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Stevens and Aristotle: the Mimetic Connection

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Stevens and Aristotle: the Mimetic Connection STEVENS AND ARISTOTLE: THE MIMETIC CONNECTION by Barbra Nightingale A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Humanities in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December, 1985 STEVENS AND ARISTOTLE: THE MIMETIC CONNECTION by Barbra Nightingale This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor , Dr. Howard D. Pearce , Department of English, and hus been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Thesis Advisor ii ABSTRACT Author: Barbra Nightingale Title: Stevens and Aristotle: The Mimetic Connection Institution: Florida Atlantic University Degree: Master of Arts Year: 1985 A detailed analysis of Wallace Ste vens's poetics reveals close parallels with Aristotle's theory of mimesis. These parallels are most notable in regard to the defi- nition of mimesis as it pertains to poetry, language , nature, r eality , and i mag i n a t i on . An exploration of thes e parallels firmly establishes Stevens as an Aristotelian , and therefore provides an important aid in understanding his use of poetic devices such as diction, m~~aphor, and persona. i i i CONTENTS Introduction Chapter One: Mimesis, Language, and the Poet 8 Chapter Two: Nature and Reality 30 Conclusion 46 iv INTRODUCTION Wallace Stevens's poetry and poetics have been much discussed since mid-century, and he has been connected or compared to such literary figures as Dante, Milton, Whitman, Emerson, Eliot, Cummings, and Williams as well ....- as associated with major movements such as neo-Classi-~ cism, Romanticism, Imagism, and Modernism (Willard 103-05) He has even been linked with Plato, with one critic call- ing Stevens's "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" the "ulti- mate Plato" (Sheehan 165); but except for oblique ref- erences, acknowledgment and comparison of Stevens's affinities with Aristotle concerning mimetic theory is lacking. That connection seems worth exploring on the basis of the relationships between Aristotle's and Stevens's thoughts on nature, reality, imagination, and language insofar as they relate to mimetic theory, and such comparisons might show how these theories operate in Stevens's work. Observing Stevens's kinship to Ari~otle might /' begin with an objection to Donald Sheehan's calling Stevens "the ultimate Plato." Sheehan's article, "The Ultimate Plato: A Reading of Wallace Stevens' [sic] 'Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,"' begins well enough with the generally 2 agreed upon idea that the poem, a "complicated argument about truth, reality , and our creative relation to them, is, in its own terms, a fiction" (Sheehan 166). Sheehan allows that the poem tells us that in order to know the world, we must see and accept it , yet recreate it through our imagination , without which we can never have a full understanding of reality (166). He also says that "this knowledge and affirmation are never permanent since, as they involve fiction, they are subject to change" (166) But Sheehan further states that " Notes" is a "comedy" which "is, in a general sense, Platonic. And so the speaker is concerned throughout t he first part to disti n - guish his Platon i sm from a ny relig i ous Neo-P l atonism" (169) The basis for Sheehan's assertion centers on the first stanza of It Must Be Abstract: Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea Of this invention , th i s invented wo rld , The inconceivable i dea of the sun. (Palm 207 ) Sheehan states that " the idea" corresponds to Plato's ideal forms, and that "The speak er therefore insists , as does Plato 1n t he Republic, upo n the non-hypothet i ca l nature of his first principle" (169). If this "first idea i s of a "non-hypothetical nature," then why does Stevens s tate late r that " The first i dea is a n i mag ined thing" (Palm 213)? This last statement is antithetical to Plato's theory of ideas or " forms" becau se , for P l ato , 3 reality is not an "imagined thing" but an absolute truth. Stevens is telling us that even the idea of something, the abstraction itself, is a product of imagination. In fact, the entire poem is anti-Platonic right from the prologue where Stevens tells us that "truth" in poetry is to be cherished more than the wisdom in "the extremest book of the wisest man" and that he clings to it as an "uncertain light" because it stems more from inspiration ("light / In which I meet you") than will (Sukenick 136) Plato felt that "a poet's activity leads men away from truth" (Adams 11), and that the poet's inspiration is akin to madness because "all