Wallace Stevens' French Connection

WALLACE STEVENS' FRENCH CONNECTION SAMUEL LEONARD ROSENBAUM A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto (C) Copyright by Samuel Leonard Rosenbaum 1997 Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie ServÏces services bibliographiques The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exc1USIVe permettant à la National Lïbrary of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distriiute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis m microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous papa or eiectronic formats. la fome de microfiche/nlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format PIectronique. The author retains ownefship of the L'auteur comme la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's on autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Wallace Stevens' French Connection Samuel Leonard Rosenbaum Doctor of Philosophy 1997 Graduate Department of English University of Toronto This thesis studies Wallace Stevensr lifelong fascination and involvement with French and France- The structure is a chronological examination and discussion of the manifestations of French in Stevens* poetry and life. Stevens' Francophilia in his private life is linked with the varied French uses in his poetry, which begin in his undergraduate writing and progress throughout his Collected Poems. Some issues of interest are the Harmonium-era movement away from fin-de-siècle French associations, and the use of moving persona1 elements during World War II. The thesis examines closely Stevensr use of French-connected lexis, as well as his use of French-associated poetic personae. Reference and allusion to French writers, artists, and locales are also explored in detail. The thesis shows ultimately the lasting interrelationship between Stevensr Francophilia and the diffuse instances of French in his poetry, indicating a poet to whom French and France are deeply significant, both personally and artistically. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Chapter 1: Beginnings Chapter 2: Harmonium Chapter 3: The ~ineteen-Thirties Chapter 4: Parts of a World Chapter 5: Transport to Sumer Chapter 6: The ~ineteen-Fifties Chapter 7: ~rancophilia conclusion Annotated Appendix Bibliography iii INTRODUCTION What a great many people fail to see is that one uses French for the pleasure that it gives. (Letter of July 21 1953)~ When Wallace Stevens wrote in a late letter that Ifone uses French for the pleasure that it gives," it captured the essence of his long-term involvement and fascination with France. He was an admitted Francophile for whom things French were always an intimate part of life. He was exposed to French in kindergarten, studied French literature at Harvard,l and absorbed quantities of French prose and poetry throughout his life, with a long-standing practice of quoting French sources in his journals and notebooks. He also delighted in the sound and resonance of French words, using them regularly throughout his poetry. The study of StevensN fascination with French and France gives insight into his life and work, and a chronological approach is useful since his involvement with France and its cultural products was life-long and changed progressively. A chronological approach reflects persona1 and external history as well, and shows how Stevens' French interests often connected the private and public aspects of 1 Letters of Wallace Stevens 792. Al1 further references will be abbreviated to L. 2 Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens 9, 17n, 2311, 33-4n. Al1 further references will be abbreviated to S&P. his life. Stevens' foreign interests were not limited to France; he drew upon other cultures and languages for his poetic purposes and private interests, but none as extensively as French. For example, because of his Pennsylvania Dutch heritage and upbringing, he was f amiliar with the German language, noting in 1948, "1 read German well enough to get something out of the [Fritz] Kredel and used +O read it freelyw (L 576). Stevens' secretary observed that "besides having an unusual knowledge of the French language, he read and spoke both German and ~rench."~He occasionally used German words in his poetry, for example in Notes toward a Supreme Fiction 1 VI1 (1942): "And a familiar music of the machine / Sets up its S~hwarmerei.~It is worth noting for comparison that there is only one German title in Collected Poemç, wLebensweisheitspielereiw (1952), whereas there are sixteen poems with French in their titles. 5 German language, literature and culture did not have the basic attraction that French did for Stevens. It may be 3 Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and lived there until he left for university in 1897. 4 Interview with Marguerite Flynn in Brazeau, Parts Of A World: Wallace Stevens Remembered 34. Al1 further references will be abbreviated to Parts. 