just “another weeping woman” that he has encountered. In the poem “black” (6) is used as an adjective for blooms. But the poet suggests that these blooms grow out of tears and breed “poison” (4). Thus “black” (6) suggests melancholy and thus gains a negative attribute. Even though it is considered poisonous and thereby evil, the black blossoms still suggest life and creativity. Thus here as well black defines the creative spirit. Darkness pertains in this poem as the poem “Domination of Black”. In the last two stanzas of the poem “Another Weeping Woman “Wallace Stevens writes: The magnificent cause of being, The imagination, the only reality In the imagined world
Leaves you With him for whom no phantasy moves, And you are pierced by a death. (7-12) In these two stanzas the poet states that the cause of human existence or beingness is the power of imagination. The world exists on the foundation of reality created by imagination. But it is strange for mortal beings as the “phantasy” (11) doesn’t move for them. The inability to imagine leaves one lifeless. The quest to blur the dividing line between reality and imagination is evident in later poems of Wallace Stevens especially in “Valley Candle”. Thus imagination becomes one with the reality and black becomes the colour which mediates this. Black exists in reality and helps imagination embrace reality. He states imagination as something that human beings look forward to or crave for. In one of his later poems, “To the One of Fictive Music” he writes in the last couplet: Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:
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The imagination that we spurned and craved
This concept of the relation between the imagination and reality and the point of convergence of both is widely portrayed in the poem “Valley Candle”14. The climax of the poem explores the power of reality that is advocated over the imagination. The poem ends by passes through a phase that finally culminates into silence: My candle burned alone in an immense valley. Beams of the huge night converged upon it, Until the wind blew. Then the beams of the huge night Converged upon its image, Until the wind blew. Through this poem Wallace Stevens tries to intrigue into the tryst between imagination and reality. It can be considered as one of his greatest experiments to find the point of encounter of reality with imagination. He has used brilliant symbols like “candle” (1), “valley” (1) and “wind” (3) to explore the shift that happens when imagination encounters reality. In the poem the “candle” (1) of imagination burns in the “valley” (1) of the poet’s mind with the “beams of the huge night” (2) embracing it. Here the night acts as a medium for the candle to burn and the adjective “huge” (2) explains the darkness of the night. But the “wind” representing the reality with its vast powers blows over the candle. Here we perceive the immediate shift to reality happening, by the imagination giving way for reality. But its “image” (5) still persists in the mind without being disturbed by the reality. Even when this “image” (5) is disturbed by the “wind” (6), it is not deterred. Thus imagination wins over the powers of reality. Or rather imagination embraces reality and becomes one with it. It would be interesting to note that Wallace Stevens in the poem “Another Weeping Woman” describes imagination as “the one reality” (8) that exist in this “imagined world” (9). I wonder whether Stevens’ idea of imagination becoming one with reality had gained foot in his journey from “Another Weeping Woman” to “Valley Candle”, which succeeds the former in the Harmonium. “Valley Candle” resembles “Domination of Black” with the common factor that in both the poems, it is the night or darkness that provokes or forms a medium that celebrates the poet’s tryst with imagination. “Black” forms the border between reality and imagination. The colour is a realistic element which inspires one into imagination. Wallace Stevens’ fascination to explore the proximity of imagination by relating it to darkness is an element that is worth exploring.
14In Wallace Stevens: An Introduction to the Poetry, Susan B. Weston says that “there are many
“anecdote” poems in Harmonium –poems, that is, that seem apropros of some more abstract
discussion, with obviously “allegorical” particulars. “Valley Candle” is an example, with the candle
representing imagination, and the wind the vaster powers of reality.(27)
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The ability of the darkness, night or black to trigger imagination and involve in creativity attributes the colour with femininity15. Wallace Stevens in “Six Significant Landscapes” writes, “night, the female” (14), which states the feminine characteristics attributed to the colour black. Night becomes the dark womb that involves itself and witnesses the process of creation. The colour black becomes that feminine medium which makes ground for imagination that leads to creativity. In order to attribute femininity to night, Wallace Stevens has used words like “cradle” and “conceive” in his poems. In her work Wallace Stevens and the Feminine, MelitaShaum remarks that: From Stevens, black is neither absence of colour nor lack of light, but an erotic and enveloping ambience rich with anticipation and the suggestion of limitless possibilities. It is the “essential dark” the originating materium out of which all creation flows. (215) Two poems that represent the feminine nature of the black are “Two Figures in Dense Violet Light” and “Stars at Tallapoosa”. The night conceives and gives birth to strong emotions under the stars and moonlight. The moonlight which belongs to the night and dreams stands for imagination. Night becomes the cradle where imagination finds its abode. The femininity of the black night is revealed here. The poem “Stars at Tallapoosa” discusses this nature of the night. The stars and the “lines” (1) between the stars belong to the secret night which belongs to the dreamers and night hunters. At the beginning of the poem itself the speaker confirms that the night does not belong to the desolate “criers” (3). The darkness is not the abode for sadness. It cradles and nurtures the night “hunters” (9) or dreamers. The absence of moon and the “dark” (4) and “sharp” (4) lines between the stars confirm the intensity of the darkness that pertains. One won’t be able to find oneself in the blackness that persists around. But this blackness demands the transcendence of imagination where the body becomes the witness to the transformation in the mind’s eye. The imagination is ignited and the unidentifiable and intangible lines between the stars is defined and woven in the mind’s eye. This delight rests with the “secretive hunter” (9) of the night, who studies the night and weaves the imaginative lines that occupy the space between the stars. One could find in the “lines” the characteristics which are incomparable. That makes them fresh, young and delightful for the “secretive hunter” (9). These “lines” of imagination are like the “brilliant arrows” (15) that penetrate the darkness and fill the mind’s eye. Wallace Stevens has brilliantly used the elements related to hunting to
15 Dependence on the feminine is something really important to Wallace Stevens. He has used
female characters in his early as well later poems while dealing with subjects of philosophical,
metaphysical importance, of which “Sunday Morning” and the “World as Mediation” are important
examples. He invokes a female muse in his poem “To the One of Fictive Music”. In his later
poetry the masculine and feminine were considered equal or rather they became one.
