DOCSLIB.ORG

496 Kbfictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
496 Kbfictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Li Yongyi Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Wei ᗀᏽ˄㕆˅˖lj䲦␺᰾䈇䘹NJˈ 亥 Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens ᗀᏽ˄㕆˅˖lj䲦␺᰾䈇䘹NJˈ亥 and Wang Wei By Li Yongyi Chongqing University Abstract: Wallace Stevens’s vision of nature is characterized by a paradox: while he yearns to circumvent, with the aid of the imagination, the barriers of human consciousness and cultural tradition so as to “return” to a pre-concep- WXDOSUHOLQJXLVWLFLQWXLWLRQRIQDWXUHKHLVSHUIHFWO\FRJQL]DQWWKDWVXFKDPHQWDOJUDVSLVLWVHOID¿FWLRQFUHDWHGE\WKH human mind. In contrast, Wang Wei seems to always refrain from exploring the intellectual intricacies of the relation- ᗀᏽ˄㕆˅˖lj䲦␺᰾䈇䘹NJˈ 亥 ship between nature and human consciousness, resting content with his quasi-objective representations of the physical universe. Reading the two great poets alongside can illuminate differences between the conceptions of nature in the two cultural traditions they work with, and give us, by mutual mirroring, glimpses to subtleties in their poems that otherwise do not easily meet our eye. ᗀᏽ˄㕆˅˖lj䲦␺᰾䈇䘹NJˈ亥 Keywords: 1DWXUHKXPDQFRQVFLRXVQHVVLPDJLQDWLRQWUDGLWLRQ¿FWLRQ ᗀᏽ˄㕆˅˖lj䲦␺᰾䈇䘹NJˈ亥 An old man sits nature since we can never confront nature without the In the shadows of a pine tree mediation of our consciousness. In contrast, ancient In China. Chinese masters, adhering to the Taoist attitude of He sees larkspur, “forgetting” their egos and immersing their spirit in Blue and white, the ubiquitous circulation of Tao, the inactive yet all- powerful life force of the universe, seldom consciously At the edge of the shadow, attempted to interpret nature when composing poetry, Move in the wind. and thus found it not difficult to create what Stevens His beard moves in the wind. The pine tree moves in the wind. 7KXVZDWHUÀRZV nature appear so artless that the Chinese believed nature Over weeds. itself molded his poems. Unlike Stevens, Wang Wei seems to always refrain from exploring the intellectual The above is the first section of Stevens’s early intricacies of the relationship between nature and human 1 Though we cannot consciousness, resting content with his quasi-objective assert that he drew inspiration from Chinese poet Wang representations of the physical universe. Reading the two Wei (701-761CE), who wrote in one of his great poems, great poets alongside can illuminate differences between 䘈⊏䲥ཌ㹼䙄ਓ “bright moon incandescent in the pines, / crystalline the conceptions of nature in the two cultural traditionsٷ䗋с኱гᴸ䎤 stream slipping across rocks” 2, Stevens in this poem they work with, and give us, by mutual mirroring, almost captures the spirit of classical Chinese nature glimpses to subtleties in their poems that otherwise do poems. However, the word “thus” betrays his identity as not easily meet our eye. a Western poet, for it reveals a desire to impose human logic on nature, as if the sheer mental force of imagined 1.Nature and Human Consciousness causation could compel the water to move, even though ᗀᏽ˄㕆˅˖lj䲦␺᰾䈇䘹NJˈ亥 thematically Stevens seems to suggest here the necessity Even though Stevens does not view tradition in of diminishing human consciousness if we are to view a favorable light, his constant doubt of the authenticity nature in its pristine purity. Throughout his career, of nature as perceived by human beings is a typical Steven’s vision of nature is characterized by a paradox: Western stance. As early as Plato, the material existence while he yearns to circumvent, with the aid of the of nature was already questioned. The visible world was imagination, the barriers of human consciousness and reduced by Plato to a mere shadow of the world of Ideas. cultural tradition so as to “return” to a pre-conceptual, Throughout Western history, the mainstream tendency, pre-linguistic intuition of nature as it is, he is perfectly both in religion and in philosophy, has been to diminish, cognizant that such a mental grasp is itself a fiction even totally refuse to acknowledge, the validity of created by the human mind, that art inevitably invents sensual experience. Stevens’s skepticism shares with this 75 Comparative Studies of China and the West Vol. 1 2013 tradition a mistrust of the senses, but differs in that he, In “The Snow Man,” Stevens presents this state of in most cases, does not begrudge an actual existence to slumber succinctly: “One must have a mind of winter / nature. His emphasis is placed on the impossibility, given To regard the frost and boughs / Of the pine-trees crusted the restriction of a human perspective, of accurately with snow.” The “mind of winter” is void, passive, perceiving nature. Once we behold nature, it ceases to uncontaminated, free of emotion, ensuring that it will not be naked, but is seen as invested with human thoughts “think of any misery” when