5 "Anglais Mort à FlorenceN (1936), "Bouquet of Belle Scavoirw (1939), "Celle Qui Fût H6aulmietten (1950), "Cortège for Rosenbloomw (1921), "Cuisine Bourgeoisen (1939), Vy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Viergesm (1915), du Malt1 (1947), ItGallant Châteauw (1934), wHomunculus et La Belle &oilew (1919), I'Madame La Fleuriet1(1951), llLe Monocle de Mon Onclet1 (1918), wMontrachet-le-Jardinn (1942), "Paisant Chroniclew (1945), "Les Plus Belles Pagesm (1941), llPoesie Abrutie (1943), "Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieuw (1935). that because of his background he associated German with the normal and commonplace, and detected no sense of difierence and exoticism like that residing in French and France. He also did not apparently think of German as a poetically conducive language, as he writes in a 1935 letter: Just how it cornes about that my vocabulary is more Latin than Teutonic, 1 donrt know- Perhaps there may be something in the idea that the language of poetry is never Teutonic, (L 302) Stevens also had an early interest in the cultural and geographical exoticism of the Orient, writing to his fiancée about a 1909 exhibition of Chinese art: "1 do not know if you feel as 1 do about a place so remote and unknown as China - the irreality of it. So much so, that the little realities of it seem wonderful and beyond beliefw (L 137). In 1935 he wrote, "1 think that 1 have been influenced by Chinese and Japanese lyricsfr (L 291) and in 1950 stated in a characteristically non-committal way: While 1 know about haiku, or hokku, 1 have never studied them.... 1 have been more interested in Japanese prints although 1 have never collected them,,.. No doubt, too, 1 have perhaps a half dozen volumes of Chinese and Japanese poetry somewhere in the house. But al1 this is purely casual. (L 291n) In this way, while Stevens was interested in aspects of German and Oriental culture they did not affect him anywhere near as deeply as that of France. While they appear at points in his poetry, they do not have the extensive 6 Stevensr interest in Oriental art ana culture also differed in a significant way from his interest in German and French in that he could neither speak; nor read Chinese or Japanese. presence of France and French, which are evident poetically from his earliest to his latest work and evident personally throughout his life. Before beginning the chronological survey of Stevens8 French connections 1 will discuss some of the critical ~ommentary,~of which a main point of convergence is the matter of a French influence on Stevensr poetry. First of all, it is necessary to define my use of the term \influencef in this context. Literary influence is an enormously large and complex area of critical thought and this discussion will not attempt to be definitive as much as to provide a flexible interpretation for my consideration of a certain area of Stevens criticism. What 1 mean by influence in this context is the evident or demonstrable use of the characteristic poetic elements of an author or genre, whether those be prosodic techniques, types of lexis, settings, tropes, or images, by another author. As an example, Tm S. Eliot's use of modern urban settings is influenced by the cityscapes in Baudelaire's IlTableaux Parisiensfvsection of Les Fleurs du maL8 1 am not concerned about whether these uses or adoptions are deliberate or not as long as they are reasonably apparent at 7 1 am indebted to Abbie F. Willard's Wallace Stevens: The Poet and His Critics for the organization of my discussion of criticism on the subject of Stevens and French, 8 This example carries the weight of Eliotrs comment that he first saw in Baudelaire "a precedent for the poetical possibilities, never developed by any poet writing in my own language, of the more sordid aspects of the modern metropolisw (("WhatDante means to Mew 126). some level, and 1 also include allusion and echo under this Procrustean heading. Helen Regueiro Elam notes that in early (i-e., pre-Structuralist) influence studies "the earlier poet functions as an undisputed and stable 8source,' a foundation or origin itself not open to questionw and that this concept of influence rests on the "ides of literary history as a stable context with deteminate cause and effect relations, recognizable sources, and a reliably straightforward chronology .lm9 She also comments about the conternporary state of influence studies: "Far from attempting to define a text's origin or cause, influence has shifted to a concern with the problematic wanderings between texts-" Allusion, which Earl Miner describes as the "deliberate incorporation of identifiable elements from other sources, dif fers from broader ideas of influence because it involves specific repetition of words or phrases.

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