Stevens and the Interpersonal

STEVENS AND THE INTERPERSONAL STEVENS AND THE INTERPERSONAL MARK HALLIDAY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Copyright © 1991 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NewJersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Oxford All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Halliday, Mark, 1949- Stevens and the interpersonal / Mark Halliday p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-06548-9 (cl.) 1. Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955—Criticismandinterpretation 2. Interpersonal relations in literature. I. Title. PS3537.T4753Z655 1991 811'.52—dc20 This book has been composed in Linotron Baskerville Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America 10 987654321 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER ONE Stevens and the Suffering of Others 9 CHAPTER TWO Stevens and Heterosexual Love 43 CHAPTER THREE Stevens and Solitude 66 CHAPTER FOUR Stevens and the Reader 94 NOTES 169 INDEX OF WORKS Β Υ WALLACE STEVENS 191 INDEX OF PERSONS 195 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS RIENDLY but tough criticism from four persons helped me to improve parts of this book; I am grateful to Allen Grossman, FRobert Pinsky, Christopher Ricks, and Joan Rutter. Also I thank Janice Hughes and Al Hughes of The Write Type of Philadelphia for expert technical assistance in preparing the Final manuscript; and Victoria Wilson-Schwartz for her insightful copy- editing. An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared as "Stevens and Hetero sexual Love" in Essays in Literature (Western Illinois University), vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 1986; and an earlier version of chapter 3 appeared as "Stevens and Solitude" in Essays in Literature, vol. 16, no. 1, Spring 1989. I am grateful to the editors for permission to reprint this material. Excerpts from the writings of Wallace Stevens are reprinted by per mission of Alfred A. Knopf Inc., publishers of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens', Opus Posthumous, ed. Samuel French Morse; The Neces sary Angel; The Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens; and Souve nirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens. Excerpts from the poetry of John Ashbery are reprinted by permis sion of Viking Penguin Inc., publishers of A Wave, copyright 1984 by John Ashbery, Selected Poems, copyright 1985 by John Ashbery, and April Galleons, copyright 1987 by John Ashbery. Some excerpts from the poetry of Emily Dickinson are reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press and the Trustees of Amherst College, from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Har vard College. Other excerpts are reprinted by permission of Litde, Brown and Company, from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H.Johnson, copyright 1929, 1935 by Martha Dickinson Bian- chi; copyright renewed 1957, 1963 by Mary L. Hampson. An excerpt from "East Coker" by T. S. Eliot is reprinted by permis sion of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., publishers of Four Quartets, copyright 1943 by T. S. Eliot and renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot; and also by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Excerpts from the poetry of Robert Frost are reprinted by permis sion of Henry Holt and Company Inc., publishers of The Poetry of RobertFrost, ed. Edward Connery Lathem, copyright 1916,1928,1942, 1947, 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston; copyright 1936, 1942, Vlii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1944, 1956 by Robert Frost; copyright 1964, 1970, 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Permission to reprint this material was granted also by Jonathan Cape Ltd. Excerpts from the poetry of Thomas Hardy are reprinted by per mission of Macmillan Publishing Company, publishers of The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, ed. James Gibson, copyright 1925 by Macmil- Ian Publishing Company, renewed 1953 by Lloyds Bank Ltd. STEVENS AND THE INTERPERSONAL INTRODUCTION Life is an affair of people not of places. But for me life is an affair of places and that is the trouble. ("Adagia") N THIS STUDY I approach the poetry of Wallace Stevens from a perspective he would not endorse, asking questions which most Iof his critics would consider inappropriate. Today nearly every one seems to agree that Stevens is a great poet, and I assume that my reader agrees or at least considers Stevens very important. But I be lieve there are omissions and distortions in his account of human life more drastic and pervasive than the omissions that can be cited in the work of other great poets, and that these omissions and distortions deserve attention they have not yet received. They are acknowledged in passing by most critics of Stevens, but in this