good poets compose their beautiful poems, not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed" (Plato 14). Stevens's prologue also states that the "single certain truth" ./ 1s "equal" to reality because both change, and that there is a "moment" that brings "peace," and in that moment is clarity and truth, which disputes Plato's claim that the poet suffers a loss of reason when composing poetry, as well as his claim that the poem is not the work of a human being, but the work of God who "possesses" the poet. Also antithetical to Stevens is Plato's insistence that sensory experience is an inferior form of expression and not cognitive. Plato"regards objects we perceive through the senses as merely copies of ideas thus twice removed from reality" (Adams 11) Stevens argues 4 against Plato in telling us "that we must begin by per­ ceiving the idea of our experience" (Powell 804). I do not mean to discard Plato's treatises as use- less in any application toward Stevens, as it must be remembered that Aristotle was Plato's pupil, and that much of Aristotelian theory is merely an expansion as well as a dissension from Platonic theory. But it cannot be disputed that Stevens, like Aristotle, exalts poetry as a true art , good in and of itself and not dependent on prior f orms for its legitimacy. The very fact that " Notes" is an example of this unique exaltation, a for- mulation of ideas on what poetry is, that 1s, a bridge between the imagination and reality that leads to aware­ ness and understan~ing of a world that lS constantly changing and by its very structure mimicking the order inherent in change , shows it to be primari l y Aristotelian in philosophy. Since, to echo Coleridge's truisms, Western critica l theory stems from Plato and Aristotle, and is still di­ vided between inclinations we think of as Pl a tonic and Aristotelian , I shall take Aristotle's mimetic theories as a basis for looking at Stevens ' s poems. Aristotle's main point of d e parture from Plato 's theories is that Aristotle believes art is imitation, but not the inferior sort of "copying" that Plato maintains i s the basis of all a rt. Plato viewed art, especia l ly poetry, as "good" 5 only when it serves to teach a moral lesson, but still never able to attain the perfection of an ideal form. Ar i stat 1 e differs in that he sees poetry as a means of representing forms that exist in nature and that mimesis (imitating these forms) leads one to an understanding of meaning as a form of truth in abstraction. Art can therefore be "good" as well as pleasurable and does not/ have to be didactic. Stevens follows these Aristotelian concepts in that / he believes poetry is an act of mimesis natural to man. In his essay "Theoretical and Atheoretical in Stevens," J. Hillis Miller confirms that for Stevens "the imagination is part of nature, or one of the forces of nature" (278); thus man is imitating nature when he uses his imagination in creating poetry. While the concept of "imagination" does not develop in Aristotle, it is inherent in his beliefs and treatment of poetry. It 1s one of the tools of thought a poet uses in developing his ideas and perhaps the essential component in the aesthetic pleasure taken by his audience. In a rather oblique reference to Stevens's con- nections to Aristotle, Denis Donoghue states that it was enough for Stevens, and it is enough for many of his readers, that the poem conform to the nature of the poet, to his "progressive mental states," and that that [sic] nature be handsome. (Aristotle allowed that a man may persuade in this way.) (229) 6 I hope to make clear in this paper just what Aristotle's and Stevens's affinities are regarding nature. Another tantalizing reference to Stevens and Aristotle 1s made by Edward Kessler in a discussion of "The Man on the Dump" wherein Kessler states that Stevens "considers art as Aristotelian imitations that have attempted to formalize the transient things of the world, its 'dew"' ( 229) . And in discussing another poem, "In a Bad Time," Kessler seems to forget these Aristotelian imitations when he says that Stevens "compels the audience to see tragedy as human action, not as a literary form, Aristotle's imitation of an action" (51). Kessler ignores Aristotle's definition of tragic imitation as being based on the imitation of "men involved in action" (Aristotle 4) and as a basic pleasurable instinct, which 1s the basis of Stevens's own view. Frank Doggett says of "The Candle a Saint" that the visionary image of night in the poem is "the abstracted goddess Nox, and that Stevens calls her 'moving and being'~· having in mind perhaps the Aristotelian idea that in movement being emerges" ~{177).
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