hearing “the sound of the and emotions. In this sense, the very act of perception wind”, remaining impervious to infiltrations of ethical becomes an act of invention. However convincingly it associations, and able to behold “[n]othing that is not there and the nothing that is.” Only when the beholder seems to have lost his ability to see and become “nothing Stevens is well aware that he is predestined to live himself” can he finally filter out everything added by in an “invented world” 3, but his craving for “things as human consciousness and see the original appearance of ĞnjQ\DWƗ they are” 4 often impels him to create some highly self- nature, even the ultimate nothingness behind it 9. Thus conscious myths. In “Nuances of a Theme by Williams,” to be privileged with a glimpse of nature as it is, the ĞnjQ\DWƗ he apostrophizes a star: beholder has to pay the price of turning himself into an Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses the title of the poem is “The Snow Man,” not “The You in its own light. Snowman.” A snow man after all is not a snowman, a Be not Chimera of morning, lifeless thing, but a human being hoping and striving Half-man, half-star. to enter the role of a snowman, a man who has a mind Be not an intelligence, of snow. As hinted by the space between “Snow” and Like a widow’s bird “Man,” the chasm between the two is unbridgeable. 5 Or an old horse . What Stevens calls for here is a neutral, almost non- human perspective. This Wang Wei unselfconsciously He longs to see a star that is simply and purely a achieved in his late poems. The first poet landscape star, not a symbol of light, or of wisdom, or a sign of painter of China, he introduced techniques of traditional religious significance. This ideal is better embodied in Chinese painting into his poetry. Ancient Chinese artists his late poem “Of Mere Being,” in which he envisions did not adopt perspective, which implies a human- a palm “beyond the last thought” and a gold-feathered centeredness. They often spent months even years in bird singing “without human meaning, without human some mountain and then produced a panoramic work feeling.” 6 But paradoxically, such crystalline beauty is that was intended to give an overall representation of the achieved only after laborious cerebration and conscious scenery. More significantly, human beings depicted in human intervention. their works rarely obtrude; they are like trees or stones, merging naturally into the landscapes. Stevens comes closer to a supreme fiction of nature in his less self-conscious moments. The opening To the Chinese mind, nature and humanity are section of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” never polarities. Even though Taoism, the only half- successfully gives the reader an illusion of regarding metaphysical school of ancient China, worships Tao, nature itself: “Among twenty snowy mountains, / The the supreme creative force of the universe, it is believed only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird.” 7 To to be a material, though invisible, entity rather than a be at one with nature, as advocated in and evidenced by spiritual presence. Zhuangzi (3 rd century BCE), whose Stevens’s poetry, we have to momentarily suppress our philosophy has been the major inspiration for Chinese consciousness, that is, lull to sleep our emotions and landscape painting and nature poetry, advocates that intellectual faculties. Instead of humanizing nature, we we should regard ourselves as on equal footing, since need to integrate into nature by transforming ourselves Tao has no bias for the human species, with everything into a natural object, an empty site where phenomena else in the world. Furthermore, the process of logical unfold without human intervention, where nature reveals thinking brings with it an array of conceptual and value itself in crystal transparence. It is for this reason that distinctions that are essentially arbitrary and futile, images of sleep hold a unique place in Stevens’ poems. 10 having no counterparts in the natural world . Therefore, As J. Hillis Miller comments, “Sleep is the beginning, the wisest approach to nature is to forego the intellect, the radiant candor of pure mind without any content, that most cherished property of human beings. As mind as it is when it faces a bare unimagined reality or philosopher Shao Yong (1011-1077 CE) puts it, “To as it is when it has completed the work of decreation and observe things in terms of those things: this is to follow is ready ‘in an ever-changing, calmest unity’ to begin one’s nature [ xing ]. But to observe things in term of the imagining again.” 8 self: this is to follow one’s feelings [ qing ]. The nature is impartial and enlightened; the feelings are partial and 76 Li Yongyi Fictions of Nature in Wallace Stevens and Wang Wei blind.” 11 Stevens.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose, Sel
