Wallace Stevens, New York, and Modernism

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1 Testimony from the Nazi Camps 10. Before Auschwitz French Women’s Voices Irène Némirovsky and the Cultural Margaret-Anne Hutton Landscape of Inter-war France Angela Kershaw 2 Modern Confessional Writing New Critical Essays 11 Travel and Drugs in Twentieth- Edited by Jo Gill Century Literature Lindsey Michael Banco 3 Cold War Literature Writing the Global Confl ict 12 Diary Poetics Andrew Hammond Form and Style in Writers’ Diaries, 1915-1962 4 Modernism and the Crisis of Anna Jackson Sovereignty Andrew John Miller 13 Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change 5 Cartographic Strategies of Race, Sex and Nation Postmodernity Gerardine Meaney The Figure of the Map in Contemporary Theory and Fiction 14 Jewishness and Masculinity Peta Mitchell from the Modern to the Postmodern 6 Food, Poetry, and the Aesthetics Neil R. Davison of Consumption Eating the Avant-Garde 15 Travel and Modernist Literature Michel Delville Sacred and Ethical Journeys Alexandra Peat 7 Latin American Writers and the Rise of Hollywood Cinema 16 Primo Levi’s Narratives of Jason Borge Embodiment Containing the Human 8 Gay Male Fiction Since Charlotte Ross Stonewall Ideology, Confl ict, and Aesthetics 17 Italo Calvino’s Architecture of Les Brookes Lightness The Utopian Imagination in an 9 Anglophone Jewish Literature Age of Urban Crisis Axel Stähler Letizia Modena

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19 Making Space in the Works of James Joyce Edited by Valérie Bénéjam and John Bishop

20 Critical Approaches to American Working-Class Literature Edited by Michelle M. Tokarczyk

21 Salman Rushdie and Visual Culture Celebrating Impurity, Disrupting Borders Edited by Ana Cristina Mendes

22 Global Cold War Literature Western, Eastern and Postcolonial Perspectives Edited by Andrew Hammond

23 Exploring Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction Ursula Kluwick

24 Wallace Stevens, New York, and Modernism Edited by Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout

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Edited by Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout

NEW YORK LONDON

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd v 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:291:55:29 PMPM First published 2012 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. From THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS by Wallace Stevens, copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. From LETTERS OF WALLACE STEVENS by Wallace Stevens, edited by Holly Stevens, copyright © 1966 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. From THE NECESSARY ANGEL by Wallace Stevens, copyright 1951 by Wallace Stevens, copyright renewed 1979 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. From OPUS POSTHUMOUS by Wallace Stevens, edited by Milton J. Bates, copyright © 1989 by Holly Stevens. Copyright (c) 1957 by Elsie Stevens and Holly Stevens. Copyright renewed 1985 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. From PARTS OF A WORLD: WALLACE STEVENS REMEMBERED by Peter Brazeau, copyright © 1977, 1980, 1983 by Peter Brazeau. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. From SOUVENIRS AND PROPHECIES by Holly Stevens, copyright © 1966, 1976 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Material from J. Donald Blount’s The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to Elsie (2006) is reprinted with kind permission of the University of South Carolina Press. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd vivi 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:291:55:29 PMPM Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book. ISBN: 978-0-415-89910-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-12193-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global.

Printed and bound in the United States of America on sustainably sourced paper by IBT Global.

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List of Illustrations xi List of Abbreviations xiii Acknowledgments xv

Introduction: Back at the Waldorf? 1 LISA GOLDFARB AND BART EECKHOUT

1 Stevens and New York: The Long Gestation 21 GEORGE S. LENSING

2 “My Head Full of Strange Pictures”: Stevens in the New York Galleries 37 BONNIE COSTELLO

3 “The Whispering of Innumerable Responsive Spirits”: Stevens’ New York Music 54 LISA GOLDFARB

4 Stevens Dancing: “Something Light, Winged, Holy” 71 BARBARA M. FISHER

5 The Invisible Skyscraper: Stevens and Urban Architecture 85 BART EECKHOUT

6 On Stevensian Transitoriness 105 AXEL NESME

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2.1 Charles Demuth, Homage to Wallace Stevens, 1925–1926. 39 2.2 Walter Pach, Hotel Shelton, 1924. 40 2.3 Christopher Shearer, The Great Storm, 1905. 42 2.4 Claude Lorrain, View of La Crescenza, 1648–1650. 43 2.5 Adolph A. Weinman, The Rising Sun, 1914. 45 2.6 Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, Mending the Sail, 1896. 48 2.7 Rembrandt van Rijn, Rembrandt and Saskia in the Scene of the Prodigal Son in the Tavern, c.1635. 50 2.8 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View of the Piazza del Popolo, c.1750. 52

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The following abbreviations for the works of Wallace Stevens are used throughout. As a rule, references to poems and prose are keyed to the Library of America edition of the Collected Poetry and Prose, edited by Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson (abbreviated as CPP). References to earlier editions appear only sparingly for text-intrinsic reasons. Page refer- ences are provided for individual poems only where words from the text are cited or the text is discussed in some detail.

CPP Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997.

CS The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to Elsie. Ed. J. Donald Blount. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006.

L Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Knopf, 1966; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

OP Opus Posthumous. Revised edition. Ed. Milton J. Bates. New York: Knopf, 1989.

SP Holly Stevens, Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Ste- vens. New York: Knopf, 1977.

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It was in a small Greenwich Village haunt some years ago that we fi rst discussed the idea of mounting a Wallace Stevens conference in New York City. Our dinner conversation that evening ranged from the particulars of Stevens’ life in New York to the way our own lives seemed to retrace some of the poet’s steps. Each morning at the train station in the northwest Bronx, one of us looks over the Hudson at the Palisades, where Stevens loved to roam a century ago. In my daily walk downtown to the Washington Square campus of NYU, I (Lisa Goldfarb) pass through the neighborhood where Stevens lived in the West Twenties near the General Theological Seminary, and as I approach my fi nal destination I am sometimes reminded that Ste- vens liked to hang out in Washington Square Park, where as a young man he went to watch the goings-on and smoke cigars. The other one of us has a similar story to tell: almost ten years ago, as a young Fulbright scholar, I (Bart Eeckhout) taught at Fordham University and stayed close to the Fordham Heights section of the Bronx, where Stevens lived for more than a year. As a Dutch-speaking Belgian, moreover, coming to view New York City as my second home for the past twenty years, I have enjoyed uncov- ering the city’s old Dutch layers much as Stevens did in his genealogical research during the 1940s. Having had the pleasure of participating in two conferences that consid- ered Stevens’ poetry in places he would have regarded as “signifi cant land- scapes” (“Wallace Stevens: Poet of Poets in Connecticut” and “Fifty Years On: Wallace Stevens in Europe”), it seemed to us that there would be great sense in mounting a conference also in New York. Thus, in March 2010, NYU’s Gallatin School hosted a group of distinguished scholars and poets at a gathering from which this book derives its title. “Wallace Stevens, New York, and Modernism” was physically located close to the young Stevens’ various New York addresses and spurred the kind of intellectual conver- sation about the poet’s formative years in the city that would become the subject of this book. We owe great thanks to the various institutions and people who enabled the conference to go forward and who, in turn, helped to inspire this book. First and foremost, we are indebted to Dean Susanne Woff ord of NYU’s

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd xvxv 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:301:55:30 PMPM xvi Acknowledgments 1 Gallatin School for her generous and enthusiastic support of the confer- 2 ence. We are pleased to extend gratitude to our many cosponsors: in partic- 3 ular, the Humanities Initiative of NYU, the Poetry Society of America, and 4 Stevens’ longtime publisher, Knopf. We have been given the opportunity 5 to publish a number of essays based on conference presentations that fall 6 outside the parameters of this book, all in the pages of The Wallace Stevens 7 Journal: the reader is invited to check out the excellent essays from Vol. 35, 8 No. 2 (Fall 2011) by Milton J. Bates, Natalie Gerber, and Angus Cleghorn. 9 Thanks are also due to the Journal for publishing the work of almost all 10 the poets who participated in the conference (see the “Visitors Gallery” in 11 Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2011). 12 We are most happy to be able to thank our gracious editor at Routledge, 13 Elizabeth Levine, for the opportunity to publish our collection in the Rout- 14 ledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, where a study of Stevens’ 15 New York years should fi nd a perfect home. The three anonymous review- 16 ers of our original book proposal have given us not only encouragement 17 but useful feedback that has helped us turn this into an even more coherent 18 collection. Our meticulous copyeditor at Routledge, John Rogers, has done 19 a wonderful job of cleaning up all remaining infelicities and inconsistencies 20 in the manuscript. 21 It is hard to imagine how we would have managed to honor our deadline 22 without the talented support of Liora Connor, our project and editorial 23 assistant. She invested many hours in reading, proofreading, and quote- 24 checking the manuscript, and was a tremendous help in all stages of the 25 process, including the initial drafting of an index. 26 Needless to say, we are particularly grateful to our contributors, all of 27 whom in their various chapters chart new ground in Stevens studies. They 28 have been a dream team to work with and we are happy to praise not 29 just their expertise and exacting scholarship but also their exemplary pro- 30 fessionalism. We would like to take the opportunity here to acknowledge 31 earlier publication of the chapter by Glen MacLeod in the special issue on 32 Stevens and Henry James guest-edited by Glen himself for The Wallace 33 Stevens Journal (Vol. 34, No. 1, Spring 2010). 34 Finally, we wish to dedicate this book to John N. Serio, whose brilliant 35 leadership and editorship of The Wallace Stevens Journal managed to raise 36 Stevens criticism to the highest academic level—and then kept it there for 37 decades. We owe our collaboration as well as a good part of our academic 38 careers to his tireless work at discovering and stimulating Stevens scholars 39 in every corner of the globe. 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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I 1 2 Wallace Stevens loved The New Yorker. His friend Wilson Taylor testifi ed 3 that whenever Stevens took the train from Connecticut (where he came to 4 live in 1916 until the end of his life in 1955) back to the New York City of 5 his early adulthood, he invariably read the magazine along the way to pre- 6 pare for the visit and its lavish cultural opportunities (Brazeau 84). Stevens’ 7 biographer, Joan Richardson, adds that the poet took a particular liking to 8 the magazine’s iconic cartoons, which seem to her so “close in spirit to his 9 own wit” (Later Years 225). And when Stevens started up a small cultural 10 exchange with a correspondent in Ceylon, he sent the man a one-year sub- 11 scription to The New Yorker, which he felt “quite sure” his correspondent 12 would like, “although there is very little that is literary about it” (L 332). 13 The latter qualifi cation is also typical of Stevens, a man of many ambiva- 14 lences who allied himself to the magazine as he often did to the city publi- 15 cized and embodied by it: not directly and unconditionally, but indirectly 16 and as a vigorously independent participant-observer from the margins. 17 Although in the course of his writing life Stevens sent individual poems 18 to a diverse range of magazines, he never submitted anything to The New 19 Yorker, in spite of his addiction to it. When a fellow lawyer at the offi ce in 20 Hartford, where Stevens worked during the day as one of the nation’s most 21 respected specialists in surety law, once inquired why Stevens so adamantly 22 resisted having a profi le written on him by the magazine, he responded in 23 his most point-blank manner, “They always try to portray you as a damn 24 fool” (qtd. in Brazeau 56). And the budding young poet Richard Wilbur 25 (much later to become the second Poet Laureate of the United States) was 26 startled when he met Stevens for the fi rst time in 1951 and, in the midst of 27 a lot of hilarity whipped up by the old poet, was suddenly taken aside by 28 him; as Wilbur recollected twenty-fi ve years later, 29 30 he leaned forward toward me, and he said with absolute seriousness, 31 indeed something approaching grimness—the look of an abbot talking 32 to a novice—“Now, Wilbur, you’re good, but you must stop publishing 33 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:301:55:30 PMPM 2 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 in The New Yorker.” . . . I confusedly defended myself. I said that I didn’t 2 have any money, and that they paid the best of all the magazines. Also 3 that to be published in The New Yorker meant that you got a pretty good 4 wide readership, and apparently reached even Wallace Stevens. He said, 5 “That doesn’t matter. Money doesn’t matter. If you’re a poet, you must 6 be prepared to be poor, if that’s necessary. You must be like a monk. You 7 must sacrifi ce yourself to your work.” . . . [H]e felt it would be impos- 8 sible for me to write over a period of years for a chic magazine that car- 9 ried advertisements for Black Starr and Frost Graham without adapting 10 myself to their expectations. (qtd. in Brazeau 197) 11 12 Most likely, then, Stevens would not have been completely surprised to 13 see how he fi nally did turn up in the pages of The New Yorker nearly 14 twenty years after his death. The witty manner in which he was introduced 15 would have delighted him as a longtime subscriber, and the monetary sce- 16 nario into which he was scripted would have served as further evidence of 17 his equation between New York City’s upscale magazine and a culture of 18 irrepressible profi t making. Only the postmodern debunking of high cul- 19 ture and the uninhibited sexual doubles-entendre, both fully established by 20 the 1970s, might have horrifi ed the monk in him who believed so deeply in 21 the value of an elitist and solitary artistic vocation. 22 The fl eeting if brilliantly timed appearance Stevens belatedly made in 23 the magazine’s pages occurs in what some regard as the fi nest short story 24 Woody Allen ever contributed to it. Under the spectacular title “The Whore 25 of Mensa,” whose oxymoronic eff ect immediately stages the gimmick at 26 the heart of the story, we are treated to the voice of a Manhattan private 27 investigator by the name of Kaiser Lupowitz. We instantly recognize the 28 parodied voice as that of the cynical hardboiled detective digging up the 29 metropolitan dirt in popular fi ction and fi lm noir: 30 31 One thing about being a private investigator, you’ve got to learn to go 32 with your hunches. That’s why when a quivering pat of butter named 33 Word Babcock walked into my offi ce and laid his cards on the table, I 34 should have trusted the cold chill that shot up my spine. (Allen 48) 35 36 Babcock’s desperate case proves to be all too familiar in outline if unusual 37 in its specifi cs. An ordinary mechanical maintenance man, Babcock has an 38 extraordinary desire for “really brainy women” with whom he can have 39 the kind of intellectual discussions his wife does not aff ord (49). So he has 40 taken to meeting up with young women who are “mentally stimulating” 41 and who, at a price, are willing to off er “a quick intellectual experience.” 42 Whenever Babcock feels the craving, he calls Flossie, “a madam, with a 43 master’s in Comparative Lit. She sends me over an intellectual, see?” After 44 half a year of such secret extramarital encounters, Flossie has started to 45 blackmail Babcock by threatening to tell his wife, Carla; as he explains: 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:301:55:30 PMPM Introduction 3 “They bugged the motel room. They got tapes of me discussing ‘The 1 Waste Land’ and ‘Styles of Radical Will,’ and, well, really getting into 2 some issues. They want ten grand or they go to Carla. Kaiser, you’ve got to 3 help me! Carla would die if she knew she didn’t turn me on up here.” (49) 4 5 Lupowitz decides to take the case and sets up a meeting with one of 6 Flossie’s call girls in a room at the Plaza Hotel, to discuss Herman Melville. 7 Although the barely nineteen-year-old Sherry clearly appeals to the private 8 eye’s eyes, that is not how she is expected to serve him: 9 10 “Shall we begin?” I said, motioning her to the couch. 11 She lit a cigarette and got right to it. “I think we could start by 12 approaching ‘Billy Budd’ as Melville’s justifi cation of the ways of God 13 to man, n’est-ce pas?” 14 “Interestingly, though, not in a Miltonian sense.” I was bluffi ng. I 15 wanted to see if she’d go for it. 16 “No. ‘Paradise Lost’ lacked the substructure of pessimism.” She did. 17 (50) 18 19 At the end of the appointed hour, Lupowitz surprises his visitor by fl ash- 20 ing his badge and forcing her to own up about the call-girl racket. Sherry 21 confesses that the Hunter College bookstore serves as a front for Flossie’s 22 intellectual brothel. So Lupowitz wends his way to the store for the fi nal 23 showdown: 24 25 A wall of books opened, and I walked like a lamb into that bustling 26 pleasure palace known as Flossie’s. 27 Red fl ocked wallpaper and a Victorian décor set the tone. Pale, ner- 28 vous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around 29 on sofas, riffl ing Penguin Classics provocatively. A blonde with a big 30 smile winked at me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and said, “Wal- 31 lace Stevens, eh?” (52) 32 33 We can leave our savvy investigator to his business (he wraps it up with 34 predictable cool) because we have reached our own destination in the story. 35 At the climax of the series of jokes, as the fi nal supreme anomaly promising 36 the highest intellectual encounter for the customer as well as the greatest 37 release in laughter for the reader, we fi nd the fi gure of Wallace Stevens, 38 played by Allen as his trump card. In this brief walk-on role, Stevens has 39 fi nally made it into The New Yorker: his name fi gures in the magazine’s 40 pages as the supreme emblem of high culture, ambivalently acknowledged 41 and ridiculed in the same gesture. He should have expected the comeup- 42 pance: “They always try to portray you as a damn fool,” he predicted. 43 Yet the foolishness is only one part of the story—the most straightfor- 44 ward part. If we take the time to put some interpretive pressure on the 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:301:55:30 PMPM 4 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 text, “The Whore of Mensa” appears to refract Stevens’ cultural posi- 2 tion in New York in several interesting ways. A richer picture emerges if 3 we also step back to refl ect on the intrinsically ironic structure shared by 4 Allen’s hyperbolic narrative and much of Stevens’ poetry: this ironic struc- 5 ture requires for its enjoyment a quintessentially literary reader who is well 6 versed in the decoding of texts in their multiple semantic layers. Such a 7 reader is able to recognize, for instance, the many encoded genre conven- 8 tions in Allen’s story, to appreciate his constant riff on that genre’s stylistic 9 clichés, and to understand each and every detail in the narrative that carries 10 a double meaning as the palimpsestic rewriting of a much more banal and 11 pornographic account of sexual prostitution. In his own satirical way, then, 12 Allen wants a close reader. And the more this reader knows about Stevens, 13 the more humorous the eff ect. Allen’s ideal reader knows the diff erence 14 between “Wallace Stevens, eh?” and “Robert Frost, eh?” 15 The same ideal reader, moreover, is able to appreciate “The Whore of 16 Mensa” not just as superior entertainment (which it is during a fi rst read- 17 ing, when the story plays its many surprise eff ects and pulls a volley of 18 laughs) but also as complex satire whose multiple meanings are folded over. 19 Upon closer inspection, the joke in this story is on a great many people and 20 social realities rather typical of New York. For some of the more middle- 21 brow readers of The New Yorker, the joke is, of course, on the forbidding 22 diffi culty of certain authors, including and especially canonized modern- 23 ists such as Stevens, whose products of the mind can never hope to be as 24 viscerally exciting and arousing as the primary sexual desire most people 25 feel for other people’s bodies. Yet as satire the joke is arguably also on the 26 city’s heterosexual male residents who, in their attitude toward women, 27 prove to be more obsessed with sex and a fetishizing logic of consump- 28 tion than with the desire for deeper intellectual companionship. And the 29 joke is simultaneously on all middlebrow readers who are themselves mere 30 pseudointellectuals of a sort frequently staged in Allen’s famous New York 31 fi lms: people whose ability to drop names (the way Allen himself does in 32 the story) is only a form of impression management that does not diff er 33 essentially from the commercial faking of prostitutes. In addition to all this, 34 the story may be read as a sly satire of the Darwinian struggle for survival 35 in New York. It then reminds us how intellectual and artistic competition 36 in this most competitive of cities sometimes betrays itself as a sublimated 37 form of sexual selection (a fact to which most of Allen’s movie career again 38 off ers an ambiguous response). Finally, the satire takes aim at Manhat- 39 tan’s indomitable culture of monetarization, which turns every reality— 40 including the highest intellectual and artistic pursuits—into opportunities 41 for commerce and trade that depend on a seller’s talents as a performer and 42 his or her manipulation of a logic of simulacra (a New York characteristic 43 most blatantly on display in the history of its self-proclaimed “crossroads 44 of the world,” Times Square). It is this cultural reality of money making in 45 the city, arguably, that allowed Stevens himself to coin an aphorism very 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:301:55:30 PMPM Introduction 5 unlike his ascetic advice to Wilbur. “Money,” Stevens noted in his private 1 collection of epigrams, “is a kind of poetry” (CPP 905). 2 3 4 II 5 6 In 1903, when the German father of urban sociology, Georg Simmel, 7 publishes his epochal essay on “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (“Die 8 Grossstädte und das Geistesleben”), the same cultural reality of “the money 9 economy which dominates the metropolis” also proves to be central to his 10 analysis (33). Focusing on the psychological eff ects of metropolitan life, 11 Simmel explains that 12 13 the money economy and the domination of the intellect stand in the 14 closest relationship to one another. They have in common a purely mat- 15 ter-of-fact attitude in the treatment of persons and things in which a 16 formal justice is often combined with an unrelenting hardness. Money 17 is concerned only with what is common to all, i.e., with the exchange 18 value which reduces all quality and individuality to a purely quantita- 19 tive level. All emotional relationships between persons rest on their 20 individuality, whereas intellectual relationships deal with persons as 21 with numbers, that is, as with elements which, in themselves, are indif- 22 ferent, but which are of interest only insofar as they off er something 23 objectively perceivable. (32) 24 25 To support his central argument, Simmel points to a saying by “the most 26 outstanding English constitutional historian to the eff ect that through the 27 entire course of English history London has never acted as the heart of 28 England but often as its intellect and always as its money bag” (33). This is 29 very similar to the claim by two of New York’s major historians, Kenneth 30 T. Jackson and David S. Dunbar, when they write that “Unlike Boston, 31 which was founded as a kind of religious experiment, New Amsterdam was 32 founded for the purpose of making money”; and that “the countinghouse, 33 not the church, was the most important building in town” (qtd. in Patell 3). 34 And so we should not be surprised by the knee-jerk conclusion Stevens also 35 draws in his fi rst journal entry after arriving in New York City. On June 36 15, 1900, he writes: 37 38 All New York, as I have seen it, is for sale—and I think the parts I have 39 seen are the parts that make New York what it is. It is dominated by 40 necessity. Everything has its price—from Vice to Virtue. (SP 72) 41 42 Simmel, writing in Berlin, off ers us the kind of theorized cultural under- 43 standing against which Stevens’ contemporaneous experiences in New 44 York as a young man may be measured. Among other things, the German 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 5 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM 6 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 thinker talks of the diffi cult “resistance of the individual to being levelled, 2 swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism” (30). Part of this 3 resistance involves 4 5 the metropolitan type . . . creat[ing] a protective organ for itself against 6 the profound disruption with which the fl uctuations and discontinui- 7 ties of the external milieu threaten it. Instead of reacting emotionally, 8 the metropolitan type reacts primarily in a rational manner, thus cre- 9 ating a mental predominance through the intensifi cation of conscious- 10 ness, which in turn is caused by it. (31–32) 11 12 “The modern mind” as represented by the metropolitan individual, Sim- 13 mel theorizes, “has become more and more a calculating one” and fi nds 14 itself grappling with “the reduction of qualitative values to quantitative 15 terms” (33). There are patent drawbacks to this social reality in terms 16 of the urbanite’s mental life. “There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon 17 which is so unconditionally reserved to the city,” Simmel comments, “as 18 the blasé outlook” (35). Fortunately, though, there is also one major advan- 19 tage to modern urban life celebrated by Simmel as compensation for the 20 more numerous drawbacks spelled out by him: it is the urbanite’s “type and 21 degree of personal freedom to which there is no analogy in other circum- 22 stances” (38), even if “It is obviously only the obverse of this freedom that, 23 under certain circumstances, one never feels as lonely and as deserted as 24 in this metropolitan crush of persons” (40). In the end, Simmel argues, the 25 very scale on which the modern metropolis is laid out—always stretching 26 farther than the eye can see and the mind can encompass—requires a kind 27 of abstraction that necessitates a fundamental openness to the world: “It is 28 . . . in transcending this purely tangible extensiveness that the metropolis 29 also becomes the seat of cosmopolitanism” (40). Almost a hundred years 30 later, in the context of what we now call a globalized world, leading philos- 31 ophers such as Kwame Anthony Appiah are still affi rming the importance 32 of such urban-based cosmopolitanism. 33 34 35 III 36 37 Wallace Stevens’ personal acquaintance with New York City covers more 38 than half a century: from around 1890 to 1955—coincidentally almost the 39 same dates we tend to use to defi ne the larger cultural arc of modernism in 40 the arts and literature. We do not know the precise year in which he stayed 41 in the city for the fi rst time. As his daughter Holly reports, “For one year 42 of his elementary school career [which ended in 1892] my father was a stu- 43 dent at the parochial school attached to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in the 44 Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where his uncle was pastor” (SP 9–10). 45 No records of this time remain, so we only know that the young Wallace 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM Introduction 7 spent a year in a largely German neighborhood in Brooklyn, itself at the 1 time—before the disputed “consolidation” into the Greater New York of 2 1898—still an independent city, the third largest in the nation. But it is to 3 the Greater New York, now consisting fully of its fi ve famous boroughs and 4 with a quickly multiplying population of nearly 3.5 million people, that he 5 returns at the age of twenty, in June 1900, fresh out of Harvard College. He 6 lives in the city at various addresses (from Greenwich Village and Chelsea 7 to Fordham Heights in the Bronx, as well as more than a year across the 8 Hudson in East Orange, New Jersey) between 1900 and 1916, when he 9 moves to Hartford, Connecticut, his home for the rest of his life. Hartford, 10 however, proves to be suffi ciently within range of the city (a three-hour 11 train ride away) for Stevens to enjoy what arguably becomes the best of 12 two worlds for him: a quiet half-suburban life of professional discipline, 13 bourgeois domestic comforts, and solitary creative freedom in the not very 14 stressful city of Hartford, interspersed with frequent outings to the twen- 15 tieth century’s foremost metropolis, where the smorgasbord of available 16 indulgences is endless. These trips to New York end only in the year of his 17 death, 1955, with one of his fi nal visits serving to collect the National Book 18 Award for his Collected Poetry, published and fêted by Knopf in the same 19 city only a few months before. 20 To be sure, an even longer perspective on Stevens’ affi liation with New 21 York could be taken: such a perspective would also involve him as would- 22 be descendent of the fi rst Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam. During the 23 1940s, Stevens spent a lot of time and money tracing his genealogy. He 24 hoped to establish that his Dutch paternal lineage reached all the way back 25 to one of the city’s fi rst settlers in the mid-seventeenth century, which would 26 have allowed him to qualify for membership in the exclusive gentlemen’s 27 club of the Holland Society. In the end, he had to settle for a more recent 28 immigrant ancestor who probably arrived in the city sometime in the early 29 1700s (Bates 612; Eeckhout 39). However, as our focus in this book is on 30 the interaction between Stevens as a major fi gure in modernist literature 31 and the paradigmatically “modern” metropolis of New York City in which 32 he lived and to which he kept returning during the fi rst half of the twenti- 33 eth century, we will forgo this longer historical perspective and stick to the 34 period 1900–1955. 35 The core period on which our contributors will be zooming in most of 36 the time—those early years when Stevens lived in and around New York 37 City from 1900 to 1916—is no doubt familiar to many of our readers in its 38 general biographical outline.1 Stevens fi rst tried his hand briefl y at journal- 39 ism, working as a reporter for the New York Tribune, before grudgingly 40 taking his father’s advice and entering New York Law School in 1901. After 41 his graduation in 1903, he clerked with W. G. Peckham for a while until 42 he was admitted to the New York bar in 1904, the year in which he also 43 met Elsie Viola Kachel during a summer return visit to Reading, Pennsylva- 44 nia, where he had been born and spent his childhood and youth. Upon his 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM 8 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 return to New York after the summer, he started on a diffi cult career path 2 as a lawyer, fi rst setting up a practice with Lyman Ward (without success), 3 then moving from one law offi ce to another, temporarily being out of work, 4 repeatedly changing lodgings, until he established a number of contacts in 5 the insurance business and started to work his way up in this industry. In 6 the meantime, he kept up a long-distance relationship with Elsie, whom he 7 fi nally married in 1909 but whose arrival in the city was no success: Elsie 8 did not like New York at all and the marriage soon became a disappoint- 9 ment to both of them. 10 It was only after more than a dozen years in the city, by 1913, that Ste- 11 vens fi nally, at age 33, turned to what he had always wanted to do in the 12 fi rst place—write poetry. He started to contribute individual poems to little 13 magazines, received encouragement from some of the important impresa- 14 rios of modernism, Harriet Monroe and Alfred Kreymborg, hooked up 15 with his Harvard friend Walter Arensberg again, and became part of the 16 latter’s circle of emerging avant-garde artists, musicians, and writers. Mean- 17 while, he rose professionally in various insurance companies as a specialist 18 in fi delity and surety bonds, until in 1916 he took up a position with the 19 Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, triggering his move to Hart- 20 ford in the same year. Thus, it was only during the fi nal three years of his 21 life in New York that Stevens fully mixed with local avant-garde circles, 22 out of which he emerged as one of the most exciting and surprising voices 23 in modern poetry. Although he then settled down and composed the lion’s 24 share of his literary work in Connecticut, it is important to understand that 25 Stevens never saw himself as a Hartford poet and kept gravitating toward 26 New York for nearly all things that mattered to him privately and poeti- 27 cally: visits to galleries, museums, and bookstores, theatrical and musi- 28 cal performances, intellectual and artistic gatherings, shopping sprees, and 29 gastronomical indulgences. Thus, out of the metropolitan cosmopolitanism 30 that had been able to fi re his poetic ambition during his early years in New 31 York, Stevens went on to develop a modern aesthetic we now recognize as 32 wholly his own, mixing in postromantic responses to nature, philosophical 33 musings, a love of wordplay and humor, and his unpredictable travels in the 34 imagination across time and space. 35 36 37 IV 38 39 What makes this collection so long overdue is that Stevens nevertheless pres- 40 ents a very special case of a New York-based or New York-oriented writer: 41 one who managed to make himself almost invisible as such. Although by 42 now solidly entrenched in the modern literary canon and even regarded 43 by many connoisseurs as the greatest twentieth-century American poet, 44 Stevens’ relation to New York was so oblique that it has been easy to over- 45 look altogether. His name is, typically, nowhere to be found in the more 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM Introduction 9 than one thousand pages of Phillip Lopate’s wonderful anthology, Writing 1 New York. If this is still pardonable because of the heavy emphasis of that 2 anthology on fi ction and nonfi ction, Stevens’ absence from Stephen Wolf’s 3 I Speak of the City: Poems of New York is much more glaring. Wolf’s is the 4 largest anthology of its kind we are aware of: it selects work by 138 poets, 5 all the way from Jacob Steendam in seventeenth-century New Amsterdam 6 to our own day and age, and is proudly marketed as gathering writers 7 “from more than a dozen countries” (says the blurb), including “two Nobel 8 Prize recipients” and “fi fteen Pulitzer Prize winners” (Wolf xxxi). But there 9 is not a single poem by Stevens, who makes a characteristically fl eeting 10 appearance only in John Hollander’s foreword—not as a poet of New York 11 then, but of the kind of philosophically affi rmed perspectivism that may 12 be said to off er a metaliterary comment on all the poems collected in the 13 anthology: “Things seen,” Hollander quotes from Stevens’ “Adagia,” “are 14 things as seen” (xix; CPP 902). 15 In Elizabeth Schmidt’s smaller collection, Poems of New York (84 poets), 16 Stevens does make the cut with one poem (fortunately, we might add, since 17 the anthology is part of Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, published by Ste- 18 vens’ own publisher, Knopf). The poem is the promisingly entitled “Arrival 19 at the Waldorf” composed in (probably) 1940, although we cannot help but 20 wonder what readers with little experience in reading Stevens are able to 21 make of a speaker who opens with the simple announcement, “Home from 22 Guatemala, back at the Waldorf,” but then does not go on to say anything 23 about the world-famous and iconic Waldorf-Astoria Hotel except that 24 25 You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight 26 Or sunlight and you hum and the orchestra 27 Hums and you say “The world in a verse, 28 29 A generation sealed, men remoter than mountains, 30 Women invisible in music and motion and color,” 31 After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala. (CPP 32 219)2 33 34 Clearly, it takes an experienced Stevens critic like Eleanor Cook to under- 35 stand the ironic use of the setting here and grasp that the Waldorf serves as 36 “a metonymy for a home where the wild country of the soul [a phrase from 37 the poem’s second line] fi nds no home” (155). Yet, even if the not-quite-so- 38 experienced reader fails to comprehend as much, he or she is still bound to 39 notice how the poem’s powerful closing line about “that alien, point-blank, 40 green and actual Guatemala” attracts all the poetic attention, pulling us 41 away from a New York cityscape summoned up in terms no more concrete 42 than “music and motion and color.” 43 Considering how marginally Stevens inhabits such literary anthologies 44 about New York, we should probably not be too surprised to notice that he 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM 10 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 has suff ered a similar fate in literary-historical criticism on the city. In our 2 most conspicuous piece of evidence here, the recent Cambridge Companion 3 to the Literature of New York, the fi gure of Stevens is brought up so per- 4 functorily as to be actively slighted: he is allowed to make an appearance 5 just once in the entire collection, and then only as part of a series of “elder 6 statesmen and stateswomen of modernism” who “in the late 1950s” gave 7 poetry readings in the city at a time when these “were generally staid aff airs 8 taking place at institutions like the 92nd Street Y” (Kane 194). So much for 9 Stevens’ contribution to the literature of New York, apparently. 10 11 12 V 13 14 And yet, we need to understand that Stevens, too, in his idiosyncratic way, 15 is a writer impossible to grasp fully without reference to his metropolitan 16 background. Already more than three decades ago, the British writer and 17 critic Malcolm Bradbury proposed that “In many respects the literature of 18 experimental Modernism which emerged in the last years of the nineteenth 19 century and developed into the present one was an art of cities. . . . The pull 20 and push of the city, its attraction and repulsion, have provided themes and 21 attitudes that run deep in literature” (96–97). Ultimately, the phenomenon 22 of artistic and literary modernism cannot be understood as anything else 23 than “a metropolitan art, which is to say . . . a group art, a specialist art, 24 an intellectual art, an art for one’s aesthetic peers” (101). 25 If Stevens is in many ways, as the essays presented here collectively man- 26 age to demonstrate, a metropolitan poet as well, then it might be worth 27 taking the time in our general introduction to fi ll in some of the larger pic- 28 ture against which the subsequent essays have to be read. In the following 29 pages, our readers will be able to enjoy a delightful series of frequently vivid 30 snapshots that bring to life one particular man’s very personal sense of 31 New York during the fi rst half of the twentieth century. But the necessarily 32 individual portrait of the city that thus emerges is of course skewed, selec- 33 tive, and subject to personal imaginative transformations. Many important 34 historical realities are not recorded in the process, so that it may be useful 35 to outline some of these in advance to build a general cultural backdrop. 36 When we look at the timeline included in the Cambridge Companion 37 to the Literature of New York for the period 1900–1916, we are able to 38 give contextual literary substance to our collective narrative about Stevens. 39 We are, for instance, reminded that the young man’s arrival in the big city, 40 and his fi rst recorded impressions to which so many of our contributors 41 will turn, happen to coincide with the publication of Theodore Dreiser’s 42 Sister Carrie. For those familiar with the New York images from Dreis- 43 er’s realist novel, a number of interesting comparisons with Stevens’ early 44 descriptions become possible. Likewise, the fi eld of literary and cultural 45 associations is thickened when we remind ourselves that it was not only 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1010 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM Introduction 11 Henry James—ubiquitous in the following pages—who pondered the city’s 1 merciless and unstoppable social changes from an ironic aesthete’s perspec- 2 tive, but also James’s friend Edith Wharton, whose novel The House of 3 Mirth appeared during this same period, in 1905. 4 The early 1900s is the time when the newly founded National Associa- 5 tion for the Advancement of Colored People held its fi rst conference in New 6 York (1909) and the socialist magazine The Masses was fi rst published 7 (1911). That magazine was soon to embody Greenwich Village’s enthu- 8 siasm for “Marxism, anarchism, birth control, free love, cubism, futur- 9 ism, Freudianism, feminism, the new theater” (Burns and Sanders 336). 10 Of more immediate importance to Stevens’ career as a poet is the fact that 11 Alfred A. Knopf started his publishing house in 1915. Knopf was, in other 12 words, still very much a new publisher when he signed up Stevens for his 13 fi rst book.3 Finally, in 1916, the year Stevens left the city, the Provincetown 14 Players established their theater in the Village—another cultural moment 15 of signifi cance in view of Stevens’ own short-lived playwriting ambitions 16 at the time. 17 Two best-selling books about the history of New York, Eric Homberger’s 18 Historical Atlas of New York City and New York: An Illustrated History 19 by Ric Burns and James Sanders, add further color and spice to this cul- 20 tural backdrop by reminding us of the larger social picture. The following 21 chapters will make it all too easy to forget that New York at the turn of the 22 twentieth century, in the period between 1880 and 1920, was the port of 23 entry for millions of new immigrants. To the dominant ethnic groups from 24 the fi rst wave of immigration in the mid-nineteenth century—especially 25 the Germans gathering in “Kleindeutschland” and the Irish living more 26 dispersedly over the city—large contingents of newcomers from the Medi- 27 terranean, Central Europe, and Russia were added. Thus, various Italian 28 neighborhoods in New York and even parts of streets came to replicate 29 distinct Italian regions of origin (Homberger 114). Most of the two million 30 Jews arriving through Ellis Island were starting out in the cramped-up tene- 31 ments of the Lower East Side, at the time “the most densely crowded place 32 on earth” (Burns and Sanders 246). Almost half of the city’s population, in 33 fact, lived in slum conditions: in 1900, there were 42,700 tenement houses 34 in Manhattan, which together housed 1,585,000 people, so that “Of all 35 the problems the city confronted in this period, the tenement was the most 36 intractable” (Homberger 110). One reason this reality becomes so easy to 37 forget in the course of reading our collection of essays is that New York at 38 the time was a city divided into “Two Nations” (Homberger 94–95): as an 39 American-born middle-class citizen whose family history on American soil 40 reached back several generations, Stevens lived in a parallel universe that, 41 despite existing in the closest possible proximity to the newly arrived immi- 42 grants, kept a considerable mental and social distance from them. 43 To accommodate the multiplying numbers of old and new residents, the 44 city was struggling to keep up with its material infrastructure. Department 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1111 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM 12 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 stores—a novel type of architecture invented in nineteenth-century New 2 York— expanded into huge multifl oor shopping palaces. The best-known 3 among these, Macy’s, moved up north to Herald Square in 1902, where it 4 came to occupy an entire housing block (Homberger 102). Late-nineteenth- 5 century New York was likewise the birthplace of the apartment house 6 (Burns and Sanders 236). Together with residential hotels—whose grandest 7 example, the Ansonia, opened its doors in 1904 (Burns and Sanders 237)— 8 such building types inaugurated a new type of twentieth-century urban 9 living. For the bustling crowds in the streets, meanwhile, a dizzying array 10 of mass transportation was off ered, from traditional horse-drawn carts, 11 wagons, and omnibuses, to electrical streetcars and street-level railroads, 12 to an overhanging web of overcrowded, noisy, and polluting elevated rail- 13 roads (collectively labeled the “el”), and fi nally, as of 1904, the fi rst subway 14 line, operated by the IRT (Homberger 106–07, 126–27). The same years 15 early in the century also saw the magnifi cent redesign of Grand Central 16 Terminal to the structure we know today, as well as the construction of the 17 fi rst Penn Station by McKim, Mead, and White—the competing, equally 18 grand Beaux-Arts design notoriously demolished and replaced by Madison 19 Square Garden in the 1960s. In 1909, furthermore, the Manhattan Bridge 20 joined its immediate neighbor, the Brooklyn Bridge, as the city’s second 21 technological marvel suspended over the East River, and in the same year 22 the building of the Queensboro Bridge began (Homberger 108–09). An 23 extended connection by rail allowed the urban masses to be slotted into 24 Coney Island, where the construction of large amusement parks alongside 25 the beach—from Steeplechase Park to Luna Park—gave rise to turn-of- 26 the-century America’s most spectacular and popular family entertainment 27 destination (Homberger 128). 28 It is in this dynamic environment, ceaselessly under construction and 29 fl ooded by newcomers, that the young Stevens found himself trying to cut 30 out a life of his own. The politician who embodied the era was himself 31 of New York stock: Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, President of the United 32 States from 1901 to 1909, set to his fellow Americans the example of 33 unstoppable masculine energy, with which his home city was also proverbi- 34 ally associated. 35 36 37 VI 38 39 It is all too understandable that of the years Stevens lived in New York, the 40 period scholars have most thoroughly explored covers his last three years 41 in the city, roughly from 1913 onwards. Stevens himself described the time 42 as his poetic and artistic “awakening” (qtd. in Brazeau 7). His engagement 43 with the so-called Arensberg circle, in the apartment of Walter and Louise 44 Arensberg on West 67th Street, presents the clearest evidence of the impact 45 of emerging trends in the arts on his poetic sensibility.4 As George Lensing 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1212 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM Introduction 13 points out in the opening chapter of our volume, it was at the Arensberg 1 “studio” where he came to befriend Marcel Duchamp and got a chance to 2 meet other innovative artists, musicians, and writers. Here it was that his 3 lifelong friendship with William Carlos Williams and Carl Van Vechten 4 began, and with the art critic and painter Walter Pach, a major go-between 5 with the modern art world in Paris as well as one of the driving forces 6 behind the groundbreaking Armory Show in 1913 that introduced the New 7 York public to new developments in art, especially postimpressionist and 8 cubist painting (MacLeod 6). Here it was, furthermore, that Stevens came 9 into contact with painters such as Francis Picabia, who would gush about 10 New York as “the Cubist city . . . the Futurist city” (qtd. in Burns and 11 Sanders 344), and had to fend off advances from the fl amboyant Dada- 12 ist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (Richardson, Early Years 468). 13 Perhaps no less intimidatingly if not so aggressively, the walls of the Arens- 14 berg apartment off ered the young Stevens, in due course, a veritable master 15 class of the latest “modern” art works. 16 Such encounters clearly put their stamp on the always curious and 17 sharp-witted young Stevens, but interested readers may fi nd out all about 18 the eff ects on his poetic awakening by consulting what especially Glen 19 MacLeod and Joan Richardson have published in this regard. While the 20 following essays will inevitably refer to this period and (with one exception) 21 do not seek to downplay its importance, our book is predominantly meant 22 to complement such extant scholarship. We wish to provide a wider view 23 of the generally understudied aspects of Stevens’ years in New York, both 24 before and after his contact with the Arensberg salon. 25 Each of the essays in our collection premises the centrality of New York 26 City to Stevens’ poetic imagination, above all during those silent years 27 before 1913, when he was engaged in the search for (in the words of George 28 Lensing) “what he believed, what he did not believe, and what he wished 29 he could believe.” These are the years when the city played an insuffi ciently 30 acknowledged formative role in Stevens’ emergent aesthetic. But equally 31 understudied are the ways in which New York continued to be a cultural 32 touchstone for the later poet coming in from Hartford so many times a 33 year. Each contribution, too, stretches our understanding of the ways in 34 which Stevens developed his distinctive modernist poetic out of an engage- 35 ment not only with the architecture of New York and the landscape of its 36 surrounding counties, but with a variety of activities across the spectrum 37 of the arts—painting, to be sure, but also music, dance, poetry, and fi ction, 38 in addition to the “fi ne art” of living well, the “gastronomic arts” of food 39 and wine. 40 George Lensing, in Chapter 1, examines two questions about the emerg- 41 ing poet of the New York years: why his progress seemed to be as arrested 42 as it appears to have been and what, in fact, he did absorb from the years 43 he lived in New York—both negatively and positively—that guided him 44 toward the modernism of the poems he started writing around 1913–1914. 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1313 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM 14 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 Lensing’s two-part chapter fi rst addresses biographical aspects of his expe- 2 rience in New York, and shows how the would-be poet’s life in the city was 3 initially laden with troubles and misdirections. For all his seeming dissat- 4 isfaction with the impersonality, enclosures, and artifi cialities of the city, 5 Stevens in some ways nevertheless became a quintessential New Yorker. In 6 the second part of his chapter, Lensing closely studies the literary and phil- 7 osophical models that informed Stevens’ developing poetic, ranging from 8 familiar fi gures, such as Keats and Duchamp, to others who have been 9 largely absent from critical discussion of the poet’s development: writers 10 like Arthur Morrison on Japan, the Italian aphorist Leopardi, the Romans 11 Catullus and Silentiarius, or the Nobel Prize winner Sully Prudhomme, 12 among many others. We are also off ered a picture of Stevens’ encounters 13 with the city’s resources and his most familiar “haunts”: the Astor Library, 14 the Metropolitan Museum, the National Academy of Design, Carnegie 15 Hall, and the New York Botanical Garden. 16 Subsequent contributions take a closer look at particular aspects intro- 17 duced by Lensing in his overarching essay, with Chapters 2 through 5 focusing 18 on Stevens’ interaction with the arts of painting, music, dance, and architec- 19 ture, and how his engagement with these helped him to forge his idiomatic 20 aesthetic. In Chapter 2, Bonnie Costello begins by observing that there has 21 been little attention to Stevens’ gallery going in the years before his connec- 22 tion to the Arensberg circle. Given the accepted importance of painting to 23 Stevens’ life and work, Costello fi lls an important gap in the critical literature 24 by concentrating on his interaction with the visual arts during his early years 25 in the city. Exploring what motivated Stevens to go to galleries and how he 26 responded to what he saw there, Costello makes two crucial points: how 27 the future poet during his days in New York was building an image bank 28 that would serve his imagination throughout the rest of his life; and how the 29 gallery-going experience fed his interest in art as illusion. Surprisingly few 30 critics, Costello argues, have stopped to consider Stevens’ taste for represen- 31 tational works or the presence of representational painting in his poetry. Yet 32 Costello demonstrates how much the young Stevens loved pictures at least in 33 part for their power of illusion. Gallery going allowed Stevens, furthermore, 34 to witness the emergent art culture of America, to satisfy his interest in his 35 ancestry, and to pursue the contemporary craze for japonisme that would 36 make itself felt in his poetry as well. 37 With Chapters 3 and 4, Lisa Goldfarb and Barbara Fisher direct our 38 attention to Stevens’ relationship to the temporal arts of music and dance, 39 respectively. Goldfarb’s chapter addresses the largely neglected impact 40 of New York’s musical life on Stevens’ writings, as well as, more impor- 41 tantly, how his experience of the sounds of the city and the performances 42 he attended contributed to the development of his musical-poetic aesthetic. 43 Long established biographical work and critical studies indicate that Ste- 44 vens’ musical and poetic sensibilities were shaped by the rich and changing 45 musical world in the early 1900s, and Goldfarb revisits these biographical 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1414 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM Introduction 15 aspects in the fi rst part of her essay. She then turns to the compelling ques- 1 tion of how Stevens’ engagement with New York City’s soundscapes and 2 its musical life underlies the drama of musical transformation at the heart 3 of his poetry. Lastly, Goldfarb posits a relationship between Stevens’ habit 4 of walking in the city—crucially, his discipline of thinking while walking, 5 since “A city is a splendid place for thinking” (L 42)—and the structures 6 and forms that were to become among the most distinctive in his poetry, 7 especially the form of musical-poetic variations. 8 If Stevens’ walking rhythms do indeed give rise to the rhythmic and 9 open-ended musical structures of his verse, Barbara Fisher, in Chapter 4, 10 further consolidates the poet’s interest in music, although this time in the 11 “embodied music” of dance. Herself a former soloist in the New York City 12 Ballet as well as an established Stevens scholar, Fisher explores the fact 13 that, from the earliest to the very late period, in both his poetry and letters, 14 we can locate a dancing Stevens. Fisher is careful to place Stevens among 15 fellow modernists in this respect. Whereas Williams, T. S. Eliot, Marianne 16 Moore, and Langston Hughes sometimes make dancers or dance their 17 subjects, Stevens does something unique: we fi nd him, arguably, “danc- 18 ing on the page.” Fisher studies particular poems to demonstrate a perfor- 19 mative Stevens—for instance, “Sea Surface Full of Clouds,” “Connoisseur 20 of Chaos,” and “A Fish-Scale Sunrise,” the latter arising out of a real-life 21 dancing experience on one of the city’s rooftop gardens. In the fi nal part of 22 her chapter, Fisher provides an examination of Stevens’ prefaces to Valéry’s 23 Eupalinos and L’Âme et la Danse, one of his last projects before his death, 24 to show the depth of his philosophical engagement with the meaning of 25 dance itself. 26 From dance we turn, with Bart Eeckhout in Chapter 5, to a diff erent 27 dimension of Stevens’ relationship to the physical world: the built environ- 28 ment of New York City. Within New York modernism, the skyscraper serves 29 as the most spectacular material embodiment of modernity, capitalism, and 30 urbanization. As such, it off ers a source of endless artistic fascination. Yet, 31 unlike the work of almost any other contemporary poet who spent time in 32 New York, from Williams and Moore to younger admirers such as Hart 33 Crane, Stevens’ poetry seems to erase this architectural modernity or con- 34 sistently turn away from it. Eeckhout’s chapter investigates why this might 35 be and what Stevens’ relation to urban architecture in general appears to 36 have been. The main part of the investigation returns us to the published 37 journals and letters to determine the place of the built environment in Ste- 38 vens’ personal observations on the world in which he matured as an artist. 39 This is followed by two briefer parts casting their tentacles into the poet’s 40 later work: on the one hand, Eeckhout identifi es the most signifi cant archi- 41 tectural typologies fi guring in Stevens’ published poetry, plays, and essays, 42 as well as the question of their relation to urban modernity; on the other, 43 he shows us how some of Stevens’ writings may be read, almost in spite of 44 themselves, as oblique comments on modern architectural realities. 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1515 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM 16 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 Only a few years after he arrived in New York, Stevens proclaimed in his 2 journal his literary ambition “to make a music of my own, a literature of 3 my own, and . . . to make my own life” (L 79). To chart his path forward 4 as a poet, he wrestled with how to fi nd a language to express his encounter 5 with the rapidly transforming urban world around him, as well as with the 6 predominant writers of his day. Chapters 6 through 8 take up specifi cally 7 literary questions: how Stevens responded to the modernity of New York in 8 the early twentieth century and how he assimilated and defi ned himself in 9 relation to literary writings—most prominently by Henry James, the most 10 celebrated of contemporary writers, who also happened to have personal 11 ties with the city. Axel Nesme, in Chapter 6, explores how Stevens experi- 12 enced urban modernity fi rsthand during his years in New York, and how 13 he learned to give up certain established poetic forms inadequate to his new 14 perception of ephemerality. Nesme begins his essay with Charles Baude- 15 laire’s famous declaration in The Painter of Modern Life that “Moder- 16 nity is the transitory, the fl eeting, the contingent, one half of art, the other 17 half being the eternal and immutable.” The motif of transitoriness, Nesme 18 maintains, appears already early on in Stevens’ career in poems that express 19 a melancholic response to his surroundings. Although these works have 20 often been dismissed for their relative simplicity in comparison with Ste- 21 vens’ more mature poetry, examples such as “Shower” from The Little June 22 Book (one of his two collections for his fi ancée, Elsie) and “Ballade of the 23 Pink Parasol” clearly announce the transitoriness that would become the 24 driving force of his later work. Nesme lingers especially on the latter poem, 25 which voices the tension “between the melancholy strain of the early son- 26 nets and a more Dionysian handling of the motif of transience, partaking of 27 the cosmic ephemeral” in the later, mature poems. Nesme further consid- 28 ers the poet’s handling of the theme of transitoriness in relation to some of 29 Stevens’ literary and poetic models: Shelley, Keats, and again James. In the 30 way he theoretically anchors his close reading of poems (through Freud and 31 Deleuze, among others), he charts a thematic unity in Stevens’ poems, from 32 the early to the late work. 33 During the time Stevens lived in New York, Henry James was, in 34 Glen MacLeod’s words, simply “the greatest living writer.” In Chapter 35 7, MacLeod contextualizes Stevens’ responses to James and provides an 36 overview of the New York connection between the two writers. In par- 37 ticular, he off ers us a new framework for understanding James’s Wash- 38 ington Square as well as Stevens’ recorded skepsis about James, which, 39 he insists, must be understood in the context of contemporary responses 40 to the émigré writer, who in his “experimental modernism” was deemed 41 too diffi cult to read. The chapter traces not only James’s infl uence on 42 Stevens when the latter underwent his own modernist transformation, 43 but investigates striking parallels between both writers as well as Stevens’ 44 knowledge of James’s work and its stylistic characteristics. It is in their 45 late work, particularly in The American Scene and Stevens’ late poems, 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1616 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:311:55:31 PMPM Introduction 17 where MacLeod locates the closest affi nity between the two canonical 1 writers. The American Scene, he suggests, poignantly exemplifi es Stevens’ 2 understanding that reality is “not [the] external scene but the life that is 3 lived in it” (CPP 658). James and Stevens employ vastly diff erent forms to 4 explore what they both perceive as an “intangible” or “fl eeting” reality, 5 yet the sensibility that animates The American Scene and some of James’s 6 fi nal great works is marvelously akin to Stevens’ late poetry—most nota- 7 bly, “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven.” 8 Stevens neither chose to locate his writing in Manhattan nor cast him- 9 self, in contrast to poets like Whitman or Crane, in the role of a New York 10 poet. In his early journals, we mostly fi nd complaints about the city’s fl aws. 11 In Chapter 8, Juliette Utard investigates why Stevens chose to appear so 12 unimpressed and argues that his writings about New York, in the fi rst ten 13 years of his residency, seem to take shape around the notion of disappoint- 14 ment. Yet, Utard does not merely point to this reality from a biographical 15 perspective; she also probes and follows the “rhetoric of disappointment” 16 that runs through both journals and letters. To articulate the contours of 17 this rhetoric, she draws on William Butler Yeats’s contention that “The 18 poet fi nds and makes his mask in disappointment,” as well as Rainer Maria 19 Rilke’s pronouncements about the poet’s vocation. Utard probes ontological 20 resonances of the word “disappointment,” and anchors her understanding 21 of Stevens’ “emergent narrative of the self” in Nicolas Grimaldi’s conten- 22 tion that “disappointment is a condition of poetry”: it makes way for nar- 23 rative. Responding to MacLeod’s invitation to pursue further connections 24 between Stevens and James, Utard devotes the latter part of her chapter 25 to examining the ways in which Stevens’ own rhetoric of disappointment 26 closely parallels James’s Washington Square. In Stevens’ discourse, Utard 27 sees not just the expression of disappointment, but the “vocation of the self- 28 appointed—not just the disappointed poet.” 29 In Chapter 9, our last extended contribution, Edward Ragg examines 30 the long history of Stevens’ interest in both literature and the “good life”: 31 how the young man’s experiences with, and appreciation of, the “actual” 32 or “sensory” life in New York—food and wine in addition to the “tradi- 33 tional” arts—grew into what would become the contours of his abstract 34 imagination in later years. Ragg starts his chapter with a discussion of 35 some of Stevens’ comments in early journals and letters about his “physical 36 sustenance” in New York as a means of opening up an analysis of the later 37 writings, where in the correspondence we fi nd increased aesthetic and gas- 38 tronomic refl ection, both palpable and in abstract form. Already in his fi rst 39 recorded observations, Ragg explains, Stevens uses the language of “suste- 40 nance” to describe at once what he ate and what he drank and his notion 41 of beauty, whose “real use” he calls “a service, a food” (L 24). Ragg goes 42 on to speculate that later, when Stevens became affl uent enough to pur- 43 chase paintings, his choices were, in large measure, determined by his own 44 “domestic” imagination: paintings were purchased “to catalyze poetry,” to 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1717 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM 18 Lisa Goldfarb and Bart Eeckhout 1 transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. “Stevens harnesses abstrac- 2 tion,” Ragg beautifully writes, “to touch the exquisite curves of what he 3 would come frequently to call ‘the ordinary’ or ‘the normal.’” He argues 4 that Stevens’ domestic refl ections on literature, gastronomy, and the plea- 5 sures of private meditation unite in a form of bourgeois abstraction. This 6 imaginative defense mechanism scorns the pejorative “bourgeois” while 7 celebrating a fecund domestic space that is neither luxurious nor impov- 8 erished. The chapter addresses indicative moments in the correspondence 9 and then looks into several of the late poems—“A Primitive Like an Orb,” 10 “Dinner Bell in the Woods,” and “A Quiet Normal Life”—to show how 11 Stevens transposes the everyday into an “aesthetic feast.” Importantly, the 12 chapter indicates how the correspondence especially provides clues as to the 13 imaginative exchange mechanism New York represented for the aging Ste- 14 vens, whose world grew literally smaller as it became imaginatively larger. 15 Thus, Ragg manages to let Stevens participate in an essential strand of 16 the literary history of New York. As Robert Lawson-Peebles has recently 17 demonstrated, gastronomical description “provides an entrée to the litera- 18 ture of New York as the city changed from a British outpost to the Ameri- 19 can metropolis” (11). “The epic that is New York,” notes Lawson-Peebles, 20 “was founded in conquest, and then transformed into the capacious corpo- 21 reality that would be celebrated by Whitman” (12). Stevens’ own gourman- 22 dizing merely continues an age-old tradition of hailing the city in culinary 23 terms—a tradition that includes New York’s most famous literary myth- 24 maker, Washington Irving, when he “told the story of ‘the thrice renowned 25 and delectable city of GOTHAM’ that was invaded by the Hoppingtots 26 who, ‘impelled by a superfl uity of appetite,’ did ‘make themselves masters’ 27 of the city and its abundance of ‘all manner of fi sh and fl esh, and eatables 28 and drinkables,’ compelling the earlier inhabitants to become, like them- 29 selves, ‘fl agrant, outrageous, and abandoned dancers’” (22). 30 31 32 VII 33 34 The nine chapters of Wallace Stevens, New York, and Modernism col- 35 lectively show that, although Stevens would reside in and around the city 36 for just sixteen years, the experience imprinted his imagination in myriad 37 ways—in the walks he took, the music he heard, the galleries and libraries 38 he visited, the books he read, and certainly also the food he tasted and the 39 wine he drank. His many return visits to the city from Hartford continued 40 to nourish him and helped to shape what would become a bigger-than- 41 urban project, his “great poem of the earth” (CPP 730). 42 The last word of our book is reserved for Alan Filreis, in what we have 43 decided to call, more playfully, a musical-poetic coda. Instead of investi- 44 gating Stevens’ infl uence on the poets of the New York School emerging 45 in his immediate wake, most famously John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara, 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 1818 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM Introduction 19 Filreis experimentally reads the aging Stevens as himself part of that liter- 1 ary cohort—as a poet operating in the early 1950s in a parallel universe of 2 New York School-style nonnarrative discontinuity. As Filreis argues, this 3 mode derived from some of the same sources as did the New York School 4 but did so separately, by way indirectly of modern and contemporary paint- 5 ing more than directly through contemporary poetry. When we look closely 6 at Stevens’ lecture on the relation between poetry and painting delivered at 7 the Museum of Modern Art, as well as his late letters and their descrip- 8 tions of his visits to the city, we start to hear a voice and a style not heard 9 before—that of the New York School Stevens casting his tentacles into the 10 poetic future of the city. We hope that Filreis’ closing poem, compiled from 11 Stevens’ letters, will prompt our readers to listen to the tones of that poetic 12 future, and then urge them, in a typically musical loop backwards, to revisit 13 the preceding chapters that explore Stevens’ development as, after all and in 14 many ways, a New York poet. 15 16 17 NOTES 18 19 1. The biographical facts listed in the remainder of this and the subsequent paragraph are almost all to be found in the brief “Chronology” at the back 20 of the Library of America edition of Stevens’ works that we are using as stan- 21 dard text in our volume (see CPP 960–62). 22 2. It does not help the reader of this anthology that “you touch moonlight” is in 23 fact misquoted as “you touch light” (Schmidt 38). 24 3. We might recall that one of the reasons Stevens in 1900 gravitated from the Boston area to New York was precisely his ambition to become a writer. This 25 made perfect sense because the city at the time was fast becoming the center 26 of the country’s publishing industry. As Eric Homberger notes, “There were 27 more people employed in printing and publishing in New York in 1900 than 28 in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston combined” (117). 29 4. For those less familiar with Stevens or the New York art world at the time, Glen MacLeod off ers the handy synopsis that Walter Conrad Arensberg 30 (1878–1954) was “a wealthy poet and art collector whose famous collec- 31 tion is now part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Stevens got to know 32 Arensberg at Harvard, where they became friends, took several courses 33 together, and were both active on literary magazines” (4–5). The two men 34 lost touch after graduating, but in 1914 Arensberg moved to New York and they resumed their friendship. See also Stevens’ detailed backward glance at 35 his relationship with Arensberg in a 1954 letter to the director of the Phila- 36 delphia Museum of Art (L 820–23). 37 38 39 WORKS CITED 40 41 Allen, Woody. “The Whore of Mensa.” 1974. Wonderful Town: New York Stories 42 from The New Yorker. Ed. David Remnick and Susan Choi. New York: Ran- dom House, 2000. 48–53. Print. 43 Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New 44 York: Norton, 2006. Print. 45 46