way I think the critics let Stevens off the hook, bowing to his severely constricted claims about what matters in life. Stevens' poetry largely tries to ignore or deny all aspects of life that center on or are inseparable from interpersonal relations. I doubt that this can be said of any great poet before Stevens. Certainly some poets have implied that the interpersonal is not the realm of ultimate value, but this is not the same as trying to ignore or deny interpersonal life altogether. The references to "friends" and "the town" in the follow ing stanzas from Herbert's "Affliction (I)" locate even this thoroughly devotional poet in a peopled landscape: When I got health, thou took'st away my life, And more; for my friends die: My mirth and edge was lost: a blunted knife Was of more use than I. Thus thinne and lean without a fence or friend, I was blown through with ev'ry storm and wind. Whereas my birth and spirit rather took The way that takes the town; Thou didst betray me to a lingfring book, And wrap me in a gown. I was entangled in the world of strife, Before I had the power to change my life.1 Herbert's discovery of a life higher than social life has not required him to obliterate social life from his account of what has mattered to 4 INTRODUCTION him. Similarly, the explicit interpersonal concern in Hopkins' "Felix Randal" and "Brothers" may be unusual in his oeuvre, but not anomalous. We do not sense that the interest in the effects of one person upon another in those poems is at odds with Hopkins' religious themes; his religious vision acknowledges and encompasses interper sonal experience. My reader may now think of Shelley, Keats, Dickinson—but for each of these three poets the nature and possibility of romantic love and of friendship between souls, and the rights and obligations of citi zens in relation to one another, were subjects of passionate concern. That this is true for the author of "Ode to Liberty," "Julian and Mad- dalo," and "Letter to Maria Gisborne" seems clear enough. In the case of Keats, admittedly, our sense of his interest in social relations, other than erotic ones, depends on his letters and his light verse, as well as on the Moneta scene in "The Fall of Hyperion"; Keats saw fit to exclude from his poetry some kinds of experience that he cared intensely about, but he hoped to broaden his poetry's scope, and might have done so had he lived longer.2 In Dickinson, social concern is extraordinarily oblique, but I would argue that her oeuvre gives a sense of someone who talks with people, listens to them, and thinks about their mysteriously separate existence as a crucial influence upon her own experience, whereas Stevens' oeu vre adopts various strategies to make these activities seem unnecessary or fruitless or worse. When Dickinson writes about ostracism, she en ters a subject area that Stevens cannot enter because he is unwilling to contemplate such vividly consequential separateness between people. Much Madness is divinest Sense— To a discerning Eye— Much Sense—the starkest Madness— 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail— Assent—and you are sane— Demur—you're straightway dangerous— And handled with a Chain3— The sense in Dickinson that one can be isolated with no one on one's side depends on her awareness of other sides populated by persons ranged against the solitary self. On a Columnar Self— How ample to rely In Tumult—or Extremity— How good the Certainty INTRODUCTION 5 That Lever cannot pry— And Wedge cannot divide Conviction—That Granitic Base— Though None be on our Side— Suffice Us—for a Crowd— Ourself—and Rectitude— And that Assembly—not far off From furthest Spirit—God—4 Dickinson is sometimes much more socially hopeful than this, but even here the inward turn is away from an acknowledged crowd, and such acknowledgment, whether grim or not, of others who have an impact (as of levers and wedges) on the brave self is much more common in Dickinson than in Stevens. When Dickinson says (in poem 303) that the soul selects, from among many candidates, the company of one other soul, she testifies to an intense interest in the possibilities of the many candidates and to the importance of a possible communion with the selected one. In Stevens there is a campaign to wipe out the fact that the self's isolation is a removal from visible other persons—a cam paign whereby they either become utterly ignorable or can somehow be shown to be not truly other. The Stevens—I speak here and throughout this study not of the biographer's man but of the poet-in-the-poems, the man figured by the poetry—who emerges in the following chapters is a man with a profound concern for the intactness of his self, in conjunction with a profound aversion to the demands of interpersonal relations, de mands which in his view threaten to puncture that intactness.

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