R This Dissertation Has Been 63-4676 M Icrofilm Ed Exactly As Received
r This dissertation has been 63-4676 microfilmed exactly as received LORD, Georgianna Wuletich, 1931— THE ANNIHILATION OF ART IN THE POETRY OF WALLACE STEVENS. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1962 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan significant value. All of its efforts, therefore, are to make the un real— that in which the imagination desires to believe— real and therefore worthy of belief. Stevens’ poetry and thought, then,springs from a dialectic between the imagination and reality, both of which are, in their most basic sense, internalized in the mind as wish (aspiration) and reason. Wish Implies the urge toward pleasure; reason, toward common sense and logic. Wish is the impulse toward grace; reason, toward gravity. Stevens believed that the dialectic between reality and the imagination is endless, that there is a war in the mind that will never end because the mind's desire to satisfy itself will never be fulfilled. Indeed, the major premise of Stevens' thought is that the wish of the imagination will never be ful filled. Underlying that major premise is a clash of irreconcilable desires: the desire to achieve fulfillment; the desire to be discon tent. Put another way, it is the desire to believe and the inability to (desire not to) believe. The imagination and reality enjoy a temporary armistice whenever each new wish postulated by the imagination is momentarily refined and sanctioned by reason, instead of being denied categorically. Ihat tem porary armistice is, as Stevens writes in "The Necessary Angel," a bal ance of imagination and reality (imagination and reason).
[Show full text]