    WALLACE STEVENS Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems, (London, 2nd impression, 1959). Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose, sel. and ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson (Library of America; New York, 1997). Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (London, 1975) [exact reprint of the New York 1923 edition]; see also Harmonium, ed. Frank Kermode (Penguin Books, New York, 1999), and Buttel (Robert), Wallace Stevens; The Making of 'Harmonium' (Princeton, 1967). Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel; Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New York, 1951). Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, ed. Milton J. Bates (London, rev. and enl. ed., 1990). Wallace Stevens, The Letters, ed. Holly Stevens (London, 1967). Sur Plusieurs Beaux Sujets: Wallace Stevens' Commonplace Book, ed. Milton J. Bates (Stanford and San Marino, 1989). Stevens (Holly), Souvenirs and Prophecies; The Young Wallace Stevens (New York, 19077). Brazeau (P.), Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered (New York, 1983). Richardson (Joan), Wallace Stevens, the Early Years, 1879-1923 (New York, c.1986) Richardson (Joan), Wallace Stevens, the Later Years, 1923-1955 (New York, 1988) Sharpe (Tony), Wallace Stevens; A Literary Life (Basingstoke, 2000). Edelstein (J.M.), Wallace Stevens: A Descriptive Bibliography (Pitsburgh, 1973). Serio (John N.), Wallace Stevens: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography (Pittsburg, 1994). Bates (Milton J.), 'Stevens' Books at the Huntington: An Annotated Checklist', Wallace Stevens Journal, 2 (1978), 45-61; 3 (1979), 70; see also 20 (1996), 76-103. Edelstein (J.M.), 'The Poet as Reader: Wallace Stevens and His Books', The Book Collector, 23 (1974), 53-68. Martz (Louis L.), 'Manuscripts of Wallace Stevens', The Yale University Library Gazette, 34 (1979), 65.
    [Show full text]
  • Wallace Stevens
    Classic Poetry Series Wallace Stevens - poems - Publication Date: 2004 Publisher: PoemHunter.Com - The World's Poetry Archive A High-Toned Old Christian Woman Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms, Like windy citherns hankering for hymns. We agree in principle. That's clear. But take The opposing law and make a peristyle, And from the peristyle project a masque Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness, Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last, Is equally converted into palms, Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm, Madame, we are where we began. Allow, Therefore, that in the planetary scene Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed, Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade, Proud of such novelties of the sublime, Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk, May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres. This will make widows wince. But fictive things Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince. Wallace Stevens www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2 Anecdote of the Jar I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.
    [Show full text]
  • Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal
    About Us: http://www.the-criterion.com/about/ Archive: http://www.the-criterion.com/archive/ Contact Us: http://www.the-criterion.com/contact/ Editorial Board: http://www.the-criterion.com/editorial-board/ Submission: http://www.the-criterion.com/submission/ FAQ: http://www.the-criterion.com/fa/ ISSN 2278-9529 Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal Bi-Monthly Refereed and Indexed Open Access eJournal www.galaxyimrj.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 8, Issue-III, June 2017 ISSN: 0976-8165 Where Does Divinity Lie? A Critical Re-reading of the Poem “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens Ujala Shamnani Assistant Professor of English Nirma University,Ahmedabad, Gujarat,India. Article History: Submitted-29/05/2017, Revised-25/06/2017, Accepted-30/06/2017, Published-05/07/2017. Abstract: “Sunday Morning” is one of the most fascinating and thematically resonant poems of Wallace Stevens. It is one of the collected pieces from Wallace Steven’s first book of poetry called Harmonium. It is a series of eight fifteen line stanzas. The first version of the poem was published in 1915 and then it was published in full in 1923.The poem unsettles and questions the traditional ways of perceiving religion and divinity which clearly reflects the modernist approach of the poet. Generally the poem is considered as an expression of paganism but the poem is much more than just an expression of paganism. It questions the complexity of our existence by posing serious questions about how our religious beliefs affect the way we perceive nature. The poet does not want us to reach an easy substitute but he wishes to make us realise the fact there is no ‘the’ particular way of understanding divinity.