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1 Bates, Milton J. “To Realize the Past: Wallace Stevens’ Genealogical Study.” Amer- 2 ican Literature 52.4 (1981): 607–27. Print. 3 Bradbury, Malcolm. “The Cities of Modernism.” Modernism 1890–1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin, 1976. 96–104. 4 Print. 5 Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biogra- 6 phy. New York: Random House, 1983. Print. 7 Burns, Ric, and James Sanders. New York: An Illustrated History. New York: 8 Knopf, 1999. Print. Cook, Eleanor. A Reader’s Guide to Wallace Stevens. Princeton: Princeton UP, 9 2007. Print. 10 Eeckhout, Bart. “How Dutch Was Stevens?” Wallace Stevens Journal 29.1 (2005): 11 34–43. Print. 12 Hollander, John. “The Poem of the City.” Wolf xv–xxvii. Print. 13 Homberger, Eric. The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History. Rev. ed. New York: Holt, 2005. Print. 14 Kane, Daniel. “From Poetry to Punk in the East Village.” Patell and Waterman 15 189–201. Print. 16 Lawson-Peebles, Robert. “From British Outpost to American Metropolis.” Patell 17 and Waterman 10–26. Print. 18 Lopate, Phillip, ed. Writing New York: A Literary Anthology. New York: Library of America, 1998. Print. 19 MacLeod, Glen. Wallace Stevens and Modern Art: From the Armory Show to 20 Abstract Expressionism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. Print. 21 Patell, Cyrus R. K. Introduction. Patell and Waterman 1–9. Print. 22 Patell, Cyrus R. K., and Bryan Waterman, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the 23 Literature of New York. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print. Richardson, Joan. Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879–1923. New York: Mor- 24 row, 1986. Print. 25 . Wallace Stevens: The Later Years, 1923–1955. New York: Morrow, 1988. 26 Print. 27 Schmidt, Elizabeth, ed. Poems of New York. New York: Knopf, 2002. Print. 28 Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” 1903. Trans. Edward Shills. Metropolis: Center and Symbol of Our Times. Ed. Philip Kasinitz. New York: 29 New York UP, 1995. 30–45. Print. 30 Stevens, Holly. Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens. New York: 31 Knopf, 1977. Print. 32 Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. 1966. Rpt. Berke- 33 ley: U of California P, 1996. Print. . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and 34 Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 35 Wolf, Stephen, ed. I Speak of the City: Poems of New York. New York: Columbia 36 UP, 2007. Print. 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2020 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM 1 Stevens and New York The Long Gestation George S. Lensing

I 1 2 Readers of Wallace Stevens are often aware of his fi rst eighteen years in 3 Reading, Pennsylvania, where he was born, his three years as a special 4 student at Harvard, and his long affi liation with the Hartford Accident 5 and Indemnity Co. in Hartford, Connecticut, where he eventually became 6 a vice president and lived and worked until his death in 1955. Perhaps too 7 easily and too often we glide over the crucial sixteen years, from 1900 to 8 1916, when he lived in New York—including the nine years prior to his 9 marriage to Elsie Viola Kachel and the fi rst seven years thereafter. (I omit 10 the year when, still in primary school, he lived in Brooklyn with the family 11 of an uncle and attended a Lutheran school there.) New York was Stevens’ 12 fi rst “home” in his postcollegiate years, and his life in the city formed him, 13 for better or for worse, during the impressionable years beginning when 14 he was twenty and continuing until his move from the city at the age of 15 thirty-six. It is not as if those years are blank pages in his personal history: 16 we have his journal beginning with the Harvard years and continuing, for 17 the most part, until his letters to his fi ancée gradually replaced the journal. 18 And the 272 preserved letters to Elsie, almost all of them composed before 19 the marriage, are now available in Donald Blount’s edition. We know many 20 of the books he purchased, read, and marked during these years. One could 21 say that we know more about the Stevens of the New York years than any 22 other comparable period of his life. 23 But perhaps the principal reason that we sometimes disregard the New 24 York years is that the development of the poet as poet seems to have made 25 little advance until his last two or three years in residence there. 26 During his last year at Harvard (1899–1900), Stevens was president 27 of the Harvard Advocate, and in that journal he was publishing his own 28 poems, mostly sonnets, under pseudonyms like John Morris 2nd, Hillary 29 Harness, and R. Jerries. But he was also accepting, rejecting, and editing 30 the work of his classmates. In that same year, he was taking the following 31 courses: “Literature from the publication of the Lyrical Ballads to the death 32 of Scott,” “Literature from the death of Scott to the death of Tennyson,” 33 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2121 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM 22 George S. Lensing 1 “History of German Literature to the Nineteenth Century,” and “General 2 View of French Literature” (Buttel 251). He was fi lling his journal with his 3 own aesthetic observations and conclusions. No other year of Stevens’ life 4 would be so totally absorbed in poetry and would so pleasurably preoc- 5 cupy his life. Going back to a poem from that last year at Harvard, “Bal- 6 lade of the Pink Parasol,” we get an unmistakable glimpse of the poet’s 7 later maturity. In his groundbreaking study on the making of Harmonium, 8 Robert Buttel points to the use of words like “wig,” “spadille,” “quadrille,” 9 “calash,” and “sedan” in that poem, adding: “Notice particularly the gusto 10 of ‘Where is the roll of the old calash,’ wherein the wit and humor are 11 reinforced by the repetitions of sound. The joy in language and sound here 12 brought Stevens much closer to the verbal virtuosity of Harmonium” (39). 13 Indeed, one catches the wit and delight in strange diction that would char- 14 acterize many of the poems of that fi rst volume. 15 Much critical attention and speculation has been spent in exploring the 16 eight to ten years between the publication of Harmonium and the composi- 17 tion of Stevens’ second volume, Ideas of Order, and why the demands of 18 business or family or perhaps some of the negative reviews of his fi rst vol- 19 ume discouraged and silenced him so long. But I have always thought that 20 the thirteen or fourteen years between the writing of a poem like “Ballade 21 of the Pink Parasol” and the delayed emergence of his earliest modernist 22 work are more diffi cult to account for. It is clear from his journals that 23 his interest in poetry and the writing of poetry never waned during the 24 New York years, but he was not writing poems for publication, nor was he 25 thinking of assembling a volume. There was very little to assemble. Almost 26 a decade after leaving Harvard, Stevens was collecting his poems into the 27 so-called June Books for his fi ancée on the occasion of her birthday in 28 1908 and 1909. He was at least partially aware of his inadequacies. To 29 Elsie he wrote, for example, “In the ‘June Book’ I made ‘breeze’ rhyme with 30 ‘trees’; and have never forgiven myself. It is a correct rhyme, of course,— 31 but unpardonably ‘expected.’ Indeed, none of my rhymes are (most likely) 32 true ‘instruments of music’” (CS 261). 33 In the early years of the twentieth century, the models to which Stevens 34 might have turned for nascent modernism were few. T. E. Hulme and his 35 short-lived Imagist group in London did not begin until 1909. Virginia 36 Woolf later looked back to 1910 as the year in which human character had 37 radically changed as well as the arts. The Great War, with all its infl uence 38 on the arts, did not begin until four years after that. It was not until 1913 39 that Ezra Pound fi rst persuaded W. B. Yeats to allow him to serve as his 40 private secretary, an association that would continue through three succes- 41 sive winters at Stone Cottage with the ostensible purpose of converting the 42 Irish poet to modernism, around the same time that Pound himself took 43 over the Imagist movement. 44 From the beginning, the city for Stevens often was a locus from which 45 to fl ee. In one of the sonnets dating from his fi nal year at Harvard, Stevens 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2222 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM Stevens and New York 23 already looked to his future with undisguised misgivings, almost certainly 1 with New York in mind. He wrote the following sonnet in February, just 2 months before he left Harvard after three years and moved to the city: 3 4 Come, said the world, thy youth is not all play, 5 Upon these hills vast palaces must rise, 6 And over this green plain that calmly lies 7 In peace, a mighty city must have sway. 8 9 The sestet then replies: 10 11 No, cried my heart, this thing I cannot do, 12 This is my home, this plain and water clear 13 Are my companions faultless as the sky— 14 I cannot, will not give them up to you. 15 And if you come upon them I shall fear, 16 And if you steal them from me I shall die. (CPP 483) 17 18 Stevens had already set the “mighty city” against his heart’s preferred “home” 19 and “companions,” defi ned in the poem as “this green plain” and “water 20 clear.” In the years ahead, that anxious foreboding would not prove idle. 21 Stevens’ life in New York, at least before his marriage, would be laden 22 with troubles and misdirections. For most of the New York years he was 23 struggling with his profession: journalist, law student, peripatetic lawyer 24 moving restlessly from fi rm to fi rm. There was a short-lived and failed part- 25 nership with Lyman Ward and his fi rst tentative connections to insurance 26 agencies: American Bonding Co., Equitable Surety Co., for which he was 27 named vice president of the New York Offi ce, and, fi nally, the Hartford 28 Accident and Indemnity Insurance Co. and the move to Connecticut. Until 29 his marriage, he lived marginally above the poverty line and took up his 30 residence in lonely boarding houses from which he regularly moved around 31 in New York and across the river in New Jersey. His friends were few and 32 his family in Reading increasingly distant. In a couple of places in his 33 journals, he even played romantically with the idea of suicide. In his own 34 psyche, these personal strains became identifi ed with New York. 35 During his fi rst year in the city, for example, he records: “The imper- 36 sonality of New York impresses me more and more every day” (SP 80). 37 He repeatedly records the loneliness of his life, otherwise accustomed, as 38 he was, to living in a large family or around a university campus. He men- 39 tions reading Bacon’s essay “Of Friendship” and must have come across 40 this observation: “The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: Magna civitas, 41 magna solitudo [a great town is a great solitude]; because in a great town 42 friends are scattered; so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, 43 which is in less neighbourhoods. But we may go further, and affi rm most 44 truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2323 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM 24 George S. Lensing 1 which the world is but a wilderness” (767). A few weeks later, however, Ste- 2 vens revised the impression: “I begin to like New York & do like it hard,” 3 but then decided that, after all, Reading was better: “which amounts to 4 this[:] that I saw Reading fi rst” (SP 84). Four years later he acknowledged 5 that “Man is an aff air of cities,” adding: “His gardens & orchards & fi elds 6 are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the 7 face of the giant [the neglected natural world] from his windows” (SP 134). 8 In 1907 he found New York “repugnant to me,” apparently because his 9 career seemed to be getting nowhere: “I am intent on getting something 10 of consequence, and it seems to be impossible. But I’ll get it or leave New- 11 York” (SP 185). A few months before their wedding, he wrote to Elsie: “My 12 chief objection to town-life is the commonness of the life. Such numbers of 13 men degrade Man. The teeming streets make Man a nuisance—a vulgarity, 14 and it is impossible to see his dignity. I feel, nevertheless, the overwhelming 15 necessity of thinking well, speaking well” (CS 187). But thinking well and 16 speaking well did not always come easily, and he sometimes succumbed to 17 misanthropy and relegations by class and race among his fellow New York- 18 ers. His hikes in the miles outside the city sustained him, as he explained in 19 a letter to his future wife: “It is such an enormous relief—yes: enormous!— 20 The truth is, it gets to be a terror here. Failure means such horror—and 21 so many fail. If only they knew of the orchards and arbors and abounding 22 fi elds, and the ease, and the comfort, and the quiet.—One might preach the 23 country as a kind of Earthly Paradise” (CS 199–200). 24 During his fi rst years in New York, Stevens was drawn to conventional 25 poems, often sonnets, that played to the emotions in the conventional mode 26 of the 1890s. There is little sense of a poet seeking models for innovation 27 or experimentation. In his fi rst year in New York, for example, he was rec- 28 ommending to his journal some sonnets by a “Scotchman” named David 29 Gray who had died forty years earlier: “Among the poems I read this morn- 30 ing were thirty sonnets by David Gray. . . . The poems were called ‘In the 31 Shadows.’ . . . There are some things in these sonnets which almost bring 32 tears to one’s eyes” (SP 84). More than a decade later he was quoting three 33 lines from one of them, “Lying Awake at Holy Eventide,” to Elsie: “‘Lo! 34 I behold an orb of silver brightly / Grow from the fringe of sunset, like a 35 dream / From Thought’s severe infi nitude—’”; he then continues immedi- 36 ately after the quote: “I swear, my dear Bo-Bo, that it’s a great pleasure to 37 be so poetical.—But it follows that, the intellect having been replaced by 38 the emotions, one cannot think of anything at all.—At any rate, my trifl ing 39 poesies are like the trifl ing designs one sees on fans” (CS 300–01). Similar 40 models came from the “Vagabondia” poems of Bliss Carman and Richard 41 Hovey (SP 209) or quotations by Laurence Binyon published in the Pal- 42 grave Golden Treasury (CS 192). “I dream now of writing golden odes,” he 43 recorded in 1907, “at all events I’d like to read them” (SP 172). 44 One of his fi rst New York poems, never published in his lifetime, is “A 45 Window in the Slums,” written shortly after his arrival. It addresses the 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2424 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM Stevens and New York 25 squalor of urban life. The city in the poem is almost certainly New York, but 1 identifi ed as London, though London was a city Stevens never visited. In the 2 poem he thinks at fi rst that he hears the sad sounds of “late birds singing” in 3 the city streets, but they turn out to be the songs of slum children: “no bird 4 greets the skies; / The voices of the children still / Up to my window rise” 5 (CPP 497). Another city poem, written eight years later, did not make its way 6 into Elsie’s June Book poems. I quote the fi rst three stanzas: 7 8 The house-fronts flare 9 In the blown rain, 10 The ghostly street-lamps 11 Have a pallid glare, 12 13 A wanderer beats, 14 With bitter droop, 15 Along the waste 16 Of vacant streets. 17 18 Suppose some glimmer 19 Recalled for him 20 An odorous room, 21 A fan’s fleet shimmer . . . (CPP 508) 22 23 For all the inevitable rhymes and simple cadence, the poem’s “ghostly 24 street-lamps” and “waste / Of vacant streets” anticipate T. S. Eliot’s own 25 assimilation of Baudelaire and Laforgue in poems such as “Preludes” and 26 “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” But Eliot’s poems were written later, and 27 Stevens’ peculiar modernism would eventually require an altogether diff er- 28 ent modality from that of Eliot. 29 When Elsie was 22 and 23 and Stevens was 28 and 29, Stevens arranged 30 two collections of poems for her birthday on June 5, 1908 and 1909, for- 31 mally entitled A Book of Verses and The Little June Book, respectively. 32 Each collection contains twenty short poems. With a few exceptions they 33 are not particularly love poems, and they show little if any advance toward 34 the poems that would begin to emerge four or fi ve years later. I have already 35 cited Stevens’ letter to Elsie in which he calls the rhymes of the June Book 36 poems “unpardonably ‘expected,’” for which, he says, he has never for- 37 given himself. “Indeed, none of my rhymes are (most likely) true ‘instru- 38 ments of music’” (CS 261). In poetic terms alone, we can make little claim 39 for the importance of these forty poems; they are, without exception, less 40 bold and experimental than the Harvard poem, “Ballade of the Pink Para- 41 sol.” One could argue that the June Book poems were intended for the eye 42 and ear of one whose education had not exceeded the ninth grade, but the 43 poems themselves do not have the markings of self-parody or a deliberately 44 condescending tone. 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2525 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM 26 George S. Lensing 1 II 2 3 From his reading and visits to museums in the city and his recorded 4 responses, one nevertheless catches glimpses of the young Wallace Stevens 5 gradually moving toward infl uences and ideas that would come to fruition 6 in his later work. The value of Stevens’ journal keeping and letter writing 7 forced him into wrestling with the attempt to capture verbally his own 8 meaning and thought, and, as he acknowledged in all the candor of his 9 youth and inexperience, “Finally (for today) my opinions generally change 10 even while I am in the act of expressing them. . . . The words for an idea too 11 often dissolve it and leave a strange one” (SP 165). Still, giving the shape 12 of words to his ideas—however inchoate, tentative, or even dissolved—was 13 never exhausted for the young, often solitary New Yorker. 14 If for Ishmael, in Moby Dick, a whaler was his “Yale College and my 15 Harvard” (Melville 119), Stevens’ campus was in books, museums, and 16 libraries in the city. In reading through the journals and letters from the 17 New York years, one notes several things that stand out: one is the ear- 18 nestness and zeal of his intellectual curiosity; another, his visits to muse- 19 ums and exhibits; yet another, his steady reading, which was both vast and 20 eclectic—poetry, obviously, but also philosophy, history, art, biography, 21 religion. It is as if in some conscious or unconscious way he was prepar- 22 ing himself to be a poet. For example, there is an ongoing debate in these 23 pages about the relationship between thought and beauty and the place of 24 both thought and beauty in art. In what way and to what degree beauty 25 off ers a “service” is an issue that had begun for him during the Harvard 26 years but continues here and would do so for the rest of his life. There is 27 also the poet’s robust physical energy, his sheer pleasure in the vigor of his 28 long hikes, of drinking in the details of the natural world outside the city, 29 of escaping the uncertainties of his own future and the long struggle to 30 fi nd his place as a journalist, lawyer, and business man. After nine years of 31 living in New York, not yet thirty years old, he summarized his life with 32 insight and candor: 33 34 I wish I could spend the whole season out of doors, walking by day, 35 reading and studying in the evenings. I feel a tremendous capacity for 36 enjoying that kind of life—but it is all over, and I acknowledge “the fell 37 clutch of circumstance.”—How gradually we fi nd ourselves compelled 38 into the common lot! But after all there are innumerable things besides 39 that kind of life—and I imagine that when I come home from the 40 Library, thinking over some capital idea—a new name for the Milky 41 Way, a new aspect of Life, an amusing story, a gorgeous line—I am as 42 happy as I should be—or could be—anywhere. (CS 187) 43 44 In many ways, the pattern of his life in New York—reading and studying, 45 physical pleasure in the outdoors, along with concessions to “the fell clutch 46 of circumstance”—defi nes the Wallace Stevens of the next half century.1

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2626 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM Stevens and New York 27 When he was 26, Stevens lamented the lack of “poetic thought” in the 1 poems he had been reading: 2 3 What strikes me is the capable, the marvellous, poetic language; and 4 the absence of poetic thought. Modern people have never failed to 5 crown the poet that gave them poetic thought. . . . We get plenty of 6 moods (and like them, wherever we get them, whether in novels, or 7 poems, or talk, or paintings); and we get fi gures of speech, and impres- 8 sions, and superb lines, and fantastic music. But it’s the mind we want 9 to fi ll—with Life. We admit now that Truth is the warrior and Beauty 10 only his tender hide, as one might say. (SP 167) 11 12 Stevens appears to have arrived at the conclusion that poetry cannot satisfy 13 solely as language, as mood, as fi gure of speech, music, or impressions, if it 14 is lacking in the underlying substance of thought. 15 To follow Stevens through the New York years, especially before his 16 marriage in 1909, is to observe the future poet trying on and taking hold of 17 many of the ideas, the “poetic thought,” that would become central to his 18 later poetry. One is impressed over and over with the uncompromising hon- 19 esty, even humility, whereby the young man in his twenties and early thir- 20 ties embraces his self-directed education and personal development. Ideas, 21 and meditation on them, satisfi ed Stevens like nothing else. 22 Stevens’ interest in art also blossomed during the New York years and in 23 ways that would have enduring consequences for his poetry. On the edge of 24 avant-garde painting in New York, he found himself increasingly attracted to 25 its radical experimentations. In a totally diff erent way, he became intensely 26 interested in ancient Chinese and Japanese art and spent many hours visiting 27 exhibitions and studying reproductions of the scroll paintings. 28 One of the most extraordinary evenings in Stevens’ years in New York 29 occurred on August 2, 1915, six years after he had married Elsie and one 30 year before their move to Hartford, Connecticut. This was the evening that 31 Stevens met Marcel Duchamp. Though we have no specifi c evidence for it, 32 there is general agreement that Stevens must have visited the Armory Show in 33 New York for the fi rst major exhibition in the United States of the works of 34 avant-garde postimpressionists and cubists—both paintings and sculptures— 35 coming out of Paris. The exhibition had taken place in New York two years 36 earlier, from February 17 to March 15, 1913. Stevens certainly knew of the 37 exhibit and remarked in a letter on the dramatic impact it made on his friend 38 and former classmate at Harvard, Walter Arensberg, who was eagerly pur- 39 chasing the work of the modernists for his own collection. Now, in 1915, it 40 was Arensberg who invited Stevens to his apartment in New York to meet 41 Duchamp, the young French painter whose famous and controversial Nude 42 Descending a Staircase had been what Glen MacLeod calls “the most publi- 43 cized attraction of the Armory Show” (7). Arensberg knew of Stevens’ interest 44 in modern art and knew also that he could converse in French. Here is how 45 Stevens described the evening to his wife who was traveling outside the city: 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2727 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM 28 George S. Lensing 1 Walter Arensberg telephoned yesterday afternoon and asked me to take 2 dinner with him at the Brevoort with Marcel Duchamp, the man who 3 painted The Nude Descending A Stair-Case. Duchamp is using the 4 Arensbergs’ apartment as a studio during the summer. . . . After dinner, 5 we went up to the Arensberg’s [sic] apartment and looked at some of 6 Duchamp’s things. I made very little out of them. But naturally, with- 7 out sophistication in that direction, and with only a very rudimentary 8 feeling about art, I expect little of myself. Duchamp speaks very little 9 English. When the three of us spoke French, it sounded like sparrows 10 around a pool of water. (CS 337) 11 12 Arensberg’s apartment itself was a small-scale Armory Show, the walls 13 fi lled with avant-garde paintings, including at least one by Duchamp him- 14 self. One regrets that Stevens in his letter to Elsie did not register some of his 15 own reactions to Duchamp’s work and other pieces hanging in the Arens- 16 berg apartment, as well as Duchamp’s paintings-in-progress in the Arens- 17 berg “studio.” Stevens’ curiosity about modernist paintings and absorption 18 of their work was greater than he lets on in the letter, and the discussion of 19 that memorable evening must have been centered on Duchamp’s work (“we 20 . . . looked at some of Duchamp’s things”) and that of other modernists. In 21 the letter Stevens sounds somewhat daunted by the presence of Duchamp, 22 eight years his junior, but his eye for modern art was hardly as lacking in 23 “sophistication” as he meekly confesses. 24 In any case, Stevens would eventually absorb—experimentally—a tech- 25 nique similar to Duchamp’s in poems written a few years later, as Buttel 26 has noted: “The women in ‘Floral Decorations for Bananas’ (1923) who 27 ‘will be all shanks / And bangles and slatted eyes’ would appear to bear a 28 family resemblance to Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending A Staircase’” (164). 29 That poem by Stevens appeared in The Measure side by side with another 30 called “How the Constable Carried the Pot across the Public Square” (later 31 retitled “The Public Square” for its appearance in the second edition of 32 Harmonium). It bears a similar resemblance to Duchamp’s angles, frac- 33 tures, and slants. The poem begins: 34 35 A slash of angular blacks 36 Like a fractured edifice 37 That was buttressed by blue slants 38 In a coma of the moon. 39 40 A Rousseau-like moon appears again in the fi nal stanza: 41 42 It turned cold and silent. Then 43 The square began to clear. 44 The bijou of Atlas, the moon, 45 Was last with its porcelain leer. (CPP 91) 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2828 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:321:55:32 PMPM Stevens and New York 29 It is worth noting, too, that paintings by Rousseau were also hanging in the 1 Arensberg apartment. 2 From his earliest years in Reading, Stevens’ fondness for hikes frequently 3 led him up to the top of Mount Penn with its majestic views of the town and 4 countryside. In 1908, the construction of a large Chinese seven-story pagoda, 5 rising almost 900 feet above the city and with a large eighteenth-century Jap- 6 anese bell suspended from the top, was completed there, and Stevens records 7 visits to the pagoda on his hikes when home, one time accompanied by his 8 fi ancée. As Thomas Lombardi has noted, “citizens could look up and see the 9 structure from practically any vantage point in the city, and the park and the 10 Pagoda must have given the city . . . a fairy-tale milieu” (90). (Many years 11 later Stevens would write his poem “The Desire to Make Love in a Pagoda.”) 12 In 1906, Stevens notes in his journal reading G. Lowes Dickinson: “The 13 friendly Chinese pictures are interesting: ‘For many miles along the valley, 14 one after the other, they (the houses) lift their blue- or red-tiled roofs out of 15 a sea of green; while here and there glitters out over a clump of trees the gold 16 enamel of some tall pagoda’” (SP 163). 17 These remarks make up our fi rst evidence of Stevens’ evolving interest in 18 Chinese and Japanese art and architecture, one that would grow in the fol- 19 lowing years and become manifest in poems he wrote that were included in 20 The Little June Book for 1909. For example, in March of 1909 he reported 21 to Elsie that he was reading “a bundle of books by Kakuzo Okakura! He’s 22 a Japanese who has written some rather thoughtful things about this, that 23 and the other—and it soothes me to think that I’m reading the latest Japa- 24 nese author. No: the fact is, it is all enchantment—it is all wonderful, and 25 beautiful and new” (CS 174). In his next letter, he describes a visit to an 26 exhibition in which he had seen Japanese lutes, cabinets, and other arti- 27 facts. His excitement was so keen that he wanted to share it with Elsie. He 28 lists many of the colors, among them “deep lapis-lazuli” and “fawn color, 29 black and gold” (CS 175). The subtleties and delicacies of the Chinese col- 30 ors made a notable impression upon Stevens, as they would continue to do. 31 In the twenty poems that make up the 1909 The Little June Book, there is 32 reference to the very scroll paintings he was admiring: “She that winked 33 her sandal fan / Long ago in gray Japan” (CPP 511). His own confl ation of 34 colors, reading like a continuation of the colors from the exhibit he recre- 35 ated in the letter, occupies the opening lines of poem XI, “Shower”: 36 37 Pink and purple 38 In water-mist 39 And hazy leaves 40 Of amethyst; 41 Orange and green 42 And gray between, 43 And dark grass 44 In a shimmer . . . (CPP 512)2 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 2929 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM 30 George S. Lensing 1 A few days following his gift of the June Book poems, he mentioned 2 another visit to an exhibition of Japanese prints at the Fine-Art Society’s 3 Galleries and a catalogue written by Oxford University scholar Arthur 4 Morrison. To Elsie he added: “Frankly, I would give last winter’s hat for 5 a copy of that catalogue” (CS 217). (A few weeks later he purchased the 6 catalogue and kept it the rest of his life: it is preserved at the Huntington 7 Library in the Stevens archive.) 8 Arthur Morrison published his own two-volume The Painters of Japan 9 two years later; there is no record that Stevens saw the lavishly illustrated 10 two-volume edition, though I have found a review of the work by Laurence 11 Binyon extracted, folded, and preserved in Stevens’ copy of the catalogue.3 12 In his introduction to the two-volume edition, Morrison writes of the eff ect 13 of the painting, one similar to the reading of a poem: 14 15 Suggestion to the imagination, in fact, rather than realisation to the 16 eye, was the aim of the [Japanese] painter throughout his work; as 17 indeed is proper for any poet, whether in lines and colours or in words. 18 So is the reader of the poem, the beholder of the picture, made, as it 19 were, collaborator with the artist; and the painters of China and Japan 20 could depend on beholders on whom no suggestion, even of the sub- 21 tlest, would fail in its eff ect. (4) 22 23 Through his study of ancient Oriental art, Stevens was learning how 24 color and image could be brought together in dramatically new ways. He 25 seems almost to be anticipating aspects of the development of Imagism, 26 though those exempla could not yet have been familiar to him. In any case, 27 one can sense the emergence of works like his fi rst play, Three Travelers 28 Watch a Sunrise (1916), the cast consisting of “three Chinese, two negroes 29 and a girl.” Here is part of the speech of the Second Chinese: 30 31 This candle is the sun; 32 This bottle is earth: 33 It is an illustration 34 Used by generations of hermits. 35 The point of difference from reality 36 Is this: 37 That, in this illustration, 38 The earth remains of one color— 39 It remains red, 40 It remains what it is. (CPP 603) 41 42 The management of color in bold juxtaposed daubs would become a prom- 43 inent part of Stevens’ method in later poems like “Disillusionment of Ten 44 O’Clock,” “Six Signifi cant Landscapes,” “Valley Candle,” part III of “Le 45 Monocle de Mon Oncle,” and other poems from Harmonium. 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3030 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM Stevens and New York 31 In the fi rst decade of the twentieth century, Stevens also developed a spe- 1 cial pleasure in reading through collections of maxims and pithy aphorisms 2 about human nature and, in some cases, certain aspects of poetry and art. 3 His preoccupation with such apothegms was not just in their wise penetra- 4 tions of human behavior, real or ideal, but in their demonstrations of how 5 language itself could be succinctly compressed; indeed, they represented a 6 workshop in how the line could be shaped to poetic utterance. 7 For his journal in 1906, he mentioned sources that he had studied from 8 Leopardi, Schopenhauer, Pascal, Rochefoucauld, Matthew Arnold, and so 9 forth. Stevens purchased the Biblical Book of Proverbs in the next year. Of 10 Leopardi’s Pensieri he wrote, “How true they all are! I should like to have 11 a library of such things” (SP 160). Years later, of course, he would compile 12 his own collection of “Adagia.” He would keep notebooks for possible titles 13 and lines called “Schemata” and “From Pieces of Paper.”4 The poetry itself 14 would often draw upon the traits of apothegms: “Let be be fi nale of seem” 15 (CPP 50); “Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil” (CPP 22) vs. “Nota: his 16 soil is man’s intelligence” (CPP 29); “The poem must resist the intelligence / 17 Almost successfully” (CPP 306).5 Leopardi suggested to the young Stevens 18 a way in which the genre of pensieri could even serve as a kind of paternal 19 guide: “For the invaluable usefulness of fi nding early in one’s youth a skill- 20 ful and aff ectionate guide totally unlike one’s own father, is matched by a 21 kind of emptiness of youth and of life in general” (35, 37). 22 Another guide was J. W. Mackail’s edition of Select Epigrams from 23 the Greek Anthology, published in 1906. In the following year, Stevens 24 informed his journal that he had “just completed a careful reading of 25 Mackail’s ‘Select Epigrams . . . ,’ a beautiful book, full of appreciation and 26 skill—and poetry. . . . I must have the Mackail book” (SP 183–84). He 27 adds that he was “pleased by the verses . . . of Paulus Silentiarius, as much 28 as by those of any one other poet. His mental light was silver twilight—a 29 little cold and most delicate” (SP 184). Mackail organizes his selected epi- 30 grams around themes such as love, literature and art, religion, beauty, fate 31 and change, and death. In one of the Silentiarius selections from “Death” 32 appears some of the “cold and most delicate” twilight, the kind of stoicism 33 that hangs over later poems like “The Death of a Soldier” and the canto 34 starting with “How red the rose that is the soldier’s wound” from “Esthé- 35 tique du Mal.” Here is Silentiarius speaking from the perspective of death: 36 37 My name—Why this?—and my country—And to what end this? 38 —and I am of illustrious race—Yea, if thou hadst been of the obscurest? 39 —Having lived nobly I left life—If ignobly?—and I lie here now— 40 Who art thou that sayest this, and to whom? (qtd. in Mackail 284) 41 42 To Elsie in 1909 he cited a maxim quoted in Latin in a work by Paul 43 Elmer More, “one of the most discriminating, learned and soundest critics 44 of the day”: 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3131 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM 32 George S. Lensing 1 O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum 2 indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! 3 4 Oh, Philosophy, thou guide of Life! Oh, thou that searchest out vir- 5 tues, and expellest vices!—That struck me as such an admirable inscrip- 6 tion for the façade of a library—or of one of those temples, bound to be 7 built some day, when people will seek in a place not specially dedicated 8 to religion, those principles of moral conduct that should guide us in 9 every-day life—as distinct, say, from the peculiar life of Sundays.—My 10 mind is rather full of such things today, and so resembles the mood that 11 fastened me, a year or more ago, so intently on Matthew Arnold—and 12 Maxims! . . . To think occasionally of such things gives me a comfort- 13 ing sense of balance. (CS 160–61)6 14 15 The journals record the young Stevens’ struggling throughout the New 16 York years to accommodate the confl ict between, on the one hand, his 17 love of religious ritual and practices of piety, and on the other, a growing 18 agnosticism that was drawing him away from the Presbyterianism of his 19 upbringing. He fi rst tried to resolve the confl ict by affi rming that behind 20 every physical fact there existed a divine force. However, he found it neces- 21 sary to create two Gods and two Stevenses: 22 23 An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is 24 not the church but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature and 25 our responses. . . . But today in my walk I thought that after all there is no 26 confl ict of forces but rather a contrast. In the cathedral [St. Patrick’s on 27 Fifth Avenue] I felt one presence; on the highway I felt another. Two dif- 28 ferent deities presented themselves; and though I have only cloudy visions 29 of either, yet I now feel the distinction between them. The priest in me 30 worshipped one God at one shrine; the poet another God at another 31 shrine. The priest worshipped Mercy and Love; the poet, Beauty and 32 Might. In the shadows of the church I could hear the prayers of men and 33 women; in the shadows of the trees nothing human mingled with divin- 34 ity. As I sat dreaming with the Congregation I felt how the glittering 35 altar worked on my senses stimulating and consoling them; and as I went 36 tramping through the fi elds and woods I beheld every leaf and blade of 37 grass revealing or rather betokening the Invisible. (SP 104) 38 39 As late as 1909, he was now convinced that “God was distinct from Jesus,” 40 but conceded that “the thought [of God] makes the world sweeter—even if 41 God be no more than the mystery of Life” (CS 185–86). When he was 27, 42 he found himself yearning for a faith that was free of doubt: “I wish that 43 groves still were sacred—or, at least, that something was: that there was 44 still something free from doubt, that day unto day still uttered speech, and 45 night unto night still showed wisdom” (SP 158). 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3232 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM Stevens and New York 33 To arrive at the conclusion that “Divinity must live within herself” from 1 “Sunday Morning” in 1915 (CPP 53), he had to work his way through 2 many years of resolving what he believed, what he did not believe, and 3 what he wished he could believe—topics which the journals repeatedly 4 revisit. The theme is touched upon, I believe for the fi rst time in his poetry, 5 in poem XII of the second June Book, “In the Sun.” The speaker returns to 6 “golden mountains,” “golden land,” “golden forests,” and “golden cities.” 7 Here, the sunlight creates for him “A new, a burning race.” He concludes: 8 9 No man was hampered there at all, 10 But lived his visions out. 11 There was no god’s necessity, 12 Nor any human doubt. (CPP 512–13) 13 14 Both “god’s necessity” and “human doubt” seem dissolved in the sunlight’s 15 defi nitions. 16 From time to time the journals and letters give passing glimpses at the 17 seeds of ideas, even precepts, that would come to be identifi ed with Stevens’ 18 later work. The glimpses are, for the most part, undeveloped, but they give 19 us an impression of the poet’s sensibility, even his native instincts, and how 20 they were propelling him toward a kind of personal doctrine. Here are a 21 few of them—all from the New York years: 22 23 It is astonishing how much poetry I can read with sincere delight. 24 But I didn’t see much that was “new or strange.” (CS 261) 25 26 —I am in an odd state of mind today. It is Sunday. I feel a loathing 27 (large & vague!), for things as they are . . . (SP 146) 28 29 —And can’t you possibly close your eyes and, by imagination, feel 30 that it is perfectly real—the dark circle of poplars, with the round 31 moon among them, the air moving, the water falling. . . . If only it were 32 possible to escape from what the dreadful Galsworthy calls Facts . . . 33 (CS 245–46) 34 35 —From one of many possible fi gures—regard the mind as a motion- 36 less sea, as it is so often. Let one round wave surge through it mysti- 37 cally—one mystical mental scene—one image. Then see it in abundant 38 undulation, incessant motion—unbroken succession of scenes, say.—I 39 indulge in heavenly psychology—I lie back and drown in the deluge. 40 The mind rolls as the sea rolls. (CS 125) 41 42 —Perhaps, it is best, too, that one should have only glimpses of real- 43 ity—and get the rest from fairy-tales, from pictures, and music, and 44 books. (CS 187) 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3333 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM 34 George S. Lensing 1 —“I sometimes think a little ignorance is wholesome in our com- 2 munion with Nature.” (quotation transcribed from Paul Elmer More; 3 SP 220) 4 5 —“The song seraphically free 6 Of taint of personality.” 7 (transcribed from George Meredith’s “The Lark Ascending”; SP 8 162) 9 10 —Here’s a list of Pleasant Things to drive dull care away . . . : 11 black-birds 12 blue-birds 13 wrens 14 crocks of milk 15 pumpkin custards 16 hussars 17 drum-majors 18 young chickens. (CS 110) 19 20 —A few Sundays ago I noticed a number of pigeons sitting out the 21 rain on one of the ledges of Washington Bridge; and as I passed there 22 this morning I heard their rou-cou-cou. (SP 175) 23 24 For all his dissatisfaction with the impersonality and self-enclosures and 25 artifi cialities of the city, Stevens in many ways became a quintessential New 26 Yorker. Many of its resources became habitual destinations for the young 27 man in his twenties. Here are some of them: the Astor Library (perhaps his 28 favorite and the place he often visited on his way home from the offi ce), 29 the Metropolitan Museum, the National Academy of Design, the Ameri- 30 can Art Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hispanic Museum, Carnegie 31 Hall, Columbia University and its Seth Low Library, the New York Botani- 32 cal Garden in Bronx Park. He enjoyed dramatic performances of Sarah 33 Bernhardt, Ethel Barrymore, and other recommended actors, and attended 34 several Shakespeare productions. At the same time, he was purchasing his 35 own copies and reading, in addition to sources I have already cited, works 36 like Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Keats’s letters, novels of Henry James, a 37 translation of Propertius, Bourget’s Une Idylle Tragique, The Carmina 38 of Catullus, Sellar’s Roman Poets of the Republic, Metchnikoff ’s Nature 39 of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy, and one or more unidentifi ed 40 works by Maurice Maeterlinck. And, he writes, “I read everything I see 41 about [the now-forgotten Nobel Prize winner] Sully-Prudhomme” (SP 185). 42 His studies included even memorizing, he says, several hundred lines of 43 “Maud” as well as Shakespeare’s “Tired with all these, for restful death I 44 cry” (SP 146). In an important and unmistakable way, and in spite of its 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3434 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM Stevens and New York 35 “impersonality,” Stevens loved New York and its rich springs from which 1 he was constantly refreshing his eager mind. These years also kept him in 2 contact with Harvard friends like Pitts Sanborn, Walter Arensberg, Witter 3 Bynner, and others who would help him fi nd publication in the later New 4 York years and off er other encouragement. 5 We know from letters written after he left New York in 1916 that he 6 enjoyed nothing more than returning there—often coming down from 7 Hartford by train and returning the same day. He liked to meet friends 8 there for drinks, or take in a special exhibition at an art museum, or attend 9 a concert. Shopping for special gustatory pleasures was another purpose for 10 his visits, perhaps recalling his earliest association with the city: “When I 11 was very young, ‘mamma’ used to go shopping to New-York and we would 12 meet her at the station—and then there would be boxes of candy to open 13 at home” (CS 135). For all his love of the country and his precious solitude 14 therein, Stevens remained a man of towns and cities throughout his life— 15 determined fi rst by profession but ultimately by choice. The country was 16 a place for escape, a necessary refuge, but the city was the place he lived 17 out his life. The sixteen years in New York set the course of that habit and 18 preference. They opened him to an ever enlarging world, broadening his 19 intellectual and artistic resources, and building the foundation of “poetic 20 thought.” In a fundamental way, and in spite of the long gestation, the 21 city made a poet of Stevens. At the end of the life of George Santayana, 22 the philosopher-novelist-poet and Harvard mentor for the undergraduate 23 Stevens, Stevens wrote the poem “To an Old Philosopher in Rome.” The 24 depiction of Santayana’s Rome is not unlike what New York and his other 25 residual cities became for Stevens himself: 26 27 The sounds drift in. The buildings are remembered. 28 The life of the city never lets go, nor do you 29 Ever want it to. It is part of the life in your room. (CPP 434) 30 31 32 NOTES 33 34 1. Stevens must have envied a life similar to the one that Keats had outlined in 35 a letter to his sister Fanny in 1819. Stevens purchased Keats’s letter in 1907 36 and, alongside these words by her from the letter, he drew a vertical line in the margin: “Mr. and Mrs. Dilke are coming to dine with us to-day. They 37 will enjoy the country after Westminster. O there is nothing like fi ne weather, 38 and health, and Books, and a fi ne country, and a contented Mind, and dili- 39 gent habit of reading and thinking, and an amulet against the ennui—and, 40 please heaven, a little claret wine cool out of a cellar a mile deep—with a 41 few or a good many ratafi a cakes . . . , a rocky basin to bathe in . . .” (Keats 269). 42 2. Another poem from the 1909 The Little June Book, “A Concert of Fishes,” 43 would later fi nd its way as one of Stevens’ earliest magazine publications. It 44 45 46