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explain the transcendence of imagination. Wallace Stevens writes in the last stanza of the poem: Their pleasure that is all bright-edged and cold; Or, if not arrows, then the nimblest motions, Making recoveries of young nakedness And the lost vehemence the midnights hold. (17-20) The imagination that penetrates the darkness is explained through the “arrows” (18) and “nimblest motions” (18) of a hunter. The poet demands the transcendence of imagination in the blackness like a hunter who is swift in his movements and finds pleasure in the secrecy of darkness. This transcendence could reveal the freshness of the night and bring back the “lost vehemence” (20) of the night. Like in many other poems darkness or blackness becomes the backdrop for the imagination to flourish. The blackness of the night appears as a cradle which nurtures the imagination thus revealing the feminine nature of the night. There are references to lines between stars, “sea-lines” (10) and “earth lines” (11) which seem to be appearing like geometric figures. This will form a fine ground for comparing Wallace Stevens’ interest in painting especially impressionism16. Another poem, as mentioned earlier, that reveals the femininity of night is “Two Figures in Dense Violet light”. The setting of the poem “Two Figures in Dense Violet Light” is the dark night. In the poem violet represents the pregnant darkness of the night. The night is given the colour “violet”. In this context violet is more of dark blue which is almost equivalent to black. Thus it is a version of blackness that pertains. Sources prove that before and after the year 1000, the colour black was used widely for centuries in the paintings representing the devil and other figures closely associated with the devil. It was not only black that was used for this purpose, but also other colours like brown, gray, purple and even blue, which were not much popular then but were considered as dark colours. These colours started to be differentiated only after the twelfth century. Michel Pastoureau mentions in Black: The History of a Color that Dark blue was often considered and perceived as equivalent to black, semi-black or sub- black, used notably for painting hell and demons.
16 Wallace Stevens was fond of impressionism and cubism which was a result of the Armory
show that he attended in 1913 and his interaction with the “Arsenburg Circle”.
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Figure 2.Painted cieling of church in Zillis (Switzerland,c.1120-25);rpt.in Michel Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Paris,2008;print) Pastoureau uses this figure in his book to explain the alternative use of blue and black. The Romanesque paintings used any colour to paint devil as far as it was dark. Here the fur of the devil is colored blue. This interchangeable use of blue and black was not just prominent in the West. In Sanskrit there is only one word, “Krishnaa” that signifies both black and blue. Dark blue is the colour of Lord Krishna, Goddess Kali and even Draupadi. Draupadi is called by the name “Krishnaa” as her colour was dark blue. The colour of Lord Krishna, which represents the dark rain clouds (kaarmukil), is also dark blue. Wallace Stevens who always experimented with colours would surely have known the interchangeability of black and blue17. This might have prompted him to give the night violet colour, which is closer to blue or dark blue in the poem “Two Figures in Dense Violet Light”.