    [Show full text]
  • En Trees for Lakeview Commons
    Reading Forest Todd Gilens Selected Phrases and Sources July 23, 2019 AS DRAWN ORIGINAL EXCERPT AUTHOR TITLE PAGE a more complex moral attitude sees fire as an ally in the But we are called now to a more complex moral attitude, Gary Snyder Back on the Fire 15 forest, even while recognizing its power to do damage where we see fire as an ally in the forest, even while recognizing its power to do damage. a pool shines, like a bracelet shaken in a dance a pool shines, like a bracelet shaken in a dance Wallace Stevens "Six Significant Landscapes", in Collected Works 74 all things are delicately interconnected All things are delicately interconnected Jenny Holzer "Truisms," in Blasted Allegories, an Anthology of 104-11 Writings by Contemporary Artists (Brian Wallis, ed.) and yet you must go on an endless road, since life flows And yet you must go [down?] an endless road, since life Carl Jung Red Book, readers edition 250 not only down a finite path but also an infinite one flows not only down a finite path but also an infinite one. are there deeper, slower variables in social systems, such Are there deeper, slower variables in social systems, such Carl Folke et al Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, np as identity, core values, and worldviews that constrain as identity, core values, and worldviews that constrain Adaptability and Transformability adaptability? adaptability? art is realistic when it strives to express our ethical ideal Art is realistic when it strives to express our ethical ideal Andre Tarkovsky Sculpting in Time 113 as life creates the conditions for fire, fire reshapes the life creates the conditions for fire, fire reshapes the living Stephen J.
    [Show full text]
  • Cultural Colonization in Poems by Wallace Stevens
    Cultural Colonization in Poems by Wallace Stevens Catholic University of Korea, Republic of Korea The Asian Conference on Literature & Librarianship 2014 Official Conference Proceedings 2014 0341 Abstract The reason for Wallace Stevens' scepticism regarding cultural colonies is clear. Most of the people in America are descendents of immigrants who bring with them their own cultural ideas to a colony. That is the reality of the American situation, and it is also Stevens' modest understanding of the reality of an America that was still in the process of trying to express its cultural relationship to the vast continent of North America. Tacit in that choice, however, is a rejection of a political solution that would preserve out-of-date cultural ideals such as that contained in the example of General Andrew Jackson, a figure who appears several times in Stevens' poetry and prose and who was famous both for waging brutal wars against the Seminole Indians in Florida and for being a champion of a populist form of political democracy. Stevens' emphasis on failure and division in his poems about American colonization, then, can be understood as a way to defamiliarize a political understanding of who Americans are as a people in order to create a basis for a new modernist cultural understanding of an American place. Of the many characters and motifs that typify Stevens' imaginary colonists in exile, I will focus on Stevens' hidalgo figure as a unifying concept to cover all figures who fail at cultural colonization in Stevens' poems. The term hidalgo, meaning a Spanish country gentleman, only appears five times in the corpus of Stevens' poetry, but it can be deployed usefully to describe a colonist from a traditional as opposed to a modern culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Fall 2005 the Wallace Stevens Journal
    The Wallace Stevens Journal Special Issue Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound A Publication of The Wallace Stevens Society, Inc. Volume 29 Number 2 Fall 2005 The Wallace Stevens Journal Volume 29 Number 2 Fall 2005 Contents The Two Voices of Wallace Stevens’ Blank Final Music —Andrew Goldstone 213 “These Minutiae Mean More”: Five Editions of Wallace Stevens’ “Esthétique du Mal” —Jeff Jaeckle 233 From Deconstruction to Decreation: Wallace Stevens’ Notes Toward a Poetics of Nobility —Ayon Roy 249 The Lyric Element and the Prosaic World in “The Idea of Order at Key West” —Victoria Shinbrot 263 Anding and Ending: Metaphor and Closure in Stevens’ “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” —Karen Helgeson 275 Poems 304 Reviews 310 News and Comments 324 Cover Wallace Stevens On the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from Wesleyan University on June 15, 1947 (AP/Wide World Photos) The Wallace Stevens Journal EDITOR John N. Serio POETRY EDITOR ART EDITOR BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Joseph Duemer Kathryn Jacobi George S. Lensing EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS EDITORIAL BOARD William T. Ford Milton J. Bates A. Walton Litz Maureen Kravec Jacqueline V. Brogan James Longenbach Faye A. Serio Robert Buttel Glen MacLeod Hope Steele Eleanor Cook Marjorie Perloff Alan Filreis Joan Richardson TECHNICAL ASSISTANT B. J. Leggett Melita Schaum Sue Campbell George S. Lensing Lisa M. Steinman The Wallace Stevens Society, Inc. PRESIDENT ADVISORY BOARD John N. Serio Milton J. Bates Joseph Duemer Owen E. Brady Kathryn Jacobi Robert Buttel George S. Lensing David M. Craig A. Walton Litz The Wallace Stevens Journal is published biannually in the Spring and Fall by the Wallace Stevens Society, Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • Wallace Stevens