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1 appeared fi ve years later in Trend, a magazine edited by Stevens’ classmate 2 Pitts Sanborn. In the poem, the fi shes are given these vivid colors: 3 Blood-red and hue Of shadowy blue, 4 And amber sheen, 5 And water-green, 6 And yellow fl ash 7 And diamond ash . . . (CPP 510) 8 3. Laurence Binyon, “The Painters of Japan.” The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 30 Sept. 1911: 427–28. Wallace Stevens Papers. 9 Henry E. Huntington Library. San Marino, CA. 10 4. See my reproduction of both notebooks in Chapters 6 and 7 of Wallace Ste- 11 vens: A Poet’s Growth. 12 5. For the fullest treatment of Stevens’ use of aphorism in his poetry, see 13 Coyle. 6. Stevens repeats the “O vitae Philosophia dux . . .” in another letter to Elsie 14 almost three months later on May 14, 1909. 15 16 17 WORKS CITED 18 19 Bacon, Francis. “Of Friendship.” The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon. Ed. 20 John M. Robertson. London: Routledge, 1905. 766–69. Print. 21 Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of “Harmonium.” Princeton: Princ- 22 eton UP, 1967. Print. Coyle, Beverly. A Thought to Be Rehearsed: Aphorism in Wallace Stevens’s Poetry. 23 Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983. Print. 24 Keats, John. Letters of John Keats. Ed. Sidney Colvin. London: Macmillan, 1891. 25 Print. 26 Lensing, George S. Wallace Stevens: A Poet’s Growth. Baton Rouge: Louisiana 27 State UP, 1986. Print. Leopardi, Giacomo. Pensieri. Trans. W. S. Di Piero. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State 28 UP, 1981. Print. 29 Lombardi, Thomas Francis. Wallace Stevens and the Pennsylvania Keystone: The 30 Infl uence of Origins on His Life and Poetry. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna UP, 31 1996. Print. 32 Mackail, J. W., ed. Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. New York: Long- mans, Green, 1906. Print. 33 MacLeod, Glen. Wallace Stevens and Modern Art: From the Armory Show to 34 Abstract Expressionism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. Print. 35 Melville, Herman. Moby Dick; or, The Whale. New York: Heritage, 1943. Print. 36 Morrison, Arthur. The Painters of Japan. Vol. I. London: Jack, 1911. Print. 37 Stevens, Holly. Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens. New York: Knopf, 1977. Print. 38 Stevens, Wallace. The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to 39 Elsie. Ed. J. Donald Blount. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2006. Print. 40 . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and 41 Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 42 43 44 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3636 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM 2 “My Head Full of Strange Pictures” Stevens in the New York Galleries Bonnie Costello

Is there anything left to say about Stevens and painting? Admittedly, it is 1 well-covered, if disputed, ground. But there has been surprisingly little atten- 2 tion to Stevens’ gallery going in the early years, especially before his “awak- 3 ening,” as he called it, and his connection (however tentative and broken) to 4 the Arensberg circle. It is worth remembering that Walter Arensberg, while 5 sometimes in the city, did not live in Manhattan until 1914, whereas Stevens 6 lived in the New York City area from 1900 until 1916—if we include the 7 period he commuted from the suburb of East Orange, New Jersey, where he 8 worried about becoming a “New Jersey Epicurean” (L 87). Gallery going 9 was one of his favorite bachelor activities, as Joan Richardson has noted 10 (375). What motivated him, and how did he respond to what he saw? 11 As Delmore Schwartz said, in a mixed 1938 review of Stevens’ work in 12 Partisan Review, Stevens fi rst felt the urges of a poet in an age when “to be 13 a poet . . . was to be peculiar; merely to be interested in the arts was to take 14 upon oneself the burden of being superior, and an exile at home.” Stevens 15 entered a milieu in which one “feared to be provincial, and aspired to mem- 16 bership among the elite” (49). Stevens’ gallery going may be understood as 17 part of this desire to gain cultural capital, by a young man from the indus- 18 trial and farming region of Reading, Pennsylvania. Yet anyone who opens 19 Stevens’ Letters, or the journal materials gathered by his daughter Holly 20 in Souvenirs and Prophecies, recognizes immediately that visual art—in 21 galleries, museums, libraries, parks, homes of friends, personal contacts, 22 books, newspapers, journals, print shops—was a deep part of Stevens’ 23 experience in his early New York years and beyond. Whatever vague curi- 24 osity or unfocused ambition may have brought him to the galleries and 25 museums of New York, his “peculiar” poetic mind stored impressions that 26 would shape not only his poetry, but also his view of life. 27 During his residence in East Orange, Stevens, age twenty-six, took a 28 walk. He was not communing with his immediate environment, however. 29 It was “The last day of the year. Sunday [1905]”—a time to sum up and to 30 refl ect about the future: 31 32 Walked to Montclair and back, in the morning, rather meditatively. 33 Very mild air. My head full of strange pictures—terra-cotta fi gurines 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3737 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM 38 Bonnie Costello 1 of the Romans, ivory fi gurines of the Japanese, winter birds on winter 2 branches, summer birds on summer branches, green mountains, etc. 3 Refl ections . . . on Japanese life, on specifi cness, on minute knowledge 4 as disclosing minute pleasures, on what I should wish my wife to be, 5 on my future. (L 85) 6 7 This is a very “strange” list indeed. Where do these “pictures” come from? 8 What do the “minute pleasures” of the visual objects have to do with the 9 last two, speculative topics? What is striking here is the mix of art and 10 life—which is which? Are those birds in his head images from observation, 11 or from paintings or prints? Does the image of his future wife come from 12 art or from life? (He had met Elsie just a few months before moving to East 13 Orange; he had also spent many hours in New York museums and galler- 14 ies, looking at portraits of women, portraits of wives—women at the piano, 15 women with fl owers.) What relation, if any, might exist between Roman 16 terra-cottas and his future? Was this the beginning of his career-long medi- 17 tation on art and posterity? Of course, we all have dissociated thoughts, 18 and writing them down brings them into association; one gathers that these 19 images and objects left by the ancient past might provoke thoughts of his 20 posthumous future that would include some “bones” of “what [he] felt / At 21 what [he] saw” (CPP 128). 22 My fi rst point in this chapter is that Stevens, in his early days in New 23 York, was building an image bank that he would add to, and that would 24 serve his imagination, throughout the rest of his life. This image bank was 25 not only a source of poetry but a way of ordering life. Stevens drew images 26 either directly from art, or from art-infl uenced experiences—life remem- 27 bered as art: “Nature as Pinakothek,” as he writes in the early poem “New 28 England Verses” (CPP 89). Writing in 1940, Delmore Schwartz called this 29 “a vision instructed in the museums” (“Ultimate Plato” 11), and we might 30 agree, but without “the word pejorative that hurts” (CPP 99). Stevens did 31 not idealize art, the “Souvenirs of museums” (CPP 208). “[M]y destroyers 32 avoid the museums,” he wrote, and he would face his destroyers (CPP 123). 33 But he did understand that “Sight / Is a museum of things seen,” even in 34 time of war, when “Sight / Hangs heaven with fl ash drapery” (CPP 245). 35 That is, the capturing of images in “sight” brings a collection of images to 36 the museum of the mind, where hang the “strange pictures” that engage the 37 inner life. Conversely, the pictures he saw in galleries and museums became 38 part of that inner gallery. 39 My second point is more controversial: I want to make a case here for 40 Stevens’ interest in art as illusion. The young Stevens loved pictures, not 41 for their verisimilitude, but certainly in part for their power of illusion, 42 their representational and pictorial thrust. I agree with the general shift, 43 led by Glen MacLeod and Charles Altieri, to reading Stevens in relation 44 to modernist abstraction rather than impressionism. And there is plenty of 45 evidence that Stevens’ contemporaries in the avant-garde art world thought 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3838 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM “My Head Full of Strange Pictures” 39 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Figure 2.1 Charles Demuth, Homage to Wallace Stevens, 1925–1926. Courtesy of 34 Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 35 36 37 of him as one of their own, at least after he began publishing in Others. 38 Charles Demuth, for instance, the artist who painted the famous Number 39 5 in response to William Carlos Williams’ “The Great Figure,” had, before 40 his death from diabetes in 1935, sketched out a poster portrait of Stevens. 41 We should not forget, however, that in his early years in New York Ste- 42 vens was not a modernist—and the New York art world itself was not 43 modernist either, though the city was certainly becoming modern. For the 44 fi rst decade of his independent life Stevens was looking at pictures all the 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 3939 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:331:55:33 PMPM 40 Bonnie Costello 1 time, but they were pictures very much in the fi gurative tradition—works 2 of the Barbizon school by artists like Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and 3 Théodore Rousseau, works of American realism and impressionism, and 4 works in various exhibitions from abroad representing nationalist pictorial 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Figure 2.2 Walter Pach, Hotel Shelton, 1924. Courtesy of City College Art Collec- 46 tion, City College of New York.

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4040 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:341:55:34 PMPM “My Head Full of Strange Pictures” 41 traditions. It is perhaps worth remembering, too, that many artists of the 1 Stieglitz group—Demuth, O’Keeff e, Hartley, and even Stevens’ friend Wal- 2 ter Pach, who founded the Society of Independent Artists—learned to paint 3 not in the studios of Picasso or Braque, but under the instruction of Wil- 4 liam Merritt Chase, a leading American impressionist. 5 The infl uence of European abstraction on American art has been over- 6 stated. Many American artists—even those of the Stieglitz group—never 7 abandoned the fi gure. Throughout the fi rst three decades of the twentieth 8 century, American art had a strong representational thrust, and abstraction 9 and representation were not at odds. While Stevens does not write pictorial 10 poetry, pictures in the mind—of “a man skating” and “a woman / Comb- 11 ing” (CPP 219), ducks on a lake, a landscape with a boat—remain central 12 to his idea of modern poetry. 13 While Stevens’ techniques may respond at times to cubist and other 14 innovations, his references remain tied to the art he saw in galleries and 15 museums in the early days, and which he continued to explore in Hartford. 16 Admittedly, some of his later references evoke a mock nostalgia (“Claude 17 has been dead a long time”; CPP 109) or an acknowledgement that Ameri- 18 can scenes require a diff erent aesthetic (“John Constable they could never 19 quite transplant”; CPP 125). But representational painting maintains 20 a presence in the poetry that has not been tracked. Is the woman in her 21 peignoir of “Sunday Morning” inspired by Manet’s Woman with Parrot, 22 which has been hanging in the Metropolitan Museum since 1899? The Met 23 had also acquired, in 1890, Rubens’ Susanna and the Elders, suggesting a 24 link to “Peter Quince at the Clavier.” Perhaps the American luminist tradi- 25 tion shines through in the “bronze shadows heaped / On high horizons” of 26 “The Idea of Order at Key West” (CPP 105). 27 The referential nature of words itself invites a relation to pictorial paint- 28 ing over abstraction, even when those references are metaphors. But Stevens’ 29 own taste for representational works has itself been underacknowledged. 30 His book collection, described by Milton Bates, tells of a taste for tradi- 31 tional genres and styles, especially for the French tradition in painting. It is 32 probably that French “poodle,” Monet, with his view of “the river, the rail- 33 road, the cathedral,” whom Stevens addresses in “Of Hartford in a Purple 34 Light,” and who is causing the “aunts” of “Pasadena” to “Abhor the plaster 35 of the western horses, / Souvenirs of museums” (CPP 208). Of course, “It 36 Must Change” (CPP 336), and “Lights masculine” will “Whisk” away the 37 “stone bouquet” of outmoded forms (CPP 208). But Stevens never really 38 whisks away fi gurative form itself. 39 In Reading, Stevens’ main link to the art world had been Christopher 40 Shearer, thirty-three years his senior (replacing his father?), who became a 41 prominent artist during the years Stevens knew him. Shearer had opened 42 a studio in his native Reading when he was only twenty-one and was cer- 43 tainly the authority on art in this region. He taught art classes in his stu- 44 dio to encourage art in the Berks County community. Shearer represented 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4141 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:341:55:34 PMPM 42 Bonnie Costello 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Figure 2.3 Christopher Shearer, The Great Storm, 1905. Courtesy of Reading Pub- 21 lic Museum. 22 23 someone for whom art and nature were joined—he was a naturalist, and 24 he had a vegetable farm as well as a studio. (On August 31, 1907, Stevens’ 25 journal records among the notable experiences of his summer “A vegetable 26 and art talk with Christopher Shearer” [SP 181].) Shearer was particularly 27 known for his large landscapes, and he had a theory, which fascinated Ste- 28 vens, about the landscape of Reading as once having been an inland sea. 29 Stevens’ early journals make several references to long walks and conver- 30 sations with Shearer, a fact that is striking not only considering their age 31 diff erence, but also considering Shearer’s prominence as an artist. “Walked 32 over to Christopher Shearer’s,” wrote Stevens in 1899, just before he moved 33 to New York, “and had him show me his pictures. He said that after all 34 nature was superior to art!” (SP 45). (Stevens was already under the infl u- 35 ence of George Santayana at Harvard, who wrote, “An artist is a dreamer 36 consenting to dream of the actual world” [39].) Stevens and Shearer were 37 often joined on these long walks by Levi Mengel, a man of Shearer’s genera- 38 tion, rather than of Stevens’. Dr. Mengel was a teacher at the Reading Boys 39 School, where Stevens had been, in his high school years, a prize-winning 40 student. With Shearer, Mengel would become, in 1907, the founder of the 41 Reading Public Museum, which developed a considerable collection featur- 42 ing nineteenth-century European art. 43 When Stevens arrived in New York City he was, despite his Harvard 44 sojourn, still very much a Reading-ite, searching out beauty in nature. He 45 initially found the city an abominable spectacle of buying and selling. In 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4242 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:341:55:34 PMPM “My Head Full of Strange Pictures” 43 his free time, his fi rst impulse seems to have been to fl ee the city for the 1 peace of the Palisades. But at least judging from the letters, gallery going 2 gradually replaces this nature quest. It was easier, perhaps, to escape into 3 the illusions of art, to the “peace” of “long, delicious valleys / In the mode 4 of Claude Lorraine [sic]” (CPP 528). 5 Stevens was certainly attracted to the trick of illusion in his early expo- 6 sure to art; for instance, he writes in 1904, “there was a gray-green Corot. 7 One noticed, incuriously, an inch of enamored man and an inch of fond 8 woman in the foreground, and one approved. Fortunate creatures to be 9 wandering so sweetly in Corot!” (L 88–89). 10 Perhaps these excursions into art and illusion helped him to adjust to 11 city life. He would soon write, “I have come to like New York” (SP 96). Of 12 course, it is unsurprising that a New Yorker, in an idle hour, would visit the 13 Met. But the deliberateness with which Stevens attended exhibitions featur- 14 ing, at times, contemporary American artists unknown in the fi rst decade 15 of the twentieth century suggests an eagerness to witness his nation’s eff orts 16 to establish culture (not specifi cally modernist culture) on its native soil. 17 Stevens’ journal of October 18, 1900, notes: “Have been doing the art 18 galleries & exhibitions” (SP 88). By 1904 Stevens had dubbed himself “an 19 exacting gallery-god” (SP 129). (He makes this remark in a journal entry 20 that also describes sets for a play, so “gallery” here could mean theater gal- 21 lery, but the phrase overlaps.) Indeed, he generally went to exhibitions on the 22 opening day, often at their opening hour, and returned two or three times. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 Figure 2.4 Claude Lorrain, View of La Crescenza, 1648–1650. Courtesy of Metro- 44 politan Museum of Art, New York. 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4343 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:341:55:34 PMPM 44 Bonnie Costello 1 He was developing a Sunday routine that is suggestive with respect to his 2 changing relation to religion: fi rst church, then a gallery or museum, and 3 then to the library to read about an artist whose work he had just seen. 4 Might Stevens have been “doing” galleries in his early role as reporter 5 for the Tribune? Probably not (his reviews were unsigned, and he found 6 the work dull), but he certainly followed the Tribune’s arts reviewing. By 7 today’s standards, the long, thoughtful discussions in these papers of local 8 exhibitions, and even auctions, are remarkable. Most of the shows he men- 9 tions in his journals and letters were reviewed in the Tribune, and some of 10 the wording is similar. On March 7, 1909, he notes in his journal: “word is 11 going around that LaFarge is a colorist” (SP 213). This “word” comes from 12 the Tribune, on the same day as the journal entry and a letter to Elsie, who 13 was likely indiff erent to the matter: “It is customary to speak of Mr. La 14 Farge as a colorist” occurs near the outset of the article (Cortissoz, “Ameri- 15 can Art”). The same review commends a show by American artist John 16 Alexander that the journal entry also mentions. He would “never miss,” he 17 said, the annual show of the Water Color Society (an organization founded 18 in New York in 1866 and offi cially known as The American Society of 19 Painters in Water Colors), and he mentions it in letters over several years.1 20 As a medium, watercolor was ranked highly in America, and many of the 21 nation’s most renowned artists were famous for this medium more than 22 for oils. It is perhaps here that Stevens found phrases, such as “evening’s 23 aquarelle” and “purple blooming,” used in the poems of “Carnet de Voy- 24 age” and “Primordia” (CPP 523, 536). 25 Comparing contemporary newspaper reviewing with Stevens’ own let- 26 ters and journals indicates that while the poet often takes his cues from the 27 reviewers, he does not always echo their sentiments. On May 8, 1909, the 28 Tribune reviews the Water Color Society show as “one of the pleasantest” 29 (Cortissoz, “Water Colors”) and the Times notes it as “more than usually 30 attractive” (“Gallery Notes”). When writing to Elsie, however, Stevens is 31 more qualifi ed: “It isn’t at all a good show—there’s nothing fresh, noth- 32 ing original—just the same old grind of waves and moonlight and trees 33 and sunlight and so on.” But he goes on to fi nd things of interest: “Yet 34 there are some interesting etchings of New-York—pictures of out-of-the- 35 way corners, that will be more valuable in the future than they are now. I 36 am always especially interested at these water-color shows in the pictures of 37 fl owers—bowls of roses and the like. [Perhaps ‘Pink and white carnations’ 38 (CPP 178)?] It would be pleasant to make a collection of them” (L 139– 39 41). Indeed, what Marianne Moore in “When I Buy Pictures” described as 40 imaginary possession (48) seems to have been part of Stevens’ motive in 41 “doing the art galleries & exhibitions.” 42 He “never fail[ed] to see,” he told Elsie, the annual exhibits at the 43 National Academy of Design (NAD) (CS 121). And he would go more than 44 once—“Today I made a second visit,” he notes in his journal (SP 188). 45 (The NAD was founded in 1825 by Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4444 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:351:55:35 PMPM “My Head Full of Strange Pictures” 45 Thomas Cole, and others “to promote the fi ne arts in America through 1 instruction and exhibition.”) He also attended the special exhibits at the 2 American Art Gallery and the National Arts Club—a private club in Gra- 3 mercy Park, founded in 1898 to “stimulate, foster, and promote public 4 interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fi ne arts.” 5 If “imaginary possession” was one motive, another seems to have been 6 nationalist: a desire to witness the emergent art culture of America. 7 It is perhaps not an accident, then, that Stevens found an apartment to 8 rent from a contemporary sculptor, Adolph Weinman, who would choose 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 Figure 2.5 Adolph A. Weinman, The Rising Sun, 1914. Courtesy of Smithsonian 44 American Art Library. 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4545 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:351:55:35 PMPM 46 Bonnie Costello 1 Elsie as the model for the Liberty dime. Nine years older than Stevens, 2 Weinman arguably replaces Shearer as a mentor in the arts. In a letter 3 to Elsie on July 30, 1913, Stevens records one evening-long conversation 4 with Weinman about art, and it is likely there were many others, especially 5 when Elsie was away from the city (CS 314). Weinman’s works are mostly 6 in bronze, and in a lyrical, classical style. He forged heroic, patriotic sym- 7 bols. Weinman studied at Cooper Union and the Art Students League with 8 sculptors Augustus St. Gaudens (who designed Boston’s Shaw Memorial) 9 and Philip Martiny. He later served as an assistant to Charles Niehaus, 10 Olin Warner, and Daniel Chester French (and he helped French design 11 and execute the Lincoln Memorial). Weinman was a practitioner of the 12 old American sublime, creating the kinds of statues in public places that 13 Stevens would reference with ambivalence throughout the 1930s, in “Owl’s 14 Clover,” “The American Sublime,” and elsewhere. Weinman’s art was like 15 “The arm of bronze outstretched against all evil” (CPP 101). Does Ste- 16 vens’ “Tradition”—“The bronze of the wise man seated in repose” (CPP 17 595)—remember the conversation with Weinman, recorded in the journals, 18 that went on until after eleven? 19 If Stevens in his early New York days was taking in contemporary Amer- 20 ican styles, he was nevertheless also cultivating his cosmopolitan side. New 21 York was, of course, already a melting pot, and now and then he describes 22 the vibrant human tableaux directly before him. But through art Stevens 23 could experience diff erent landscapes and cultures, satisfy his interest in his 24 ancestry, and pursue the contemporary craze for japonisme. The Ameri- 25 can Art Galleries at Madison Square, which served as an auction house 26 with free viewing of “valuable” collections, often showed contemporary art 27 from abroad.2 In 1906 Stevens remarks: “Saw a little Cazin at the Ameri- 28 can Art Gallery to-day called ‘Departure of Night,’ that I liked: a step or 29 two of road, a roadside house of white, a few trees and just the sky-full of 30 clair d’aube—with three stars, as I remember” (L 88). Stevens breaks into 31 French as if carried away by the illusion. 32 “Orientalia,” as it was called by the papers, is a turn-of-the-century 33 craze that made its way even to Reading, where, as George Lensing explains 34 in the previous chapter, a grand pagoda was built in 1908. Stevens was 35 already following the development of Asian collections in Boston and Lon- 36 don when New York caught the craze. On March 16, 1909—a Tuesday— 37 the Tribune reviewed a show, and he was there in a dash; on “Thursday 38 evening” (March 18), in a letter to Elsie, he reports: 39 40 Then I went to an exhibition (getting there at nine.) . . . I saw two cabi- 41 nets of carved jade—whatever that may be. I know it is highly prized 42 but I don’t altogether see why.—Shall I send a picture or two to make 43 a private exhibition for you? Well, here they are, and all from the Chi- 44 nese, painted centuries ago: 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4646 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:351:55:35 PMPM “My Head Full of Strange Pictures” 47 “pale orange, green and crimson, and white, 1 and gold, and brown;” 2 3 and 4 5 “deep lapis-lazuli and orange, and opaque 6 green, fawn-color, black, and gold;” 7 8 and 9 10 “lapis blue and vermilion, white, and gold 11 and green.” (L 137)3 12 13 Another feature of this exhibit was, to quote the March 16, 1909 Tribune, 14 “an extraordinary group of old musical instruments, Italian lutes, mando- 15 lins, lyres and so on” (Cortissoz, “Approaching Sales”). And in the same 16 letter to Elsie, Stevens writes, “there were some antiquated musical instru- 17 ments that were amusing. One had sixteen strings. There were lutes inlaid 18 with mother of pearl and there were French cornemeuses” (L 137). No 19 object was lost on Stevens, that “lutanist of fl eas” (CPP 22); here he would 20 have gazed upon the insipid lutes, the claviers, and the hautboys that return 21 in his later verse—and would imagine their music. 22 On January 2, 1911, he writes to Elsie again about Asian art: 23 24 Walked down Fifth Avenue to Madison Square and, after lunch, went 25 into the American Art Galleries, where, among other things, they are 26 showing some Chinese and Japanese jades and porcelains. The sole 27 object of interest for me in such things is their beauty. Cucumber-green, 28 camellia-leaf-green, apple-green etc. moonlight, blue, etc. ox-blood, 29 chicken-blood, cherry, peach-blow etc. etc. Oh! and mirror-black: that 30 is so black and with such a glaze that you can see yourself in it.—And 31 now that I am home again, and writing, in semi-obscurity, lights lit, 32 boats whistling, in the peculiar muteness and silence of fog—I wish, 33 intensely, that I had some of those vivid colors here. (L 169) 34 35 As Lensing in the previous chapter again points out, Stevens fi lled his note- 36 books and the poetry of the June Book with these vivid colors. But it is worth 37 noting also that Stevens’ list of colors here somewhat resembles one that 38 appeared in the Tribune on December 30, 1910: “Scattered all through the 39 collection, sometimes alongside quite unattractive specimens, are numer- 40 ous lovely bits of blue and white, sang de bœuf, sapphire blue, celadon, 41 mirror-black and other noble tints” (Cortissoz, “Converse Collection”). 42 If his love of color drew Stevens to Chinese and Japanese art, his love 43 of light drew him to painting from another part of the world. At the 44 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4747 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:351:55:35 PMPM 48 Bonnie Costello 1 far uptown Hispanic Society of America, an exhibit that received rave 2 reviews in the Times and the Tribune seems to have had a similarly pow- 3 erful impact on Stevens, who saw it at least three times. It showed the 4 work of contemporary painter Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, an artist whose 5 stunning work shares qualities of John Sargent. To Elsie on February 10, 6 1909, he writes of the pictures: “They show marvellously the reality of 7 sunlight—as one sees it on the beach at Valencia” (CS 152). “The most 8 remarkable exhibition of pictures that has been held in New York in 9 recent years,” he writes in his journal on March 7, 1909, again echoing 10 the reviews, and he continues: “The pictures are extraordinary for their 11 eff ulgent sunshine . . . and for their realism generally. But this is not the 12 realism of every day but realism, say, of holiday,—of the external world 13 at its height of brilliance. The pictures make a vigorous impression, and 14 leave one in Sparkling spirits—all of which is, psychologically, of inter- 15 est—and simple” (SP 213). 16 “The sun stands like a Spaniard as he departs,” Stevens would write 17 years later, in “The Novel” (CPP 391). Was he remembering that sun- 18 drenched world of Sorolla? But “Mrs. Anderson’s Swedish baby / Might 19 well have been German or Spanish” (CPP 120). Stevens especially sought 20 out exhibitions that had some link to his ancestral past. In early 1909, the 21 Met had a special show of German art which he attended: “I am German 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Figure 2.6 Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, Mending the Sail, 1896. Courtesy of Bridge- 45 man Art Library. 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4848 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:351:55:35 PMPM “My Head Full of Strange Pictures” 49 to the uttermost. All the exiled ancestors crowded up to my eyes to look at 1 the Vaterland” (L 117). He was doing a study of the seventeenth century, 2 he noted, and in the course of it discovered the Dutch and Flemish rooms at 3 the Met.4 Here he could peer at the faces of Blandina, Jacomyntje, and the 4 others without encountering their disapproval. 5 So it is not surprising that there were “strange pictures” in his head as 6 he walked from East Orange to Montclair and back. Increasingly, Stevens 7 looked for strong, memorable impressions—not just virtuoso reproductions 8 of reality, but impressions that could shape his perception of the world. Ste- 9 vens often saw reality in terms of art. In 1904, on April 18, he writes in his 10 journal: “The Fifth Avenue hotel was covered with a strange astral light + 11 looked very much like [Pierre Etienne Théodore] Rousseau’s (?) painting of 12 Fontaineble[a]u” (L 71). Wandering through town, he continues to describe 13 the light—as if he were painting it. 14 Throughout his early years in New York, such tantalizing connections 15 surface repeatedly in Stevens’ jotted thoughts. In a letter to Elsie on Janu- 16 ary 2, 1911: “Across the street, the trees were like a charcoal sketch of 17 trees” (L 169); “A half-misty, [Ignace Henri Jean Théodore] Fantin-La 18 Tourish night,” begins another entry comparing the eff ects of nature to 19 those of the nineteenth-century impressionist (SP 167). On February 10, 20 1909, he had written to Elsie, “I have no interest in the technical side of 21 painting. I look only for things I know—to recall them—as one recalls 22 ‘the beauty of morning’ or ‘Hesperus, gloaming’s prime cheerer’—or any 23 such commonplace—to recall them and feel their eloquence” (CS 152). 24 He is quoting Turner in this last phrase, but one hears, as well, the poet 25 remembering “The bough of summer and the winter branch” (CPP 54). 26 Were those boughs and branches of nature or of art? Does art recall us to 27 the eloquence of things we know from experience, or does it implant in us 28 memorable images that we can recall at will (as on a walk to Montclair) 29 to enliven a dreary world? Such questions would toss around in Stevens’ 30 poetry forever. 31 Feeling lonely in his room, longing for his Bo-Bo, he turns to Rembrandt 32 to supply the image of connection. To Elsie, on a Monday evening (April 33 22, 1907), he writes: “My room was unwelcome when I returned. So, at 34 noon today, I ran up-town and (to do what I could) bought a large photo- 35 graph of one of Rembrandt’s paintings. It is a portrait of himself and of his 36 wife, Saskia—and she is sitting in his lap! I might just as well have chosen a 37 Madonna, but now I am glad I chose this, because it is just what I needed” 38 (SP 178). Again we see how Stevens’ imagination mixes personal associa- 39 tions with classic images from art. 40 The power of pictures to call up fi gures and places and to invite the 41 observer to enter their illusions is of primary interest to Stevens at this 42 time. We may think of it as a naïve response to art, but it is also a primary 43 one that would remain central to Stevens’ sense of what art is—even as 44 his attention shifted from the scenes and objects of art to the relationship 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 4949 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:361:55:36 PMPM 50 Bonnie Costello 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Figure 2.7 Rembrandt van Rijn, Rembrandt and Saskia in the Scene of the Prodi- 37 gal Son in the Tavern, c.1635. Alte Meister Gallerie, Dresden, Germany. Courtesy 38 of Art Resource. 39 40 41 between the artist and the work. An exhibit of paintings by American tonal 42 painter Charles Warren Eaton brought him to Brooklyn, in order to trans- 43 port him to Belgium. On a Saturday evening, February 6, 1909, he writes 44 in a letter to Elsie: “This afternoon I went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to 45 see some paintings by Charles Warren Eaton. They concerned Bruges, the 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 5050 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:361:55:36 PMPM “My Head Full of Strange Pictures” 51 Belgian Bruges, chiefl y.” After a long description of the images he found in 1 these paintings, he concludes: “Bruges becomes important to me. I must 2 whirl away there to-night in my chariot and never rest until I touch the Pont 3 Flammand [sic]” (CS 150). Yet if art sometimes seemed to compete with life 4 for him, it also had, early on, the power to enhance life, to make him see 5 and relish it. The world of New York sometimes seemed a living gallery to 6 Stevens. On a Friday evening, June 25, 1909, a letter to Elsie relates: “At 7 noon I bought two boxes of cherries. . . . When I was buying the cherries I 8 noticed peaches, plums, apricots, fresh tomatoes and all the usual things. 9 Decidedly, a market is a pleasant place with its stalls of silvery fi sh, red 10 fruit—and so on; and I do not wonder (altogether) that people have painted 11 such things almost as frequently as they have painted the shadows of pop- 12 lars, of which you spoke” (CS 228–29). Similarly, we see Stevens compos- 13 ing a scene in “Primordia” as if he were a painter: “The child’s hair is of the 14 color of the hay in the haystack . . . / There is the same color in the bellies of 15 frogs, in clays, withered reeds, skins, wood, sunlight” (CPP 534). 16 One place we might look for evidence of the enduring importance of a 17 pictorial tradition is in Stevens’ use of artists’ names or names of schools 18 as a way of calling up a scenic mood without reproducing it himself. By 19 the time he writes “Carnet de Voyage,” which carries forward some of the 20 June Books, he is beginning to introduce these references, so in “Phases” 21 we get “Raphael’s costumes” or “In the mode of Claude Lorraine” (CPP 22 525, 528); in “Anecdote of the Abnormal” “there are regions where the 23 grass / Assumes a pale, Italianate sheen—/ Is almost Byzantine” (CPP 24 550). In “Lettres d’un Soldat,” “I keep thinking of the Primitives” (CPP 25 540). In other words, rather than trying to reproduce painterly eff ects, he 26 imports them into his poetry by alluding to them, drawing on his memory. 27 And starting with Ideas of Order, the names of artists become a regular 28 feature of Stevens’ style: “Poem Written at Morning” mentions “A sunny 29 day’s complete Poussiniana” (CPP 198); “From the Packet of Anacharsis” 30 talks of “A subject for Puvis” (CPP 317); and of course “Notes Toward a 31 Supreme Fiction” brings up “Weather by Franz Hals” (CPP 333). 32 Peter Brazeau’s oral biography of Stevens provides a rich body of evi- 33 dence for Stevens’ gallery going, in a later era. But I will take my closing 34 example from the late letters. In December 1948 and January 1949, at the 35 height of abstract expressionism, Stevens made several trips to New York 36 City. Yet he “kept away from the galleries” (L 626). He seems to have felt 37 some distance, at this point in his life, from the direction of contemporary 38 art, despite his admiration for certain artists such as Dubuff et, Klee, and 39 Mondrian. Writing to Barbara Church, and again to Thomas MacGreevy, 40 and to José Rodríguez Feo in January 1949 (L 627–30), he describes his 41 response to a show of Jean Arp, with mixed feelings. In all three letters, 42 however, he singles out a trip to the Morgan Library, observing to Church: 43 “My day in New York was a particularly good one. I spent an hour at the 44 Morgan Library looking at various things of [Giovanni Battista] Piranesi’s. 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 5151 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:361:55:36 PMPM 52 Bonnie Costello 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Figure 2.8 Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View of the Piazza del Popolo, c.1750. 23 Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 24 25 While the imagination of Piranesi is not the modern imagination, it is a far 26 greater thing if one is to judge it by its eff ect on the observer” (L 628). 27 Perhaps he was thinking ahead to a poem he would write soon about 28 another city, Rome—a poem about George Santayana, who, like Piranesi, 29 was an “inquisitor of structures” (CPP 434). Piranesi was based in Rome 30 and made the city his most recurrent subject. These lines, from “To an 31 Old Philosopher in Rome,” could easily serve as a description of drawings 32 by Piranesi that Stevens had seen: “Two parallels become one, a perspec- 33 tive. . . . / Things dark on the horizons of perception, / . . . / A shape within 34 the ancient circles of shapes, / And these beneath the shadow of a shape” 35 (CPP 432). Stevens, of course, had never been to Rome, but with Piranesi’s 36 help, from a gallery in New York, he could imagine it. 37 38 39 NOTES 40 41 1. See, for example, L 132–35 and 139–41. 42 2. See, for example, the American Art Galleries’ Tribune advertisement of Feb- ruary 25, 1906, regarding “A Valuable Collection of Oil Paintings by Distin- 43 guished Artists of the Modern French, Dutch and American Schools” (New 44 York Tribune 25 Feb. 1906: 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 1 45 Oct. 2009). 46

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3. Holly Stevens notes in her edition of the Letters: “The fi rst two lists of colors are 1 included in a Journal entry for May 14, 1909; they are also in manuscript form 2 in Stevens’ red folder. The third group does not appear elsewhere” (L 137). 3 4. In The Contemplated Spouse, Stevens’ January 10, 1909 letter to Elsie con- tains passages regarding the Dutch and Flemish galleries not found in the 4 1966 Letters (CS 122). 5 6 7 WORKS CITED 8 9 Altieri, Charles. Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Con- 10 temporaneity of Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. Print. 11 Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biogra- 12 phy. 1983. Rpt. San Francisco: North Point, 1985. Print. Cortissoz, Royal. “American Art: Paintings by Mr. La Farge, Mr. Alexander, and 13 Mr. Walker.” Rev. of Knoedler Galleries Exhibition. New York Tribune 7 Mar. 14 1909: A2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 1 Oct. 2009. 15 . “Art Exhibitions: Approaching Sales of Textiles and Paintings.” Review. 16 New York Tribune 16 Mar. 1909: X7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 17 1 Oct. 2009. . “Art Exhibitions: The Sale of the John H. Converse Collection.” Review. 18 New York Tribune 30 Dec. 1910: X7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 19 1 Oct. 2009. 20 . “Art Exhibitions: Some American Water Colors, Etchings and Illustra- 21 tions.” Review. New York Tribune 8 May 1909: 7. ProQuest Historical News- 22 papers. Web. 1 Oct. 2009. “Gallery Notes: Water Color Society’s Exhibition More Than Usually Attractive.” 23 Review. New York Times 29 Apr. 1909: 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 24 Web. 1 Oct. 2009. 25 Haskell, Barbara. Charles Demuth. New York: Whitney Museum of American 26 Art, 1987. Print. 27 MacLeod, Glen. Wallace Stevens and Modern Art: From the Armory Show to Abstract Expressionism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. Print. 28 Moore, Marianne. Complete Poems. New York: Viking, 1981. Print. 29 Richardson, Joan. Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879–1923. New York: 30 Beech Tree, William Morrow, 1986. Print. 31 Santayana, George. The Life of Reason, or the Phases of Human Progress. 5 vols. 32 New York: Scribner, 1917. Print. Schwartz, Delmore. “New Verse.” Rev. of The Man with the Blue Guitar, and 33 Other Poems. Partisan Review 4.3 (1938): 49–52. Print. 34 . “The Ultimate Plato with Picasso’s Guitar.” Harvard Advocate 127 (Dec. 35 1940): 11–16. Print. 36 Stevens, Holly. Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens. New York: 37 Knopf, 1977. Print. Stevens, Wallace. The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to 38 Elsie. Ed. J. Donald Blount. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2006. Print. 39 . Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Knopf, 1966. 40 Print. 41 . Opus Posthumous. Ed. Milton J. Bates. New York: Knopf, 1989. Print. 42 . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 43 44 45 46

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I

1 In 1955, when Wallace Stevens received an honorary degree from the Hartt 2 College of Music in his hometown, Hartford, he referred retrospectively 3 to his years in New York City as an “awakening,” to describe, as Peter 4 Brazeau reports, “the surge of creativity during his last years in New York 5 that marked the start of his mature career as a poet” (7). Given Stevens’ 6 departure from New York and eventual move to Hartford in 1916, we 7 might wonder in what sense the years in the city constituted an “awaken- 8 ing” for him, and in what ways this awakening might have been a musical 9 one as well. Certainly, the fact that his poems rarely explicitly refer to the 10 life of the city has reinforced our notion that his years in New York and 11 his ongoing trips to the city lie only on the margins of his poetic life. Yet, it 12 was from New York City that he wrote of his poetic ambition—“to make 13 a music of my own, a literature of my own” (L 79)—and in his journals 14 and letters that he began the practice of hearing, seeing, and recording 15 the impressions with which he would make a “life” of his own in poetry 16 (L 79). Although scholars have long identifi ed Stevens’ versatile musicality 17 (his haunting melodies and his eclectic borrowing of musical forms—from 18 sonatas to variations) as a hallmark of his work, such musical character- 19 istics and structures have not been seen specifi cally in their relation to his 20 years in New York. For Stevens, however, the city was arguably more than 21 an experiential backdrop to his creation of musical poetry. This chapter 22 speculates that there is a much closer relation between Stevens’ years in and 23 continuous experience of New York and the great musical poetry he pro- 24 duced years after he lived in the city. In the pages that follow, I will argue 25 that the poet’s years in New York and his lifelong visits to the city—his 26 musical activities and refl ections, his habit of walking which was nourished 27 there—helped him to shape the poetic style for which he is best known. 28 Journals and letters suggest that his descriptions of his New York experi- 29 ence and his meditations when there not only refl ect the importance of the 30 city for Stevens, but themselves exhibit many of the identifying features of 31 his more mature, and characteristically musical, verse. 32 Long-established biographical work and critical studies indicate that 33 Stevens’ musical and poetic sensibility was, in part, shaped by a rich and 34 changing musical world in the early 1900s. Ragtime, as Joan Richardson

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T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 5757 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:371:55:37 PMPM 58 Lisa Goldfarb 1 great bronze bells that ring every quarter hour. To-night I heard them for 2 the second time—but really for the fi rst time to listen to them. They are 3 immensely high up in the air. It is splendid” (CS 261–62). 4 One of the most distinctive features of Stevens’ musicality is not only the 5 sheer variety of sounds we hear, but the disparate worlds from which these 6 sounds arise. Stevens orchestrates a poetic world in which he measures the 7 relations between the raw natural sounds of the earth and the sounds of 8 musical instruments. In some early letters one can see Stevens ponder the 9 shape of the unique world of sound both in the way he studies the relations 10 between the sounds he hears and in his delight in unusual sonic combina- 11 tions. That he contemplated the relation between the random sounds he 12 heard—the playing of an occasional street musician or a natural sound— 13 with the concert music he appreciated most is clear from a few early letters 14 to Elsie. Consider the way Stevens conveys his responses to the sound of a 15 street harpist in the following passage from a letter of June 24, 1909: 16 17 After dinner to-night I sat out-doors for a while. A man with a harp 18 came along and played across the street—and may be playing yet. Yet 19 a harp is a poor thing to play in the street. No one could imagine, to 20 hear it, how wonderful it is in an orchestra—in good music—when, 21 for example, there is a pause and suddenly (while you wait for the next 22 sound) arpeggios and long runs thrill over it—and the violins begin 23 again, and all the rest. (CS 228) 24 25 Here we can discern how he begins to measure the qualities of musical 26 sound, one in relation to another. Struck by what he considers the meager 27 sound of the street harpist, Stevens contemplates the diff erence between 28 what he hears and what he knows to be possible. Although he states that 29 “No one could imagine” the sound of a harp in an orchestra, once he notes 30 his response to the harpist, he proceeds to describe exactly what that won- 31 derful sound might be. 32 In another letter that same summer, Stevens again contemplates the rela- 33 tion between musical sounds when he writes about a “little cricket that 34 sang in the rain,” which he hears from his lodgings, and considers the 35 relation between the sounds of the cricket and instrumental music. In this 36 meditation, he ponders a hierarchy of sound (as he will in his poems), fi rst 37 comparing the cricket’s sounds to the mechanical sound of a clock, then to 38 a composition by Alexander Glazunov: 39 40 Under my window, the little cricket that sang in the rain—so long ago, it 41 seems—chirps, chirps, chirps—like—well, like an old clock. (CS 264) 42 43 A fuller meditation on the sounds of the cricket comes a bit later in the letter: 44 45 chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. . . . It reminds me of a Russian 46 symphony I heard a winter or two ago—by Glazounoff , I think. One