17 In the poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar”, the blue colour symbolizes imagination. It does the
same function as black. Dark blue was also used by Wallace Stevens in some of his poems like
“Variations on a Summer Day”, “Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas”,
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The poem takes course from the conversation with two people, a man and his lover. Under the moonlight the one of them asks the other to share the imagination or the “voice” (4) that the night carries in its abode. Darkness of the night carries in its womb dark secrets which can be claimed only with the power of human imagination. The “dusky words” (5), “dusky images” (5) and the darkened speech suggest he words and images coloured by the imagination. The blackness acts a medium to reveal the secrets buried in the mind’s eye. The speaker does not desire for listening to whatever is being said by the other. There exists an expectation to understand each other’s’ thoughts and imagination. The unsaid words are understood. They conceive words like the night conceives the “sea sounds”. Like a woman the night conceives and gives birth to wonderful “serenades”. The night assumes a feminine nature as in “Stars at Tallapoosa”. The “sea sounds conceived in silence” (10) transform into a “serenade” (12) of imagination. Night remains obscure for mere perceivers. But the blackness reveals the secret to those imaginative minds like the palms becoming clear in the blue. It is the blackness of the night that possesses the “moonlight” (2) or rather imagination. While examining the predominance and the significant position that black occupies in the poems of Wallace Stevens, it also becomes important to find the contrast between the colours black and white, that Stevens presents in his poems. Black has always been associated with death and evil while white stands for purity. This was an age old tradition which has some roots in Christianity. Pastoureau in Black: The History of a Color explains the use of the colours white, red and black in the celebrations under Roman Christian tradition of eleventh and twelfth centuries. According to them: White, the symbol of purity, was used for all celebrations of Christ as well those of the angels, virgins and confessors; red which recalls the blood spilled by and for Christ, was used for celebrations of the apostles and martyrs, the cross, and the Holy Spirit, notably Pentecost; as for black, it was used for times of waiting and penitence (Advent, Lent), as well as for the masses for the dead and for Holy Friday. (39-40) This distinction of black and white was carried on for centuries and soon they were started to be regarded as adversaries. Newton’s colour theories revealed the scientific differences between these colours. According to the 1911 edition of the Britannica Encyclopedia, a white object will reflect all the light of all the colours while a black object absorbs almost all the colours. Wallace Stevens has tried to show the purpose of these chromatic contraries in Harmonium. The “Snow Man” which follows the poem “Domination of Black” brings out a contrast between the colours black and white. The darkness of the night in “Domination of Black” gives way for a snow covered landscape.Eleanor Cook writes in A Reader’s Guide to Wallace Stevens that: “The Snow Man” is so placed that it makes a companion poem to “Domination of Black” in a fine contrast of black versus white, night versus day, fire versus ice, past tense versus present, “I” versus “one”, haunting memory versus purged memory, charm poem versus riddle poem. Not that this poem represents a domination of white: it is a poem written against any domination. (35-36)
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Stevens presents a snowman, an immobile witness of the winter who is cold as well as dispassionate to the surroundings. Only a snowman can have perfect absorption into the surroundings. Everything that is present in the landscape is white and there is no sign of life. The evergreen boughs of the pine trees, junipers and spruces are covered with snow and glitter in the sun. The only sound that one can hear is the sound of the “few leaves” (9) that remain when the wind blows over the landscape. Nothing else tends to disturb the “bare” (12) and peaceful atmosphere that exists. This would appear quiet strange when one moves from a night filled with the “cry” of peacocks on the boughs of hemlocks to a bare landscape. The poet claims that to enjoy the atmosphere one must be a “snow man” who wishes to embrace the frost without thinking of any “misery” in the atmosphere that pertains around. This suggests that one should live in reality without giving way for imagination to embrace the winter and enjoy it. There is absolutely no scope for imagination, to think of “nothing that is there” (15) and “nothing that is” (15). Through this poem Wallace Stevens might be trying to say how difficult it would be for human beings to separate their perceptions from their imagination. While in the domination of black the imagination gets life, here the sight of snow or whiteness around makes the poet demand the suppression of thoughts. Black for Wallace Stevens becomes a medium where the thoughts flourish and creativity looms. But imagination can’t flourish unless there is a stage where one perceives the objects as they are as suggested in the “Snow Man”. The winter explained in “Snow Man” will soon give way to colours. One cannot skip the season of winter to embrace spring, the season of colours when the evergreen spruces, junipers and pines will shed the snow and takes its real form which was buried under the snow for long. So the season of snow with its whiteness everywhere is essential to understand the importance of the spring season and its colours. Similarly without a season of suppressed thoughts one will not be able to create for themselves a season of imagination. The poem “Snow Man” is not aimed at portraying the barrenness of white or promoting the immense possibilities of the colour black. Rather the poem tries to distinguish the use of black and white colours by Wallace Stevens and look deeply into the nature of imagination that functions only with the existence of reality. Without knowing the real, one will not be able to experience the imagined. As the poems of Wallace Stevens from Harmonium reveals, the transcendence of reality into imagination happens with the presence of black colour. This colour which defined the evil and the dead for years assumes a feminine nature and carries the burden of mediating creation or life in Wallace Stevens’s poems.
Works Cited:
Stevens, Wallace. Harmonium. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. Print. —. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. print. —. Necessary Angel : Essays on Reality and the Imagination. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1942. print. —. Opus Posthumus. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1972. print.
Vol. 6, Issue. V 186 October 2015 www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN: 0976-8165
Onlline Concordance to Wallace Stevens Poetry. n.d. web.
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