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) Sunday Morning (1915) I Complacencies of the peignor, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon the rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She dreams a little, and she feels the dark Encroachment of that old catastrophe, As a calm darkens among water-lights. The pungent oranges and bright, green wings Seem things in some procession of the dead, Winding across wide water, without sound. The day is like wide water, without sound, Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet Over the seas, to silent Palestine, Dominion of the blood and sepulchre. II Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul. III Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth. No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind. He moved among us, as a muttering king, Magnificent, would move among his hinds, Until our blood, commingling, virginal, With heaven, brought such requital to desire The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
    [Show full text]
  • The Creation of Space for Engaged Reading and Creative Interpretation in the Collected Works of Wallace Stevens
    Cleveland State University EngagedScholarship@CSU ETD Archive 2017 The Creation of Space for Engaged Reading and Creative Interpretation in the Collected Works of Wallace Stevens Lauren Cannavino Cleveland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/etdarchive Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Recommended Citation Cannavino, Lauren, "The Creation of Space for Engaged Reading and Creative Interpretation in the Collected Works of Wallace Stevens" (2017). ETD Archive. 1010. https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/etdarchive/1010 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in ETD Archive by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE CREATION OF SPACE FOR ENGAGED READING AND CREATIVE INTERPRETATION IN THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WALLACE STEVENS Lauren Cannavino Bachelor of Arts in English Cleveland State University December 2006 Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH at CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY December 2017 THIS THESIS IS HEREBY APPROVED FOR Lauren Cannavino candidate for the Master of Arts degree in English for the Department of English & CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY’S College of Graduate Studies by ____________________________________________________ Thesis Chairperson, Dr. Frederick J. Karem _______________________________________
    [Show full text]
  • O Imperador Do Sorvete E Outros Poemas
    WALLACE STEVENS O imperador do sorvete e outros poemas Seleção, tradução, apresentação e notas Paulo Henriques Britto Edição revista e ampliada 14440-miolo-poemas-Wallace-Stevens.indd 3 10/20/17 11:47 AM Copyright ©1923, 1931, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1955 by Wallace Stevens Copyright renovado © 1984 by Holly Stevens Publicado mediante acordo com a Alfred A. Knopf, selo de Knopf Doubleday Group, uma divisão da Penguin Random House, LLC Esta antologia foi feita a partir de: Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Grafia atualizada segundo o Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa de 1990, que entrou em vigor no Brasil em 2009. Capa Victor Burton Foto de capa Bettmann/ Getty Images Preparação Silvia Massimini Felix Revisão Silvana Salerno Angela das Neves Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP) (Câmara Brasileira do Livro, SP, Brasil) Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955 O imperador do sorvete e outros poemas / Wallace Stevens ; seleção, tradução, apresentação e notas Paulo Henriques Britto. — 1ª- ed. rev. e ampl. — São Paulo : Companhia das Letras, 2017. Título original : Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. ISBN 978-85-359-3008-5 1. Poesia norte-americana I. Título. 17-08012 CDD-811.3 Índice para catálogo sistemático: 1. Poesia : Literatura norte-americana 811.3 [2017] Todos os direitos desta edição reservados à EDITORA SCHWARCZ S.A. Rua Bandeira Paulista, 702, cj. 32 04532-002 — São Paulo — SP Telefone: (11) 3707-3500 www.companhiadasletras.com.br www.blogdacompanhia.com.br facebook.com/companhiadasletras instagram.com/companhiadasletras twitter.com/cialetras 14440-miolo-poemas-Wallace-Stevens.indd 4 10/20/17 11:47 AM Sumário Apresentação ................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Place in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and Robert Bringhurst