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T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 5959 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:371:55:37 PMPM 60 Lisa Goldfarb 1 in the branches sweeping in the rain.” His refl ections on the sounds of the 2 crickets may similarly underlie the imagery in such poems as “Esthétique 3 du Mal,” where “indiff erent crickets chant / Through our indiff erent cri- 4 ses” (CPP 282–83), or may have stimulated the even measure and rhythm 5 of the “crickets by night” in “Things of August,” whose “sounds are long 6 in the living of the ear” (CPP 417). In one letter of an early summer day in 7 1909, his description of the sounds he hears might well comprise the audi- 8 tory images he could later collect for a poem. “A day meant for a country 9 ramble (an old thing—old as the hills—but always a pleasure) has been 10 spent here in my room, at work for fi ve hours on a tangled piece of busi- 11 ness,” he writes to Elsie, “to the accompaniment of thunder, lightning, rain, 12 heat, canary birds, pianos, mandolines, and talking machines. One of the 13 machines has been singing, ‘Oh, you’ll have to sing an Oirish song, if you 14 want to marry me’; and now it is grinding out a bass solo, with a sound like 15 a whale in agony” (L 147).4 To convey to Elsie the feel of the summer day, 16 Stevens details the typically urban cacophony of sounds he hears: the natu- 17 ral sounds of the thunder and rain, the domestic song of canaries, along 18 with the random instrumental and mechanical music and popular vocal 19 tunes he might hear from his window. It is almost as if in this and other 20 early letters, he were beginning to conceive of his modern musical poetics 21 composed in part of such groupings of unlike sounds and musical images— 22 the bird in “On an Old Horn” that “from his ruddy belly blew / A trumpet” 23 (CPP 211), the “Canaries in the morning, orchestras / In the afternoon” 24 that open “Academic Discourse at Havana” (CPP 115), musical combina- 25 tions that express, in “Mozart, 1935,” “the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo, / Its 26 shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic, / Its envious cachinnation” (CPP 107). 27 Stevens’ letters from New York also off er extended refl ections and 28 meditations on music and sound that foreshadow his more abstract poetic 29 music. These meditations suggest that he began refl ecting upon the power 30 of both music and sound, and thinking about an abstract poetic music, long 31 before he composed such poems. That sound, for Stevens, is the agent of 32 transformation is clear from some key early letters, in which he ponders its 33 power to transport us from one time or place to another. One winter night 34 in 1908, Stevens lightheartedly responds to Elsie’s thoughts about the saxo- 35 phone, an instrument popular in the new music of the time. “It was pleas- 36 ant,” he writes, “to have you speak of the saxophone. It whisks one away 37 to a kind of German or, rather, Dutch Arcadia. I have no doubt that Dutch 38 satyrs play the saxophone” (CS 104). Of church bells, he writes that same 39 winter: “There is a church in the neighborhood that has the grace to ring its 40 bell on Sundays. It has just stopped. It is so pleasant to hear bells on Sunday 41 morning. By long usage, we have become accustomed to bells turning this 42 ordinary day into a holy one” (CS 123). In both letters, Stevens suggests 43 that musical sound transports us from reality into an imaginative realm: in 44 one case, into a playful and mythical world; in the other, from an ordinary 45 day into a spiritual one. In one important letter, in which he refl ects on the 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6060 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:371:55:37 PMPM “The Whispering of Innumerable Responsive Spirits” 61 performance of Schubert’s Unfi nished Symphony he had attended the night 1 before, Stevens off ers a more extended, almost Proustian meditation on 2 music’s transformative power of sparking memory:5 3 4 I have learned of another little thing that seems to be suited for the 5 refi ning ear—acute for melody fi rst of all.—Only a half-hour ago I 6 was downstairs picking out snatches of last evening’s Schubert. Do- 7 do-dodódodí!—It is ten years since I heard it. An echo ten years old— 8 surely the world is a magical place. But think of music a hundred years 9 old.—There is a diff erence between the thought of motion long ago 10 and the thought of sound long ago. I think of the siege of Rome, say, 11 simply as motion, without sound—take an ancient siege. The trenches 12 are dug, the guns are brought up, the regiments manouvre [sic], the 13 walls tumble. It is all visionary. The fi ring of the guns is merely a fl ash 14 of color—a fl ick in the mind. The regiments are as quiet as leaves in 15 the wind. The walls fall down mutely as all things happen in times far 16 off .—But let sound enter—the hum of the men, the roar of the guns, 17 the thunder of collapsing walls. The scene has its shock.—So that ten- 18 year-old do-re-mi-fa reanimates—and by closing the eyes—it is ten 19 years ago. (CS 122–23) 20 21 Stevens refl ec ts on t he u n ique proper t y of sou nd t hat allows us i n t he moment 22 of its sounding to move from the present to a diff erent temporal realm. He 23 recounts two separate occasions of his hearing the Schubert symphony: 24 once, the night before, which he attempts to relive at the piano (“picking 25 out snatches of last evening”), and again while still in Cambridge, “An echo 26 ten years old,” when he “saw Professor Norton listening to it in the college 27 theatre” (CS 120). Marveling at the ways that both the symphony and his 28 rough attempts to sound out one of its melodies at the keyboard transport 29 him to the last time he heard the Schubert piece, he then ponders the almost 30 magical diff erence that sound and music make. The diff erence, Stevens sug- 31 gests, is between a scene we may recollect in the mind’s eye (“a fl ash of 32 color—a fl ick in the mind”) and the physical “shock” of sudden presence 33 that sound brings.6 Indeed, the musical scale, Stevens writes, transports us 34 from one time and place to another—into a place of the imagination or the 35 substance of memory: “that ten-year-old do-re-mi-fa reanimates—and by 36 closing the eyes—it is ten years ago.” As he will write many years later of 37 “The sound of that slick sonata” in “Certain Phenomena of Sound,” such 38 a performance “makes music seem / To be a nature, a place in which itself 39 / Is that which produces everything else” (CPP 256). 40 Later in the same year, Stevens again refl ects on the power of music to 41 awaken memory in another long letter to Elsie. As James Longenbach has 42 discovered, in this letter, Stevens paraphrases at length from the essay he 43 had been reading of Paul Elmer More, to whom Stevens refers as “one of 44 the most discriminating, learned and soundest critics of his day” (L 133).7 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6161 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:371:55:37 PMPM 62 Lisa Goldfarb 1 Whether Stevens’ ideas of music and memory derive from his reading of 2 More is less important, for the purposes of this chapter, than the way his 3 meditation looks ahead to his own more abstract fi gurations of music: 4 5 A little phantasy to beguile you—a bit of patch-work—and about 6 music. . . . What is the mysterious eff ect of music, the vague eff ect we 7 feel when we hear music, without ever defi ning it? . . [sic] It is consid- 8 ered that music, stirring something within us, stirs the Memory. I do 9 not mean our personal Memory—the memory of our twenty years and 10 more—but our inherited Memory, the Memory we have derived from 11 those who lived before us. . . . While I had always known of this infi - 12 nite extension of personality, nothing has ever made it so striking as 13 this application of Music to it. . . . So that, after all, those long chords 14 on the harp, always so inexplicably sweet to me, vibrate on more than 15 the “sensual ear”—vibrate on the unknown. . . . And what one listens 16 to at a concert, if one knew it, is not only the harmony of sounds, but 17 the whispering of innumerable responsive spirits within one, momen- 18 tarily revived, that stir like the invisible motions of the mind wavering 19 between dreams and sleep: that does not realize the fl itting forms that 20 are its shadowy substance. (L 136) 21 22 On the one hand, More reinforces Stevens’ understanding that music “stirs” 23 the “personal Memory,” as the Schubert symphony awakened his own experi- 24 ence in Cambridge. On the other, he kindles Stevens’ imagination by suggest- 25 ing that music also elicits “our inherited Memory” which “we have derived 26 from those who lived before us.” Importantly, music for Stevens, as for More, 27 gives us the means to probe beyond the limits of what we know and have 28 experienced. Most striking in the language of the above passage is the way 29 Stevens describes music as reaching into an intangible realm. His language 30 is marked by words that look forward to the enigmatic role music and the 31 musical-poetic analogy play in his work: he lightheartedly refers to his own 32 words as “A little phantasy” for Elsie that will “beguile” her; he longs to 33 understand music’s “mysterious eff ect,” and indicates that it lies beyond defi - 34 nition. The voice of music comprises an “infi nite extension of personality,” 35 and its allure transcends the rational, for it is “inexplicably sweet.” Almost in 36 expectation of his description of poetry as an “unalterable vibration” (CPP 37 662) more than thirty years later in his essay “The Noble Rider and the 38 Sound of Words,” in the above passage Stevens describes music as that which 39 “vibrate[s] on more than the ‘sensual ear’—vibrate[s] on the unknown.” 40 Music, as the poetic music Stevens will himself write, evokes what we intuit 41 but cannot fi rmly know: it is “whispering,” “invisible,” “shadowy.” 42 Indeed, sometimes the phrasing of these early letters evokes poetic lines 43 we will see take shape many years later. In earlier poems, Stevens seems to 44 gesture toward “a music” that “vibrate[s] on more than the ‘sensual ear’”: 45 in “Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds,” Stevens compares the “pomps 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6262 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:371:55:37 PMPM “The Whispering of Innumerable Responsive Spirits” 63 / Of speech” to “music so profound / They seem an exaltation without 1 sound” (CPP 44). In “Peter Quince at the Clavier,” in what are among Ste- 2 vens’ most celebrated lines, his speaker proclaims that his “fi ngers” on the 3 piano keys—and their resultant sound—spur changes that transform those 4 soundings into feeling and thinking: “Music is feeling, then, not sound,” 5 and, to the “object” of his desire—“Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, 6 / Is music” (CPP 72). Stevens’ later poems do more than gesture toward 7 the kind of “whispering,” “invisible,” and “shadowy” music that defi es 8 precise defi nition; in poem after poem, he uses musical language to reach 9 toward the “infi nite extension of personality” and “the unknown” (L 136) 10 for which he credits music so many years earlier. In “Two Tales of Liadoff ,” 11 Stevens’ speaker imagines the composer playing “epi-tones” on the piano 12 after his death, and, in the second canto, the music allows Liadoff (today 13 spelled Lyadov or Liadov) a rebirth: “like a violent pulse in the cloud itself,” 14 he “no longer remained a ghost / And, being straw, turned green, lived 15 backward, shared / The fantastic fortune of fantastic blood” (CPP 303). It 16 is as if Stevens were poeticizing his earlier refl ections in the way Liadoff ’s 17 music, like the Schubert symphony so many years before, breaks the barrier 18 between past and present (and between life and death), for Liadoff “turned 19 green” and “lived backward.” Sometimes, too, Stevens ponders the relation 20 between the physical sounds we hear—natural or musical—and the purer 21 or “inaccessible” intuitive sense, as in “Montrachet-le-Jardin” (CPP 237) 22 when the speaker takes a moment near the poem’s end to express his wish 23 to reach the unreachable: 24 25 Item: The cocks crow and the birds cry and 26 The sun expands, like a repetition on 27 One string, an absolute, not varying 28 29 Toward an inaccessible, pure sound. (CPP 237) 30 31 In poems of Stevens’ mature years, he uses music as a fi gure for the kind 32 of knowledge—irrational or unconscious—that we feel but cannot fully 33 grasp. He creates a poetic language that approximates what he calls in his 34 1909 letter to Elsie the “mysterious eff ect of music, the vague eff ect we feel 35 when we hear music, without ever defi ning it” (L 136). In “Description 36 Without Place,” Stevens gives perfect voice to an unconscious or irrational 37 kind of transformative knowledge that music brings and that he had begun 38 to conceive in New York City so many years before: 39 40 There might be, too, a change immenser than 41 A poet’s metaphors in which being would 42 43 Come true, a point in the fire of music where 44 Dazzle yields to a clarity and we observe, 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6363 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:371:55:37 PMPM 64 Lisa Goldfarb 1 And observing is completing and we are content, 2 In a world that shrinks to an immediate whole, 3 4 That we do not need to understand, complete 5 Without secret arrangements of it in the mind. (CPP 298) 6 7 Stevens stresses the tentative and “shadowy” unconscious sense of such 8 knowledge in his use of the conditional tense: “There might be,” “in which 9 being would / Come true.” Yet, he modulates his tense from conditional to 10 present, as one stanza moves into the next, as the composer would modulate 11 his keys, so as to emphasize the “shock” of recognition and sudden presence 12 that music brings. “[T]he fi re of music,” for Stevens, both as a young man in 13 New York and as a mature poet, is “inexplicably sweet” (L 136) and “yields” 14 a knowledge we can feel but “That we do not need to understand.” 15 16 17 III 18 19 When Stevens moved from New York to Hartford, he might have moved 20 from one region to another, yet there was one aspect of his physical life in 21 New York that he took with him, and that was his habit of walking. Though 22 he writes, the year before his death, that he has “no set way of working,” 23 Stevens nevertheless admits, “A great deal of my poetry has been written 24 while I have been out walking. Walking helps me to concentrate and I sup- 25 pose that, somehow or other, my own movement gets into the movement 26 of the poems” (L 844).8 That Stevens composed poems on his walks to and 27 from the offi ce is now legendary. Bart Eeckhout, in a forthcoming essay on 28 “Stevens’ Modernist Melodies,” relates “the dominant pace of his verse to 29 the ‘stately, measured’ manner of the ‘slow stride’ for which he was noted 30 by his neighbors in Hartford.’” Of the many critics who have addressed the 31 topic, Roger Gilbert has off ered the most detailed study of Stevens’ work in 32 relation to what he calls the American “walk poem.” In his study of “An 33 Ordinary Evening in New Haven,” Gilbert maintains that Stevens brings 34 the genre to a new level, for, he writes, “the walk provides not a narrative 35 armature but an occasion, an experiential node out of which the poem’s 36 ‘never-ending meditation fl ows.’” He insists that “No American poem has 37 entered more deeply into the kinetics of experience” (106). My contention 38 is that Stevens’ walking not only informs the particular composition of “An 39 Ordinary Evening in New Haven,” but extends to his entire poetic corpus. 40 I would like to suggest, then, in the last segment of this chapter, that in 41 the longer history of Stevens’ New York walking we fi nd the “experiential 42 node” that informs his poetry more broadly. Stevens may have ambled 43 through the Pennsylvania countryside in his youth, but it was in New 44 York that he cultivated the lifelong pattern of walking, thinking, and 45 writing that helped him to create the poetic structures that generate the 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6464 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:371:55:37 PMPM “The Whispering of Innumerable Responsive Spirits” 65 rhythm and thus the “movement of the poems” (L 844). It may well be, 1 then, that the most signifi cant, if perhaps the most subtle and indirect, 2 infl uence of Stevens’ New York years on his poetry is to be found in the 3 variation forms in which he composed some of his greatest work, from 4 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” to his later longer meditative 5 sequences. In his variation poems, the fl exibility and open-ended quality 6 of the structure enables Stevens to express one of his most enduring poetic 7 “subjects”—“the act of the mind” (CPP 219) as it meets the motion of 8 the world, and those resultant “interrelations” and “interactions” (CPP 9 903) that “project themselves endlessly” (L 710). Often the early letters 10 in which Stevens details his responses to the sights and sounds of the city 11 have the texture and feel of poems-in-the-making, and look ahead to his 12 great poems of musical-poetic variation.9 13 Soon after he arrived in New York, Stevens wrote in his journal, “A city 14 is a splendid place for thinking” (L 42), and in these early entries and let- 15 ters, we can see both the great geographical reach of his walks and how his 16 walking stimulated his “thinking.” Routes within the city included walks 17 from lower Manhattan to and through Central Park, “a midsummer tour 18 . . . from the offi ce up to 91st Street and back again to the ferry” (L 83), 19 a trip up to the Botanical Garden to see exotic birds, after which he trav- 20 eled to “Van Cortlandt and then to Spuyten Duyvill” (L 184). Some of his 21 lengthier refl ective walks would begin downtown, but reach into surround- 22 ing counties. One such walk in 1902 occasioned a journal entry in which 23 he traces his travels north of Manhattan, across the river, and then details 24 his discovery of a refuge that he fi nds along the Palisades (L 60). That these 25 walks in and beyond New York were important to Stevens and etched into 26 his memory is clear from a late letter of April of 1955, written just months 27 before his death. Stevens writes to a young Korean correspondent, Peter 28 H. Lee, and, as he compares his walking in old age to his walking in his 29 youth, he looks back at his New York walks: “With all, there is constantly 30 a good deal of walking,” he writes, “even though, nowadays, it is only a 31 small fraction of what I used to do, when I could walk up Broadway from 32 Chambers Street to Grace Church in a shade under eighteen minutes and 33 thought nothing at all of walking up the Palisades on Sundays to Nyack 34 and sometimes a long way beyond” (L 845). 35 Most importantly, the journals and letters in which Stevens describes his 36 walks reveal the kind of thinking that he did. Wherever Stevens walked, he 37 registered the features of his physical environment and their corresponding 38 eff ects—the interaction between the physical “reality” he encountered and 39 his “imagination.” We often note that in Stevens’ poems—and the longer 40 variation poems, in particular—the cantos do not culminate in a distinct 41 end-point, but, instead, off er variable versions of an ever-moving reality 42 (sea and sky in “Sea Surface Full of Clouds,” summer in “Credences of 43 Summer” or “Variations on a Summer Day,” etc.). As if he were practic- 44 ing to compose such poems in his journals and letters, Stevens notes the 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6565 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:381:55:38 PMPM 66 Lisa Goldfarb 1 city and landscape of his walks, and lingers on their interior eff ect. Of one 2 walk, he writes: “West Street, along the North River, is the most interesting 3 street in the whole city to me. I like to walk up and down and see the steve- 4 dores and longshoremen lounging about in the sun” (L 47). What he fi nds 5 compelling about this street are not the particulars of the scene, but rather 6 the motion that enlivens it: “It is the only one that leaves the memory full 7 of pictures, of color and movement” (L 47). Stevens dwells on the “imagi- 8 native eff ect” of the succession of pictures and what lasts in the memory 9 is their “movement.” He also often expresses delight in the act of walking. 10 Of one long hike—over seventeen miles through towns of New Jersey—he 11 writes, “I love to walk along with a slight wind playing in the trees about 12 me and think over a thousand and one odds and ends” (L 58). His walks, 13 like his poetic meditations in later years, are not the means to destinations, 14 but rather constitute an activity that allows for prismatic refl ection. It is 15 perhaps not surprising that in an advisory letter to Elsie he writes, “Walk- 16 ing becomes an ecstasy, you will fi nd” (CS 159). We might imagine the 17 “ecstasy” to which he refers as a harbinger of the poetic inspiration that 18 Stevens took from his walks. 19 When Stevens refl ects on his walks in his journals, he often closely charts 20 his own movement—the pace of his footsteps and the way his emotions 21 change in relation to the changing scene—as if he were readying himself 22 to write his variation poems in which the motion of both mind and world 23 become the essential subject—the “description without place” (CPP 300). 24 In one journal entry, in which he describes an evening walk to and through 25 Central Park, we can see how attentively he discovers its terrain. The fol- 26 lowing entry approximates the ambulatory energy that propels his poems, 27 and the language looks forward to their sensory texture: 28 29 This afternoon I took a walk from the house up to Central Park and 30 through it. I got to the Park after sunset, although the Western horizon 31 was still bright with its cold yellow. The drives were white with snow 32 and at times the air was quite full of the cheering sound of sleigh-bells. 33 I hurried through the Mall or Grand Alley or whatever it is; went down 34 those mighty stairs to the fountain; followed a path around the lake, 35 and came to a tower surrounded with a sort of parapet. The park was 36 deserted yet I felt royal in my empty palace. A dozen or more stars 37 were shining. Leaving the tower and parapets I wandered about in a 38 maze . . . and I stumbled about over little bridges that creaked under 39 my step, up hills, and through trees. An owl hooted. I stopped and 40 suddenly felt the mysterious spirit of nature—a very mysterious spirit, 41 one I thought never to have met with again. I breathed in the air and 42 shook off the lethargy that has controlled me for so long a time. But my 43 Ariel-owl stopped hooting + the spirit slipped away and left me looking 44 with amusement at the extremely unmysterious and not at all spiritual 45 hotels and apartment houses that were lined up like elegant factories on 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6666 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:381:55:38 PMPM “The Whispering of Innumerable Responsive Spirits” 67 the West side of the Park. I crossed to Eighth-ave., and in a short time 1 returned to the house. (L 50) 2 3 As if he were “trying out” how to animate his description, Stevens uses a 4 series of verbs that approximates his lively movement through the park. He 5 writes matter-of-factly of his approach—“I took a walk from the house,” 6 “I got to the Park after sunset”—but once he discovers its winding paths 7 and byways, his verbs become more excited, and in quick succession he 8 explains: “I hurried,” “went down,” “followed a path . . . and came to a 9 tower,” “I wandered,” “stumbled,” “stopped,” and “breathed in the air.” 10 All along the way, he provides a series of vivid images that describes what he 11 sees and hears—sunset “still bright with its cold yellow,” “drives . . . white 12 with snow,” “the cheering sound of sleigh-bells,” a “tower and parapets,” 13 “little bridges that creaked,” a hooting owl. Stevens also marks his own 14 imaginative and emotional route through the landscape of Central Park: 15 “I felt royal in my empty palace,” he writes, and when he hears the owl, 16 he “stopped and suddenly felt the mysterious spirit of nature.” It is worth 17 mentioning, too, that it is when the owl stops hooting that the enchantment 18 comes to an end. Strikingly, he fi nds the end of mystery in the “not at all 19 spiritual hotels and apartment houses that were lined up like elegant fac- 20 tories on the West side of the Park.” It is, at least in part, the bold contrast 21 he fi nds between the streets and the park’s paths, the diff erence between 22 the rural and the urban scenes, that stimulates Stevens’ imaginative vision. 23 Such bold contrasts, too, impel the movement of Stevens’ poems, particu- 24 larly in longer poetic and variation sequences. 25 Stevens, however, is famously a poet of the country, and it is rare to fi nd 26 urban images in his verse. Most frequently, he takes as his subject the pat- 27 terns and rhythms of nature in his poems of variation: the blackbird against 28 the snowy mountains spurs the movement of “Thirteen Ways of Looking 29 at a Blackbird”; the full roses begin the contemplations of “Credences of 30 Summer”; fl ashes of the northern lights show the way for pondering early 31 autumn in “The Auroras of Autumn.” One might wonder, then, how it 32 could be that his wanderings through New York City as a young man might 33 have contributed, more than tangentially, to his development of a form 34 and a poetic corpus that seems so resolutely to resist images of the city. 35 Yet, what is often striking about Stevens’ journal entries is that his passion 36 for traversing the city and exploring the more rural areas on its outskirts 37 provokes the most extended meditations, as if the sharp diff erence in the 38 environments he experiences nourishes his imagination. 39 To close, I would like to turn to a journal entry in which Stevens chroni- 40 cles one of his very longest walks through the city, a walk extending all the 41 way to West Point. He begins his walk before dawn and ends it at evening. 42 He describes “The Fifth Avenue hotel . . . covered with a strange astral 43 light,” details the changes in the skyscape, and marks his own progress: 44 “I walked without stopping longer than a minute or two at a time” (L 71). 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 6767 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:381:55:38 PMPM 68 Lisa Goldfarb 1 Along the Palisades, he takes careful note of what he passes and what he 2 sees and hears—the birds and their songs, dogs, and especially the blue of 3 the sky—and what he senses stimulates beautiful poetic prose: “What a 4 thing blue is,” he exclaims, “It seems as if it were the dusk of the lost Pleia- 5 des, as if it were a twilight where any moment the fairies might light their 6 lamps” (L 72). Yet, even more important to our subject than the beauty 7 of his prose, or the clearly still romantic poetic images of “fairies” the sky 8 inspires, are Stevens’ thoughts upon his return: 9 10 One word more. I thought, on the train, how utterly we have forsaken 11 the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but 12 few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. . . . Man is 13 an aff air of cities. His gardens + orchards + fi elds are mere scrapings. 14 Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant 15 from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless. (L 73) 16 17 For Stevens, it is his life in New York City—and the contrast between 18 what lies within its boundaries and reaches beyond—that leads him to 19 identify his greatest subject: the Earth, “its physical hugeness, its rough 20 enormity.” As early journals and letters demonstrate, Stevens’ attention to 21 the sounds of the city, his refl ections on the music he hears, and his walks 22 within and outside its borders enable him to see and feel the “giant” of 23 nature. Yet, as the journals and letters show, it is the urban “giant” of New 24 York City that presents to him that great subject and serves to magnify 25 the gigantic quality of the counterposed Earth. His musical aesthetic—his 26 unusual combination of auditory and musical images, the heterogeneous 27 sound of his words, the great contrastive themes that mark his poems, the 28 distinctive walking rhythms that drive his work in longer poetic sequences, 29 and the variation forms and open-ended musical structures of some of his 30 greatest poems—derives, at least in part, from his years in and continuous 31 relationship to the city. Stevens may not include many images of New York 32 City in his poems, yet, if we listen closely to the medley of sounds, and 33 pay close attention to the sonorous meditations that rise from his musical- 34 poetic structures, we can detect and feel the full measure and impact upon 35 Stevens of his New York years. 36 37 38 NOTES 39 40 1. Richardson quotes Roger Shields from “an essay printed on the record jacket of 41 Americana, Vol. IV, The Age of Ragtime ” 42 (542). Shields writes: “A lilting and stimulating music once swept across 43 America with an unprecedented intensity and universality of appeal. Ragtime, 44 THE popular craze from around 1897–1917, is special because it is the fi rst distinctive American music. New and shocking, yet thoroughly enchanting to 45 the general public, ragtime was also quickly embraced and respected abroad: 46

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Debussy, Stravinsky, Satie, Milhaud, Hindemith, and other European fi gures 1 happily worked with ragtime elements. The serious musical establishment at 2 home, however, embroiled itself in great controversy over this music—some 3 groups even banned playing it! Naturally Charles Ives, the great exception, early vamped and stylized ragtime in many works” (qtd. in Richardson 542–43). 4 2. MacLeod considers Stevens’ involvement with the “Art Crowd” in his book 5 Wallace Stevens and Company, and details his relationship with Sanborn 6 and Van Vechten, in part to demonstrate the role of music in Stevens’ New 7 York life. In Chapter 4, he addresses Stevens’ musical infl uences and turns 8 his attention to Stevens’ high regard for Eugène Emmanuel Lemercier, who, MacLeod informs us, “continually writes about music”; of Lemercier’s valu- 9 ation of music, and its impact on Stevens, MacLeod further explains, “This 10 iteration of the consolatory powers of music surely struck a sympathetic 11 chord in the music-lover Stevens” (58). 12 3. In The Contemplated Spouse, Blount provides detailed information about 13 each of these musical plays that Stevens refers to in his letters to Elsie, includ- ing the dates of the performances as well as the playwrights and composers. 14 4. Blount includes the same letter (CS 229), and notes that “This was the hit 15 song of Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies of 1908, sung by Nora Bayes (1880–1928), 16 a popular vaudeville singer and comedienne” (CS 237). 17 5. In his recent collection of essays on music and poetry, Marshall Brown dis- 18 cusses the abstract and “unfi xable” power of music (36) that Stevens also grapples with in these letters of 1909. Brown, like many others before him, 19 turns to Proust to locate the aptest description of that power of music. The 20 passage he quotes dovetails with Stevens’ own insights here. Brown quotes 21 Proust’s description of the narrator’s response to Vinteuil’s septet: “‘This 22 music seemed to me something truer than all known books. At moments I 23 thought that this was due to the fact that, what we feel about life not being felt in the form of ideas, its literary, that is to say, intellectual, expression 24 describes it, explains it, analyzes it, but does not recompose it as does music, 25 in which the sounds seem to follow the very movement of being, to reproduce 26 that extreme inner point of our sensations which is the part that gives us that 27 peculiar exhilaration which we experience from time to time’” (36). 28 6. Stevens poetically returns to the concept of “motion, without sound” (as he imagines it in the siege of Rome) in the opening canto of “Sunday Morn- 29 ing,” written the year before he left New York for Hartford. As the female 30 fi gure there dreams, the images of the “oranges” and “cockatoo” around 31 her become transformed into a silent “procession” (CPP 53) that evokes her 32 “inherited Memory” (L 36)—a memory that carries her back to “silent Pal- 33 estine.” Perhaps Stevens’ earlier refl ections on sound and memory subtly lie behind his lines: 34 She dreams a little, and she feels the dark 35 Encroachment of that old catastrophe, 36 As a calm darkens among water-lights. 37 The pungent oranges and bright, green wings 38 Seem things in some procession of the dead, Winding across wide water, without sound. (CPP 53) 39 7. Longenbach traces Stevens’ thoughts about music and memory to his read- 40 ing of More’s essay on Lafcadio Hearn. Longenbach fi nds in Stevens’ con- 41 cern with music and memory, and in his paraphrasing of More’s ideas, “an 42 uncanny preview of the mind that would produce ‘Sunday Morning’ and 43 ‘Peter Quince at the Clavier’” (103). 8. Paul Valéry analyzes the relationship between walking, music, and poetic 44 composition in his beautiful essay “Fragments des mémoires d’un poème” 45 46

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1 [“Fragments of Memories of a Poem”], which could be instructive in relation 2 to Stevens’ statement that his “own movement gets into the movement of the 3 poems” (L 844). A reminiscence of his own memories of composing his mas- terpiece, “La Jeune Parque” [“The Young Fate”], Valéry’s essay also charac- 4 teristically looks profoundly into a kind of “dissociation of self” that is part 5 of the musical-poetic process. Walking, he maintains, bestows a musical gift 6 on him that he initially fi nds confusing; however, little by little language 7 conforms to the rhythm, which ultimately takes shape as a poem. He marvels 8 and wonders how to think about the unexpected rhythm that arises from his walking. Of the freedom of thought that walking engenders, Valéry writes: 9 “Je crois, d’ailleurs . . . que toute pensée serait impossible si nous étions tout 10 entiers présents à tout instant. Il faut à la pensée une certaine liberté, par 11 abstention d’une partie de nos pouvoirs” (1472–73). [I believe, then . . . that 12 all thought would be impossible if we were always entirely consciously pres- 13 ent at all moments. There is a certain freedom necessary for thought that necessitates a kind of abstention or repression of some of our powers.] 14 9. Alan Filreis, in the Coda to this volume, playfully fi gures forth Stevens’ urban 15 observations from his letters as though they were poems-in-the-making of 16 the New York School. 17 18 19 WORKS CITED 20 21 Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biogra- 22 phy. New York: Random House, 1983. Print. Brown, Marshall. The Tooth That Nibbles at the Soul: Essays on Music and Poetry. 23 Seattle: U of Washington P, 2010. Print. 24 Eeckhout, Bart. “Stevens’ Modernist Melodies.” Texas Studies in Language and 25 Literature, forthcoming. 26 Gilbert, Roger. Walks in the World: Representation and Experience in Modern 27 American Poetry. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991. Print. Keats, John. Keats’s Poetry and Prose. Ed. Jeff rey N. Cox. New York: Norton, 28 2009. Print. 29 Longenbach, James. “‘The Fellowship of Men That Perish’: Wallace Stevens and 30 the First World War.” Wallace Stevens Journal 13.2 (1989): 85–108. Print. 31 MacLeod, Glen G. Wallace Stevens and Company: The Harmonium Years, 1913– 32 1923. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981. Print. Richardson, Joan. Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879–1923. New York: 33 Beech Tree, William Morrow, 1986. Print. 34 Stevens, Wallace. The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to 35 Elsie. Ed. J. Donald Blount. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2006. Print. 36 . Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. 1966. Rpt. Berkeley: U of 37 California P, 1996. Print. . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and 38 Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 39 Valéry, Paul. Oeuvres I. Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1957. Print. 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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Remember the “angel in his cloud / Serenely gazing at the violet abyss” in 1 “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”? He plucks on his strings and suddenly 2 plunges downward on “spredden wings” growing “warm in the motionless 3 motion of his fl ight.” This passage in the third and fi nal section of “Notes” 4 (“It Must Give Pleasure”) is alive with motion, color, and sound. But it also 5 turns upon a question, a provocative question, that initiates an exploration 6 of the relations between three distinct modes of knowing—creative imagi- 7 nation, transcendent experience, and pragmatic existence: 8 9 What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud, 10 Serenely gazing at the violet abyss, 11 Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory, 12 13 Leaps downward through evening’s revelations, and 14 On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space, 15 Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny, 16 17 Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight, 18 Am I that imagine this angel less satisfied? 19 Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air? (CPP 349) 20 21 The meditation on the angel’s fl ight with its lovely enameling of violet, lapis 22 lazuli, and gold, slips from space into time, from Becoming to Being, to 23 the “motionless motion” of the poet’s fl ight. As in the Platonic dialogues 24 so treasured by Stevens, there is no simple “answer” to the question, only 25 further questions. But the persistent questioning proves illuminating: 26 27 Is it he or is it I that experience this? 28 Is it I then that keep saying there is an hour 29 Filled with expressible bliss, in which I have 30 31 No need, am happy, forget need’s golden hand, 32 Am satisfied without solacing majesty, 33 And if there is an hour there is a day, 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7171 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:381:55:38 PMPM 72 Barbara M. Fisher 1 There is a month, a year, there is a time 2 In which majesty is a mirror of the self: 3 I have not but I am and as I am, I am. (CPP 349–50) 4 5 Every so often, like his own angel of the abyss, the poet leaps from his 6 cloud of thinking, or mere Being, or from the practical planning of every- 7 day life, and abandons his philosophical-rational perspective—just for a 8 moment—to be fi lled “with expressible bliss.” Expressible bliss. At such 9 a point, Stevens might break into a jig. Or morph into the jongleur. Or 10 execute a pirouette in an otherwise serious essay, as we shall see. From 11 the earliest to the very late period, in both his poetry and the letters, we 12 can fi nd Stevens dancing on the page. Of course, because this is Stevens, 13 sharp questioning often follows. The angel’s fl ight in “Notes,” for instance, 14 prompts such a question: “Is it he or is it I that experience this?” The 15 ecstatic moment, the twirling waltz, the joking and juggling are all too 16 soon replaced—or perhaps protected—by the questioning mind. 17 Poets, all poets, share with dance and dancers the fundamental concept 18 of the “moving foot.” Whether it results in iambics, dactylic hexameter, 19 or Anglo-Saxon long-line, or in a grand jeté, a soutenu, or a cabriole,1 the 20 moving foot makes possible rhythmic patterns, designed motion, speed, 21 and stillness—as well as subtle or striking variations on a theme. And since 22 the very beginning, the various Muses of poetry and the Muse of dance 23 have been closely entwined with Polyhymnia, their musical sister. 24 Stevens’ contemporaries have treated dance in very diff erent ways. 25 William Carlos Williams’ “The Dance” portrays a group of sweating 26 Flemish peasants at a wedding (its lively motion and earthy spirit refl ect- 27 ing the Brueghel painting); and there is Williams’ somewhat Dionysiac, 28 somewhat narcissistic “Danse Russe,” with the poet posturing “naked, 29 grotesquely” before a mirror at sunrise. In sharp contrast stands T. S. 30 Eliot’s metaphysical location of movement at “the still point of the turn- 31 ing world” in Four Quartets: “there the dance is.” (Eliot’s image inspired 32 Todd Bolender’s ballet, The Still Point, a lyric love story set to a Debussy 33 string quartet, premiered by the New York City Ballet in 1956.) Mari- 34 anne Moore celebrated the fi rst black danseur noble in a major American 35 ballet company as “slim dragonfl y / too rapid for the eye / to cage” in 36 a poem entitled “Arthur Mitchell,” while Langston Hughes shaped his 37 “Dancer” to graphically suggest the fi gure of the electrifying jazz art- 38 ist who “tapped, trucked, boogied, sanded, and jittered” in a Harlem 39 nightclub. Theodore Roethke’s dark, psychoanalytic “My Papa’s Waltz,” 40 fi nally, is charged with a far more negative tension: “The whiskey on your 41 breath / Could make a small boy dizzy; / But I hung on like death: / Such 42 waltzing was not easy.”2 43 But Wallace Stevens, who in the “Adagia” observes that “The body is 44 the great poem” (CPP 908), is unique in his approach. While his contempo- 45 raries make dance or dancers the subject of poems, Stevens does something 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7272 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:381:55:38 PMPM Stevens Dancing 73 else: he dances in his poems; he makes his poems dance. They perform with 1 rhythm, color, timing, repetition, variations—the occasional swerve into 2 French. Indeed, all six of these elements are conjoined in the positioning, 3 the choreography, of Stevens’ extraordinary “Sea Surface Full of Clouds.” 4 First published in 1924 and subsequently among the poems added to the 5 second edition of Harmonium in 1931, “Sea Surface” develops like a clas- 6 sical “theme and variations.” The opening stanzas set forth thematic ele- 7 ments, then variation after variation plays on the same themes in seemingly 8 endless turns: 9 10 In that November off Tehuantepec, 11 The slopping of the sea grew still one night 12 And in the morning summer hued the deck 13 14 And made one think of rosy chocolate 15 And gilt umbrellas. Paradisal green 16 Gave suavity to the perplexed machine 17 18 Of ocean, which like limpid water lay. 19 Who, then, in that ambrosial latitude 20 Out of the light evolved the moving blooms, 21 22 Who, then, evolved the sea-blooms from the clouds 23 Diffusing balm in that Pacific calm? 24 C’était mon enfant, mon bijou, mon âme. (CPP 82–83) 25 26 This poet moves in abstract forms, in romantic forms, in comic modes 27 and acrobatic twists. He can be graceful—or disjointed. He captures the 28 unexpected fi gure in the wings and brings it on stage. Sometimes he dances 29 out two ideas, abstract and opposed theses, just as Balanchine might walk 30 a girl onto the empty stage, immediately joined by a boy who enters from 31 the opposite wing, and has them stand motionless, still, facing one another. 32 We see them in profi le, simply there, before the opening movements of an 33 intricate, sensual pas de deux. This confi guration is exactly what we fi nd at 34 the opening of Stevens’ “Connoisseur of Chaos”: 35 36 A. A violent order is disorder; and 37 B. A great disorder is an order. These 38 Two things are one. (Pages of Illustrations.) (CPP 194) 39 40 The discipline that underlies every movement of a dancer’s trained body is 41 refl ected in Stevens’ logical mode of approach: the opening “ifs” of proposi- 42 tions, the paradoxical “law of inherent opposites, / Of essential unity”—a 43 “law” which evolves into a strangely sensuous condition “as pleasant as 44 port” (CPP 195). In “Connoisseur of Chaos,” sensuality emanates from 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7373 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM 74 Barbara M. Fisher 1 colorful images and teasing suggestions: “If the fl owers of South Africa 2 were bright / On the tables of Connecticut, and they are” (CPP 194–95). 3 Again, just as a choreographer might introduce a sudden, unexpected 4 sequence into the dance—perhaps a shocking tangle or angular intersec- 5 tion of human limbs—a sequence that captures the attention and radically 6 shifts the audience’s focus, so Stevens, in “Connoisseur,” famously inter- 7 rupts his meditation on “the pretty contrast of life and death” with a shock- 8 ing verse line: The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind (CPP 195). 9 And fi nally, to extend the analogy a bit further, just as a dancer might leap 10 in the air to be carried by her partner into the wings, high off the ground, 11 so Stevens ends his choreography with a fl oating image: 12 13 The pensive man . . . He sees that eagle float 14 For which the intricate Alps are a single nest. (CPP 195) 15 16 Although he may at times refer to a specifi c dance (as in “Sad Strains of 17 a Gay Waltz”), Stevens is far more likely to invest images with motion: “It 18 is a theatre fl oating through the clouds, / Itself a cloud, although of misted 19 rock / And mountains running like water, wave on wave, / Through waves 20 of light” (CPP 359). Or, as we shall see, he may insert a delicate ballet 21 sequence into a poem about an ugly equestrian statue. How simply he fi g- 22 ures forth the distinction, in “Mr. Burnshaw and the Statue,” between cre- 23 ative art and political grandstanding! Inevitably, we fi nd “Stevens dancing” 24 in meter and moving verbs, in sudden unexpected turns: a leaping fi recat 25 (CPP 3), plungings of water and the wind (CPP 105), ten thousand tum- 26 blers tumbling down (CPP 325), a woman striding (CPP 106), leaves turn- 27 ing (CPP 7), and clouds fl ying round and round in “The Pleasures of Merely 28 Circulating” (CPP 120). In the House of the Metaphysician, curtains are 29 drifting, the entire fi rmament up-rising and down-falling (CPP 49). And 30 consider that comic turn, that “pirouette” mentioned earlier, not in a poem 31 but in a serious prose essay: diverging from his discourse on imagination 32 in “The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet,” Stevens unaccountably trots 33 out an anecdote about Samuel Taylor Coleridge who, on board a boat to 34 Germany, has been drinking with a party of Danes and ends up “dressed in 35 black, with large shoes and black worsted stockings, dancing on the deck 36 of a Hamburg packet” (CPP 667). 37 Two letters, one written the year before his marriage, the other a year 38 before his death, should illustrate this ongoing tendency, this irresistible 39 Terpsichorean intrusion into the poet’s more sober pursuits. In both cases, 40 we are able to catch something of New York City’s own restless dance, the 41 rushing physical motion on its streets, the performances in its theaters, the 42 constant comings and goings of its business community. Stevens’ letter to 43 Elsie dated December 9, 1908, is part of a virtual cascade of correspon- 44 dence showered upon his intended bride—and this particular missive (it 45 must be admitted) comes across as somewhat giddy. Surely, the letter is 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7474 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM Stevens Dancing 75 aimed at raising Elsie’s spirits as well as his own, because at this point the 1 twenty-nine-year-old Stevens is working as a lawyer at the American Bond- 2 ing Company in New York City while his bride-to-be remains in Pennsyl- 3 vania. He has been drawing up legal papers all day “full of ‘Whereas’ and 4 ‘Now, Therefore,’” he tells her (L 113), and after an exhausting day at the 5 offi ce he’s “too tired to bother with . . . all the blessed commas and excla- 6 mation points” and sees no need to be “prim and prudent and proper” (L 7 114). Then, with a “Hey-ding-a-ding” he launches into the medieval tale of 8 the Jongleur and Our Lady—that is, the tumbler who performs his acrobat- 9 ics before a statue of the Virgin and is graced by the miracle of her smile. 10 (It doesn’t take a genius to grasp that Stevens is the jongleur and Elsie the 11 Blessed Virgin.) At the conclusion of the tale, Stevens performs his own 12 little dance, complete with orchestration: 13 14 And a jig—and a jiggety-jigetty-jig. There is my juggling, my dear— 15 and my somersault. . . . I am tempted now, after having been so wise 16 and so foolish by turns, to go on with my jig, and fi nish to the sound 17 of the fi ddle, the saxophone, and fl ute—with undertones of tinkling 18 glass. . . . 19 20 Toot, 21 Flute! 22 Bellow, 23 Mellow 24 Saxophone! (L 114) 25 26 The second letter, penned forty-six years later in December 1954, is to 27 the widow of his closest friend, Henry Church, and is full of information 28 about family and mutual acquaintances; its tone can hardly be character- 29 ized as “giddy.” Stevens writes with friendly familiarity to Mrs. Church 30 (although respectfully using the formal form of address rather than her 31 fi rst name) that he missed seeing her on a recent visit to New York. He had 32 gone to her house on Park Avenue where the elevator man told him she 33 was out. A simple listing of activities follows. He had “got in several hours 34 at the Public Library looking up a few things,” spent several more hours 35 walking (and, it turns out, shopping) in the city, then caught the six o’clock 36 train back to Hartford—carrying with him “several of Valery’s [sic] books 37 of prose, a box of Turkish fi gs, two Spanish melons, ten persimmons and 38 other things too numerous to mention” (L 854). Stevens, now seventy-four 39 years old, apparently cannot resist the urge to stage a bit of choreography 40 here, a staging distinguished by color, number, and foreign origins. There 41 is no partridge and no pear tree, but with the Twelve Days of Christmas 42 close at hand, the entrance of the Turkish fi gs, immediately followed by two 43 Spanish melons and ten persimmons, rings down a backdrop, as it were, of 44 lords a-leaping, swans a-swimming, and courtly ladies a-dauncing. 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7575 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM 76 Barbara M. Fisher 1 After the parade of the fruits, however, Stevens returns to the subject of 2 Paul Valéry, telling Barbara Church that he has been asked to write an intro- 3 duction to a volume of the French poet and essayist’s collected works. Lisa 4 Goldfarb (whose fi ne-textured essay on the “Erotics of Sound” fi rst drew my 5 attention to this letter) comments on the affi nity that grew between Stevens 6 and the older poet’s writings: “Though Stevens initially hesitated to com- 7 mit himself to the project, he soon found that Valéry’s dialogues gave voice 8 to his own central poetic questions concerning the relation between poetry 9 and physical life” (138).3 One of the two Dialogues that Stevens would soon 10 translate and comment upon was Eupalinos ou l’Architecte [Eupalinos, or 11 the Architect]; the second was L’Â me et l a Dan se, which he styled the “lesser 12 work” (CPP 891). We will return to Dance and the Soul in a moment, but 13 it will be helpful fi rst to train the focus on a much younger Stevens, athletic 14 and physically fi t; then on an older Stevens, married and a father, but still 15 adventurous; and fi nally, on an aging Stevens who, even as a vice president of 16 the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, clearly loved to dance. 17 The young Stevens enjoyed hiking and climbing in the Pennsylvania 18 mountains; after college, his years in New York City as a journalist, then 19 a law student, and a lawyer found him taking forty-mile walks along the 20 New Jersey Palisades. This was a young man, in other words, who wel- 21 comed physical exertion, who moved easily and well, an aspect not gener- 22 ally summoned up in critiques of the poetry. Stevens’ daughter, Holly, once 23 told me that her father was a “strong swimmer” and an expert skater who 24 enjoyed doing fi gure eights; she added that he once saved the life of a man 25 who had skated onto thin ice and was nearly swept under (Fisher 211). 26 Indeed, a man skates right into “Of Modern Poetry,” Stevens’ penetrating 27 meditation on “the relation between poetry and physical life.” The poem’s 28 opening lines posit a search: “The poem of the mind in the act of fi nding / 29 What will suffi ce” (CPP 218). The closing lines reveal the physical nature 30 of what will suffi ce: 31 32 It must 33 Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may 34 Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman 35 Combing. The poem of the act of the mind. (CPP 219) 36 37 Peter Brazeau’s invaluable oral biography of Stevens contains an inter- 38 view with Margaret Powers, wife of James Powers (a business colleague), 39 that not only sheds light on the “Jim” and “Margaret” of “A Fish-Scale 40 Sunrise” (CPP 130) but reveals a surprisingly impetuous aspect of the sup- 41 posedly staid insurance lawyer. Although they had moved to Portland, 42 Oregon, in the early 1930s, the couple returned almost every year to have 43 “fun and frolic”—as Mrs. Powers put it—with Stevens, who would come 44 down from Hartford to meet his friends in New York City (Brazeau 88). 45 At this point Stevens was in his early fi fties. The evening Margaret Pow- 46 ers describes took place shortly before the repeal of Prohibition, and “A

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7676 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM Stevens Dancing 77 Fish-Scale Sunrise” memorializes the occasion. The trio began their eve- 1 ning at “a couple of speakeasies,” enjoyed a dinner with live music, and 2 ended up near midnight on the roof of the posh Waldorf Hotel where they 3 danced for hours. According to Mrs. Powers, this occasion was Stevens’ 4 initiation into ballroom dancing: 5 6 First time he had ever danced, so we danced. He was doggone good; 7 he had a wonderful sense of rhythm. He seemed to enjoy it thoroughly, 8 and that was a new experience for him. (qtd. in Brazeau 90) 9 10 “It was an impetuous evening,” she concludes, “I think we just meant to 11 meet and have cocktails, but we went on and on and on.” The poem’s open- 12 ing verses are in lugubrious accord, for “A Fish-Scale Sunrise” might have 13 been entitled “Ode to a Hangover” right from its opening lines: “Melodi- 14 ous skeletons, for all of last night’s music / Today is today and the dancing 15 is done” (CPP 130). 16 Finally, Brazeau introduces us to a portly gray-haired Stevens in a three- 17 piece suit, just short of seventy, yet still kicking up his heels at a company 18 banquet. The occasion is in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the col- 19 league in charge of the New York branch of the Hartford Accident and 20 Indemnity Company. The setting is the Biltmore Hotel, the year 1950 or 21 1951, and according to the business associate Brazeau interviewed, the 22 action developed as follows: 23 24 We had a large room, a bar, plenty of whiskey. An accordion player 25 played as we ate. Everybody seemed to get pretty liquored up as the 26 evening wore on, and then the dancing began. All men. You never saw 27 such a sight: Jainsen [a fellow vice president] dancing with Wallace Ste- 28 vens, swinging him around the room to a Polish polka. Wallace Stevens 29 would throw up one foot as he would twirl. That’s a side of Stevens 30 nobody knew existed. (Coy Johnston qtd. in Brazeau 17) 31 32 Readers of his poetry, however, might have spotted that side of Stevens 33 already in “The Pleasures of Merely Circulating” (from the 1936 collection 34 Ideas of Order), even though the polka is a really fast dance in 2/2 time and 35 “The Pleasures” moves in a more leisurely 3/4 waltz rhythm: 36 37 The garden flew round with the angel, 38 The angel flew round with the clouds, 39 And the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round 40 And the clouds flew round with the clouds. (CPP 120) 41 42 *** 43 44 Roughly four years after that bacchanalia at the Biltmore, Stevens would be 45 deeply engaged with Valéry’s two dialogues. His prefaces to the Eupalinos 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7777 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM 78 Barbara M. Fisher 1 and L’Âme et la Danse were printed as a single essay, separated only by 2 a subtitle in French: Chose légère, ailée, sacrée [Something light, winged, 3 holy] (CPP 889). It should be underscored at this point that the subtitle 4 derives not from Valéry but from Plato. Stevens opens his preface to what he 5 called the “lesser work”—the second dialogue—by quoting at length from 6 a letter that Valéry sent to Louis Séchan, “Professor of Greek Language 7 and Literature at the University of Montpellier” (CPP 889). This scholar 8 had published a work on classical Greek dance which included a chapter on 9 Valéry’s Dance and the Soul, and the poet’s detailed response comes across 10 as something of an apologia, a defense. “‘I should never have planned to 11 write on the dance, to which I had never given serious thought,’” Valéry 12 wrote to Séchan (CPP 890). “‘Moreover, I considered—and I still do—that 13 Mallarmé had exhausted the subject in so far as it belongs to literature’” 14 (referring to the elder poet’s Divagations). In Stevens’ account, Valéry tells 15 Séchan that, rather than attempting a philosophical treatment, he has in 16 essence choreographed Dance and the Soul: “‘I have tried to make of the 17 Dialogue itself a sort of ballet,’” he writes, “‘of which the Image and the 18 Idea are Coryphaeus [leader of the group] in turn. The abstract and the sen- 19 sible take the lead alternately and unite in the fi nal vertigo.’” Valéry sums 20 up his points (in Stevens’ translation) as follows: 21 22 “I in no degree strove for historic or technical rigor. . . . I freely intro- 23 duced what I needed to maintain my Ballet and vary its fi gures. This 24 extended to the ideas themselves. Here they are means . . . [and] this idea 25 . . . leads on . . . to wicked thoughts about philosophy.” (CPP 890) 26 27 Stevens points out toward the close of his own commentary that “M. 28 Séchan quoted the words of Plato on the poet: chose légère, ailée, sacrée” 29 and adds that these “apply equally to Valéry’s text” (CPP 892). Is it pos- 30 sible there is something quietly ironical about this comment? Stevens does 31 not specify which Platonic dialogue contains the phrase—it is in fact lifted 32 from the Ion—but the context of these words in the original, as we shall 33 see, suggests that Stevens is making a critical point by setting the quotation 34 where it cannot be missed—“fl agging” it, as it were. In what way, then, 35 might these words “apply equally” to Valéry’s text? We will return to this 36 question, but fi rst it will help to have a close look at the “ballet” that the 37 French poet has choreographed. 38 Valéry models both his dialogues on the “Socratic method” of discov- 39 ery through questioning, but he departs radically from Plato’s philosophic 40 point of view. And while the second dialogue has moments of great beauty, 41 even brilliance, a satirical edge surrounds the characters—and the dancers. 42 It seems at times as if Valéry is laughing at the very idea of a search for 43 truth. In Dance and the Soul, the conversation occurs during a banquet, 44 much like the setting of the Symposium. There is eating and drinking, a 45 fl ute player—and a lot of talking. But the thrice-repeated question that 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7878 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM Stevens Dancing 79 supposedly drives the work—“O mes amis, qu’est-ce véritablement que la 1 danse?” (Valéry 48)—or as Stevens translates it, “O my friends, what in 2 truth is dance?” (CPP 891)—is never actually addressed by the speakers. 3 When Valéry’s Socrates puts the question to Phaedrus, for example, the dis- 4 ciple answers, “You might as well ask ‘What is love?’” Valéry underscores 5 the diffi culty of defi ning an abstract concept in Socrates’ response: 6 7 O my friends, I am only asking you what dance is; and each of you 8 appears to know it individually, but to know it quite diff erently [tout à 9 fait séparément]! One of you tells me it is what it is, and reduces it to 10 what we see here with our eyes; and the other maintains stoutly that it 11 represents something, and therefore that it lies not entirely in itself, but 12 chiefl y in us. As for me, my friends, my uncertainty remains intact. (61) 13 14 Socrates confesses that his “mind is troubled with numbers . . . swarming 15 round me” and to Eryximachus exclaims: “What I need now is that power 16 of lightness which is proper to the bee, as it is the sovereign excellence of the 17 dancer” (61). This is the fi rst mention of légèreté in Valéry’s dialogue, and 18 it should be noted that the term has the same cluster of meanings in French 19 as in English: Harrap’s translates the adjective léger/légère (among other 20 meanings) as “fl ighty,” “fi ckle,” and “frivolous,” and defi nes the noun 21 légèreté as “lightness (as of a rising gas); nimbleness and agility (as of a 22 dancer), and lightness of touch,” but also as “levity, fl ightiness, fi ckleness.” 23 It would seem that the very fi rst term in Stevens’ introductory triad—Chose 24 légère, ailée, sacrée—is akin to “winged” and “holy,” but one should keep 25 in mind that légère has two faces. 26 In Dance and the Soul the three characters engaged in conversation— 27 Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and Socrates—represent three perspectives. As 28 a physician, Eryximachus is centered on the body; he is trained in anat- 29 omy and herbal medicine, responds to queries with laconic brevity, and 30 approaches all situations pragmatically. Our fi rst encounter with him, how- 31 ever, fi nds him stuff ed to the gills and woozy, having gluttonously overeaten 32 and imbibed. Furthermore, he has no respect for patient privilege, for he 33 entertains his companions with intimate secrets the dancers in the chorus 34 have told their doctor. Phaedrus, a poet and “voluptuary,” is all imagina- 35 tion and responds to every comment and question with lyrical fl ights of 36 fancy. Socrates invariably disregards his outpourings. Yet Phaedrus is the 37 one who breaks into Socrates’ lengthy disquisition on “my mind” by asking 38 with some acerbity, “Cher Socrate, tu ne peux donc jamais jouir que de 39 toi-même?” [Dear Socrates, can’t you ever take pleasure in anything but 40 yourself?] (Valéry 48–49). In Valéry’s dialogue, Socrates, teacher and phi- 41 losopher, is the moderator of discussion, the thinking mind, but he also pro- 42 liferates paradox and dualities. He presents his burning questions about the 43 nature of dance only when he himself is presented with something he can- 44 not answer. He becomes arrogant and overbearing, as when, for instance, 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 7979 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM 80 Barbara M. Fisher 1 he aims a bombardment of herbal/medicinal knowledge at Eryximachus 2 that clearly dwarfs the doctor’s own. There is a delicious comic edge to 3 these characterizations—we cannot respect any of the personae. Plainly, 4 none of them are meant to represent the search for truth, the enlightening 5 of ignorance, that forms the backbone of Platonic dialogue. 6 Then there is the corps de ballet, “the winged choir of famous danc- 7 ers” as Valéry’s Phaedrus puts it (17), and fi nally the entrance of the pre- 8 mière danseuse, “the astonishing and transcendent dancer, Athikte” (23). 9 The name in Greek means “untouched,” “untainted,” but also “not to be 10 touched, holy, sacred.” In Stevens’ translation, she is “that ardent Athikte, 11 who divides and gathers herself together again, who rises and falls, . . . 12 and who appears to belong to constellations other than ours . . . in an ele- 13 ment comparable to fi re—in a most subtle essence of music and movement, 14 wherein she breathes boundless energy, while she participates with all her 15 being in the pure and immediate violence of extreme felicity” (CPP 892). 16 One wonders if this mute but extraordinary mover is meant to represent the 17 “Soul.” But the appearance of “the thrilling Athikte” (Valéry 31) excites a 18 strange set of comments from the three talkers: 19 20 Socrates: “She is nothing.” [Elle n’est rien.] 21 Phaedrus: “Little bird!” [Petit oiseau!] 22 Socrates: “A thing without a body!” [Chose sans corps!] 23 Eryximachus: “A thing without price!” [Chose sans prix!] (Valéry 31) 24 25 Arlene Croce, The New Yorker’s peerless dance critic, once referred in 26 a review to Stéphane Mallarmé (whose Divagations are cited by Valéry in 27 his letter to Séchan, and in turn by Stevens); her comment, her insight, and 28 her exquisitely clear language cast a light on these paradoxical responses to 29 Athikte in Valéry’s dialogue: 30 31 It was Mallarmé who said that a ballerina is not a woman dancing, 32 because she isn’t a woman and she doesn’t dance. In this he was draw- 33 ing a critical distinction between dancing and the ballet. The ballet, 34 in Mallarmé’s view, is dancing adapted to the theatre; it is “preemi- 35 nently the theatrical form of poetry,” and the ballerina is a metaphor, 36 one who writes poems with her body . . . forever a symbol, never a 37 person. (62)4 38 39 As the dialogue develops, two things grow increasingly clear: 40 41 1) The dancers who were all lauded as divine graces when they are 42 performing are transformed from wondrous beings into something 43 less than human when they are not. The dancers in the chorus are 44 compared to bees and insects, and Athikte’s head to a pine cone. 45 Socrates remarks that Athikte, possessed with the joy of movement, 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8080 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM Stevens Dancing 81 might easily appear a lunatic, “All that is mad and joyous and awful” 1 (Valéry 79). 2 2) The major thesis of the dialogue surfaces: it is not mind over mat- 3 ter but the reverse. Watching Athikte “turning, whirling, revolving,” 4 Socrates states—in direct contrast to a Platonic theory of Ideas—that 5 “A body, by its simple strength and by its own act, is potent enough to 6 alter the nature of things more profoundly than mind was ever able to 7 do in its speculations and in its dreams!” (Valéry 89). Stevens does not 8 choose to argue with this conclusion; instead, he comments thought- 9 fully about the eff ect Valéry’s dialogue has on the reader: 10 11 the constant allusions to the dancers . . . keep the reader of the dialogue 12 in the presence of the dancers. He hears the voices of the speakers and 13 watches the movements of the dancers at one and the same time . . . 14 and as his interest in what is being said grows greater . . . and as his 15 absorption in the spectacle becomes deeper . . . and because of the 16 momentum toward the ultimate climax, he realizes, for the fi rst time, 17 the excitement of a meaning as it is revealed at once in thought and in 18 act. (CPP 892) 19 20 Turning to Plato’s Ion, we fi nd Socrates scolding, deriding, actually 21 humiliating the rhapsodist poet for his swollen sense of importance and 22 for placing his own fl ights of fancy in a realm above rational thought. A 23 single extended passage will show how much Valéry drew from it for his 24 own dialogue (including the bees), but it also lends insight into Stevens’ 25 choice of phrase for his subtitle. For, in the original, the phrase does not 26 describe the qualities of dance, but those of the poet. Here is the passage 27 in the Benjamin Jowett translation that Stevens owned from the time he 28 was just out of college. Plato’s Socrates is gaining speed in the process of 29 puncturing the poet’s ego, repeatedly telling Ion that poets are out of their 30 minds when inspired: 31 32 For all good poets [he tells Ion], epic as well as lyric, compose their 33 beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and pos- 34 sessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in 35 their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when 36 they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the 37 power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bac- 38 chic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are 39 under the infl uence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right 40 mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same . . . for they tell us 41 that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the 42 gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way 43 from fl ower to fl ower. . . . For the poet is a light and winged and holy 44 thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8181 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM 82 Barbara M. Fisher 1 is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him; when he has not 2 attained to this state, he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. 3 (298, emphasis added) 4 5 Plato excoriates the rhapsodist for mindlessness just as Valéry exposes the 6 dumb dancers, and it is just possible that Stevens is suggesting with his sub- 7 title that the French poet’s “lesser” dialogue is guilty of the more frivolous 8 senses of légèreté. On the other hand, Stevens knows as well as anybody the 9 diffi culty of defi ning dance. 10 So what is dance? Is it a gigue, a sarabande, a minuet—a courtly dance? 11 Is it a hopak, a hora, a hula—or a sailor’s hornpipe? A Native American 12 “war dance”? Is it Swan Lake, Concerto Barocco, or Billy Elliot: The 13 Musical? Is it circling the maypole or an Irish jig? How about belly danc- 14 ing? Ragtime? Jazz? The tango? Does it include slow-motion Japanese Noh 15 dance? Or Dionysiac romping in the street during Mardi Gras? What about 16 MIT’s “Tech Squares” (a square-dance group for nerds, distinguished by 17 mathematically complex formations), or television’s latest variety show: 18 “So You Think You Can DANCE?” 19 John Milton summons Laughter and sweet Liberty to “Com, and trip 20 it as ye go / On the light fantastick toe,” in “L’Allegro,” so that he may 21 live with both “In unreproved pleasures free” (Complete Poetry 107). His 22 honored predecessor, the “sage and serious Poet Spenser,” as Milton puts it 23 (Complete Prose 516), envisioned “An hundred naked maidens lilly white, 24 / All raunged in a ring, and dauncing with delight” in The Faerie Queene 25 (Spenser 642). We have Wallace Stevens’ own ring of men orgiastically cel- 26 ebrating the sun—“Naked among them, like a savage source”—in “Sunday 27 Morning” (CPP 56). And, just to complicate the problem, there is Wil- 28 liam Butler Yeats’s unanswerable question in “Among School Children”: 29 “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, / How can we know the 30 dancer from the dance?” (214). Is the dance/dancer a Taglioni, a Nijinsky, 31 a Pavlova, an Alonso, a Baryshnikov, a Martha Graham or Twyla Tharp? 32 A rap artist? No, it’s got to be Fred Astaire! Solo dance, ballroom dance, 33 round dance, square dance, ritual dance, down-and-dirty dance. One may 34 as well ask with Valéry’s Phaedrus: “What is love?” or “What is poetry?” 35 In Harmonium, Stevens dances with the children in “Life Is Motion”: 36 37 In Oklahoma, 38 Bonnie and Josie, 39 Dressed in calico, 40 Danced around a stump. 41 They cried, 42 “Ohoyaho, 43 Ohoo” . . . 44 Celebrating the marriage 45 Of flesh and air. (CPP 65) 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8282 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM Stevens Dancing 83 Finally, the poet contemplates a group of equine statues in “Owl’s Clo- 1 ver,” marble horses “Ugly as an idea, not beautiful”—but also calls up an 2 echo of the transcendent angel, his necessary angel, who seems to appear 3 and disappear throughout his verse: 4 5 They are horses as they were in the sculptor’s mind. 6 They might be sugar or paste or citron-skin 7 Made by a cook that never rode the back 8 Of his angel through the skies. (CPP 570) 9 10 To the inarticulate “Clumped carvings” of a “foppish” sculptor (CPP 568, 11 570), Stevens opposes the beauty and elegance of all natural moving things: 12 13 Come, all celestial paramours, 14 Whether in-dwelling haughty clouds, frigid 15 And crisply musical, or holy caverns temple-toned, 16 Entwine your arms and moving to and fro, 17 Now like a ballet infantine in awkward steps, 18 Chant sibilant requiems for this effigy. 19 ...... 20 Then, while the music makes you, make, yourselves, 21 Long autumn sheens and pittering sounds like sounds 22 On pattering leaves and suddenly with lights, 23 Astral and Shelleyan, diffuse new day . . . (CPP 571) 24 25 26 NOTES 27 28 1. See Schorer, Balanchine Pointework. This is a precise and readable introduc- 29 tion to the defi nition and spelling of ballet terms. Well-placed photographs 30 clearly illustrate movements and positions (see esp. 24–27, 44). 31 2. References in this paragraph are to Williams, Collected Poems II 58–59 and Collected Poems I 86–87, Eliot 119, Moore 220, Hughes 236, and Roethke 43. 32 3. See also Stevens’ letter to Thomas MacGreevy (L 868). 33 4. The conclusion to Croce’s review (originally published October 14, 1974) 34 clarifi es the comments of both Mallarmé and Valéry: “Ballet is fantasy, true, 35 but even when it is erotic fantasy its transfi gured realism reorders the sensa- 36 tions that fl ow from physical acts, and our perceptions change accordingly. The arabesque is real, the leg is not” (67). 37 38 39 40 WORKS CITED 41 42 Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biogra- phy. New York: Random House, 1983. Print. 43 Croce, Arlene. Writing in the Dark: Dancing in The New Yorker. 2000. Rpt. 44 Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005. Print. 45 46

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1 Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. New York: Harcourt, 2 1971. Print. 3 Fisher, Barbara M. “Recollecting Holly.” Wallace Stevens Journal 16.2 (1992): 211–12. Print. 4 Goldfarb, Lisa. “Erotics of Sound in Wallace Stevens.” Wallace Stevens Journal 5 30.2 (2006): 138–58. Print. 6 Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Vintage, 7 1990. Print. 8 Milton, John. The Complete Poetry of John Milton. Ed. John T. Shawcross. Gar- den City: Anchor, 1971. Print. 9 . Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Vol. II. Ed. Ernest Sirluck. New 10 Haven: Yale UP, 1959. Print. 11 Moore, Marianne. The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. New York: Mac- 12 millan, 1980. Print. 13 Plato. The Dialogues of Plato. Vol. I. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. New York: Random House, 1937. Print. 14 Roethke, Theodore. The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Garden City: 15 Anchor, 1975. Print. 16 Schorer, Suki. Balanchine Pointework. Madison: Society of Dance History Schol- 17 ars, 1995. Print. 18 Spenser, Edmund. The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser. Ed. R. E. Neil Dodge. Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1908. Print. 19 Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. 1966. Rpt. Berke- 20 ley: U of California P, 1996. Print. 21 . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and 22 Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 23 Valéry, Paul. Dance and the Soul. Trans. Dorothy Bussy. London: Lehmann, 1951. Print. 24 Williams, William Carlos. The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. Vol. 25 I: 1909–1939. Ed. A. Walton Litz and Christopher MacGowan. New York: 26 New Directions, 1986. Print. 27 . The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. Vol. II: 1939–1962. Ed. 28 Christopher MacGowan. New York: New Directions, 1988. Print. Yeats, William Butler. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 29 1974. Print. 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8484 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:391:55:39 PMPM 5 The Invisible Skyscraper Stevens and Urban Architecture Bart Eeckhout

I 1 One of the most successful movies of 1923, the year that also saw the 2 publication of Wallace Stevens’ fi rst book of poems, Harmonium, is 3 called Safety Last. A classic in the history of American silent comedy, 4 it survives in the collective imagination especially through the image of 5 Harold Lloyd in a characteristically precarious position. As the fi lm critic 6 Richard Schickel explains, 7 8 no illustrated history of the movies—indeed, of the social history of 9 twentieth-century America—seemed complete without that famous 10 still from Safety Last . . . of Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock, 11 its face itself dangling from the huge timepiece’s mainspring, some 12 twelve stories above a busy downtown street. (qtd. in Jacobs 152) 13 14 The incident with the clock was only one in an extended series of comic con- 15 frontations with a skyscraper as Lloyd tried to scale the building’s façade 16 fl oor by fl oor until he fi nally reached the top, where he could be rewarded 17 with a climactic kiss from his girlfriend. 18 Other antiheroes from the slapstick era, such as Buster Keaton and Lau- 19 rel and Hardy, also loved to climb and defy skyscrapers. Their quixotic 20 endeavors represent the popular side of the early-twentieth-century fasci- 21 nation with the prime material embodiment of the nexus of modernity, 22 capitalism, and urbanization that defi ned the age. When the skyscraper 23 arose as a new building type in the fi nal decades of the nineteenth century, 24 Chicago and New York were still jockeying to take the lead. But the New 25 York into which Stevens moved in 1900 was already beginning to win the 26 contest, certainly quantitatively if perhaps not always aesthetically. Before 27 long, New York City would emerge as the world’s skyscraper capital, to 28 remain so for most of the twentieth century (it no longer is in the twenty- 29 fi rst). Stevens lived and worked in this obsessively, self-assertively skyscrap- 30 ing city until 1916 and witnessed further changes as a regular visitor for 31 four more decades. Thus, he was able to observe fi rsthand the erection of a 32 number of landmark buildings. 33 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8585 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM 86 Bart Eeckhout 1 The most famous early instance was the Fuller, designed by the Chicago 2 architect Daniel H. Burnham and fi nished in 1902. One might legitimately 3 suppose such a building to have interested Stevens not only for the original- 4 ity of its wedgelike shape, its slender lyrical elegance, or its transatlantic 5 mix of American technological industrialism with an architectural language 6 straight out of Paris, but also for its eff ects on the collective imagination— 7 for instance, the metaphoric leap that gave it the immortal nickname of 8 Flatiron. As a young and lonely bachelor, moreover, he might have known 9 how the drafts raised by the building’s exceptional height tended to lift 10 women’s petticoats on the sidewalk, forcing constables to chase away the 11 men who came to peek (Dupré 25). He would have observed also how 12 the building was quickly acquiring iconic status in another artistic form 13 emerging out of the proliferation of technological possibilities: the art of 14 photography. Alfred Stieglitz’s most famous “pictures” of the Flatiron tried 15 to wed images of technological modernity with a pictorialist style inspired 16 by nineteenth-century painting. We know from Bonnie Costello’s chapter 17 earlier in this book that forms of pictorialism exerted a strong appeal on 18 the younger, premodernist Stevens. 19 “It is as if some mighty force were astir beneath the ground, hour by 20 hour,” Harpers Weekly intoned in the year the Flatiron was fi nished, “push- 21 ing up structures that a dozen years ago would have been inconceivable” 22 (qtd. in Burns and Sanders 231). Since Stevens worked briefl y as a reporter 23 for the New York Tribune, he knew all too well how important the inven- 24 tion of the elevator had been in allowing buildings to soar upwards: the 25 headquarters of the Tribune had been among the very fi rst buildings in the 26 city to rise to unusual heights (more than ten fl oors) thanks to the installa- 27 tion of an elevator (Burns and Sanders 231; Burrows and Wallace 943). The 28 marriage of elevator and steel-frame construction would do the rest to open 29 up the gates to the sky. With his initial experience in journalism, moreover, 30 Stevens must have kept close track of the building of the twenty-fi ve-story 31 Italianate New York Times Tower, fi nished a mere two years after the Flat- 32 iron. Like everybody else in the city, he knew that its construction was 33 the reason for changing the name of Long Acre (or Longacre) Square into 34 Times Square. As a theater goer he was able to observe the crucial role the 35 building played in the emergence and booming of what was arguably the 36 city’s fi rst public space, Times Square, and especially of the Broadway the- 37 ater world to which he was to remain attracted for the rest of his life (see 38 Eeckhout 159 and Taylor). 39 Farther downtown, Stevens also saw the sixty Gothic fl oors of the 40 Woolworth Building go up between 1910 and 1913, a tower soon to be 41 dubbed the “Cathedral of Commerce” and much later (by the architec- 42 tural critic Paul Goldberger) “the Mozart of skyscrapers” (qtd. in Dupré 43 28–29). Around the time in 1915 when Stevens published his fi rst major 44 poem, “Sunday Morning”—a text in which the female protagonist feels 45 some “dark / Encroachment” (CPP 53) and the sky is but a “dividing and 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8686 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 87 indiff erent blue” (CPP 54)—the overbearing, forty-story Equitable Build- 1 ing was fi nished, robbing the narrow streets and neighboring buildings 2 in the Wall Street area of so much light that the nation’s fi rst modern 3 building and zoning ordinance was developed and local skyscrapers were 4 forced to shift their typological language to the stepped-back wedding- 5 cake style soon to become emblematic of New York’s tall buildings (think 6 Chrysler and Empire State). These were the years when, in the descrip- 7 tion of the Piranesi of modern-day New York, Hugh Ferriss, “There were 8 banks pretending to be temples, skyscrapers pretending to be cathedrals, 9 and Madison Square offi ce buildings pretending to be Venetian campa- 10 niles—and all were getting gold medals for the pretense” (qtd. in Dupré 11 29). Already the cycles of “Creative Destruction” that to the economist 12 Joseph Schumpeter would come to defi ne the essence of capitalism (qtd. 13 in Page 2) were making themselves felt with a vengeance: although the 14 nineteen-story Gillender Building had just gone up in the year Stevens 15 entered Harvard, in 1897, the value of the real estate on which it sat 16 multiplied so fast that a mere thirteen years later, in 1910, it was torn 17 down again to be replaced by a much taller tower, thus setting a record as 18 the skyscraper with the shortest lifespan in the city’s history (Burns and 19 Sanders 218–19). 20 Within New York-based modernism, the skyscraper in due time came to 21 serve as a central image and source of artistic fascination. In photography, 22 it was everywhere in the works of Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, 23 Wendell MacRae, Berenice Abbott, and André Kertész. In fi lm, it was cel- 24 ebrated tirelessly through the cinematic genre of the city symphony and 25 would go on to build the perfect backdrop to countless stories presented 26 as quintessentially metropolitan. Painters such as Joseph Stella, Georgia 27 O’Keeff e, Diego Rivera, and Charles Sheeler returned to its shape time and 28 again. Stevens’ friend Marcel Duchamp wracked his brain trying to fi nd a 29 way of turning the Woolworth into a readymade (Lütticken 315). And to 30 architects, obviously, the skyscraper was a key instrument in meeting the 31 challenges of their art and devising utopian versions of the future. Upon his 32 visit to Manhattan, the master provocateur of modernism, the Swiss archi- 33 tect Le Corbusier, famously protested that “its skyscrapers are too small” 34 and proposed to demolish them all (qtd. in Koolhaas 235). 35 In poetry, the most spectacular architectural embodiment of moder- 36 nity gradually made its appearance as well. James Weldon Johnson testi- 37 fi ed in “My City” that among those things he would consider “the keenest 38 loss” after his death were Manhattan’s “shining towers” (qtd. in Wolf 30). 39 James Oppenheim wrote a poem about “New York, from a Skyscraper” in 40 which, gazing over “the Deepest City in the World,” “a great joy clutches 41 my throat!” (qtd. in Wolf 38–39). In “From the Woolworth Tower,” Sara 42 Teasdale described the dizzying elevator ride up (qtd. in Wolf 40–42). But 43 the most striking verbal splurge about the Woolworth came from e. e. cum- 44 mings in “at the ferocious phenomenon of 5 o’clock i fi nd myself”: 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8787 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM 88 Bart Eeckhout 1 In the soft midst of the tongue sits the Woolworth 2 building a serene pastile-shaped insipid kinesis or frail 3 swooping lozenge. a ruglike sentience whose papillæ 4 expertly drink the docile perpendicular taste of this 5 squirming cube of undiminished silence, supports 6 while devouring the firm tumult of exquisitely in- 7 secure sharp algebraic music. For the first time in 8 sorting from this vast nonchalant inward walk of vol- 9 ume the flat minute gallop of careful hugeness i am 10 conjugated by the sensual mysticism of entire vertical 11 being, i am skilfully construed by a delicately experi- 12 menting colossus whose irrefutable spiral antics involve 13 me with the soothings of plastic hypnotism . i am 14 accurately parsed by this gorgeous rush of upward 15 lips. . . . (149) 16 17 One might expect Stevens to have participated in this collective artistic 18 appropriation. Materially, the aspiring poet was surrounded every day by 19 these modern towers under construction, and his mixing with the avant- 20 garde circles of the Arensberg group during his later years in the city, his 21 growing interest in the experiments of modern painting, as well as his 22 famous love of roaming visual observation might all lead us to assume a 23 strong attention to his architectural environment in his published writings. 24 He is, after all, a walking poet in the tradition of Walt Whitman (see also 25 the chapter by Lisa Goldfarb). And yet, unlike the work of almost any other 26 major modernist poet who spent time in New York, Stevens’ poetry seems 27 to erase this architectural modernity or consistently turn away from it. In 28 his poems, the phenomenon of the New York skyscraper remains almost 29 entirely invisible. Why and how is this? 30 A combination of factors must have played a role. One fairly obvious part 31 of the answer lies in the primacy of Stevens’ love of nature. The two life- 32 sustaining addictions he arguably developed during his childhood in Penn- 33 sylvania were epic walking trips through the countryside and long reading 34 sessions at home. Growing up in the 1870s through the 1890s, moreover, 35 his view of the world was clearly still steeped in the romantic tradition of 36 especially Wordsworth, Keats, and Emerson—the great masters to whom he 37 would continue to write back as a mature poet (adding other interlocutors 38 along the way). The modern metropolis he discovered as a young man might 39 have been fascinating, full of surprises and possible treats to an aesthete with 40 a Harvard education, but it must have remained in its most extreme forms 41 a somewhat alien spectacle, not in the most fundamental sense a habitat to 42 him. The force that pulled most strongly at the young bachelor in his spare 43 time on Sundays was the countryside across the Hudson River, where he 44 went on his famous solitary rambles along the New Jersey Palisades. 45 To such a fundamentally temperamental aspect should be added one 46 historical and one literary qualifi cation. On the one hand, the modernist