    The “Cure of the Ground”: Place in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and Robert Bringhurst by Kirsten Hilde Alm B.Sc., University of Saskatchewan, 2001 M.A., Trinity Western University, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Department of English © Kirsten Hilde Alm, 2016 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopying or other means, without the permission of the author. ii The “Cure of the Ground”: Place in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and Robert Bringhurst by Kirsten Hilde Alm B.Sc., University of Saskatchewan, 2001 M.A., Trinity Western University, 2011 Supervisory Committee Dr. Nicholas Bradley, Supervisor Department of English Dr. Iain Macleod Higgins, Departmental Member Department of English Dr. Margaret Cameron, Outside Member Department of Philosophy iii Abstract This study analyzes the Canadian poet, typographer, and translator Robert Bringhurst’s (b. 1946) extensive engagement with the poetry, poetics and metaphysical concerns of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). It asserts that Bringhurst’s poetry responds to Stevens’ poetry and poetics to a degree that has not previously been recognized. Although Bringhurst’s mature poetry—his works from the mid-1970s and after—departs from the obvious imitation of the elder poet’s writing that is present in his early poems, it continues to engage some of Stevens’ central concerns, namely the fertility of the liminal moment and/or space and a meditative contemplation of the physical world that frequently challenges anthropocentric narcissism.
    [Show full text]
  • The Life of Wallace Stevens. Simon & Schuster, 2016
    NOTRE DAME REVIEW REDUCING THE MONSTER: SOME ORDINARY EVENINGS WITH WALLACE Paul Mariani. The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens. Simon & Schuster, 2016. J. D. Garrick The greenness of night lies on the page and goes Down deeply in the empty glass… —Stevens, “Phosphor Reading by His Own Light” If it wasn’t for his personal life, he was a happy man. —said of Stevens by a colleague We enjoy the ithy oonts and long-haired Plomets, as the Herr Gott Enjoys his comets. —Stevens, “Analysis of a Theme” A damned fine poet but he couldn’t fight. —Hemingway, of Stevens This fellow has heresy in his essay. —Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man In Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear, Sherlock Holmes remarks to his partner in crimesolving: You are developing a certain un-expected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. It might have been news ninety years ago that Wallace Stevens liked to make jokes. But even today too many of us, one mutters, have taken Stevens too seriously too often, haven’t guarded ourselves; it’s that Hartford-respectable cover portrait on the old Knopf edition of the Collected Poems leading us astray. Some of the stiff-brace titles for recent books on Stevens’s work invite parody and would have amused Stevens. But surprisingly, the photo representing Stevens for Paul Mariani’s biography The Whole Harmonium is more suggestive of Watson’s pawky humourist, a fellow who might be more than a little impish—the kind of man who gives his poems droll titles like “Nudity at the Capital,” “A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts,” “Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds,” “Lytton Strachey, Also, Enters into Heaven,” and, of 126 J.D.
    [Show full text]
  • ENG 351 Lecture 13 1 Well, I Made an Outrageous Statement When We Got
    ENG 351 Lecture 13 1 Well, I made an outrageous statement when we got to Robert Frost and quoted one of my favorite professors who stated Robert Frost was probably the best American poet of the 20th century so far. Well so far. The 20th century is over. You wouldn’t know it sometimes. But as far as that goes, the next two poets that we’ll be reading, Stevens and William Carlos Williams, who are different writers but who share some similarities. They’re my favorites. I would hate to do without Frost, but I think in the long run I’d hate more to do without Stevens. I’ll try to convince you of some of that. Born in 1879 and died in 1955, 76. Much has been made about Stevens — the fact that Stevens was an insurance man. Well, he wasn’t exactly an insurance man but he was an executive at the Hartford in Connecticut. His father was an attorney. He went to Harvard for three years but he studied modern languages and then later realized that he needed to make money so he went to law school. It was New York University law school. He practiced for a while, the partnership failed, and then he went into the legal department of the Hartford Insurance Company and he was, apparently, a successful insurance executive. He was vice-president of that firm. There’s a legend that the people that Wallace Stevens worked with didn’t even know he was a poet until he won the Pulitzer Prize, that he kept it from them, that it was all top secret.
    [Show full text]