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8888 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 89 celebration of the new metropolitan architecture (or indeed the infl uence 1 of international modernism overall, as Costello reminds us in her chapter) 2 was by no means fully established by the time Stevens and his wife Elsie 3 (who patently disliked big city life) moved to Hartford in 1916. The poems 4 quoted above, for instance, and several others I could have added, largely 5 date from the period after Stevens had moved out of the city. On the other 6 hand, we might note that literary writers, both in poetry and in fi ction, 7 and despite the brief tasting menu provided above, in general seem to have 8 been less attracted to those overbearing architectural behemoths—with 9 their structural-engineering complexity, practical function as offi ce spaces, 10 unmanageable multiplication of narratives, and general semiotic oversat- 11 uration—than to other, more daily mainstays of metropolitan modernity: 12 the city’s transportation systems, its culture of neon lights and mass adver- 13 tisements, the spectacle of window shops and new entertainment venues, 14 the life lived inside tenements and apartments, or those social and psy- 15 chological street-level encounters with crowds and individuals that writ- 16 ers on the whole tend to prefer. To most modern writers at the beginning 17 of the twentieth century, these arrogantly money-driven skyscrapers do 18 not appear to have played the same symbolic and existential role formerly 19 attributed to especially church towers, with their expression of religious 20 aspirations and deeply held personal and collective beliefs. Characteristi- 21 cally, the Brooklyn Bridge exerted a much greater literary appeal as an 22 emblem of metropolitan modernity and of social ideals, even if eulogies of 23 it (by Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and others) 24 were always also metonymically readable as comments on the rising archi- 25 tectural skyline behind it. 26 Still, we do know that Stevens’ work is alert to a great many aspects of 27 the world around him—even if it tends to record experiences obliquely, 28 without the slightest journalistic-documentary drive, and consciously 29 transforms them with his unpredictable imagination. Given the focus of 30 our book, a reconsideration of the ways in which the material aspects of 31 his New York environment appear in his work is in order. In what follows, 32 I want to undertake part of such an analysis. Most of my time will be 33 devoted to Stevens’ journals and letters, which allow us to determine with 34 greater precision how he viewed the architectural environment in which 35 he matured as an artist. In a shorter additional section, I will branch out 36 to identify the dominant architectural typologies to be found in his later 37 poetry, plays, and essays. Finally, I will argue that we can make some of 38 Stevens’ architectural landscapes visible again by engaging in a number of 39 metonymical and metaphorical readings of his work. 40 41 42 II 43 44 Rewind to 1900. When the twenty-year-old Wallace Stevens arrives in 45 New York after his three years at Harvard College, he is not without an 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 8989 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM 90 Bart Eeckhout 1 interest in architectural issues. In the months leading up to his move to 2 New York, he has devoted three editorials in The Harvard Advocate to the 3 so-called fence question—the question of how to fence in Harvard Yard. 4 The architectural fi rm of McKim, Mead, and White, known locally for 5 landmarks such as Boston’s Symphony Hall and increasingly famous for its 6 iconic buildings in New York, won a commission the year before to design 7 the fence that is today still standing. But in early 1900, Charles McKim’s 8 design had not yet been executed and was still meeting with a lot of opposi- 9 tion on campus. 10 Stevens would have none of the second-guessing and defended the design. 11 He called a fence an achievement of “order out of chaos” (CPP 757) and 12 used the unashamedly elitist argument that a fence would restore some of 13 Harvard’s “prestige” by allowing those inside to feel in “an envious posi- 14 tion” with respect to those outside (CPP 758). He was all for the “seclusion 15 . . . of distinct whereabouts, of separateness,” as he called it (CPP 760). 16 The question of social privilege, nevertheless, seemed to preoccupy him 17 less than the aesthetic debate: he protested against a hybrid alternative— 18 which he called an “architectural potpourri” (CPP 759)—that would have 19 consisted of combining a solid wall with open iron work. Instead of such 20 a typical example of turn-of-the-century architectural eclecticism, he pre- 21 ferred an iron fence all the way and wished it to be so pleasant to the eye 22 as to distract from the ugly buildings behind it (CPP 758). The architects’ 23 design met with his approval for being “simple and dignifi ed” (CPP 759). 24 He saw it as the only proposal that was both appropriate and pleasing, 25 with its massive pillars of masonry soon to be overgrown by ivy. Not yet a 26 modernist by a wide margin, Stevens feared one great danger: that the fence 27 would “modernize the Yard” (CPP 759). 28 At Harvard, Stevens got what he wanted, architecturally at least. But 29 in New York he fi nds himself thrown into a new environment he cannot 30 contain and control so well. “All around me,” he writes on June 15, 1900, 31 in his fi rst recorded impressions in his journal, “were tall offi ce buildings 32 closed up for the night. The curtains were drawn and the faces of the build- 33 ings looked hard and cruel and lifeless” (L 38; SP 72). His description 34 refl ects the kind of urban alienation that will become a modernist literary 35 cliché in due time, refracted in various ways from T. S. Eliot in poetry to 36 John Dos Passos in fi ction. 37 Not that Stevens’ fi rst impressions are invariably so negative. Five days 38 later, he jots down his liking for Columbia University’s campus on Morn- 39 ingside Heights: the Low Library, designed by the same Charles McKim 40 of the Harvard Yard fence, is brand new at this point—barely three years 41 old—and Stevens reports on his visit by calling the campus 42 43 a delightful place. The Seth Low library has a great deal of grandeur to 44 it—its approach consists of terraces of granite stairs rising to a domical 45 building with a porch of lofty columns. There are roses and evergreens 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9090 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 91 planted here and there on adjacent terraces. Their scent fi lled the hot, 1 motionless air that hung about the structure. Inside is a huge dome sup- 2 ported by encircling galleries and alcoves. From these, I could hear the 3 song-sparrows singing in the foliage without. (SP 75) 4 5 The description typically evokes the kind of architecture Stevens will con- 6 tinue to be attracted to: the early-twentieth-century Beaux Arts style of the 7 City Beautiful movement that sought to inscribe bourgeois values all over 8 the urban landscape through a classically oriented civic aesthetic—the style 9 we associate with the many landmark constructions by McKim, Mead, and 10 White in New York, those by Burnham in Chicago, and, most permanently, 11 those in the public heart of Washington, D. C. (see Rybczynski 131–48). 12 The description briefl y conjures up this style, yet it also displays an idiom- 13 atic infl ection in Stevens’ attention: his perception is spontaneously directed 14 at the pastoral context of the library. The surrounding fl owers in Stevens’ 15 description turn the library into a perfumed building. This perfuming of 16 architecture will recur several times in his later writings, including depic- 17 tions of his fl ower-fi lled home in Hartford. Like his enchantment over the 18 birdsong that simultaneously surrounds the building with natural music, 19 it already shows Stevens’ preference for dynamic aesthetic sensations that 20 are ephemeral and fl eeting—a preference clearly marking him as more of 21 an heir of the romantic tradition than a budding architectural engineer of 22 the modern future. 23 Thus, it is probably no coincidence that when Stevens will come to 24 write, eighteen years later, a poem called “Architecture,” the descrip- 25 tion there will entirely ignore the opportunity to evoke instances of tech- 26 nological modernity, opting instead for a freewheeling evocation of an 27 imaginary, naturally organic, and ceaselessly fl uid building that seems to 28 be more interested in responding to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s visions in 29 “Kubla Khan” than to processes of technological modernization. And it 30 may be equally signifi cant that Stevens will then go on to denounce the 31 poem’s attempt at materially embodying his aesthetic ambitions: the two- 32 page “Architecture” is one of only three poems in Harmonium he chose 33 not to reprint in the second 1931 edition. 34 If we were to require a concrete anecdotal origin for Stevens’ lack of 35 special aff ection for skyscrapers, we can fi nd it already within his fi rst two 36 weeks in the city. In the same journal entry of June 28, 1900, in which he 37 records the depressing experience of Stephen Crane’s anonymous funeral, 38 he recalls a particularly terrifying moment after scaling the heights of one 39 of the taller buildings in the city. “Yesterday afternoon,” he writes, 40 41 I went up on top of the World building in Park Row to get a look at 42 the city. It had been sultry all day and here and there were masses of 43 shadowy cloud. Suddenly a stroke of lightning struck a fl ag-staff on 44 the building of the Tract Society a short distance off and knocked me 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9191 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM 92 Bart Eeckhout 1 down. I was up again in a minute, however, and did not waste much 2 time getting down into the street. (SP 78) 3 4 This was Stevens’ own Harold Lloyd moment, so to speak, confronting 5 him with the precariousness of climbing skyscrapers. Yet we should not 6 jump to conclusions on the basis of a single anecdote. The incident with the 7 lightning did not apparently scare him away for long. An entry for August 8 3 fi nds him in the restaurant on top of the same Tract Society Building he 9 saw hit by lightning. “23rd fl oor,” he records, obviously impressed with the 10 height, but even more with the natural eff ect it has: “My fi rst—or practically 11 my fi rst sunset of the summer. Everything deliciously pure and calm” (SP 12 83). That fi nal little addition is a telling one if we also recall Wordsworth’s 13 typically romantic eulogy of London in his sonnet “Composed upon West- 14 minster Bridge.” “Earth has not any thing to show more fair,” Wordsworth 15 exulted in this would-be spontaneous overfl ow of powerful feelings, but 16 the rest of the sonnet showed why: because the majestic view of London 17 inspiring him to write the poem occurred on the earliest cusp of day, when 18 the city was reduced to utter silence and calm, and the unpeopled, inactive 19 cityscape “l[ay] / Open unto the fi elds, and to the sky” (317). As a Words- 20 worthian nature lover, Stevens, too, was inclined to appreciate cityscapes 21 insofar as they could heighten and reenergize his primary love of sublime 22 sunrises and sunsets.1 23 A good month into his new life in New York, on July 22, we see the 24 young Stevens trying to defi ne to himself in his journal what he has come 25 to dislike gradually about his built environment: 26 27 The impersonality of New York impresses me more and more every 28 day. This afternoon I came across a charming set of church buildings— 29 the buildings were not charming, but the ivy on their walls was—at 30 Chelsea Square, taking up the whole square. Nobody could tell me 31 what they were—except a maid in an area who told me she thought 32 they were a seminary. There’s impersonality for you! . . . Another thing 33 is the lack of locality! There are few places in the city—there is always 34 something disintegrating, dislocating & nothing is distinct, defi ned— 35 as Harvard for example is in Cambridge, the City Hall in Philadelphia, 36 or the cathedrals, I imagine, in the towns of England & France. (SP 37 80–81, emphases added) 38 39 The italicized terms are typical of turn-of-the-century intellectual responses 40 to the booming industrial metropolis. The founding father of twentieth- 41 century urban sociology, Georg Simmel, used similar terms when writing 42 that life in the modern metropolis “is composed more and more of . . . 43 impersonal cultural elements and existing goods and values which seek 44 to suppress peculiar personal interests and incomparabilities,” adding that 45 “The atrophy of individual culture through the hypertrophy of objective 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9292 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 93 culture lies at the root of the bitter hatred which the preachers of the most 1 extreme individualism, in the footsteps of Nietzsche, directed against the 2 metropolis” (44). Along the same lines, Simmel’s contemporary Max Weber 3 would come to characterize modernity—embodied, above all, by the mod- 4 ern metropolis—as a general process of disenchantment. 5 The horror of an impersonal, disenchanting environment in which a 6 sense of place is lost and individual distinction disappears loomed large for 7 an elitist youngster fresh out of Harvard, where he could still welcome a 8 fence for securing the “prestige” of “distinct whereabouts.” But the sense 9 of threat extended far beyond his particular case: it was widely shared by 10 intellectuals and artists in an age of mass industrialization, which started 11 to see the eff ects of conveyor-belt production written into the streetscape 12 and urban skyline on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, as the blank, imper- 13 sonal minimalism and mathematical sublime of architectural modernism— 14 the so-called International Style—would develop in the following decades 15 under the infl uence of its most iconic proponents, Le Corbusier and Mies 16 van der Rohe, twentieth-century architectural theory would come to be 17 haunted precisely by the question of how to restore a sense of personality 18 and national-cultural identity through a “vernacular” style that honored 19 distinct, individual localities. 20 Already by September of 1900, we notice how the young Stevens cannot 21 always be bothered anymore to make extensive architectural notes about 22 his surroundings. “Dropped into St. Patrick’s Cathedral this afternoon,” 23 he writes, adding in the most laconic and elliptical manner: “Beautiful but 24 cold. Gothic architecture” (SP 86). If he can bring himself to describe his 25 urban walks at all, he prefers a visit to Central Park after dark—the kind 26 of turn-of-the-century experience magically brought to life fi ve years later 27 by another modernist who was known as an insurance man, Charles Ives, 28 in his orchestral tone poem “Central Park in the Dark.” Lisa Goldfarb has 29 already discussed the following passage at some length in her own chapter, 30 but I want to reconsider it here for its architectural and aesthetic features, 31 added between brackets. On February 7, 1901, Stevens recalls how on his 32 nocturnal ramble through the park he 33 34 came to a tower surrounded with a sort of parapet [which we can iden- 35 tify as the Victorian whimsy of the Belvedere Castle]. The park was 36 deserted yet I felt royal in my empty palace [an observation aptly sum- 37 ming up the kind of solitary, imaginary consumption of spaces favored 38 by Stevens]. A dozen or more stars were shining. Leaving the tower 39 and parapets I wandered about in a maze of paths some of which led 40 to an invisible cave [a rambling encounter that perfectly refl ects the 41 romantic spirit intended by the park’s designers, Frederick Law Olm- 42 sted and Calvert Vaux]. By this time it was dark and I stumbled about 43 over little bridges that creaked under my step, up hills, and through 44 trees. An owl hooted. I stopped and suddenly felt the mysterious spirit 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9393 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM 94 Bart Eeckhout 1 of nature—a very mysterious spirit, one I thought never to have met 2 with again [enter Wordsworth and Emerson, striding into the heart 3 of the modern industrial metropolis]. . . . But . . . the [self-indulgently 4 romantic, intrinsically nineteenth-century] spirit slipped away and left 5 me looking with [a more modern, typically urban and ironic] amuse- 6 ment at the extremely unmysterious and not at all spiritual hotels and 7 apartment houses that were lined up like elegant factories on the West 8 Side of the Park. (SP 98) 9 10 The poet Eamon Grennan has recently highlighted this passage as announc- 11 ing a “new tone of response” that Stevens as an emerging twentieth-century 12 poet brought to the world around him—a tone Grennan likes to character- 13 ize as “the romantic spiked with the commonplace” (109). 14 And so the architectural comments in Stevens’ journal become spotty 15 and far between. The young man’s relative lack of excitement about the 16 aesthetic dimensions of his architectural environment is perhaps best illus- 17 trated by the many occasions when he just omits them from his description. 18 In August 1903, for example, while he is out camping with W. G. Peck- 19 ham in British Columbia, he thinks back to the city he has left behind, yet 20 his typically urban catalog description (the hallmark of Whitman’s New 21 York style that we will fi nd recurring later) is notably short on architectural 22 markers, focusing instead on the city’s social mix (recorded with distancing 23 condescension) as well as its wistfully recalled consumer delights: 24 25 Lying in one’s tent, looking out at the sky, one’s thoughts revert to New 26 York: to the trains stopping at the L stations, to the sinuous females, to 27 the male rubbish, to the clerks and stenographers and conductors and 28 Jews, to my friend the footman in front of Wanamakers, to Miss Dun- 29 ning’s steak, to Siegel and his cigars. (SP 120) 30 31 During some of his clerkship with Peckham, Stevens in fact shares an apart- 32 ment on East 24th Street with Arthur Clous, a classmate from Reading who 33 happens to be a draftsman with an architectural fi rm. He records a couple 34 of walks with Clous in his journal, usually to an exhibition and to Central 35 Park, but the companionship does little apparently to get Stevens fi red up 36 about the architectural spectacle developing around him. The laconic report 37 in a 1907 letter to Elsie is almost hilariously clipped: “A day of Spring sun 38 and Winter wind. Arthur came up at noon and took dinner with me. In the 39 afternoon we walked North and South criticizing all the architecture in the 40 little world we saw. Home again in time for tea” (CS 82). 41 But perhaps this elliptical reference is a little treacherous. Maybe it tells 42 us more about how the published letters to Elsie build poor source material 43 for learning of Stevens’ architectural opinions. After all, Elsie was less edu- 44 cated than he and served principally as his pastoral muse who shared his 45 passion for long walks through the Pennsylvania countryside. As such she 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9494 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 95 was not an ideal audience for reporting intellectual and aesthetic discus- 1 sions about the aggressively masculine and hypermaterialist business world 2 embodied by the skyscrapers going up in New York. In writing to her, Ste- 3 vens was understandably more inclined to wax lyrical about Central Park 4 or the New Jersey Palisades—or the greenhouses at the Botanical Garden 5 in the Bronx, where he gets carried away with excitement at a very diff erent 6 kind of modern (as in Victorian-Crystal-Palace type of) architecture: the 7 enclosed, simulated world of palm trees, sparrows, camellias, and goldfi sh 8 in a pond—all while a punishing blizzard is raging beyond the window 9 panes (CS 67). 10 Occasionally, nevertheless, we can see the young Stevens, in his let- 11 ters to Elsie, throw in his admiration for some of the engineering feats 12 around him. Once he even indulges in a moment of eulogizing that pro- 13 saically anticipates the language of his young admirer Hart Crane, though 14 the object of admiration is not Brooklyn Bridge but another bridge viewed 15 from the Brooklyn side that came to join it in 1909: 16 17 I could see the stupendous bulk of the new Manhattan Bridge in the dis- 18 tance. It is a mass of steel, suspended over the East River by steel cables 19 attached to two lofty steel towers. A chant to the builders!—I think 20 that if people went more often to points outside of the city from which 21 they could look back and see the magnitude of it, and the immensity 22 of some of the structures, they would feel more awe for it than they do 23 now. It is superb. It may not be beautiful, but in force and strength it is 24 superb, yet I think it is beautiful. Its power is inspiring. . . . these Cyclo- 25 pean monsters of ours springing from one city to another, and making 26 them all one, require no explanation. (CS 194)2 27 28 Likewise, when the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad opens in 1909, con- 29 necting lower Manhattan and Jersey City in just three minutes, Stevens is 30 among the fi rst-day crowd, reporting again admiringly to Elsie in terms 31 that foreshadow his later taste for a more abstract sublime: “I came home 32 by way of the new tunnel under the river, which was opened to-day. It is 33 like any other tunnel to look at. But it is a great work, enormous in labor 34 and art—the part of it one cannot look at” (CS 244). 35 Sometimes, while his future wife is still back in Reading during their 36 extensive long-distance courtship, Stevens also tries to convince Elsie of the 37 attractions of his metropolitan surroundings by off ering glimpses into what 38 Walter Benjamin would come to defi ne as the intrinsic phantasmagoria of 39 the city. In March 1907, for instance, he writes, “To-morrow is the fi rst 40 day of Spring: the greatest day of the year for us, don’t you think? And 41 imagine—Barnum and Bailey’s Circus opens in the afternoon in Madison 42 Square Garden! That is a better sign than blue-birds or crocus-es [sic]” (CS 43 73). This is the voice of the young man about town who, despite his misfor- 44 tunes as a beginning lawyer and his relative loneliness in a city overfl owing 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9595 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:401:55:40 PMPM 96 Bart Eeckhout 1 with mass immigration, loves to frequent Broadway theaters, calling the 2 Stuyvesant (today the Belasco) “the most attractive theatre in town” and 3 getting carried away by his attempt at describing its lavish interior (CS 4 142–43). 5 It is the same Stevens who occasionally dines at the Murray Hill on 6 Park Avenue, patronized also by Mark Twain and Presidents Cleveland and 7 McKinley; or at the Players Club on Gramercy Park, designed in the style of 8 an Italian Renaissance palazzo and containing Shakespearean quotations 9 on the walls of all of its rooms—“one of the pleasantest places in town,” 10 he notes (CS 169); the Stevens who regularly goes to the Princeton Club 11 and Harvard Club, which have the imprint of McKim, Mead, and White 12 stamped all over them again; and who will wrap up evenings on one of the 13 roof gardens springing up on top of Broadway theaters and entertainment 14 complexes (CS 313)—the same phantasmagoric spaces that would be sati- 15 rized with such deft, light-fi ngered irony by Djuna Barnes in “Come into 16 the Roof Garden, Maud.” These luxurious, socially privileged, aesthete’s 17 spaces, along with the libraries and museums to which he is attracted so 18 much of the time, are Stevens’ personal playground, and remain so for 19 decades to come. They sometimes fi ll him with strange architectural ideas 20 that give us an inkling of how he inhabits them imaginatively: “If we are to 21 believe in the theory that we are never anything but children (a theory sup- 22 ported by Fashion, Sport, our houses, Work—everything)—then the the- 23 atre becomes no more than the most dazzling toy ever devised” (CS 148). In 24 his more childish imagination, then, New York serves Stevens as a kind of 25 toy land. His observations off er us a glimpse of what is meant by historians 26 of the Progressive Era when they argue that in the fi rst decade of the twen- 27 tieth century the American industrial city was slowly becoming “as much a 28 place of play as a place of work” (David Nasaw qtd. in Hannigan 15). 29 Once in a while, as we have seen, Stevens will try to impress Elsie with 30 panoramic views of the Manhattan skyline during his walks. Crossing 31 Brooklyn Bridge back into the city in early February 1909, he for example 32 assures her that 33 34 The harbor is certainly one of the great sights. . . . the innumerable 35 ships, the fort, the huge silhouette of the city in the twilight. . . . The 36 Brooklyn Bridge was brilliant with its hundreds of lamps. And the 37 Singer building with its lighted tower shows far more beautifully in the 38 vague light than you would expect. (CS 150–51) 39 40 The Singer had only just been fi nished in the previous months and lorded it 41 over the skyline as the tallest skyscraper in the city and a theatrical symbol 42 of optimistic capitalism (Dupré 33). One year later, it was outshone in turn 43 (as was typical of New York in this period) by the single skyscraper Ste- 44 vens mentions more than once in his published letters to Elsie: the Metro- 45 politan Life Tower at Madison Square, modeled after the sixteenth-century 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9696 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 97 Campanile in Venice’s Piazza San Marco. On June 17, 1909, he conjures 1 up the nearly fi nished building for the fi rst time, using a typically pictorial- 2 ist image: “At seven o’clock the top of the Metropolitan Tower . . . was as 3 cloud-capped as Fujiyama, or any marvellous mountain; and it was new to 4 watch the wraiths drift through the upper scaff olding” (CS 219). A month 5 and a half later, he brings up the construction again when drawing up a 6 catalog of the day’s sights: 7 8 I’ve been out walking—looking in shop-windows at shoes and pictures 9 and fans—at fruit-peddlars’ wagons, at towers, band-concerts, stars, 10 new buildings, apartments, advertisements, restaurants, orange-col- 11 ored clouds, people. . . . They’ve painted the ceiling at Martin’s (where 12 I bought a cigar) and the Metropolitan Tower is almost fi nished and the 13 widening of Fifth Avenue is still under way, and so on. That’s what one 14 notices on these walks. (CS 255) 15 16 On August 20, fi nally, he adds, in another passage previously referred to 17 in Chapter 3: 18 19 There is something quite new in town. On top of the tower of the 20 Metropolitan Life building, in Madison Square, are four great bronze 21 bells that ring every quarter hour. To-night I heard them for the second 22 time—but really for the fi rst time to listen to them. They are immensely 23 high up in the air. It is splendid. (CS 261–62)3 24 25 Stevens’ marveling at the height from which the bells resound has affi ni- 26 ties with Shelley’s “To a Sky-Lark,” where the music also arrives invisibly 27 from heaven, as if emanating directly from the spheres. This is the kind 28 of romantic, intangible eff ect to which the young Stevens remains most 29 susceptible while he starts to save up for the less metropolitan life he will 30 eventually live in Hartford. In this sense, it is probably telling that the one 31 occasion during his years in New York when Stevens is so enchanted with 32 an architectural experience that he even attempts to draw a fl oor plan 33 occurs when he is taking a holiday outside of the city in the Berkshires 34 in August 1913, where he falls in love with a mansion along the Housa- 35 tonic in Great Barrington. This luxurious estate, with its grand house and 36 voluptuous gardens, is what most attracts him architecturally. Already in 37 1907, Stevens had reassured Elsie that he, too, would prefer to live his life 38 in a smaller village, and that one should “include cities in one’s life, as one 39 includes great ideas, great feelings, great deeds: that is from time to time” 40 (CS 43). The language of greatness in this formulation no doubt implies 41 the urban typology of the skyscraper, but the young lawyer’s enthusiasm 42 for the house in Great Barrington foreshadows that he would come to live 43 in a more suburban-style, homely environment, only commuting to New 44 York irregularly to recharge his batteries and renew his sense of possible 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9797 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM 98 Bart Eeckhout 1 greatness there. This also suggests, however, that in the long run New York 2 and its skyscrapers, despite their immediate invisibility in almost all of Ste- 3 vens’ poetry, came to occupy a place just as vital to his artistic imagination 4 as so many other sources of fl eetingly satisfi ed desire that managed to ener- 5 gize his literary work. 6 7 8 III 9 10 With all this biographical background about the early New York years in 11 mind, we can take another look now at the built environment as it came 12 to fi gure in Stevens’ published poetry, plays, and essays. Given the space 13 restrictions of this chapter, such a look must be brief and synthetic. Yet, 14 even in the heavily compacted form of a few additional pages, it is able to 15 open up critical perspectives. 16 To identify the most signifi cant traces of Stevens’ built environment in 17 his mature writings, I have taken the trouble to compile a list of architec- 18 tural typologies. My fi rst conclusion after doing so squares well with the 19 argument in Chapter 2 about Stevens’ attachment to premodern fi gurative 20 paintings: the majority of architectural typologies in Stevens’ writings are 21 not modern at all but older archetypes. This ties in with the observation 22 that whenever Stevens drops names associated with the architectural imag- 23 ination, they are not those of his famous modernist contemporaries—Le 24 Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, or Mies—but of the eighteenth-century 25 Giovanni Battista Piranesi (whose etchings are described in “The Figure of 26 the Youth as Virile Poet” [CPP 672–73]) or the nineteenth-century Eugène 27 Viollet-le-Duc, the master of Gothic revival referred to in “Notes Toward a 28 Supreme Fiction” (CPP 334). 29 Most of the archetypes Stevens draws on are, predictably, of a lofty sort: 30 they are oriented toward the spiritual life and the life of the mind, thereby 31 refl ecting Stevens’ own mooring in the nineteenth century, from which he 32 derives a constitutive obsession with the ways in which poetry may come to 33 replace religion as the highest spiritual value. Several of his favorite build- 34 ing types, in addition, have an un-American quality to them and serve to 35 inscribe his images more clearly in a transatlantic literary tradition: Stevens’ 36 implied settings switch with remarkable ease between North American and 37 European landscapes, which to his imagination clearly build a single cul- 38 tural space. This becomes obvious as soon as we think of the appearance of 39 palaces and castles in his work—two typologies that predominantly hark 40 back to European history and do not serve to conjure up a world of indus- 41 trialization and metropolitan modernity. Other buildings of this sort may 42 be less unambiguously foreign for someone who came to maturity in Beaux 43 Arts New York, but they are still typological carryovers from an older 44 Europe and its material manifestations of historical value systems: Stevens’ 45 writings make frequent reference to temples and their classical language 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9898 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 99 of columns, pillars, and pediments; they refer plentifully to cathedrals, 1 churches, chapels, and cloisters (all patently Christian in pedigree) as well 2 as to an occasional synagogue, and love to single out the characteristic fea- 3 tures of such buildings—their domes, buttresses, spires, steeples, portals, 4 naves, arches, vaults, tombs, and attached cemeteries. We may probably 5 throw in the poet’s love of balconies here as well, which fi gure an interest- 6 ing space in his case: on the threshold between public and private, such 7 balconies refl ect the desire for an elevated and self-contained space of privi- 8 lege aff ording the kind of scopic and meditative distance Stevens preferred 9 in consuming the world around him. The balconies, we might further note, 10 are never apparently those of high-rise buildings, though their implied set- 11 ting may be urban when they prove to be parts of theaters. 12 The theatrical type of balcony brings us to the more secular and pleasure- 13 oriented urban venues to which Stevens also likes to allude—those public 14 spaces to which he naturally gravitated in New York and other cities: hotels, 15 museums, theaters, and operas. In the most extensive survey of buildings 16 that went up in New York between 1890 and 1915, the architectural his- 17 torians Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and John Montague Mas- 18 sengale off er a practical yardstick against which we can measure Stevens’ 19 selection of building types. Their survey is divided into three subdivided 20 categories: Palaces of Production (Offi ce Buildings, Banks and Commerce, 21 Stores), Palaces of Pleasure (Theaters, Roof Gardens, Clubs, Coney Island), 22 and Palaces for the People (Hotels, Apartment Hotels, Apartments). Such a 23 division allows us to determine with greater accuracy how partial Stevens’ 24 literary cityscape is: the fi rst category, for instance, is almost entirely absent 25 from his representations (and the two banks that build the proverbial excep- 26 tion are exotically situated in Sweden and Ireland [CPP 102, 389]); in the 27 second category, he clearly downplays the importance of places for social, 28 interactive fun (roof gardens, clubs, and Coney Island), instead favoring 29 venues for silent artistic spectatorship (museums, theaters, operas); and 30 while the life of apartments does not seem to exert any appeal on him (wit- 31 ness also his cranky comments on modular apartment living in “The Noble 32 Rider and the Sound of Words” [CPP 653]), the occasional hotel—such as 33 the Waldorf-Astoria mentioned in our general introduction—does seem to 34 allow him the solitary independence he prefers. 35 Of the predominant typologies in Stevens’ work, only the tower is con- 36 nected ambiguously to the modern skyscraper—ambiguously, because it is 37 almost never identifi ed or identifi able as a skyscraper, even if the rare men- 38 tion of scaff olds and derricks (CPP 88) may bring us to visualize these, or 39 even if a reference to architectural “peaks outsoaring possible adjectives” 40 (CPP 171) no doubt implies the Manhattan skyline. But in most cases, Ste- 41 vens’ use of the archetypical fi gure of the tower may derive just as much, 42 if not more, from his childhood memories of the stone tower on Mount 43 Penn that he grew up with in Reading. Other infrastructural markers of 44 modernity fare just as poorly in his writings, though some of them—such 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 9999 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM 100 Bart Eeckhout 1 as pylons, stacks of electric plants, railroads, and funiculars—do make the 2 exceptional appearance as shorthand for technological modernity. 3 Nearly all of the foregoing typologies, it should be noted, are public in 4 nature: they refl ect the poet’s socially inhabited spaces. Over and against 5 these, there are building types that embody Stevens’ private desire for 6 inwardness and self-containment. Among these, the paradigmatic Ameri- 7 can cabin—a staple of self-reliant frontier life as well as of American letters 8 since at least Thoreau—plays a recurrent fi gurative role, all the way from 9 Crispin’s arrival on North American soil in “The Comedian as the Letter 10 C” to the elderly poet’s apocalyptic vision of a white cabin on a deserted 11 beach in “The Auroras of Autumn.” Yet most frequently, Stevens quite sim- 12 ply conjures up the house—in the abstract designation of that word allow- 13 ing for the reader’s personal aff ective appropriation of it—with its no less 14 generically conveyed rooms, fl oors, ceilings, walls, and adjacent garden. 15 Whether Stevens thus espoused the idea, like Hart Crane, that “poetry is 16 an architectural art” (qtd. in Edelman 28), and whether he felt, like Crane, 17 that it was to be pitted against Eliot’s archeological analogy in “The Waste 18 Land” (Edelman 29), is a question I must leave to another occasion. James 19 Baird has sought to develop such an argument in The Dome and the Rock, 20 where he sees Stevens as seeking objective correlatives for the inventions of 21 the mind in built material structures. In my own concluding section, I pro- 22 pose a diff erent approach: I would still like to show how Stevens’ implied 23 architectural landscapes may sometimes emerge to surprising view again in 24 the eye of the beholder. 25 26 27 IV 28 29 If criticism has long established that transformation is at the heart of the 30 Stevens aesthetic, and if we have been able to observe how invisible some of 31 the poet’s metropolitan surroundings remain in his literary writings, then it 32 should be possible to reverse a few of the poet’s transformations and allow 33 invisible realities to come to view again. 34 I would argue, fi rst of all, that Stevens’ poetry and prose repeatedly fi g- 35 ure images that may be read as metonymical substitutes for high-rise build- 36 ings. This is especially the case with his frequent attention to public statues 37 as cultural objects infl exibly fi xing the past and its social hierarchies: we 38 only need to link these statues metonymically to architecture to understand 39 that the scope of the poet’s attitude toward them—in “Dance of the Maca- 40 bre Mice,” “Owl’s Clover,” “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,” or 41 “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven”—may be signifi cantly expanded to 42 include a much larger part of his material world. In her contribution to this 43 volume, Costello refers to the role played by the sculptor Adolph Weinman 44 “as a mentor in the arts” during the time Stevens rented an apartment with 45 him in Chelsea. But Weinman’s art, we should remember, did not exist in 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 100100 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 101 a vacuum: he was the favorite sculptor of McKim, Mead, and White. His 1 gigantic gilded statue, Civic Fame, still the second largest fi gurative statue 2 in Manhattan, was installed on top of the architects’ Manhattan Munici- 3 pal Building, the forty-story Beaux Arts monolith erected between 1907 4 and 1914 close to the Brooklyn Bridge to embody the city’s consolidation 5 of its fi ve boroughs. 6 If this metonymical link to Stevens’ larger architectural environment 7 should be relatively obvious because of the physical contiguity of statues 8 and buildings, less evident and more exciting to uncover, fi nally, are some 9 of the more metaphorical substitutes we may likewise identify. Thus, I 10 would argue that Stevens’ neglected poetic play Carlos Among the Candles 11 (whose single performance was at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New 12 York in October 1917) gains in signifi cance when it is read as a metaphori- 13 cal evocation of the urban sublime of skyscrapers. At fi rst sight, to be sure, 14 such a reading runs counter to the very intimate setting of the play—a dark 15 room in which a number of candles are slowly lit and then extinguished 16 again—as well as to its subjective-meditative nature refl ected by the single 17 actor on stage engaging in an extended lyrical soliloquy. Yet it is interest- 18 ing to note, fi rst of all, in which terms the soliloquizing Carlos defi nes the 19 multiplying eff ect of lighting the candles. When the third candle starts to 20 fl icker, his sense is that a certain “elegance” has been achieved. Candle four 21 raises the spectacle to one of “luxury,” followed by the fi fth candle bringing 22 “magnifi cence,” to culminate in the sixth candle and the resulting experi- 23 ence of “splendor” (CPP 617). Thus, Stevens stacks up his search for the 24 sublime in a mathematical fashion that happens to be at the heart also of 25 high-rise architectural construction in the city. 26 Such a metaphorical equation would be tenuous, of course, if it were 27 limited to just a multiplication of modular elements that fi ll the spectator 28 with increasing awe and admiration. There is, however, additionally the 29 way in which Carlos goes on to congratulate himself: having built up his 30 series of experiences, he concludes that “Truly, I am a modern.” He starts 31 to dance around the room and—unusually for Stevens—moves from per- 32 sonal to social description: 33 34 To have changed so often and so much . . . or to have been changed 35 . . . to have been carried by the lighting of six candles through so many 36 lives and to have been brought among so many people . . . This grows 37 more wonderful. Six candles burn like an adventure that has been com- 38 pleted. They are established. They are a city . . . six common candles 39 . . . seven . . . (CPP 617, ellipses in the original) 40 41 And so Carlos goes on to light candles seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and 42 twelve. There is nothing to stop his apparent elation at building up his city 43 through multiplication. Suddenly, he fi nds there is still another table in the 44 room with twelve candles in a row, so he lights these as well. He is now 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 101101 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM 102 Bart Eeckhout 1 speaking, as the stage directions instruct, “excitedly,” and shifts to the rhe- 2 torical technique typical of urban eulogies since Whitman—the drawing 3 up of a catalog: 4 5 Here there will be silks and fans . . . the movement of arms . . . rumors 6 of Renoir . . . coiff ures . . . hands . . . scorn of Debussy . . . commu- 7 nications of body to body . . . There will be servants, as fat as plums, 8 bearing pineapples from the Azores . . . because of twenty-four candles, 9 burning together, as if their light had dispelled a phantasm, falling on 10 silks and fans . . . the movement of arms . . . The pulse of the crowd 11 will beat out the shallow pulses . . . it will fi ll me. (CPP 618, ellipses in 12 the original) 13 14 If Stevens were to have left his audience with this sense of the urban 15 crowd fi lling Carlos with erotic energies as a result of his construction, 16 level by level, of twenty-four identical and brilliant layers, we might legiti- 17 mately wonder why skyscrapers do not fi gure more prominently in his 18 oeuvre. But what he does next is perhaps more typical of him: having 19 now staged his ecstatic climax, Stevens goes on to cancel out the proce- 20 dure just as systematically. He allows the night wind—an emissary from 21 nature invading the room, not an intrinsically urban force—to blow out 22 a few candles, after which Carlos returns to a state of total inwardness 23 by going on to blow out the rest of them. Characteristically, this process 24 is accompanied by images almost all drawn from nature: Carlos com- 25 ments upon it through a series of similes, from “twelve wild birds fl ying in 26 autumn” to “an eleven-limbed oak tree,” “nine leaves drifting in water,” 27 “eight pears in a nude tree,” the “six Pleiades,” “the fi ve purple palma- 28 tions of cinquefoil withering,” and so forth (CPP 619). The sense of archi- 29 tectural and urban sublime is being stripped away again, layer by layer. Its 30 experience turns out to be just as ephemeral in the end as Stevens’ poet- 31 ics, steeped in the perennial changes of nature, habitually demand. From 32 this perspective, it is equally characteristic that one of Carlos’ concluding 33 meditations—on how the light of the fi nal extinguished candle “remains 34 fi xed a little in the mind” (CPP 620)—recurs in “Valley Candle,” a poem 35 composed simultaneously, and that there, as the title suggests, the candle 36 is simply placed in nature. In that brief imagistic poem, the wind blows 37 once to extinguish the candle and a second time to extinguish the linger- 38 ing image on the retina. 39 A reading of Carlos Among the Candles as a fl eeting metaphorical evo- 40 cation of the architectural sublime of skyscrapers indicates that, as long as 41 we dare to tweak some of Stevens’ texts, they still have the power to sur- 42 prise us with their new vistas. My fi nal example in this regard is a very late 43 meditation by Stevens that has not received nearly enough attention as an 44 architectural manifesto. The poem has no title and reads as follows: 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 102102 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM The Invisible Skyscraper 103 An architecture reflects its region. 1 That raises the question of the building’s truth. 2 The building must be of the nature of its creator. 3 It is the nature of its creator increased, 4 Heightened. It is he, anew, in a freshened youth 5 And it is he in the substance of his region 6 Wood of the forests and stone out of his fields 7 Or from under his mountains. (after: CPP 476) 8 9 This is a poem that, certainly when read in conjunction with Stevens’ 10 prose refl ections on “Connecticut Composed,” would easily fi t into any 11 course book on twentieth-century theories of architecture—for instance, 12 in the section with phenomenological meditations by Martin Heidegger 13 and Christian Norberg-Schulz, or in the context of the critical regional- 14 ism associated with Kenneth Frampton. If this is not a context in which 15 we are used to placing Stevens, that only goes to show we have not yet 16 exhausted the possibilities for interpreting his manifold modernisms. 17 There is still room for plumbing Wallace Stevens’ wider importance as a 18 paper architect. 19 20 21 NOTES 22 23 1. Interestingly, Stevens quotes from Wordsworth’s sonnet as an example of 24 “how poets help people to live their lives” in “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words” (CPP 662). 25 2. Note that the same Cyclopean image recurs in Crane’s description of the 26 Manhattan skyline in “The Harbor Dawn,” part of his modernist epic The 27 Bridge: “From Cyclopean towers across Manhattan waters /—Two—three 28 bright window-eyes aglitter, disk / The sun, released—aloft with cold gulls 29 hither” (54). 3. A plaque on the Metropolitan Life Tower added in 1957 by the New York 30 Community Trust informs us that the “Four chimes (the largest 7000 pounds) 31 sound a measure by Handel on quarter hours.” The “splendid” bells, in other 32 words, play a culturally infl ected kind of urban music en plein air. 33 34 35 WORKS CITED 36 37 Baird, James. The Dome and the Rock: Structure in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1968. Print. 38 Barnes, Djuna. “Come into the Roof Garden, Maud.” 1914. Writing New York: A 39 Literary Anthology. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Library of America, 1998. 40 410–16. Print. 41 Burns, Ric, and James Sanders. New York: An Illustrated History. New York: 42 Knopf, 1999. Print. Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 43 1898. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print. 44 45 46

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1 Crane, Hart. The Poems of Hart Crane. Ed. Marc Simon. New York: Liveright, 2 1989. Print. 3 Cummings, E. E. Poems 1923–1954. New York: Harcourt, 1954. Print. Dupré, Judith. Skyscrapers. New York: Black Dog, 1996. Print. 4 Edelman, Lee. Transmemberment of Song: Hart Crane’s Anatomies of Rhetoric 5 and Desire. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1987. Print. 6 Eeckhout, Bart. “The Postsexual City? Times Square in the Age of Virtual Repro- 7 duction.” Post Ex Sub Dis: Urban Fragmentations and Constructions. Ed. 8 Ghent Urban Studies Team (GUST). Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2002. 152–81. Print. 9 Grennan, Eamon. “My Stevens: The Romantic Spiked with the Commonplace.” 10 Wallace Stevens Journal 35.1 (2011): 108–11. Print. 11 Hannigan, John. Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profi t in the Postmodern Metropolis. 12 London: Routledge, 1998. Print. 13 Jacobs, Steven. “Slapstick Skyscrapers: An Architecture of Attractions.” Slapstick Comedy. Ed. Tom Paulus and Rob King. New York: Routledge, 2010. 152–68. 14 Print. 15 Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. 16 New York: Monacelli, 1994. Print. 17 Lütticken, Sven. “The Invisible Work of Art.” The Urban Condition: Space, Com- 18 munity, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis. Ed. Ghent Urban Studies Team (GUST). Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1999. 308–23. Print. 19 Page, Max. The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900–1940. Chicago: U of 20 Chicago P, 1999. Print. 21 Rybczynski, Witold. City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World. New York: 22 Scribner, 1995. Print. 23 Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” 1903. Trans. Edward Shills. Metropolis: Center and Symbol of Our Times. Ed. Philip Kasinitz. New York: 24 New York UP, 1995. 30–45. Print. 25 Stern, Robert A. M., Gregory Gilmartin, and John Montague Massengale. New 26 York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890–1915. New York: 27 Rizzoli, 1983. Print. 28 Stevens, Holly. Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens. New York: Knopf, 1977. Print. 29 Stevens, Wallace. The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to 30 Elsie. Ed. J. Donald Blount. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2006. Print. 31 . Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. 1966. Rpt. Berkeley: U of 32 California P, 1996. Print. 33 . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 34 Taylor, William R., ed. Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the 35 Crossroads of the World. 1991. Rpt. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. 36 Print. 37 Wolf, Stephen, ed. I Speak of the City: Poems of New York. New York: Columbia 38 UP, 2007. Print. Wordsworth, William. “[Sonnet] Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 39 3, 1802.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed., vol. D: The 40 Romantic Period. Ed. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York: Nor- 41 ton, 2006. 317. Print. 42 43 44 45 46

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In “The Painter of Modern Life,” Charles Baudelaire famously declared: 1 “Modernity is the transitory, the fl eeting, the contingent, one half of art, 2 the other half being the eternal and immutable” (553).1 This is also the 3 sense of modernity Wallace Stevens experienced fi rsthand during the six- 4 teen years he spent in and around New York City, where he learned to give 5 up certain poetic forms inadequate to his new perception of ephemerality: 6 “Sonnets have their place, without mentioning names; but they can also be 7 found tremendously out of place: in real life where things are quick, unac- 8 countable, responsive” (SP 80). 9 Like Henry James who, upon revisiting The American Scene in 1904– 10 1905, found New York’s buildings to be “consecrated by no uses save the 11 commercial at any cost” (61), Stevens, shortly after his arrival in New York 12 in 1900, fi rst thought of the city as “a wretched place—with its infernal 13 money-getting” (SP 79). In another early response (July 22, 1900), he com- 14 mented on the city’s “lack of locality” in terms that stressed New York’s 15 mutable, provisional aspect: “There are few places in the city—there is 16 always something disintegrating, dislocating & nothing is distinct, defi ned” 17 (SP 81). And when, on June 18, 1900, Stevens wrote in his journal that 18 he had “visited Trinity Church,” he simply noticed the people “praying 19 there” (SP 75). In The American Scene, on the other hand, the church’s 20 growing invisibility gives rise to an elegiac lamento: “Where, for the eye, is 21 the felicity of simplifi ed Gothic, of noble preeminence, that once made of 22 this highly-pleasing edifi ce [that is, Trinity Church] the pride of the town 23 and the feature of Broadway?” James fi nds no reason to rejoice in such 24 transitoriness, and only the “bitterness of history” is felt by him in such 25 gradual vanishings, which, to the novelist, bring “a horrible, hateful sense 26 of personal antiquity” (62–63). About Trinity Church, now increasingly 27 surrounded by the skyscrapers of the fi nancial district, James observes that 28 it only “aches and throbs” in its “smothered visibility . . . , in its caged and 29 dishonoured condition,” so that the viewer can only “commune with it, 30 in tenderness and pity” (61). Incapable of connecting the church’s beauty 31 to its transience, as Sigmund Freud later attempted to do in his essay “On 32 Transience,” James repeatedly inveighs against “buildings whose very fi rst 33 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 105105 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM 106 Axel Nesme 1 care is to deprive churches of their visibility” (62). Although he occasion- 2 ally fi nds temporary relief in the charm of certain neighborhoods, like “the 3 space between fourteenth Street and Washington Square [that fi gures] the 4 old ivory of an overscored tablet” (68), James mostly bemoans what he 5 calls the “abolished presence” (65), heralding the loss of aura Walter Ben- 6 jamin later saw as one of the distinctive features of modernity. In the three 7 chapters of The American Scene dedicated to New York, the city appears 8 as a place of swarming multiplicities, where not only buildings, but identi- 9 ties are brought under erasure by its “huge white-washing brush” (97). In 10 a passage where he describes himself visiting Washington Square, not only 11 does James realize that the fantasized plaque bearing his name is nowhere 12 to be found, he also discovers that even his birth house has been “rudely, 13 . . . ruthlessly suppressed” (70). New York may have provided a home to a 14 “million or so of immigrants,” in James’s words (66), but it is primarily a 15 place where, like Stevens’ Crispin, James “the insatiable egotist” (CPP 24) 16 fi nds himself “washed away by magnitude” (CPP 22), “dissolved” (CPP 17 23), and “annulled” (CPP 23) in a city whose very identity is more meta- 18 morphic than metaphorical. As Gilles Deleuze would put it, the city is a 19 collective assemblage: part city, part boa constrictor, part clockwork, part 20 primal scene, as is clearly perceptible in James’s account of his visit to Ellis 21 Island, where the making of the American nation is described as an “act 22 of ingurgitation” (66) performed by a “monstrous organism” (59) whereby 23 “the inconceivable alien” becomes to the viewer “a ghost in his supposedly 24 safe old house” (66)—the uncanny revelation of himself as other. 25 Henry James complained that New York off ered no “possibility of 26 poetic, of dramatic capture” (65), and indeed few of Stevens’ poems make 27 New York their overt theme. However, if we bear in mind James’s defi ni- 28 tion of the city as “that concert of the expensively provisional into which 29 your supreme sense of New York resolves itself” (61), this transitory quality 30 does resonate with a number of poems Stevens wrote during or around the 31 years he spent in New York as a young man. This is the angle I would like 32 to explore in the present chapter. 33 In The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche suggests that learning to write 34 and learning to walk are one and the same thing: “Our fi rst question of 35 value about a book, a man or music are: ‘Can they walk?’ Even more ‘Can 36 they dance?’” (230). In her Esthétique de l’éphémère [Aesthetics of the 37 Ephemeral], Christine Buci-Glucksmann argues that the form of knowl- 38 edge advocated by Nietzsche is an invitation to “think of the ephemeral as 39 a positive value.” This is the hidden face of art: “a knowledge of lightness, 40 that of Zarathustra’s dancer over the abyss, who can accompany the tragic 41 by transforming it” (16).2 It would be no coincidence if Stevens perfected 42 his poetics of transitoriness during his New York years, which, as the poet’s 43 journals indicate and Lisa Goldfarb analyzes at length in her contribution 44 to this book, were also a time of continuous roamings in the outskirts of 45 the city—a poetics increasingly devoid of Jamesian nostalgia, as could be 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 106106 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM On Stevensian Transitoriness 107 expected from a young poet who, though he did translate a sonnet from 1 Joachim du Bellay’s The Regrets (CPP 516), nonetheless wrote to Elsie in 2 1909: “No one loathes melancholy more than I” (SP 209). 3 The motif of transitoriness appears already early on in Stevens’ career. 4 One of its fi rst occurrences shortly precedes his move to New York, in a son- 5 net written in 1899 with the opening line, “When I think of all the centuries 6 long dead” (CPP 483). While in its form the poem is reminiscent of Keats’s 7 “When I have fears that I may cease to be,” its theme bears the imprint of 8 Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” as Stevens muses on “The cities fall’n to dust, the 9 kingdoms won / And in a moment lost again,” and then seems to allude to 10 the hubristic Pharaoh’s half-buried colossus in the lines “Others with hot and 11 angry pride, I cry, / Others in their thin covered dust may lie” before hero- 12 ically stating his own youthful resolve: “But not—if strength of will abides— 13 not I.” The sixth item in the same sonnet sequence, “If we are leaves that fall 14 upon the ground” (CPP 484), lays no claim to originality: while in the octave 15 human beings are predictably compared to dead leaves, withered fl owers, 16 and ephemeral weeds, the speaker prays in the sestet that through the “sweet 17 sorcery / Of love” a “tremor” may “through our briefness run” (CPP 485). 18 Conventional as this motif may seem, it nonetheless resurfaces in section V 19 of “Sunday Morning,” where death is evoked as follows: 20 21 Although she strews the leaves 22 Of sure obliteration on our paths, 23 The path sick sorrow took, the many paths 24 Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love 25 Whispered a little out of tenderness, 26 She makes the willow shiver in the sun 27 For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze 28 Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. (CPP 55) 29 30 Apropos of these lines, James Longenbach writes: 31 32 In the fi fth stanza of “Sunday Morning” Stevens turns on the “topos 33 of the fallen leaves” common to Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Shelley. 34 Tracing these echoes, Eleanor Cook has noticed that throughout the 35 tradition, the topos is associated with the losses of warfare; but she 36 concludes that Stevens’ poem “is not situated in a time of war.” “Sun- 37 day Morning” employs the topos precisely because it is situated in a 38 time of war: the world of 1915 made the music of the leaves meaning- 39 ful. The First World War turned Stevens into a major poet, one who 40 could take on the major voices of Shelley and Keats. (78) 41 42 Longenbach’s arguments about the historicity of these lines could simi- 43 larly be brought to bear on Sigmund Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” 44 and “On Transience,” two essays published after the beginning of the Great 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 107107 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:411:55:41 PMPM 108 Axel Nesme 1 War, in the same year as “Sunday Morning,” 1915. In the fi rst paragraph 2 of “On Transience,” Freud describes himself walking in the woods with 3 two companions, one of whom is a “taciturn friend,” presumably the poet 4 Rainer Maria Rilke. Freud explains that his poet friend could not enjoy the 5 beauty of nature in summer, for he was haunted by the thought that come 6 winter, all this beauty would vanish, “as does indeed all human beauty.” 7 Such awareness of transitoriness, Freud explains, may trigger two opposite 8 responses: poetic world-weariness or stubborn revolt against the mere fact 9 of transience. Throughout the rest of the essay, Freud adopts a third position 10 much more consonant with Stevens’ own in “Sunday Morning,” by exam- 11 ining how the ongoing war has modifi ed our perception of worldly beauty 12 and how the transitory nature of beautiful things adds to the intensity of 13 the enjoyment we derive from them. To readers interested in the history of 14 Freud’s theory, this position, which integrates potential loss into our valua- 15 tion of beauty, may be traced to the impact of the war on Freud’s notion of 16 mourning. But if we read carefully Freud’s description of the walk in which 17 his refl ections on transitoriness originated, we also notice that, by his own 18 account, loss overshadowing our experience of beauty may be an a priori 19 disposition independent of the historical context, as is indeed the case with 20 his poet friend. Signifi cantly, Freud insists that even at the time of the walk, 21 which, he says, took place one year before the war broke out, he already 22 held the notion that beauty and transitoriness were inseparable, thus fore- 23 stalling a strictly historical account of his theory’s genesis. Regardless of 24 the historical context, then, “the music of the leaves,” to use Longenbach’s 25 formulation, was already made “meaningful” by its transience. 26 The transformations of the motif of transitoriness in Stevens’ early poetry 27 pose a similar problem of historical identifi cation, and make it equally diffi - 28 cult to choose between historicist and structural arguments. It may be that 29 Stevens’ handling of the topos of fallen leaves in “Sunday Morning” was 30 determined by his awareness of the war that raged in Europe. This, in any 31 case, did not really prod him into “tak[ing] on the major voices of Shelley 32 and Keats,” whose overwhelming presence may already be felt in the early 33 sonnets. It is also tempting to argue that Stevens’ use of the topos manifests 34 a tendency already noticeable in his prewar poems—an observation which, 35 without invalidating a historical approach, also leaves room for Alessia 36 Ricciardi’s structural defi nition of loss and mourning as a “transcendental 37 category of desire” (56). 38 This methodological hesitation persists if we examine the fourteenth 39 and last poem of Stevens’ youthful sonnet sequence composed as an under- 40 graduate student at Harvard. Though none of its antiquated inversions 41 (“hands uncouth”) and dusty imagery (“the sweet-rimmed goblet of my 42 youth”) seem to herald the Stevens of Harmonium, this sonnet may still be 43 regarded as an early exploration of the “tempus fugit” topos that reemerges 44 at the end of Stevens’ New York years (CPP 488). As he “drain[s] with joy 45 the golden-bodied wine,” the speaker’s seemingly pure sensuous experience 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 108108 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM On Stevensian Transitoriness 109 is adulterated by “grievous music” and a “distant echo from dead melody, 1 / Soft as a song heard far in Paradise” (CPP 488). The signifi ers of grief 2 and death which thus cast their shadow over the sestet exhibit the ambigu- 3 ity and fi niteness of the Edenic moment and the existence of a melancholy 4 strain at this liminal stage in Stevens’ development, to be echoed and ampli- 5 fi ed later on in the rhetorical question placed at the beginning of section VI 6 of “Sunday Morning”: “Is there no change of death in paradise? / Does ripe 7 fruit never fall?” (CPP 55). 8 Quite early on in Stevens’ career, a sense of transience turns out to be the 9 driving force behind several poems. Thus, in the vignette from The Little 10 June Book of 1909 entitled “Shower” (CPP 512), simple visual percepts 11 follow one another in rapid juxtaposition, as if to produce one of those 12 “Pictures of the fl eeting world” that Stevens also mentions in his journal 13 entry of May 14, 1909 (SP 221): 14 15 Pink and purple 16 In water-mist 17 And hazy leaves 18 Of amethyst; 19 Orange and green 20 And gray between, 21 And dark grass 22 In a shimmer 23 Of windy rain— 24 Then the glimmer— 25 And the robin’s 26 Ballad of the rain. (CPP 512) 27 28 Stevens’ handling of light in this short poem brings to mind the technique 29 of impressionism. The “water-mist / And hazy leaves” that diff ract the 30 light spectrum so as to make it “shimmer” and “glimmer,” generate that 31 “ephemerality of accepted impermanence” that also defi nes a painting like 32 Claude Monet’s Nymphéas, according to Buci-Glucksmann (48). The poem 33 ends with a baroque mise en abyme of transience via the mention of “the 34 robin’s / Ballad of the rain” in which Stevens’ own ballad of the ephemeral 35 is mirrored in the bird song that simultaneously punctuates the eponymous 36 shower and the poem thereof. 37 Buci-Glucksmann argues that the baroque as a historical style estab- 38 lishes a new connection between art, time, and melancholy, “a conception 39 of grieving beauty, which culminates in ruins, fragments and fl eeting motifs, 40 refl ections and fl owers” (34). The off shoots of this “melancholy root” of sub- 41 jectivity may be a Hamletian self-destructiveness and madness, or a “poetics 42 of the aerial and of appearances” dwelling in metamorphosis and inconsis- 43 tency (34–35). Two versions of the ephemeral thus emerge: “the melancholy 44 ephemeral” which is characteristic of the baroque and of auratic modernity 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 109109 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM 110 Axel Nesme 1 as defi ned by Walter Benjamin in his essay “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”; 2 and a “cosmic ephemeral” (Buci-Glucksmann 33) exhibiting an “‘empathy’ 3 with the ephemeral” (28) whereby “fl ux and fl uidity” are embraced as posi- 4 tive forces. The faculty marshaled by this second version of the ephemeral is 5 what the Greeks termed metis, that is, cunning, “a ratio prior to logos” (28) 6 that is more apt to capture the transitoriness of fl ux. 7 Stevens’ “Ballade of the Pink Parasol” stages a similar confrontation 8 between metis and logos, between the melancholy strain of the early son- 9 nets and a more Dionysian handling of the motif of transience, partaking 10 of the cosmic ephemeral.3 As the French spelling of the word “ballade” 11 indicates, Stevens’ generic model is not the narrative poem that has almost 12 the same name (the ballad, as in Wordsworth and Coleridge’s famous Lyri- 13 cal Ballads), but the literary complaint over ephemerality as exemplifi ed by 14 François Villon’s “Ballade des dames du temps jadis” [Ballade of the Ladies 15 of Times Past]. Written in the form of a dialogue, most of the poem consists 16 of a series of questions which are so many reworkings of the “ubi sunt” 17 topos where, instead of Villon’s wistful refrain “Where are the snows of 18 yesteryear?” Stevens substitutes his own much less melodramatic and more 19 fi n-de-siècle variant: “But where is the pink parasol?” 20 The poem is rife with historical references to a long-gone era: eighteenth- 21 century England, where wigs and the card game of “quadrille” mentioned 22 in the second stanza were fashionable. As for its diction, it is humorously 23 archaic and hyperbolic: 24 25 I pray thee where is the old-time wig, 26 And where is the lofty hat? 27 Where is the maid on the road in her gig, 28 And where is the fire-side cat? 29 Never was sight more fair than that, 30 Outshining, outreaching them all, 31 There in the night where lovers sat— 32 But where is the pink parasol? (CPP 496) 33 34 In addition to cataloguing a variety of losses ranging from the aforementioned 35 maid in her gig to “the painted fan / And the candles bright on the wall,” the 36 poem off ers an intriguing mise en abyme of loss in its second stanza: 37 38 Where in the pack is the dark spadille 39 With scent of lavender sweet, 40 That never was held in the mad quadrille. 41 And where are the slippered feet? 42 Ah! we’d have given a pound to meet 43 The card that wrought our fall, 44 The card none other of all could beat— 45 But where is the pink parasol? (CPP 496) 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 110110 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM On Stevensian Transitoriness 111 Not only is incompleteness the very premise of the card game of qua- 1 drille (since it is played with a deck of forty cards lacking eights, nines, 2 and tens), the brief episodes narrated in this stanza also revolve around 3 another missing card, “the dark spadille” or ace of spades, which is said to 4 have “wrought” the players’ “fall.” Defi ned as “The card none other of all 5 could beat” and etymologically related to the Spanish word spada meaning 6 “sword,” the card tropes death by metaphor, and beauty by the metonymy 7 of its “scent of lavender sweet.” It is thus an early avatar of the death-beauty 8 nexus further explored again in “Sunday Morning.” It is also a paradoxical 9 being, since to the extent that it is identifi able through its scent, we assume 10 that the speaker must have held it, although he specifi es that none of the 11 players did actually “meet” the card—a failed rendezvous to be later on 12 corrected, as we will see, in “Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds.” The 13 missing spadille connecting the series of beauty and transience functions 14 here as what Gilles Deleuze in The Logic of Sense calls 15 16 a very special and paradoxical agency,4 which ensures the relative dis- 17 placement of the two series, the excess of the one over the other, with- 18 out being reducible to any of the terms of the series or to any relation 19 between these terms[, and which] has the property of being always 20 displaced in relation to itself[, so that it] is never where we look for it, 21 and conversely that we never fi nd it where it is. (40–41) 22 23 Loss is thus comically redoubled in Stevens’ complaint over the loss of a 24 game in which the signifi er of loss itself was missing or, rather, to follow 25 Deleuze’s suggestion, “displaced.” 26 A gloomy voice answers the speaker’s queries in the fi nal quatrain. It 27 addresses him as a Hamletian “Prince,” and its message proves to be a 28 stern memento mori: “Prince, these baubles are far away, / In the ruin of 29 palace and hall, / Made dark by the shadow of yesterday—” (CPP 496). Yet 30 this reminder of universal transitoriness fails to punctuate the poem—or to 31 silence the fi rst speaker, who disregards his addressee’s somber “nevermore” 32 as if it were totally irrelevant to his reiterated query: “But where is the pink 33 parasol?” This is where the poem’s four stanzas turn into a Nietzschean 34 quadrille—in the dancing sense of the word—playfully revolving around 35 loss as represented by the double workings of metaphor and metonymy: the 36 metaphor in absentia in which loss is troped by another absent signifi er, 37 namely the formal defi cit of the fi nal stanza’s missing four lines; and the 38 metonymically displaced signifi er of loss which, like the purloined letter 39 that is the subtext of Deleuze’s remarks, was there all along—not in the 40 deck of cards, but as the lost pink parasol which does not so much encap- 41 sulate all other losses as displace them. Indeed, after reading the entire 42 poem we come to suspect that the question “Where are” may not always 43 translate as “ubi sunt,” and that what our habits of lyric reading have led 44 us to interpret as a melancholy complaint over time gone by, was from the 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 111111 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM 112 Axel Nesme 1 start always already displaced by an obsessive and most literal inquiry as 2 to the exact location of a misplaced pink parasol. 3 The transition from the melancholy to the cosmic—and comic— 4 ephemeral that we witness in “Ballade of the Pink Parasol” may be fur- 5 ther observed in two of Stevens’ early poems: a quatrain written during 6 the year prior to his move to New York City, and a poem from Harmo- 7 nium. Both poems revolve around the motif of the cloud, about which 8 Buci-Glucksmann writes: “If the past is nothing, the future will be only 9 a cloud to which the fl eeting present clings. Being is only its unstable 10 appearance, between ‘there is’ and ‘there no longer is’. . . . That is why 11 the ephemeral is a present intensifi ed by the mannerism of time” (24). Ste- 12 vens’ 1899 quatrain, voiced as an address to a “young cloud,” displays a 13 fi n-de-siècle awareness of ephemerality mixed with a Lamartinian desire 14 to suspend the fl ight of time: 15 16 Go not, young cloud, too boldly through the sky, 17 To meet the morning light; 18 Go not too boldly through that dome on high— 19 For eastward lies the night. (CPP 490) 20 21 The poem ends with the mild paradox of the young cloud and the sun fol- 22 lowing opposite trajectories, so that for the cloud too eager to seize the day, 23 the night turns out to be located “eastward.” The motif of the drifting cloud 24 is revisited in “Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds” from 1921, where the 25 poet of Harmonium, as if facetiously to correct his platitudinous younger 26 self, renounces the all-too-obvious trope of “morning light” as the image of 27 “youth,” and begins by addressing the clouds through the heavily allitera- 28 tive personifi cation of “Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns” (CPP 44), 29 which generates maximum dissonance between the poetic medium, dragged 30 down by the repeated initial g sound, and its airy referents. This initial 31 line, however, may also be interpreted as an instance of those “sustaining 32 pomps” mentioned further down in the text (CPP 45), whereby poetic lan- 33 guage keeps the “gloomy grammarians” afl oat throughout and despite the 34 monotonous repetition of the “stale, mysterious seasons” (CPP 44). This 35 contradictory upward and downward pull is programmatic of the text as a 36 whole, centered as it is on the pivotal verb “returns,” placed exactly halfway 37 through the poem, and surrounded on either side by the anaphora on “evo- 38 cations,” in a mimesis of the natural cycle of the rain which is also refl ected 39 in the alternation of nouns and verbs containing the opposite Latin prefi xes 40 ex- and re-. The prefi x ex- is found in several signifi ers denoting the upward 41 movement of “e-licited” speech: when wielded by “philosophers,” who are 42 called “funest” presumably because of the reminder of mortality contained 43 in their teachings, speech becomes an “ex-altation” which evaporates into 44 cloudy “e-vocations.” It then returns once again in the form of “evoca- 45 tions” of a more poetic nature, since they are now “casual,” although not 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 112112 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM On Stevensian Transitoriness 113 entirely distinct from their more “funest” counterparts. Indeed, much 1 as philosophers are called “ponderers,” we have already noted how the 2 language of the poem’s initial line is weighted down by a rather ponder- 3 ous alliteration on g. The prefi x re- is found in several words describing 4 varieties of responses to the equally cloudy speech conveyed by “Gloomy 5 grammarians” and “Funest philosophers and ponderers”: those, as was just 6 hinted at, are the “responsive, still sustaining pomps” of poetry in which 7 the speech of the clouds’ “processionals” returns, at least in so far as the 8 Greek word pompè precisely means “procession” and the French word ren- 9 dez-vous contains the verb rendre, which is the equivalent of “to return” in 10 its transitive sense. These responses ultimately boil down, not to nostalgia 11 triggered by a melancholy sense of the ephemeral, but to its cosmic other, 12 in Buci-Glucksmann’s terminology, that is, to what Stevens calls “the music 13 of meet resignation” (CPP 44). 14 In Stevens’ early “Go not, young cloud,” the resistance to mutability is 15 conveyed by the imperative mood, whereas in “Of the Manner of Address- 16 ing Clouds” mutability is assimilated within a succession of declarative 17 clauses, all of which are in the indicative. More importantly, the premise 18 explored in the later poem is one of continuity between speech and the 19 clouds as emblems of transitoriness. As “Gloomy grammarians” they trope 20 the onward fl ow of poetic syntax: the “mortal rendezvous,” therefore, is 21 not only located outside, in the poet-philosopher’s contemplation of the 22 clouds (or in a card game, as was the case in “Ballade of the Pink Parasol”), 23 but primarily within the material letter of the poem, in those punctuation 24 marks which signal the end of the poetic line and are, vanitas-like, the 25 barely visible signature of its own fi niteness and ephemerality. Although 26 “meet,” Stevens’ “music of . . . resignation” is thus not meek: being “meet,” 27 it inevitably meets the clouds on the “mortal rendezvous” whereby, in their 28 speech, the metaphor of the ephemeral may be read, while in their “golden 29 gowns” are also found “meet” tropes to veil the otherwise “mute bare 30 splendors of the sun and moon” (CPP 44–45). 31 Referring to kairos, which in Greek means the opportune moment, Buci- 32 Glucksmann writes that it “redoubles itself in all the vibrations of light, 33 in everything that creates scintillating, motley instability, shimmerings, 34 undulations, and refl ections” (28). Stevens’ clouds create a similar eff ect by 35 veiling the sun and moon behind their “golden gowns.” Here too, “What 36 is at stake in an aesthetic of the ephemeral is a ‘kairology’ of transparency, 37 marked by non-ontological light which relinquishes all models of perma- 38 nence and disrupts the notion of form, now open and conceived in terms of 39 energy and multiple forces” (31). “This enveloping light . . . sets the ephem- 40 eral vibrating beyond Being” (36). “The awareness of the ephemeral . . . 41 which blossoms in the baroque era, undermines the metaphysics of western 42 time, always subordinated to Being or the Idea” (25). The word theoria in 43 Greek designates the direct contemplation of being, one of whose standard 44 metaphors is the sun in Plato’s Republic. In Stevens’ poem, however, theory 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 113113 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM 114 Axel Nesme 1 remains at best nebulous and is, quite literally, an absent signifi er. Although 2 apparently dissimilar, the words “processionals” and “pomps” stem from 3 two Latin and Greek words which are exact translations of each other. As 4 is often the case with Stevens, our attention is thus once again drawn to the 5 interpretive possibilities that etymology may yield. 6 Etymology alone seems retrospectively to motivate the meeting between 7 the clouds’ cortège and the pomps of poetry. Etymology, likewise, may 8 illuminate the slightly missed rendezvous between poetry and philosophy. 9 To the extent that it cultivates the analogy between the motion of clouds 10 drifting in the sky and the sometimes cloudy or nebulous speculations of 11 philosophers, between the logical manner in which their reasonings are 12 supposed to pro-ceed and the clouds’ “processionals,” the poem constantly 13 hints at theory without ever naming it; it is entirely based on a silent, unde- 14 tectable pun which proclaims the victory of metis over logos: the syllep- 15 sis that marks the semantic interval between theory and theory, between 16 the theoria that is the contemplation of essences and the theoria which 17 in Greek is simply a pageant or procession. If clouds have their theory, 18 the provisional conclusion that may be drawn from “Of the Manner of 19 Addressing Clouds” is that theory is best confi ned to “an unoffi cial view of 20 being” (CPP 667), wrapped in the ephemeral clouds of poetic allusion.5 21 As “Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns” the clouds are atmospheric 22 compromise formations of light and darkness. This brings me to focus on 23 “Chiaroscuro,” a poem composed in New York in 1908, shortly before 24 The Little June Book. Even the fi xed components of the setting are mutable 25 and dematerialized here. The rain blown across the façades of the buildings 26 functions like a screen creating an illusion of motion against the hieratic 27 house-fronts: 28 29 The house-fronts flare 30 In the blown rain, 31 The ghostly street-lamps 32 Have a pallid glare, . . . (CPP 508) 33 34 The light cast by the streetlamps, being “ghostly,” hovers in an indeterminate 35 interval between being and nonbeing, and the light emanating from the win- 36 dows of the building is intermittent. The transitional and the transitory are 37 thus closely intertwined in the penumbra in which the action is set. Against 38 this mutable backdrop Stevens places an ill-defi ned fi gure whose “bitter 39 droop” is less revealing of the wanderer’s state of mind than of the speaker’s 40 eagerness to extract a tale from the scant visual data available to him: 41 42 A wanderer beats, 43 With bitter droop, 44 Along the waste 45 Of vacant streets. 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 114114 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM On Stevensian Transitoriness 115 Suppose some glimmer 1 Recalled for him 2 An odorous room, 3 A fan’s fleet shimmer 4 5 Of silvery spangle, 6 Two startled eyes, 7 A still-trembling hand 8 And its only bangle. (CPP 508) 9 10 Although the adjective “bitter” already implies that a subjective assessment 11 of the man is taking place, it is only at the outset of the third quatrain that 12 what could only be a surmise is acknowledged as such, while the burden of 13 hypothesis is surreptitiously transferred. Not only is supposition intrinsi- 14 cally provisional and transitory, the agency in which it originates shifts from 15 the poem’s anonymous speaker to the reader who, through the imperative 16 “Suppose,” is now summoned to take his place. The poem thus stages yet 17 another mise en abyme by virtue of which its absent co-enunciator becomes 18 a mirror held up to the speaker’s own speculations. 19 But the supposing itself is at a slant in relation to its own object. While 20 the imperative invites us to take a guess as to the possible cause-eff ect rela- 21 tion between “some glimmer” and the memory it triggers, supposition is 22 superfl uous at this point in the short narrative: it behooves the reader to 23 defer or dis-place the act of supposing to the end of the poem, where it is 24 indeed called for as we are teased into a variety of hypotheses accounting 25 for the “startled eyes” and for the “still-trembling hand / And its only ban- 26 gle.” Connecting the woman’s expression of surprise with the wanderer’s 27 “bitter droop” suggests that a scene of parting may have just taken place, 28 and that some cruelty may have been involved on the part of the male pro- 29 tagonist of this miniature drama. Perhaps the man simply announced that 30 he had decided to leave the woman. Perhaps he told her about another lover. 31 Perhaps the hand’s “only bangle” metaphorizes the abandoned woman’s 32 plight. Or perhaps this single piece of jewelry is an indication of her social 33 status, as opposed, say, to a large number of cheap bracelets. The meaning 34 of the poem is thus left wavering in a hermeneutic chiaroscuro, and the 35 “fan’s fl eet shimmer / Of silvery spangle” turns out to trope the broadening 36 spectrum of temporary conjectures which fan out from the fragmentary 37 indications scattered in the poem’s four stanzas—or, as the poem’s last 38 brace rhyme on the words “spangle” and “bangle” implies, the various 39 hypothetical angles from which this narrative may be approached. 40 The dual pulsation of Stevens’ Baudelairean, pre-Prufrockian wanderer’s 41 footsteps through the “waste / Of vacant streets” is not only refl ected in 42 the binary rhythm of the poem’s dimeters. It is also mirrored in the dual 43 readings elicited by the compound adjective “still-trembling” in the fourth 44 stanza. In an adverbial reading of “still” several scenarios can be inferred 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 115115 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM 116 Axel Nesme 1 from the pathos of the hand that trembles in the wanderer’s memory. This 2 metonymic fragment functions as a shimmering surface luring the reader 3 to assume hidden depths of meaning, which may be little more than fi g- 4 ments of his or her own imagination. However, “still-trembling” may also 5 be read as an oxymoron combining two incompatible adjectives. Whether 6 in its handling of surfaces and of the depths that they artifi cially suggest or 7 in its cultivation of the paradox of mutable fi xity, Stevens’ “Chiaroscuro” 8 brings to mind the passage from Aesthetics of the Ephemeral where Buci- 9 Glucksmann writes: 10 11 That chiaroscuro is the invention of the baroque era and generates the 12 values of obliqueness, curvature, and of the acme of time as fi xity and 13 pure becoming, might be the starting point of a new adventure of light, 14 in which being is given in a variety of “manners” which destabilize 15 ontology to the benefi t of an ephemerality which is the energy of the 16 present, in which forms and forces are interwoven. (33) 17 18 The logic of Stevens’ “Chiaroscuro” is essentially metonymic, not only in 19 that fragmentary details point toward the possibility of a broader narrative, 20 but also in that, unlike the man who is explicitly designated by the personal 21 pronoun “him” and exists, though vaguely, as a whole entity referred to as 22 “A wanderer,” the female character is reduced to the synecdoches of “Two 23 startled eyes” and “A still-trembling hand,” and to the metonymies of her 24 “odorous room,” her “fan,” and her “only bangle.” 25 Buci-Glucksmann points out that the off shoots of the “melancholy root” 26 of baroque subjectivity may be Hamletian self-destructiveness and mad- 27 ness, or a “poetics of the aerial and of appearances” dwelling in metamor- 28 phosis and inconsistency (34–35). Stevens’ “The Worms at Heaven’s Gate” 29 from 1916 taps this “melancholy root” in a playfully macabre rewriting of 30 the “ubi sunt” motif where, in “Chiaroscuro” fashion, parts of the Ara- 31 bian princess Badroulbadour, the “Moon of Moons” whom Aladdin mar- 32 ries in the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, are translated to heaven 33 by worms in charge of proclaiming the transitoriness of human beauty. 34 Besides the allusion to Shakespeare’s “Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate 35 sings” in Cymbeline (2.3.20), Stevens’ lines “Here are the lips, / The bundle 36 of the body and the feet” barely conceal their reference to Hamlet’s own 37 version of “ubi sunt”: 38 39 Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be 40 your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your fl ashes of merriment, 41 that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your 42 own grinning? Quite chop-fallen? (Hamlet 5.1.182–86) 43 44 A song of Badroulbadour’s passing, “The Worms at Heaven’s Gate” is also 45 a song of what is best passed over in silence, that is, of what is lost not just 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 116116 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM On Stevensian Transitoriness 117 in the transition between this life and the next, but also in the fl eeting inter- 1 val between the poem’s penultimate and fi nal lines. Indeed, in this mock 2 complaint about the ephemerality of human beauty the lady vanishes twice: 3 fi rst as a whole body reduced to parts in an inversion of the blazon motif 4 where the fragments of Badroulbadour’s body are brought as an homage to 5 her (un-)maker. As for the lady’s second vanishing, it occurs at the juncture 6 preceding the return of the poem’s refrain, in the awkward silence where 7 dots are substituted for what Andrew Marvell once obliquely designated, in 8 “To His Coy Mistress,” by the lines: “Two hundred to adore each breast, / 9 But thirty thousand to the rest” (338). 10 Transitoriness and metaphorical transport are closely woven together 11 in this poem, where the worms call themselves the princess’ “chariot”— 12 in other words, the metaphorical vehicle of the princess’ piecemeal trans- 13 fi guration in death (CPP 40). While the worms metaphorize metaphoricity, 14 however, they primarily point to what is lost in metaphorical transport. As 15 in “Metaphors of a Magnifi co,” where the speaker stumbles on the tau- 16 tology, “Twenty men crossing a bridge, / Into a village, / Are / Twenty 17 men crossing a bridge / Into a village” (CPP 15), the worms remain at the 18 gate of metaphoricity, being capable only of fl atly enumerating parts of 19 the woman’s body. In its morbid humor the poem thus also conveys what 20 may go wrong when the poetic imagination fails to metabolize its material. 21 Vanitas itself becomes the locus of a baroque mise en abyme conveying not 22 only the transitoriness of feminine beauty, but also the precariousness of 23 the poetic faculty itself. 24 In 1909, Stevens was reading Paul Elmer More’s essays. On May 14 of 25 that year, he copied into his journal several quotes from More’s writings, 26 themselves in part quotes of other books, including a famous line from the 27 French Renaissance poet Malherbe’s “Consolation à M. du Périer”: “et rose 28 elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses” (SP 220).6 Malherbe’s rose of transitori- 29 ness resurfaces in the tenth poem of The Little June Book: 30 31 Only to name again 32 The leafy rose— 33 So to forget the fading, 34 The purple shading, 35 Ere it goes. 36 37 Only to speak the name 38 Of Odor’s bloom— 39 Rose! The soft sound, contending, 40 Falls at its ending, 41 To sweet doom. (CPP 512) 42 43 In “Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds” we have seen how transitori- 44 ness becomes indistinguishable from poetic syntax. Here, too, Stevens is 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 117117 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:421:55:42 PMPM 118 Axel Nesme 1 aware that “Roses are not noted for endurance,” as Amy Lowell wrote 2 in “Fugitive” (120). So, instead of dwelling on the ephemerality of the 3 rose as a hackneyed poetic theme, he plays with the Cratylian notion 4 that the brevity of the fl ower’s life is somehow built into its signifi er. 5 Every single line in the poem thus ends with a voiced consonant which 6 briefl y reverberates beyond the line’s natural ending, and the barely 7 audible shift from “fading” to “shading” translates the fl ower’s decline 8 in terms of the minimal diff erence between two fricatives, as if language 9 itself had been set adrift. Similar phonemic displacements “From dry 10 catarrhs, and to guitars” (CPP 8), or from “Mon-ocle” to “Mon Oncle” 11 (CPP 10), pervade the writing of Harmonium, where linguistic identi- 12 ties are in constant fl ux, as witnessed by the central role assigned to the 13 prepositions from and through in “The Ordinary Women” (CPP 8–9), 14 for instance. 15 I pointed out earlier that in Henry James’s descriptions of New York the 16 dimension of the uncanny is often present, as if registering the city’s muta- 17 bility is inseparable from unveiling it as a living organism in the process of 18 giving birth to the American nation. Laurent Jenny, in La Parole singulière, 19 argues that poetic fi gures, which by defi nition inscribe mutability within 20 language by blurring the boundaries between signifi ers, likewise point to 21 the fantasized birth of language. “Every poetic fi gure,” Jenny writes, “takes 22 us back to the mythical moment of the simultaneous foundation of lan- 23 guage and speech, and represents it for us. . . . In one unique ‘originary’ 24 moment the future and the foundation of language cross paths” (89).7 The 25 critic adds: 26 27 All poetic fi gures pulsate on the threshold of indistinctiveness. Some- 28 times they challenge the distinction between signifi ers by highlighting 29 analogies which threaten to return it to indistinctiveness. Speech then 30 borders on confusion where a semantic-phonemic continuum might 31 clog up entire areas of the linguistic system (as is the case in parono- 32 masia . . . ). Sometimes poetic fi gures create distinctions where lan- 33 guage had merged several semantic representations . . . (as is the case 34 with antanaclasis, which varies the meanings of a word throughout its 35 various occurrences within a single utterance). . . . The possibility of 36 meaning and the risk of meaninglessness are thus questioned simulta- 37 neously. (99–100) 38 39 In such minimal sound nuances as that which separate “shading” from 40 “fading,” it is “not time but its vibration which has become perceptible,” 41 in Buci-Glucksmann’s words (26): “the ephemeral captures time in the 42 imperceptible fl ux and interval of things, of beings and of what exists” 43 (25). It is in this light that we may understand Stevens’ much later pro- 44 nouncement, in “Variations on a Summer Day,” from which I will borrow 45 my conclusion: 46

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1 James, Henry. The American Scene. New York: Penguin, 1994. Print. 2 Jenny, Laurent. La Parole singulière. Paris: Belin, 1990. Print. 3 Longenbach, James. Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Print. 4 Lowell, Amy. “Fugitive.” Imagist Poetry. Ed. Peter Jones. London: Penguin, 1972. 5 120. Print. 6 Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Third 7 ed. Ed. Alexander W. Allison et al. New York: Norton, 1983. 337–38. Print. 8 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Ed. Bernard Williams. Trans. Josefi ne Nauckhoff and Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print. 9 Ricciardi, Alessia. The Ends of Mourning: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Film. Stan- 10 ford: Stanford UP, 2003. Print. 11 Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Harold Jenkins. London: Methuen, 1982. 12 Print. 13 Stevens, Holly. Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens. New York: Random House, 1977. Print. 14 Stevens, Wallace. Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Ker- 15 mode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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In January 1909, when he was living in New York City, Wallace Stevens 1 bought a copy of Henry James’s novel Washington Square (1880). As he 2 was about to start reading it, he wrote to his fi ancée Elsie: 3 4 I think I’ll send it to you if it is good. It was written almost thirty years 5 ago, when Henry James was still H. J. Jr. and had tales to tell. (L 121) 6 7 He probably hoped that Washington Square’s New York setting might help 8 her develop an interest in living in the city once they married. But three 9 days later he had changed his mind: 10 11 The “Washington Square” was not specially good: altogether an exhi- 12 bition of merely confl icting characters. It is such an old story that the 13 neighborhood was once suburban but that with the growth of the City 14 has come to be very much “down-town”—the very last place, in fact, 15 in which people live, all below it being exclusively business, except for 16 the tenement intermissions.—Yet it was balm to me to read and to read 17 quickly. (L 122) 18 19 Most readers, I think, have taken these passages to mean that Stevens had 20 little interest in Henry James. In describing the novel as primarily a dull 21 treatment of how the population of New York spread progressively north- 22 ward during the nineteenth century, Stevens seems to have missed the entire 23 plot of the book, which he characterizes vaguely as “altogether an exhibi- 24 tion of merely confl icting characters.” But this apparent dislike of the book 25 and distaste for James need to be understood in context. 26 At the time he wrote these letters, Stevens’ engagement to Elsie had just 27 caused a serious rift with his family. A few months before, in the fall of 28 1908, Wallace had fought with his father over it. Garrett Stevens probably 29 opposed the marriage because, as Peter Brazeau puts it, “he felt his son had 30 misplaced his aff ection on a stenographer from across the tracks” (257). 31 The confl ict between father and son was so bitter that they never spoke 32 again. This situation closely resembles the plot of Washington Square. In 33 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 121121 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:431:55:43 PMPM 122 Glen MacLeod 1 that novel, the young Catherine Sloper clashes with her father, Dr. Sloper, 2 over the man she wishes to marry. Father and daughter being equally stub- 3 born, their sharp disagreement causes a permanent and painful breach 4 between them. Catherine refuses to renounce her lover—although he turns 5 out to be just as disreputable as her father believes—and Dr. Sloper never 6 forgives her, disinheriting her in his will. 7 Stevens tells Elsie that Washington Square is “not specially good,” there- 8 fore, not because he thinks the book is bad, but because he is afraid that 9 reading it would upset her. Its “confl icting characters” would be too close 10 for comfort.1 In a similar way, he steered her away from the gloomier and 11 more pessimistic novels of Thomas Hardy: 12 13 If you should come to regard [Thomas Hardy] as not as interesting as 14 he might be, read his “Under the Greenwood Tree” before you give him 15 the sack. It is pleasantness itself. (L 85) 16 17 Wallace had already brought enough “confl icting characters” into Elsie’s 18 life; in the realm of fi ction, at least, he wanted to be able to assure her of a 19 happy ending. 20 As for himself, his concluding remarks about Washington Square seem 21 to indicate that he actually enjoyed reading the book: “it was balm to me 22 to read and to read quickly.” And yet why, if it was “balm . . . to read,” 23 does he add that phrase, “and to read quickly”? We might take this to 24 mean that, although he enjoyed any chance to spend time reading, he sim- 25 ply skimmed James’s book because he found it so slight. Such an attitude 26 hardly bespeaks an interest in Henry James. 27 But there is another way of reading this phrase. If there was one thing 28 every literate person knew about Henry James in the early twentieth cen- 29 tury, it was that his latest novels were not quick to read. The Golden Bowl, 30 for instance, was published in the United States in 1904 and got a lot of 31 coverage because James himself was revisiting his native country at the 32 time. Responses were decidedly mixed. Some readers praised James’s high 33 artistic achievement, but many more complained that the book was too 34 hard to understand. A reviewer for the New York Times criticized James 35 as “prolix,” “inconsequent,” “incoherent,” and “indecisive.”2 One popular 36 novelist commented that “He thinks in and out and all around an idea, till 37 you get dizzy and a headache by following it . . .”3 Another reader wished 38 that we might have back the “Henry James, Jr.” who knew how to write 39 proper books.4 This situation explains Stevens’ original comment to Elsie 40 that Washington Square “was written almost thirty years ago when Henry 41 James was still H. J. Jr. and had tales to tell.” It was commonplace in the 42 early twentieth century to remark that the later James, however eminent, 43 was no longer a straightforward teller of tales. His own brother, William 44 James, complained after reading The Wings of the Dove in 1902: “You’ve 45 reversed every traditional canon of story-telling (especially the fundamental 46

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T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 123123 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:431:55:43 PMPM 124 Glen MacLeod 1 about James could fi ll an entire library. In addition to this sheer volume of 2 material, James is daunting for scholars because his long career straddles 3 several distinct areas of academic specialization: both the nineteenth and 4 the twentieth centuries, both British and American literature. If we cannot 5 become experts on both writers, how can we profi tably address the possible 6 relations between them? In this chapter, I hope to open up a few possible 7 avenues of exploration. 8 Stevens, of course, would have been aware that he was following in the 9 footsteps of Henry James even when he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 10 from 1897 to 1900. Henry’s brother William James was probably the most 11 famous professor teaching at Harvard while Stevens was there. But New 12 York, to which Stevens moved directly from Cambridge, had an even closer 13 connection to the James family. Henry was born and raised there, and he 14 made no secret of his special fondness for the city. He devotes three full chap- 15 ters to New York in The American Scene (1907), the book describing his 16 year-long tour of his native country, from New England to Florida, in 1904– 17 1905. Boston, in contrast, gets only one short chapter. Fully half of A Small 18 Boy and Others (1913), the fi rst volume of his unfi nished autobiography, 19 records his happy memories of growing up in New York. When he undertook 20 the monumental task of editing his collected Novels and Tales (twenty-four 21 volumes, 1907–1909), James dedicated “the whole enterprise explicitly to my 22 native city” by calling it the New York Edition (Letters IV 368).6 23 During the years that Stevens lived in and around New York, 1900– 24 1916, James was recognized as the greatest living American writer. As 25 such, he was much discussed in literary circles. As the New York Times put 26 it in 1904: “James as a ‘literary topic’ seems to us in more evidence now 27 than he has been since the era of ‘Daisy Miller’”—that is, since the days 28 of James’s fi rst great international success in the late 1870s. New Yorkers 29 naturally took pride in James’s international reputation and the New York 30 press treated him as a native son. On his death in 1916, a tribute in the New 31 York Times began: 32 33 A New York farewell to this noble fi gure of American, of European, 34 letters must not forget that . . . Henry James was “an old New Yorker.” 35 . . . New York may well cherish the memory of this illustrious son, her 36 greatest artist . . . 7 37 38 Throughout Stevens’ formative years in New York, he would have been 39 regularly reminded of James’s preeminent stature and achievement. 40 There are a number of obvious similarities between Stevens and the late 41 Henry James. Both writers made a kind of religion of art. Both aspired 42 to a transatlantic, cosmopolitan outlook that was often at odds with the 43 provincialism of mainstream America. Both insist on pleasure as a reason- 44 able pursuit in art and life, fl outing the puritanical strain of their American 45 background. Both accept the fact of money as necessary to the high culture 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 124124 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:431:55:43 PMPM Stevens and Henry James 125 they value—Stevens’ saying that “Money is a kind of poetry” (CPP 905) 1 neatly epitomizes this attitude. But both also avoid writing about the world 2 of work—Stevens could have been speaking for both James and himself 3 when he admonished his daughter Holly in 1942 that “None of the great 4 things in life have anything to do with making your living” (L 426). Both 5 James and Stevens were interested in writing as a fi ne art. For James, this 6 meant creating a kind of fi ction that aspires to the condition of poetry. He 7 enriches his dense and diffi cult later prose with poetic devices, most notably 8 with an increasing use of symbolism and of simile and metaphor; and in his 9 prefaces he sometimes refers to himself as “the poet.” This poetic aspect of 10 his late style helps to explain why modernist poets like Ezra Pound, T. S. 11 Eliot, and Marianne Moore found it so natural to claim Henry James as a 12 kindred spirit. 13 If we think in terms of style, it is the late Henry James who is most like 14 Wallace Stevens. In saying this, I am thinking not so much of the great 15 novels of the so-called major phase—The Wings of the Dove (1902), The 16 American (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904)—as of the series of works 17 that Ross Posnock characterizes as “a second major phase (1907–1914) 18 of autobiography, cultural criticism, and aesthetics” (4) and that David 19 McWhirter calls “a fourth phase.” This phase includes works such as The 20 American Scene (1907), in which he repeatedly refers to himself in the 21 third person (“the restless analyst,” “the earnest observer”), avoiding the 22 fi rst person as Stevens would do even more assiduously in his poetry. I 23 think also of the prefaces to the New York Edition, in which he analyzes 24 his own creative process and lays out his critical principles; these prefaces 25 have affi nities with Stevens’ own essays, with some of Stevens’ poems about 26 the poetic process, and even with Stevens’ long, careful explications of his 27 poems in the published Letters. Another work representative of the retro- 28 spective and self-analytical later James is the unfi nished Autobiography 29 (1913, 1914, 1917) in which James applies the minute distinctions, careful 30 accuracy, and abstract circumlocutions of his late style to a reconstruction 31 of his own personal experience in ways that sometimes call to mind Ste- 32 vens’ poetic explorations of his own mental processes. 33 The only evidence that Stevens read any of these late volumes by Henry 34 James is circumstantial. But to quote Henry David Thoreau, “Some cir- 35 cumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you fi nd a trout in the milk” 36 (94). Although there is no record of Stevens’ reading The American Scene, 37 for instance, he certainly would have been familiar with it. James’s home- 38 coming tour on which it is based was news at every stop from New Hamp- 39 shire to Florida in 1904–1905. The New York papers published notices of 40 dinners given in James’s honor while he was revisiting the city of his birth. 41 The book itself was widely reviewed when it was published in 1907. Stevens 42 also had more personal reasons to be interested in The American Scene. 43 His Harvard connection to William James is one. Roy Harvey Pearce has 44 argued convincingly that Stevens’ poem “Chocorua to Its Neighbor” was 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 125125 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:431:55:43 PMPM 126 Glen MacLeod 1 inspired by Stevens’ memory of reading the description in The American 2 Scene of William James’s retreat near Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire 3 (139–47). An even closer connection was Stevens’ Harvard friend Witter 4 Bynner, who met and became friendly with Henry James in the summer 5 of 1904, while the famous writer was staying in New York during his 6 American tour. Stevens was keeping up his own friendship with Bynner at 7 this time; it is impossible to imagine that Bynner’s new acquaintance with 8 Henry James would not have been a topic of conversation between them. 9 It seems likely that Stevens would also have read Bynner’s interview with 10 James published in The Critic in February of 1905.8 All of this would surely 11 have made Stevens curious about The American Scene. If he did not read 12 the entire book, he at least would have informed himself about it, because 13 James was the kind of writer whose work any well-read person would have 14 kept up with—reading about it in periodicals, dipping into it in bookstores 15 and libraries—as his books were published and reviewed year by year. We 16 can assume that Stevens knew what the book was about, how it was writ- 17 ten, and what its signifi cance was in James’s career. 18 Circumstantial evidence also suggests that Stevens probably read James’s 19 Autobiography. In the fourth section of his essay “The Noble Rider and the 20 Sound of Words,” Stevens summarizes how the sense of reality itself has 21 changed during his lifetime. The watershed, for him, occurred during the 22 1910s, when he was living in New York, and when the First World War 23 and the modernist revolution suddenly changed everything. Here is how he 24 describes that shift: 25 26 First . . . there is . . . the comfortable American state of life of the eight- 27 ies, the nineties and the fi rst ten years of the present century [that is, 28 the time of his boyhood and youth]. Next, there is the reality that has 29 ceased to be indiff erent, the years when the Victorians had been dis- 30 posed of and intellectual minorities and social minorities began to take 31 their place and to convert our state of life to something that might not 32 be fi nal. This much more vital reality made the life that had preceded 33 it look like . . . one of Töpfer’s books of sketches in Switzerland. (CPP 34 658–59) 35 36 I cannot be the fi rst reader to wonder, on reading this passage, who “Töp- 37 fer” was and what his sketches looked like. Of course, the general point of 38 the comparison is clear enough in any case. Stevens considers these sketches 39 outdated in style, quaint reminders of a simpler time and place, fi tting anal- 40 ogies for his nostalgic memories of the days of his youth in the years before 41 World War I. The particular “books of sketches in Switzerland” Stevens 42 refers to are the two volumes of Rodolphe Töpff er’s Voyages en zigzag, pub- 43 lished in French in 1844 and 1854 and reissued occasionally, still in French, 44 into the early twentieth century.9 What exactly did he expect Töpff er to 45 mean to his listeners? 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 126126 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:431:55:43 PMPM Stevens and Henry James 127 The answer is to be found, I think, in Henry James’s Autobiography. 1 The fi rst volume of that unfi nished book, A Small Boy and Others, was 2 published by Scribner in 1913. In a passage looking back on the series 3 of schoolmasters and tutors that provided the eccentric education of the 4 famous James brothers, Henry lingers fondly on their experience in Swit- 5 zerland, inspired by, as he puts it, “the fond New York theory of Swiss 6 education . . . as a beautifully genialized, humanized, civilized, even roman- 7 ticized thing” (164–65). He continues: 8 9 What it mainly brings back to me is the fi ne old candour and queerness 10 of the New York state of mind, begotten really not a little, I think, under 11 our own roof, by the more charmed perusal of Rodolphe Toepff er’s 12 Voyages en Zigzag, the two goodly octavo volumes of which delight- 13 ful work, an adorable book, taken with its illustrations, had come out 14 early in the ’fi fties and had engaged our fondest study. It is the copious 15 chronicle, by a schoolmaster of endless humour and sympathy . . . of his 16 holiday excursions with his pupils, mainly on foot and with staff and 17 knapsack, through the incomparable Switzerland of the time before the 18 railways and the “rush,” before the monster hotels, the desecrated sum- 19 mits, the vulgarized valleys, the circular tours, the perforating tubes, 20 the funiculars, the hordes, the horrors. To turn back to Toepff er’s pages 21 to-day is to get the sense of a lost paradise . . . (165–66) 22 23 Töpff er’s Voyages en zigzag represent, for James, a “lost paradise” in at 24 least two senses. It is a vision of an older Europe, unspoiled by the boom in 25 tourism that occurred in the later nineteenth century. But it is also a fond 26 reminder of what James refers to as “the New York state of mind”—that is, 27 the state of mind he associates with his childhood in New York City in the 28 years before the Civil War. It is a state of mind that is characterized primar- 29 ily by an idealized vision of Europe (“beautifully genialized, humanized, 30 civilized, even romanticized”). In retrospect, this state of mind appears 31 naively but touchingly innocent, charged with a youthful exuberance, an 32 intellectual curiosity, a headstrong enthusiasm for life and for culture that 33 represent, for James, the American character at its best. 34 Töpff er had such personal signifi cance for James, we learn later in the 35 Autobiography, partly because Töpff er’s son Charles was, for a time, a 36 favorite tutor and friend to Henry and William (242–43). But James does 37 not assume that his readers will share his familiarity with the Swiss author 38 and illustrator. He explains who Töpff er was and describes what his charm- 39 ing books Voyages en zigzag are about. So, almost thirty years later, when 40 Wallace Stevens was looking for an example to illustrate his own sense of 41 a “lost paradise” before World War I, he found one ready made in James’s 42 memories of Rodolphe Töpff er. Stevens does not feel the need to explain his 43 allusion because James has done it for him. He expects any well-educated 44 reader to have read the Autobiography of Henry James.10 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 127127 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:431:55:43 PMPM 128 Glen MacLeod 1 A closer look at The American Scene will highlight what is perhaps the 2 closest affi nity between Stevens and the late Henry James. The American 3 Scene is a travel book, but an unusual one, because James’s point of view 4 is so subjective and so abstracted that the perplexed reader often wonders 5 where, exactly, he is. It exemplifi es at length the idea that reality (as Stevens 6 put it) is “not [the] external scene but the life that is lived in it” (CPP 658). 7 Take, for instance, the fi rst chapter of the book. James has been regret- 8 ting the absence of what he calls “social and sensual . . . by-play” in the 9 plain and simple atmosphere of New England. Then he comes upon a rare 10 example of such “by-play.” Here is his description of it: 11 12 Never was such by-play as in a great new house on a hilltop that overlooked 13 the most composed of communities; a house apparently conceived—and 14 with great felicity—on the lines of a magnifi ed Mount Vernon, and in 15 which an array of modern “impressionistic” pictures, mainly French, 16 wondrous examples of Manet, of Degas, of Claude Monet, of Whistler, 17 of other rare recent hands, treated us to the momentary eff ect of a large 18 slippery sweet inserted, without a warning, between the compressed lips 19 of half-conscious inanition. One hadn’t quite known one was starved, 20 but the morsel went down by the mere authority of the thing consum- 21 mately prepared. Nothing else had been, in all the circle, prepared to 22 anything like the same extent; and though the consequent taste, as a 23 mixture with the other tastes, was of the queerest, no proof of the sover- 24 eign power of art could have been, for the moment, sharper. It happened 25 to be that particular art—it might as well, no doubt, have been another; 26 it made everything else shrivel and fade: it was like the sudden trill of a 27 nightingale, lord of the hushed evening. (37) 28 29 The eff ect of this passage is practically the opposite of what we expect 30 from a travel book, or even from the normal use of particular examples in 31 prose. Instead of giving clear and concrete form to otherwise diff use obser- 32 vations, this example of the country house dissolves into the liquid medium 33 of James’s imagination. Although we know we are somewhere in the vicin- 34 ity of Farmington, Connecticut, James does not tell us the particular facts 35 that would allow us to situate this experience in a normal human and social 36 context. He admires the architecture of the house, comparing it aptly to 37 Mount Vernon with its large, pillared front porch, but he does not tell us 38 that the house has its own name (Hill-Stead), that it was owned by Alfred 39 Atmore Pope, who lived there with his family, or that James stayed there 40 as their guest for several days in 1904.11 James does mention a number of 41 actual paintings, but only as abstract “examples” of absent painters, so that 42 these factual details fi nally have less concrete presence than the metaphor 43 of the “large slippery sweet” and the simile of the nightingale’s song, the 44 poetic devices that convey James’s private, sensual response to the scene. 45 As the paragraph builds to this climax of subjectivity, the paintings are left 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 128128 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:431:55:43 PMPM Stevens and Henry James 129 hanging in a generalized air of sensibility, and the house itself vanishes into 1 James’s overall impression. 2 The experience of reading this passage is similar to the experience of 3 reading certain of Wallace Stevens’ late poems. For example, a reader 4 encountering the title “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” for the fi rst 5 time might reasonably expect the poem to include some description of the 6 city of New Haven, especially as the text consists of thirty-one cantos and 7 takes up at least twenty pages in most editions. What the reader gets instead 8 is clear from the very beginning of the poem: 9 10 The eye’s plain version is a thing apart, 11 The vulgate of experience. Of this, 12 A few words, an and yet, and yet, and yet— 13 14 As part of the never-ending meditation, 15 Part of the question that is a giant himself: 16 Of what is this house composed if not of the sun, 17 18 These houses, these difficult objects, dilapidate 19 Appearances of what appearances . . . (CPP 397) 20 21 If Stevens’ aim in this poem is to get as close as possible to “plain real- 22 ity,” as he says it is (L 636), then his method is certainly counterintui- 23 tive—rather like Henry James’s idea of how to write a travel book about 24 America. As James, passing through Farmington, Connecticut, pauses to 25 focus on the specifi c example of Hill-Stead and its impressionist paintings, 26 Stevens, writing about New Haven, starts with the example of a particular 27 house: “Of what is this house composed if not of the sun.” Yet Stevens 28 does not name the house, as James never names Hill-Stead, and what he 29 does go on to describe—again like James—is not the house itself but his 30 own thoughts and feelings inspired by it. As his meditation proceeds, “This 31 house” becomes the more generalized plural “These houses,” and then the 32 increasingly abstract “objects,” “Appearances,” and “Impalpable habita- 33 tions” (CPP 397)—as it gradually dissolves, like James’s Hill-Stead, in the 34 restless imagination of the writer.12 35 My point in drawing out this parallel is not to suggest direct infl uence. 36 What I hope to have shown is that, during his New York years, Stevens 37 was undoubtedly aware of James as a towering literary fi gure; that he fol- 38 lowed James’s career as any literary person would have at the time; that he 39 would have known the characteristics of James’s late style whether he read 40 his books or not; and that he would have recognized an affi nity between 41 James’s sensibility—that of an ambitious, internationally oriented, self-con- 42 sciously artistic New Yorker—and his own. I hope this chapter, in combi- 43 nation with those by Axel Nesme and Juliette Utard, will encourage further 44 research on the relations between these two great American writers. 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 129129 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:431:55:43 PMPM 130 Glen MacLeod 1 NOTES 2 3 1. In her biography of the poet, Joan Richardson suggests that Stevens was 4 made uncomfortable by Washington Square because Dr. Sloper’s domineer- ing attitude toward Catherine reminded him of his own treatment of Elsie 5 (318–19). 6 2. H. W. Boynton, “The Golden Bowl.” New York Times 26 Nov. 1904: BR1. 7 ProQuest. Web. 20 Aug. 2011. 8 3. “Gertrude Atherton on Novels, Novelists, and Reviewers.” New York Times 9 16 Apr. 1905: SM3. ProQuest. Web. 20 Aug. 2011. 4. Letter from Emma Carleton. New York Times 14 Jan. 1905: BR 26. It should 10 be said that some readers also wrote to defend James: see letters from “O. 11 S. P.,” 7 Jan. 1905: BR10; and from “A. F. P.,” 31 Dec. 1904: BR 938. Pro- 12 Quest. Web. 20 Aug. 2011. 13 5. “F. H.,” “A Stylist on Tour.” New Republic 1 May 1915: 320–21. Print. This 14 is an essay on rereading The American Scene nearly ten years after it was fi rst published. 15 6. Two posthumous volumes of James’s collected works, published in 1918, 16 brought the total number to twenty-six. 17 7. “Henry James.” New York Times 1 Mar. 1916: 10. ProQuest. Web. 20 Aug. 18 2011. 19 8. Bynner’s article in the Saturday Review in 1943 begins, “I fi rst met Henry James in New York in the summer of 1904” and reprints his 1905 interview, 20 “A Word or Two with Henry James.” Stevens records a drunken evening 21 with Bynner in a journal entry of April 9, 1904 (L 71). In a letter to Bynner 22 dated “Thursday [May ? 1904],” he suggests meeting for dinner sometime 23 after June 7, the date of his bar exam, “unless I fl unk” (L 74). 24 9. Rodolphe Töpff er is now celebrated as the father of the comic strip (see Kunzle). Stevens’ memory of Töpff er in “The Noble Rider and the Sound of 25 Words” apparently renewed his interest in the Swiss writer. He mentions in 26 a letter to Barbara Church, on October 25, 1949, that he owns an edition 27 of Xavier de Maistre’s letters to Töpff er, probably Lettres inédites à son ami 28 Toepff er (Genève: Skira, 1945). He remarks in the same letter that “there is 29 a new edition of him now coming out volume by volume. How pleasant it would be to spend the winter on a farm and spend the time reading Töpff er” 30 (L 653). The edition he refers to is probably Oeuvres complètes de Rodolphe 31 Töpff er (Genève: Skira, 1942–1958). In this edition the Voyages en zigzag 32 appear in volumes 18 through 26, published between 1945 and 1958 under 33 the imprint “Genève: P. Cailler.” 34 10. It seems clear that Stevens did not have James’s Autobiography in front of him when he was composing “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,” 35 since he misspells Töpff er’s name as “Töpfer.” More likely he was remem- 36 bering James’s passage on Töpff er from reading A Small Boy and Others 37 sometime soon after it was published in 1913. Further possible evidence 38 of Stevens’ reading this volume may be found in a passage about another 39 favorite tutor, Richard Pulling Jenks: “[We were] to remember that the taste of Cornelius Nepos in the air, even rather stale though it may have 40 been, had lacked the black bitterness of our next ordeal” (121). James’s 41 allusion to Cornelius Nepos, whose easy style was a staple of elementary 42 courses in Latin, conveys associations of rote learning and dusty classroom 43 routine that seem, nevertheless, comfortably congenial in comparison with 44 the business-oriented lessons to which Henry and William were next con- signed. Stevens alludes to Nepos in a similar way in “The Man on the 45 Dump” (1938): 46

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The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says 1 That it puff s as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puff s 2 More than, less than or it puff s like this or that. (CPP 185) 3 Both James and Stevens allude to Cornelius Nepos in order to defi ne a certain atmosphere: stale and dull perhaps, but with a comforting sense of familiar 4 routine, combined in hindsight with a nostalgia for the freshness of youth 5 itself. Stevens’ apparently pedantic classical allusion may actually be a witty 6 allusion to James’s talent for apt comparisons. 7 11. The house James describes in Farmington, Connecticut, is now the Hill- 8 Stead Museum. 12. Roger Gilbert emphasizes nearly the opposite aspect of “An Ordinary Eve- 9 ning in New Haven,” reading it as a “walk poem” that conveys “a fairly 10 accurate sense of the city’s topography” (85). For a “politico-aesthetic” read- 11 ing of the relation between The American Scene and “An Ordinary Evening 12 in New Haven,” see Berger. 13 14 15 WORKS CITED 16 17 Berger, Charles. “Reading the Alien in American Scenes: Henry James and Wallace Stevens.” Wallace Stevens Journal 34.1 (2010): 15–36. Print. 18 Block, Ralph. Extract from “The Wisconsin Players Now at the Neighborhood 19 Playhouse.” New York Tribune 22 Oct. 1917: 9. Rpt. in Doyle 27. Print. 20 Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biogra- 21 phy. New York: Random House, 1983. Print. 22 Bynner, Witter. “On Henry James’s Centennial: Lasting Impressions of a Great American Writer.” Saturday Review 26 (22 May 1943): 23–28. Print. 23 Doyle, Charles, ed. Wallace Stevens: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 24 1985. Print. 25 Fogel, Daniel Mark. “Imaginative Origins: ‘Peter Quince at the Clavier’ and Henry 26 James.” Wallace Stevens Journal 8.1 (1984): 22–27. Print. 27 Gard, Roger, ed. Henry James: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1968. Print. 28 Gilbert, Roger. Walks in the World: Representation and Experience in Modern 29 American Poetry. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991. Print. 30 James, Henry. The American Scene. New York: Penguin, 1994. Print. 31 . Autobiography. Ed. Frederick W. Dupee. New York: Criterion, [1913, 32 1914, 1917,] 1956. Print. . Complete Letters of Henry James. Vol. I: 1855–1872. Vol. II: 1872–1876. 33 Ed. Pierre A. Walker and Greg W. Zacharias. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006, 34 2008. Print. 35 . Letters. Vol. IV: 1895–1916. Ed. Leon Edel. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 36 1984. Print. 37 Kunzle, David. Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpff er. Jackson: UP of Mis- sissippi, 2007. Print. 38 MacLeod, Glen, ed. Wallace Stevens and Henry James. Spec. issue of The Wallace 39 Stevens Journal 34.1 (2010). Print. 40 Matthiessen, F. O. “Wallace Stevens at 67.” New York Times Book Review 20 41 Apr. 1947: 4, 6. Rpt. in Doyle 288–91. Print. 42 McWhirter, David. “‘A Provision Full of Responsibilities’: Senses of the Past in Henry James’s Fourth Phase.” Enacting History in Henry James: Narrative, 43 Power, and Ethics. Ed. Gert Buelens. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 148– 44 65. Print. 45 46

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1 Pearce, Roy Harvey. Gesta Humanorum: Studies in the Historicist Mode. Colum- 2 bia: U of Missouri P, 1987. Print. 3 Posnock, Ross. The Trial of Curiosity: Henry James, William James, and the Chal- lenge of Modernity. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Print. 4 Richardson, Joan. Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879–1923. New York: 5 Beech Tree, William Morrow, 1986. Print. 6 Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Knopf, 7 1966. Print. 8 . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 9 Thoreau, Henry David. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal. Vol. II: 10 1850–September 15, 1851. Ed. Bradford Torrey. Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 11 1906. Print. 12 Töpff er, Rodolphe. Nouveaux voyages en zigzag à la Grande Chartreuse, autour 13 du Mont Blanc, dans les vallées d’Herenz, de Zermatt, au Grimsel, à Genes et à la Corniche. Paris: Lecout, 1854. Print. 14 . Oeuvres complètes de Rodolphe Töpff er. Genève: Skira, 1942–1958. 15 Print. 16 . Voyages en zigzag: ou, Excursions d’un pensionnat en vacances dans 17 les cantons suisses et sur le revers italien des Alpes. Paris: Dubouchet, 1844. 18 Print. Vendler, Helen. Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen out of Desire. Knoxville: U of 19 Tennessee P, 1984. Print. 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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Authors are actors, books are theatres. (CPP 901)

1 2 Skimming through Wallace Stevens’ writings for a proper collection of poetic 3 evocations of New York proves to be a rather disappointing task. Allusions 4 to New York are scarce in the poems, while most of the journals and let- 5 ters from 1900 to 1916 aff ord inauspicious complaints about the city’s ail- 6 ments. Throughout his formative years, Stevens threw an unfavorable light 7 on New York, his new and temporary home after his childhood in Reading 8 and before his poetically mature years in Hartford. The disappointments 9 associated with his life there were soon ascribed to, or perhaps conveniently 10 transferred onto, the city itself, as he strove to cope with bouts of what he 11 called “my New York gloom” (L 83). This, he realized, was his “probation” 12 (L 86),1 a time to measure up hopes against necessity, desire against oppor- 13 tunity, before settling accounts2 and making life-changing decisions. “Long 14 ago, I gave up trying to make friends here, or trying really to enjoy myself. 15 C’est impossible,” he wrote, rather dramatically, in a journal entry of 1905 16 (L 81). Whether real or imagined, this disappointment contributed to Ste- 17 vens’ rejection of journalism, and of literature as a profession. This chapter 18 suggests a reading of Stevens’ discourse of disappointment not so much from 19 a biographical perspective or with an intention to probe into Stevens’ inner 20 life as a New Yorker, but with a view to regarding his New York writings as 21 necessary fi ctions, probatory fi ctions of the self, which constituted the “pre- 22 liminary minutiae” to the writing of a great œuvre.3 23 Of course, as several other chapters in this volume demonstrate, Stevens 24 did not remain entirely impervious to the lure of the city. There is ambiva- 25 lence, more than repugnance, to be found in the biographical accounts of 26 the period. That the letters he wrote were destined to his fi ancée in Reading 27 also makes it rather natural that he should have refrained from praising his 28 life there. But in all his sixteen years in New York it seems odd that he never 29 cast himself in the role of a “poet in New York,” as even Federico García 30 Lorca did after spending only a number of months there, or celebrated the 31 city as “his city,” like Walt Whitman or Hart Crane. At a time when New 32 York was becoming a major modernist metropolis, why did he often choose 33 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 133133 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:441:55:44 PMPM 134 Juliette Utard 1 to appear so unimpressed? Why insist on rejecting to the periphery what 2 John Dos Passos would later call the “center of things” (4)? “I laughed in 3 my sleeve at New-York, far out on the bleak edge of the world” (L 117), he 4 wrote in a letter to Elsie in 1909.4 5 Even after he had settled in Hartford, Stevens kept New York out of 6 his poetry. Its very name appears but twice, each time within a marginal, 7 uncollected poem. In “Agenda” (1935), the line “Charleston should be 8 New York” (CPP 565) clearly follows this pattern of marginalizing New 9 York. The focus is on Charleston, not New York, whose specifi c aura is 10 made dubious through the use of the modal “should.” Might the poem’s 11 “agenda” include debunking the city and challenging the legitimacy of its 12 power and self-esteem? Similarly, the fourth section of “Owl’s Clover” (in 13 the uncollected version) seems to summon the fantasy of relocating New 14 York elsewhere: 15 16 It cannot mean a sea-wide country strewn 17 With squalid cells, unless New York is Cocos 18 Or Chicago a Kaffir kraal. It means this mob. (CPP 584)5 19 20 If we understand “a sea-wide country” as a possible reference to the United 21 States, the “squalid cells” stand for great American cities like New York 22 and Chicago. Manhattan Island does not fare well compared with the 23 Cocos Island of the Indian Ocean, while Chicago’s Stock Yards, vilifi ed as 24 The Jungle as early as 1905 in Upton Sinclair’s novel, are a bleak industrial 25 counterpart to the South African “kraal,” which is a word in Afrikaans for 26 a livestock enclosure. That this one should be “a Kaffi r kraal”—an off ensive 27 term taken from the Arabs to mean a black African nonbeliever—does not 28 alleviate the negativity of Chicago. Surely the harsh alliterative k sounds 29 that pile up toward the end of those lines would be enough to vouch for 30 this particular choice of words. But “kaffi r” also underlines the question of 31 belief that underlies the whole poem. In the midst of these enclosures (cells, 32 kraals, islands), the one redeeming aperture is provided by the conjunc- 33 tion “unless.” The enigmatic line “unless New York is Cocos,” meaning 34 perhaps unless we believe in a fi ction, opens a new possibility—albeit a 35 minor one, as the suffi x “less” emphasizes—and operates as a welcoming of 36 fi ction, echoing the poem “Asides on the Oboe” a few years later: “So, say 37 that fi nal belief / Must be in a fi ction” (CPP 226). In these lines, “unless” 38 functions as a key to what the poet Yves Bonnefoy calls “the improbable,” 39 the exceptionality and unforeseeability of what is.6 40 Both the poems and the prose written in New York articulate a recur- 41 ring discourse of disappointment, as if New York had made it possible for 42 Stevens to polish a kind of urban lament, by which he might ascertain his 43 place as a subject. Even before his fi rst week in the city was over, Stevens 44 had already made up his mind that New York was not the place for him: 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 134134 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:441:55:44 PMPM “Unless New York Is Cocos” 135 What is there to keep me, for example, in a place where all Beauty 1 is on exhibition, all Power a tool of Selfi shness, and all Generosity 2 a source of Vanity? New York is a fi eld of tireless and antagonistic 3 interests—undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is 4 looking at everybody else—a foolish crowd walking on mirrors. . . . 5 Thank Heaven the winds are not generated in Yorkville, or the clouds 6 manufactured in Harlem. What a price they would bring! (L 38) 7 8 However delightful in its unforgiving irony, this entry relies heavily on rhet- 9 oric with its opening rhetorical question, its ensuing generalizations and 10 hyperboles, the capitalization of abstract nouns associated with a ternary 11 rhythm (Beauty/Power/Generosity), the aphoristic sentences—to name but 12 a few of the devices used. Still, Stevens’ tone is easily recognizable, and 13 the punctuation cleverly helps to retrieve the fi rst-person pronoun “me” 14 from the fast-crowding plurals of the sequel: “me, for example,” stands in 15 contrast to “everybody else,” so that in the end the exemplarity falls on the 16 speaker, not on the examples that follow.7 17 Seven years later Stevens still complained about his life as a New Yorker. 18 He explained to Elsie that 19 20 There is so little in New-York that I desire enough to work for: cer- 21 tainly I do not desire money, and yet my thoughts must be constantly 22 on that subject. It is active, gay (at times), powerful, interesting and full 23 of people who say that they would rather be lamp-posts on the Bowery 24 than cedars in Lebanon. But, of course, I’m of the cedary disposition. 25 (L 100) 26 27 That most people found New York thrilling only seems to have encouraged 28 Stevens to cling more self-righteously to his own diff erence, to what he 29 called his “cedary disposition.” Half-disguised in the letter is a reference to 30 Psalm 91:12: “The righteous shall fl ourish like the palm tree and grow like 31 a cedar in Lebanon.” That cedars are the tallest and loftiest of trees in the 32 Bible again suggests that Stevens’ disappointment was the measure of his 33 ambition. New York infl icted a number of narcissistic wounds on Stevens 34 as a young man, and he would not be satisfi ed with a minor role there. 35 Perhaps keeping it at a distance in his writings was all he could do to bear 36 the brunt of the off ense and preserve his own dignity. Perhaps placing New 37 York at the periphery was a way of keeping himself at the center. 38 In her Poetics of Disappointment: Wordsworth to Ashbery, which 39 includes a chapter on Stevens, Laura Quinney off ers a reading of Stevens’ 40 late poetry through the thematics of disappointment—a disappointment 41 which is already present in the early poems but which, Quinney argues, 42 acquires deeper meaning in the late poems. She defi nes disappointment 43 not simply as “the frustration of wishes or expectations,” but as a “more 44 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 135135 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:441:55:44 PMPM 136 Juliette Utard 1 generalized—and deeper—frustration of eros, in which the self . . . is in fact 2 humiliated both in itself and in its idea of what it means to be a subject” 3 (ix).8 Nicolas Grimaldi, in Le Désir et le temps, takes a similar approach, 4 though he sees disappointment as a promise of philosophical thought: “Any 5 philosophy originates in disappointment. We philosophize only because . . . 6 we secretly feel we are meant to be something which is forever being post- 7 poned. We are the promise of something, what exactly is what we fail to 8 discover, so that we remain until the end an unkept promise.”9 Like Quin- 9 ney, Grimaldi is interested in the ontological resonances of the word. His 10 philosophy of disappointment defi nes philosophical discourse as an attempt 11 to “capture the secret of our disappointment” (7) and fi nd the path to our 12 own freedom. In Grimaldi, disappointment is more than a feeling and less 13 than a crushing force; it becomes a condition of philosophy.10 14 For Stevens in New York, disappointment may have been a necessary dis- 15 course, perhaps even a condition of poetry. Certainly it became a “motive for 16 metaphor” (CPP 257). By weaving a discourse of disappointment, Stevens 17 explored his own “cedary disposition,” trying like the French Renaissance 18 poet Joachim du Bellay (1522–1560), exiled in Rome, to defi ne his own 19 position in the world, and fi nd the path to his own freedom. Between 1910 20 and 1913, Stevens kept recalling a sonnet from du Bellay’s The Regrets, 21 which he translated for Elsie’s benefi t. He repeatedly identifi ed with du Bel- 22 lay, who had accepted a position in Rome because he was, like Stevens, a 23 second child and had no fi nancial prospect. But once in Rome, instead of 24 celebrating the beauty of the city in Latin verse, du Bellay chose to celebrate 25 his native French province in vernacular French, a radical aesthetic and 26 political act. Stevens was drawn to the story at least as much as to the verse 27 itself, and du Bellay became an alter ego through whose example he could 28 fully endorse the aesthetic choice of neglecting New York. 29 “The poet fi nds and makes his mask in disappointment, the hero in 30 defeat,” William Butler Yeats wrote in section IX of Per Amica Silentia 31 Lunae (33). This Yeatsian aphorism describes precisely Stevens’ disappoint- 32 ment with New York: as a New Yorker, Stevens did “fi nd and make his mask 33 in disappointment.” It helped him give shape and substance to his identity, 34 by challenging his desire to become a poet and forcing him to question the 35 necessity of his vocation. In the same years, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote his 36 Letters to a Young Poet: “This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent 37 hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And 38 if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a 39 strong, simple ‘I must,’ then build your life in accordance with this neces- 40 sity” (6). Rilke’s words strangely echo Stevens’ secret interrogations only 41 three years before: “Is literature really a profession? Can you single it out, 42 or must you let it decide in you for itself? I have determined upon one thing, 43 and that is not to try to suit anybody except myself” (L 39). 44 Through the replacement of an idealized projection with a less gratifying 45 one, disappointment structurally makes way for narrative: it is both linear 46

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T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 140140 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:441:55:44 PMPM “Unless New York Is Cocos” 141 Disengaging himself from his ascribed position meant that Stevens could 1 now proceed to reappoint himself, following his own “cedary disposition,” 2 and embrace his vocation as self-appointed—not just disappointed—poet. 3 Rather than discarding Stevens’ disappointment with New York as a 4 momentary lapse of aesthetic intuition or foresight, or as a way for him to 5 play down his simultaneously undeniable attraction to the city, this chapter 6 has been suggesting a more literal approach, working from disappointment 7 not as a feeling or a theme, but as a type of discourse, articulated in the 8 journal and letters, which may have been one of the necessary steps to the 9 maturing of Stevens’ voice. As a way of distancing himself from the expec- 10 tations and projected fantasies of early adulthood, this discourse may have 11 served to reappoint Stevens more adequately in his new life. “I must fi nd a 12 home in the country—a place to live in, not only to be in,” he complained 13 in a journal entry of 1902 (L 58). In a biographical note sent to Harriet 14 Monroe, he made it clear that he merely “resided” in New York, but did 15 not live there, while later he would say that he “lived” in Hartford.18 New 16 York did, however, constitute a major turning point in his life story, and 17 perhaps one of its lasting impressions was that it helped Stevens turn from 18 the fi rst-person pronoun to the third-person pronoun, from the personal 19 toward the impersonal, from his writings as a diarist to his writings as a 20 poet: “The impersonality of New York impresses me more and more every 21 day” (SP 81). 22 23 24 NOTES 25 26 1. “The top of a house in the suburbs is about as comfortless a place as there is in 27 the world. It is part of my probation, however, and I shall have to think of it as amusing,” he wrote from East Orange, New Jersey, to Elsie in 1906 (L 86). 28 2. The punctuation of several journal entries, written in telegraphic style, 29 visually evokes the plus and minus signs of an account book, as if it held 30 the record of credit or debit entries (which it often does) even when money 31 is not an explicit concern: “I have money in pocket but not in bank + I 32 pay most of my bills promptly + all of them eventually. Still my hands are empty—+ that much idolized source of pathetic martyrdom, mon pauvre 33 cœur!” (L 81). There is defi nitely a double stake, literary and monetary, in 34 Stevens’ daily “account” of his life, with New York embodying the fantasy 35 of self-reliance. 36 3. Stevens had thought of the title The Grand Poem: Preliminary Minutiae for 37 the collection that would ultimately become Harmonium (see his letter to Alfred A. Knopf of March 12, 1923, L 237). 38 4. That he used Paris as the imaginary perspective from which to provincial- 39 ize New York has often been noted—and of course he never took the risk of 40 being disappointed by Paris, which remained forever “on the other side of the 41 ocean,” as he liked to say (L 49). 42 5. It only adds to the present argument that these lines were abridged and the reference to New York (and Chicago) altogether left out, in the version that 43 was published in Harmonium: “It cannot mean a sea-wide country strewn / 44 With squalid cells. It means, at least, this mob” (CPP 164). 45 46

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1 6. Bonnefoy’s collection of essays on poetry and art entitled L’improbable et 2 autres essais opens with the following epigraph: “I dedicate this book to the 3 improbable, that is to say, to what is” (my translation). 7. This resonates with García Lorca’s lines, which also strive to reaffi rm the 4 centrality of the self in front of the city: 5 Me. 6 My emptied space without you, city, without your voracious dead. 7 Rider through my life fi nally at anchor. 8 Me. (113) 9 8. It is signifi cant that Quinney’s use of the word should be indebted to a 10 dominant romantic tradition, in which disappointment became synonymous 11 with dejection and disenchantment, while in fact the original meaning was 12 much more literal, much less emotionally loaded than it became through the 13 romantics’ use. “To disappoint” fi rst meant “to undo the appointment of; to deprive of an appointment, offi ce, or possession”; additionally, it meant “to 14 frustrate the expectation or desire of” and “to break off , or fail to fulfi ll an 15 appointment with” (OED). Only gradually did it come to refer to an emo- 16 tional response to such (literal) disappointments. Quinney’s argument clearly 17 serves to reaffi rm Stevens’ position within a romantic tradition. 18 9. This is my approximate translation from the original French: “Toute phi- losophie a pour origine quelque déception. Si nous philosophons, c’est parce 19 que . . . nous sentons secrètement que nous avons à être quelque chose que 20 d’instant en instant nous ne fi nissons pas d’ajourner. Promis à quelque chose, 21 mais ne sachant à quoi, nous sommes la promesse qui n’est jamais tenue” 22 (Grimaldi 7). 23 10. If the act of philosophizing is dependent on personal disappointment in the promise one fails to live up to, then it is perhaps no coincidence that Stevens 24 noted (enthusiastically, to be sure) how “a city is a splendid place for think- 25 ing” (L 42). 26 11. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson, in their chronology of Stevens’ life for the 27 Library of America edition, state that in July of 1900 Stevens, who had moved 28 to New York only in June, became an “avid playgoer, and [was] especially impressed by [the] performance of Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet” (CPP 960). 29 12. Interestingly, the fear of being plain appears in Stevens’ own letters to Elsie: 30 “The plain truth is, no doubt, that I like to be anything but my plain self; 31 and when I write a letter that does not satisfy me—why it seems like showing 32 my plain self, too plainly,” he wrote in 1908 (L 109). Stevens’ complaint here 33 also casts a distant shadow forward to the poet in old age, who will fi nally come to accept “The Plain Sense of Things” in the poem carrying that title. 34 13. Another good example is the following quote, which takes up again the idea 35 of settling accounts with “poor Catherine”: “Though his little girl was not 36 what he had desired, he proposed to himself to make the best of her. He had 37 on hand a stock of unexpended authority, by which the child, in its early 38 years, profi ted largely” (6, emphases added). Later in the novel, Catherine’s father takes her to Europe hoping that she will eventually give up Morris 39 Townsend. As they head back, he pays her a rather double-edged compli- 40 ment: “[Morris Townsend] ought to be very thankful to me, do you know. 41 I have done a mighty good thing for him in taking you abroad; your value 42 is twice as great, with all the knowledge and taste that you have acquired” 43 (136, emphasis added). 14. “I am convinced from the Poetry (?) you write your Mother that the affl atus 44 is not serious—and does not interfere with some real hard work” (Garrett B. 45 Stevens to his son Wallace, February 9, 1899, L 23). 46

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15. “I recently wrote to father suggesting that I should resign from the Tribune + 1 spend my time in writing. This morning I heard from him +, of course, found 2 my suggestion torn to pieces. If I only had enough money to support myself I 3 am afraid some of his tearing would be in vain. But he seems always to have reason on his side, confound him,” Stevens wrote in his journal on March 4 12, 1901 (L 53). 5 16. The last sentence of the novel takes up the sartorial metaphor again, with a 6 probable parallel between text and “fancy-work”: “Catherine, meanwhile, in 7 the parlour, picking up her morsel of fancy-work, had seated herself with it 8 again—for life, as it were” (199). 17. See, for example: “Three months of idleness. I do not know what to think. 9 I am intent on getting something of consequence, and it seems to be impos- 10 sible. But I’ll get it or leave New-York. New-York is more than repugnant to 11 me and I should be glad to go,” he wrote to Elsie as late as 1907 (L 105). 12 18. These are his words to Monroe in 1915: “I was born in Reading, Pennsyl- 13 vania, am thirty-fi ve years old, a lawyer, reside in New-York and have pub- lished no books” (L 183). To Gilbert Seldes he wrote in 1922: “Do, please, 14 excuse me from the biographical note. I am a lawyer and live in Hartford” (L 15 227). 16 17 18 WORKS CITED 19 20 Bonnefoy, Yves. L’improbable et autres essais. Paris: Gallimard, 1992. Print. 21 Dos Passos, John. Manhattan Transfer. 1925. Boston: Houghton, 2000. Print. 22 García Lorca, Federico. Poet in New York: A Bilingual Edition. Trans. Greg Simon and Steven F. White. New York: Farrar, 1988. Print. 23 Gargano, James W. Critical Essays on Henry James: The Early Novels. Boston: 24 Hall, 1987. Print. 25 Grimaldi, Nicolas. Le Désir et le temps. Paris: Vrin, 1992. Print. 26 James, Henry. Washington Square. 1880. London: Penguin Classics, 2007. Print. 27 Quinney, Laura. The Poetics of Disappointment: Wordsworth to Ashbery. Char- lottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999. Print. 28 Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: 29 Random House, 1984. Print. 30 Stevens, Holly. Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens. New York: 31 Knopf, 1977. Print. 32 Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Knopf, 1966. Print. 33 . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and 34 Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 35 Yeats, William Butler. Per Amica Silentia Lunae. London: Macmillan, 1918. 36 Print. 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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1 2 3 Selwyn Gurney Champion’s 1938 Racial Proverbs is just one of the many 4 intriguing titles comprising Stevens’ personal library, now part of the Wal- 5 lace Stevens Archive housed at the Huntington Library in San Marino, 6 California. What is perhaps more surprising, however, on opening Ste- 7 vens’ copy of Racial Proverbs, is that a very slim brochure entitled The 8 Wines of France is tucked inside.1 The brochure’s cover features a paint- 9 ing depicting dining tables, serving girls—fi gures reminiscent perhaps of 10 the “demoiselles” of Stevens’ gastronomically inspired “Montrachet-le- 11 Jardin” (CPP 236)—as well as chefs and chateaux; this painting is accom- 12 panied on the back by an artist’s “vinous map” of France which indicates 13 Burgundy—the region to which “Montrachet-le-Jardin” alludes, not least 14 the Grand Cru Le Montrachet itself, one of the most famous vineyards 15 of Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune—as well as the Moselle region to which 16 Stevens refers in another vinous poem, “Certain Phenomena of Sound”: 17 “Slice the mango, Naaman, and dress it / With white wine, sugar and lime 18 juice. Then bring it, / After we’ve drunk the Moselle, to the thickest shade 19 / Of the garden” (CPP 256). 20 The map on the back of The Wines of France prefers such aesthetic 21 projection over fact, inaccurate as it is with respect to the locations of Bur- 22 gundy’s subregions. Indeed, the whole constitutes a “bourgeois fantasy” of 23 France which no doubt captured Stevens’ imagination at a distance: such 24 were the predilections of this Francophile American, a poet who clearly 25 thrived, as his poetic and professional careers progressed, on abstract 26 notions of place as well as holding “in the abstract” certain pleasures com- 27 fortably kept in abeyance (although, clearly, the poet who never traveled 28 to France fed his stateside imagination with actual phenomena from that 29 country, whether Burgundian wines or French paintings). Bernard Ragner, 30 the brochure’s author, was editor of the Chicago Tribune’s European edi- 31 tion from 1925–1929; and, writing of Burgundy’s Grands Crus, notes the 32 aforementioned Le Montrachet, observing “each name [is] a glorious real- 33 ity, also a signifi cant symbol”—comments which attest to the near-sacred 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 144144 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM Bourgeois Abstraction 145 status of Burgundy’s most famed vineyards, planted by the Romans, then 1 sustained by various orders including the Cistercians. Ragner pays testi- 2 mony, in part, to this legacy, recounting how the heartland of Burgundy’s 3 Côte d’Or and its wines have been prey to occupying forces both ancient 4 and modern: “Caesar’s legions drank them, and appreciated them; so did 5 the American Expeditionary Forces when camped upon these fertile hills of 6 gold” (n. pag.)—a reference, of course, to the Côte d’Or itself. 7 This brochure with its intriguing cover design only came to my atten- 8 tion after having written an essay for The Wallace Stevens Journal entitled 9 “Love, Wine, Desire: Stevens’ ‘Montrachet-Le-Jardin’ and Shakespeare’s 10 Cymbeline” which brought together Stevens’ love of Burgundian wines 11 with the reality of Occupied France in 1942. However, the relevance of the 12 Ragner brochure to Stevens’ abstract and frequently gastronomic imagina- 13 tion was subsequently discussed in greater length in a revised reading of 14 “Montrachet” in my book Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstrac- 15 tion (143–65). My interest in the present chapter is to explore, fi rst, how 16 Stevens’ obsession with both literary art and the “good life”—as expressed 17 in his gastronomic-aesthetic experiences—coalesced in his early life in New 18 York City; and, second, how, in his later years, New York became part 19 of the poet’s abstract imagination, an imagination frequently inspired by 20 real and fi ctive refl ections on gastronomy, poetry, and painting. Indeed, 21 as much as the older Stevens continued to make actual visits to New York 22 from Hartford—the latter having become the professional epicenter of his 23 career as surety bond lawyer and poet—these quasi-clandestine returns 24 to the city of his youth (after Reading) would also feed an increasingly 25 abstract imaginative life, which, by his late career, was colored by domestic 26 life in Hartford. 27 Put diff erently, this chapter draws on Stevens’ early experiences of New 28 York as a means of opening up discussion of his later years, where, in both 29 the correspondence and poetry, we fi nd increased aesthetic and gastronomic 30 refl ection, both palpable and in abstract form (Stevensian abstraction, in 31 fact, aims to conjoin palpable and imaginative perceptions). Clearly, New 32 York was the vector for the development of Stevens’ aesthetics and became 33 the site upon which, either in actual visits to the city or from the vantage of 34 Hartford, the older, abstract poet could project his imagination. Stevens’ 35 mature sense of abstraction, however, only became clearly delineated in his 36 fi nal decade as the poet’s sense of painting matured and his correspondence 37 and picture-purchasing markedly increased. During this time Stevens also 38 realized he would never travel outside the United States again. Apart from 39 the occasional trip to New York, the poet’s world grew literally smaller as 40 it became imaginatively larger, as Stevens’ domestic situation in the later 41 years indicates. 42 My basic argument is that Stevens’ domestic refl ections on art, litera- 43 ture, gastronomy, and the pleasures of private meditation unite in a form of 44 “bourgeois abstraction” in the later work; and that New York, the site of 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 145145 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM 146 Edward Ragg 1 formative aesthetic experiences in Stevens’ youth, would become the cos- 2 mopolitan urban center upon which the mature Stevens could project his 3 abstract imagination, not least from the homely confi nes of Hartford, but 4 also via actual visits to New York.2 “Bourgeois abstraction,” as it emerges, 5 is an imaginative defense mechanism that scorns the pejorative “bourgeois” 6 while lauding a fecund domestic space: one neither luxurious nor impov- 7 erished nor even house-proud. Rather than provide detailed close readings 8 of the later poems, my aim is to look at some indicative moments in the 9 correspondence and focus briefl y on the late poems “A Primitive Like an 10 Orb,” “Dinner Bell in the Woods,” and “A Quiet Normal Life.” The corre- 11 spondence especially provides clues as to the imaginative exchange mecha- 12 nism New York represented for the ageing Stevens. For example, having 13 claimed life was “pleasant at home,” Stevens admitted to Barbara Church: 14 “Yet one is always curious about the other side of the mountain, and it 15 invigorates me, at least to go to New York intending to have a really swag- 16 ger lunch somewhere even though on the train I decide that there won’t be 17 time for lunch” (L 769). Clearly, some pleasures were realized while oth- 18 ers remained conveniently abstract. As we shall see, Stevens’ “bourgeois 19 abstraction” would often take gastronomic forms of expression whether in 20 conceiving painting or poetry. 21 But before that stage of his career in which Stevens began to formu- 22 late an abstract aesthetic—the fi rst phase of which the poet would only 23 approach with confi dence in the late 1930s—how did the young Stevens 24 react to the New York which I claim fed his appetites both poetic and 25 gustatory? Stevens’ early refl ections on art and “beauty” revealingly touch 26 on the notion of sustenance. Even before his move to New York, an early 27 journal entry of March 1899, discussing the futility of “Art for art’s sake” 28 and noting the beauty of the stars, insists: “but the real use of their beauty 29 (which is not their excuse) is that it is a service, a food” (L 24). Stevens’ 30 attraction to a “gastronomic aesthetics” was subsequently fostered in New 31 York early in his career. Certainly, the poet equated the good life with lei- 32 sured consumption and it was his experiences in New York of attempting 33 to make ends meet that inform (and sometimes juxtapose with) his journal 34 entries concerning what he ate and drank on a quotidian basis. 35 For example, the New York which the young Stevens despaired was 36 ubiquitously “for sale”—in which “Everything has its price—from Vice to 37 Virtue”—was also the urban environment in which, with some resources, 38 the poet could take “dinner in a little restaurant—poached eggs, coff ee and 39 three crusts of bread”: an experience contrasted with an earlier, less vari- 40 ous, but perhaps more sustaining meal, “a week ago my belly was swagging 41 with strawberries” (L 38). On returning home from this experience in June 42 1900, Stevens was surrounded by “boarders . . . leaning on railings and 43 picking their teeth,” the poet himself coming home to a room in which “the 44 voices of children manage to come through my window from out it, over 45 the roofs and through the walls” (L 38)—sparse accommodation indeed. 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 146146 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM Bourgeois Abstraction 147 Stevens partially sustained himself during this demanding period by con- 1 triving an ironic humor in his New York journals as he literally attempted 2 to feed himself. On June 19, 1900, he observed: 3 4 I am beginning to hate the stinking restaurants that line the street and 5 gush out clouds of vegetable incense as I pass. To-day I bought a box of 6 strawberries and ate them in my room for luncheon. To-morrow I pro- 7 pose to have a pineapple; the next day, blackberries; the next, bananas 8 etc. While I am on the subject of food I may add that I dine with Russell 9 Loines at the Harvard Club to-night. (L 39) 10 11 Doubtless, some of New York’s restaurants presented an entrancing, savory 12 world—replete with quasi-sacred “clouds of vegetable incense”—a gastro- 13 nomic High Church to which Stevens experienced infrequent access or 14 could only “buy” by means of a Harvard dinner ticket from a friend or 15 acquaintance. Nevertheless, Stevens’ more modest and quotidian “fruit 16 diet” does foreshadow the later abstract poet with a taste for exoticism, 17 real or imagined (“To-morrow I propose to have a pineapple”)—this from 18 the poet who would write the abstract and painterly “Someone Puts a Pine- 19 apple Together,” the poem which forms the second part of “Three Aca- 20 demic Pieces” (we will see later how the mature Stevens craved, as one letter 21 notes, “pineapples a foot high with spines fi t to stick in the helmet of a wild 22 chieftain”; L 622). 23 It is not, of course, that the Stevens of 1947, even in a poem that looks 24 back self-consciously at his own poetic career, would necessarily have 25 remembered his early New York attempts to feed himself on a range of 26 fruits.3 The point is that Stevens’ sense both of his professional and, ulti- 27 mately, poetic well-being would come to be refracted through a gastro- 28 nomic lens fi rst focused in New York; and, of course, that his honing of an 29 abstract poetic would often take expression by means of food and drink as 30 his literary corpus grew.4 31 The contrast between occasional slap-up dinners and Stevens’ more 32 Spartan New York accommodation also helps us to understand his later 33 penchant for “bourgeois abstraction,” an aesthetic stance that reveled in 34 perceiving food, drink, and paintings from the comparative domestic para- 35 dise of Westerly Terrace (notwithstanding the poet’s less than successful 36 marriage). Stevens had noted of himself as early as 1900, pondering the 37 idea of marriage: “I am certainly a domestic creature, par excellence” (L 38 43). But it would be a Stevens of lively and poetically inspiring creature 39 comforts that would sustain the older poet. On one of his more extended 40 New York walks, Stevens noted in his journal of August 1900: “I also saw a 41 fl eet of canal-boats—a wilderness of domesticity. . . . I could not help being 42 a bit contemptuous. A dead cat lay under the rudder of one. Nearby was a 43 little butterfl y hunting sustenance.” Although Stevens dismissed this rug- 44 ged domestic scene as a “Silly jumble!” (L 45), the sentiments inscribed in 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 147147 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM 148 Edward Ragg 1 the poet’s humor barely mask a fear of economic uncertainty and wariness 2 of a domesticity fallen short of the domestic idyll Stevens no doubt fanta- 3 sized for himself and subsequently in his courtship of Elsie Kachel. 4 Stevens was also acutely aware, not least following his experience of Ste- 5 phen Crane’s drab funeral (see L 41), of precisely what it would mean to 6 achieve both fi nancial and literary success. The “little butterfl y hunting sus- 7 tenance” might seem, on a less charitable, psychoanalytical reading, a fi gure 8 for his own position in New York as a would-be literary talent bent on sus- 9 taining himself literally and poetically (no doubt his early professional life 10 would have seemed from time to time a “Silly jumble”). The sheer size and 11 variety of that urban space later inspired the Stevens who pondered more 12 abstractly the interplay of “reality” and “imagination,” but in his 1900 jour- 13 nal he could observe only half-ironically: “New York is so big that a battle 14 might go on at one end, and poets meditate sonnets at another” (L 47). By 15 1902 Stevens wrote, again in his New York journal: “But perhaps an Arca- 16 dian fl ute is better after all than a metropolitan corn-cob” (L 58). It would 17 take Stevens at least another two decades to realize, in poetic form, that “a 18 metropolitan corn-cob”—which provides immediate sustenance rather than 19 the insubstantial breath of an utopian fl ute—might prove inspiring and that 20 only the “plain sense of things” (CPP 428), the “ordinary,” might constitute 21 a fecund portal to an earthier realm than “Arcadia.” 22 Stevens’ early contact with wine, a lifelong passion infl uencing both the 23 correspondence and signifi cant poems, was also nourished in New York. 24 Perhaps the earliest reference to his favored Burgundy—the region whose 25 wines Stevens later enjoyed with Henry Church—can be found in a letter 26 of 1903: 27 28 I have smoked Villar y Villars + Cazadores, dined at Mouquin’s on 29 French artichokes + new corn etc. with a fl ood of drinks from crême 30 de cassis melée [sic], through Burgundy, Chablis etc. to sloe gin with 31 Mexican cigars + French cigaroots. I have lunched daily on—Heaven’s 32 knows what not (I recall a delicious calf’s heart cooked whole + served 33 with peas—pig that I am) . . . (L 64) 34 35 Stevens enjoys the animalistic irony of being the “pig” that consumes a “calf’s 36 heart cooked whole.” He alludes also to a specifi c cocktail: the Burgundian 37 blackcurrant liqueur (crême de cassis) mixed here with either Cognac or ver- 38 mouth to form a mêlé-cassis (from mêler: to mix, blend, or mingle). There is 39 a quasi-sense of economic triumph in this letter where choice non-American 40 products surfeit the young poet, although also a sense of isolation as if the 41 only way Stevens could “mingle” would be via a “fl ood of drinks” (avoir la 42 langue mêlée is to speak under a state of drunkenness). 43 Predictably, not every New York night involved such euphoria. In late 44 1903, Stevens reports having “guzzled vin ordinaire” and, almost ruefully, 45 adds: “To-morrow, however, I shall reassume the scrutiny of things as they 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 148148 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM Bourgeois Abstraction 149 are” (L 68), possibly the earliest Stevensian usage of “things as they are” 1 prior to “The Man with the Blue Guitar” (note also the implicit distinction 2 between “reassume” and “resume” as the young Stevens realizes “things as 3 they are” will require his full imaginative attention). Not that Stevens’ early 4 New York years were without moments of comparative companionship. 5 By April 1904, for example, the poet recounted meeting up with Harvard 6 friend and poet Witter Bynner: “I went with him to the Café Francis in 7 West 35th Street where we sat + smoked + talked + drank St. Estéphe [sic] 8 until after midnight” (L 71). Stevens may have been experimenting here 9 with red Bordeaux (from St. Estèphe) rather than Burgundy, but undeniable 10 in these early New York experiences was the forging of an acute sensibil- 11 ity whose later abstract projections upon gastronomy and painting would 12 infl uence profoundly the mature poet’s work. As Stevens revealed in a let- 13 ter to Bynner from May 1904, approaching his New York Bar exams: “My 14 idea of life is a fi ne evening, an orchestra + a crowd at a distance, a medium 15 dinner, a glass of something cool + at the same time wholesome, + a soft, 16 full Panatela” (L 74). Stevens’ underlining of “at a distance” foreshadows 17 his later abstract aesthetic which is not so much removed from life but 18 seeks a diff erent perspective of a thoroughly stimulating world, a view of 19 the crowd (not from within it). This statement was indirectly infl uenced by 20 Stevens’ realization of what New York’s crowds had taught him: “There 21 was a time when I walked downtown in the morning almost oblivious of 22 the thousands and thousands of people I passed; now I look at them with 23 extraordinary interest as companions in the same fi ght that I am about to 24 join” (L 63). 25 But let’s turn now to the older Stevens, the domesticated art collec- 26 tor in Hartford whose swift New York visits aimed to capitalize on as 27 much aesthetic experience as possible. As well as acquiring specifi c paint- 28 ings, Stevens also owned volumes on the Dutch masters, impressionists, 29 expressionists, primitives, and modernists as well as Maine painter Rus- 30 sell Cheney and imported surrealist Yves Tanguy (who lived in Woodbury, 31 Connecticut, from 1939–1955).5 The study of Tanguy was by James Thrall 32 Soby; Stevens’ personal library also claimed the majority of Soby’s MoMA 33 publications.6 Perhaps through reading such art criticism—combined with 34 occasional museum visits to the nearby Wadsworth Atheneum or to New 35 York—the older Stevens, by 1949, would bemoan the onslaught of “profes- 36 sional modernism” (L 647) as he encountered what he considered to be 37 increasingly derivative work. 38 Far from being fuddy-duddy, Stevens’ complaint involves a subtler aes- 39 thetic response. With respect to the paintings Stevens purchased, some crit- 40 ics remain surprised that he did not acquire more overtly modernist works, 41 suggesting his apparently “bourgeois” tastes clashed with a passion for 42 Klee and were discontinuous with the painterly dimensions of Stevens’ own 43 writing.7 To some extent, Stevens could not have acquired a Kandinsky or 44 Klee even if he had wanted: fi rst, because of the expenditure, and second, 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 149149 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM 150 Edward Ragg 1 because these artists’ works were largely unavailable (the poet did own a 2 minor example of Braque’s work, but that was exceptional). What really 3 characterized Stevens’ purchases was his desire to make an aesthetic virtue 4 of necessity: “what I want is something exquisite and at the same time 5 something for which I should not be obliged to pay as if I were a wealthy 6 merchant” (L 577). Acquiring comparatively “modest” paintings repre- 7 sented opportunities for Stevens to project his own imagination domesti- 8 cally rather than in a museum space (despite the allure of the Wadsworth 9 or New York); and, as with the Pierre Tal-Coat which infl uenced “Angel 10 Surrounded by Paysans,” such meditation catalyzed poetry. Stevens came 11 to cherish, therefore, cheerful, charming, even paysan work: not unsophis- 12 ticated, but not stylized either and certainly not indebted to any particular 13 school of art, modernist or otherwise. He relished, in his later years, what 14 one letter triumphantly calls the “second-rate” (L 728). 15 Stevens was not alone in mourning derivative modernism, especially 16 hackneyed abstraction. The early American interest in European abstract 17 painting—as in A. E. Gallatin’s 1933 show “The Evolution of Abstract 18 Art” (Museum of Living Art, New York) and Alfred H. Barr’s 1936 19 “Cubism and Abstract Art” (MoMA)—was by the early 1940s on the 20 wane. Indeed, by World War II, the American Abstract Artists Associa- 21 tion essentially folded, having spread its message following formation in 22 1937. By the mid-1940s New York had absorbed abstract painting, albeit 23 before the advent of abstract expressionism (indeed it was such absorp- 24 tion that would enable abstract expressionism; see Moszynka 141–43 and 25 Anfam). Nevertheless, Stevens’ tastes in French painting were still rela- 26 tively idiosyncratic; and he never lost faith in his favorite abstractionists: 27 Klee, Mondrian, and Kandinsky. 28 But how specifi cally did Stevens discuss abstraction, painting, and poetry 29 in the fi nal decade? In 1948 he wrote to José Rodríguez Feo: 30 31 I think that all this abstract painting that is going on nowadays is just 32 so much frustration and evasion. Eventually it will lead to a new real- 33 ity. When a thing has been blurred by the obscurity of metaphysics and 34 eventually emerges from that blur, it has all the characteristics of a bril- 35 liantly clear day after a month of mist and rain. (L 593) 36 37 Superfi cially, abstract painting shares little with “metaphysics.” But Ste- 38 vens knew how Klee, Kandinsky, and Mondrian had variously insisted that 39 abstraction enables access to spiritual domains. Kandinsky’s On the Spiri- 40 tual in Art (1912) absorbed German idealism and Theosophy. Mondrian, 41 also a Theosophist, desired access to the “spiritual realm” in painting. Klee, 42 like Stevens, was more mystifi ed by abstraction, feeling “reality” would often 43 infl uence his work, regardless of the artist’s hand (see Düchting 25). Stevens 44 was certainly impressed by Klee’s desire to uncover “the secret places,” as 45 “The Relations Between Poetry and Painting” demonstrates (CPP 750). 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 150150 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM Bourgeois Abstraction 151 Stevens’ letter to Feo, then, characterizes hackneyed abstract painting as 1 “frustration,” or worse, “evasion”—as if the “metaphysics” of abstraction 2 had, in minor examples, substituted for revelation. As Stevens observed 3 to Thomas MacGreevy: “It is easy to like Klee and Kandinsky. What is 4 diffi cult is to like the many minor fi gures who do not communicate any 5 theory that validates what they do and, in consequence, impress one as 6 being without validity” (L 763). When it came to Stevens’ own collection, 7 the poet clearly experienced pleasure and frustration in assimilating his 8 purchases. A French still life bought on the report of his Parisian bookseller 9 and purchasing go-between, Paule Vidal, was something Stevens relished 10 “in the abstract”—but, once arrived in Connecticut, its physical reality 11 Stevens would abstract again, not merely to reconceive the same painting 12 with fresh eyes, but to catalyze poetry. As with the Tal-Coat that infl uenced 13 “Angel Surrounded by Paysans,” the creative violence with which Stevens 14 repeatedly renewed his home-world fi nds its source in precisely this kind of 15 abstract eff ort: to make Tal-Coat into the painter who will almost satisfy 16 Stevens’ incessant longing for vibrant “reality.” 17 Signifi cantly, Stevens judged fi gures like Tal-Coat in the same breath as 18 his beloved Klee. If this required abstract embellishment—transforming the 19 charming into the fecund—Stevens willingly exerted the eff ort, especially 20 if the “payoff ” was a poem. But his aesthetic craving is more nuanced than 21 initially appears: he sought artists who seemed “ordinary” but had pains- 22 takingly achieved the semblance of simplicity. Speaking of another portrait 23 in his collection, Stevens observed, without apparent criticism: “The pic- 24 ture occupies me when I lean back to rest from reading. Why is the artist, 25 Jean Cavaillès, a nobody and why is the picture commonplace?” (L 836). 26 Clearly, when Stevens began publishing verse, the cultural movement 27 that became “modernism” was anything but professionalized. But, by 28 the late 1940s, if not before, the poet distanced himself from the “mass” 29 absorption of abstract art, at least as expressed in museum collections. In 30 a revealingly gastronomic letter, following a frustrated visit to MoMA, 31 Stevens reports: 32 33 Is all this really hard thinking, really high feeling or is it a lot of nobod- 34 ies running after a few somebodies? I enjoyed quite as much the window 35 in a fruit shop that I know of which was fi lled with the most extraordi- 36 nary things: beauteous plums, peaches like Swedish blondes, pears that 37 made you think of Rubens and the fi rst grapes pungent through the 38 glass. But on the whole New York was a lemon. (L 647) 39 40 That New York is “a lemon” (a dud or disappointment) wittily contrasts 41 with Stevens’ salivation at other fruits, as he constructs his own episto- 42 lary and gastronomic “still life”: the “beauteous plums,” the “peaches like 43 Swedish blondes,” the pears reminiscent of Rubens and those fi rst-season 44 grapes almost smelt “through the glass” (their pungency here synesthetically 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 151151 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM 152 Edward Ragg 1 visualized). This is verbal painting, a prelude to a poem. Note too how 2 the nominally ordinary “window in a fruit shop” displays “extraordinary 3 things,” forbidden fruits (perhaps the imagined “Swedish blondes”), unlike 4 the uncomfortable confi nes of MoMA, where run-of-the-mill “nobodies” 5 chase genuine “somebodies” in a largely frustrated quest for the extraordi- 6 nary. Recreating the scene of his New York voyeurism, Stevens harnesses 7 abstraction to touch the exquisite curves of what he would come frequently 8 to call “the ordinary” or “the normal.” 9 Likewise, what Stevens appreciated in Tal-Coat’s still life is the absence 10 of aff ected collage and an abundance of everyday consumables: 11 12 My Tal Coat occupies me. . . . It is a still life in which the objects are 13 a reddish brown Venetian glass dish, containing a sprig of green, on a 14 table, on which there are various water bottles, a terrine of lettuce, a 15 glass of dark red wine and a napkin. Note the absence of mandolins, 16 oranges, apples, copies of Le Journal and similar fashionable commodi- 17 ties. . . . It contradicts all of one’s expectations of a still life . . . (L 654) 18 19 Clearly, the fruits listed here are “off -limits” as topoi of traditional still 20 life. The omission of mandolins and “copies of Le Journal” unmistakably 21 alludes to early cubist representations of stringed instruments and news- 22 paper collage. Taking their place are the more reassuring signs of human 23 proximity: “various water bottles, a terrine of lettuce, a glass of dark red 24 wine and a napkin.” 25 But Stevens’ specifi cally bourgeois tendencies emerge most revealingly in 26 his love of the “primitive” Henri Rousseau (who is not to be confused with 27 the painter of the Barbizon school, Théodore Rousseau, about whom Bon- 28 nie Costello writes in her chapter). During his New York days, Stevens pos- 29 sibly saw Rousseau’s work at Walter Arensberg’s apartment (MacLeod 13); 30 later he also possessed Uhde’s 1949 Five Primitive Masters and Rich’s 1942 31 Henri Rousseau. The “primitives” were, appealingly, not really a group at 32 all. As Uhde writes, “its members remained total strangers to one another.” 33 All were “self-taught, poor and obscure. . . . They had no education to 34 speak of, no opportunities . . . no funds”—precisely the kind of artists who 35 garner “bourgeois” recognition, either condescendingly or positively, for 36 being “exotic” and untamed (11–13). 37 Uhde paints the primitives in inadvertently “Stevensian” terms, seemingly 38 recalling Stevens’ “Prelude to Objects” with its Cézanne-inspired notion that 39 one “has not / To go to the Louvre to behold” oneself (CPP 179): 40 41 Occasional visits to the Louvre, if they made them, had little eff ect on 42 their careers; their lives wore a humdrum pattern and ran in humdrum 43 channels. The business of earning enough for mere bread and wine 44 came fi rst, and luxury . . . consisted of cheap magazines or picture 45 postcards. (13) 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 152152 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM Bourgeois Abstraction 153 The mature Stevens likewise lived off picture postcards for inspiration, even 1 though he had actual paintings to devour. Although his professional career 2 amply provided “bread and wine”—more indeed than these traditional 3 “staples”—Stevens’ deep attachment to the “channels” of the “humdrum” 4 is unmistakable. 5 But was Stevens in danger of romanticizing Henri Rousseau? The fre- 6 quent references to “bread and wine” in his own work suggest both meta- 7 phorical and actual concerns. Moreover, if Stevens absorbed Rich’s study, 8 he would have read how the “primitive” tag was a pejoratively “bourgeois” 9 notion which seriously underestimated Rousseau’s signifi cance. Rousseau 10 was appreciated by Picasso, Braque, and Delaunay before MoMA exhibited 11 his work; Picasso and Braque even organized a regular event known as the 12 “Banquet Rousseau” at Picasso’s Rue Ravignan studio, with Rousseau him- 13 self in attendance (Ireson 72). Delaunay’s The City of Paris (1910–1912) 14 also alludes to Rousseau’s Myself, Portrait-Landscape (1890). Clearly, a 15 twofold attraction to Rousseau was shared by these modernist painters and 16 Stevens alike. On the one hand, Rousseau was paradoxically “exotic”: a self- 17 taught painter, living the alleged “contradiction” between customs offi cial 18 work (hence his nickname, “Le Douanier”) and the imaginative strength of 19 his art. On the other, Rousseau’s painting could be seen as a caricature of 20 “exoticism,” replete not just with jungle scenes but also strangely “bour- 21 geois” portraits of Parisian families. Nominally “simple” scenes like those 22 in Rousseau’s Portrait of a Lady (1895–1897), The Wedding (1904–1905), 23 The Football Players (1908), or Old Junier’s Cart (1908) involve unusual 24 juxtapositions which bear testimony to bourgeois habits but also, in a vein 25 Stevens would have appreciated, locate the fantastic in the ordinary (see 26 Ireson 25–27). 27 Few commentators, not forgetting the ever-astute Marianne Moore, 28 have discussed Stevens and Rousseau.8 But what was Stevens’ precise sense 29 of Rousseau and primitivism? One letter observes: 30 31 Bombois, obviously, is a Rousseau who has never visited Mexico, that 32 is to say, a Rousseau without imagination. . . . However, [the painting] 33 is fresh, pleasant and without sophistication. The truth is that I have a 34 taste for Braque and a purse for Bombois. (L 545) 35 36 If Bombois is “a Rousseau who has never visited Mexico,” Stevens knew 37 that Rousseau had never traveled literally to Mexico either, despite the 38 painter’s self-deluding boasts about travel. Rather, what Stevens appre- 39 ciates is how Rousseau depicts faraway places and jungle scenes; just as 40 he was himself prone to imaginative traveling. If Bombois lacks imagina- 41 tive strength, however, Stevens enjoys how his picture is “fresh, pleasant 42 and without sophistication,” potential material for the poet’s abstractive 43 gaze. The more frequently quoted part of this letter—“The truth is that I 44 have a taste for Braque and a purse for Bombois”—should be taken with a 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 153153 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:451:55:45 PMPM 154 Edward Ragg 1 considerable pinch of critical salt. Stevens may have literally had “a purse 2 for Bombois” but he seems to have had less “a taste for Braque” and more 3 a taste for lesser-known artists who seemingly resisted modernist trends. 4 Certainly, Stevens aestheticized the process of acquiring “a Primitive.” 5 In the same month he printed “A Primitive Like an Orb” he wrote to Paule 6 Vidal wondering if she had “been paralyzed by” his “request for a Primi- 7 tive and, again, for something exquisite but cheap” (L 581). His desire for 8 something on a par perhaps with Rousseau, but a portrait not already part 9 of an existing catalogue, was bound to test Vidal’s powers. 10 How might any of this aff ect the poetry? Did Rousseau’s Poet’s Bou- 11 quet (1890–1895) infl uence Stevens’ “The Bouquet” or even “Bouquet of 12 Roses in Sunlight”?9 The textual evidence is slight. However, “A Primi- 13 tive Like an Orb” does evoke an external, but “domestic” scene similar 14 to Rousseau’s depictions of the bourgeois excitement at domesticating the 15 outdoors in Carnival Evening (1886), the aforementioned The Wedding 16 (1904–1905) and The Football Players (1908), as well as Jardin du Lux- 17 embourg (1909). 18 Canto III of “A Primitive Like an Orb” ventures: 19 20 What milk there is in such captivity, 21 What wheaten bread and oaten cake and kind, 22 Green guests and table in the woods and songs 23 At heart, within an instant’s motion, within 24 A space grown wide, the inevitable blue 25 Of secluded thunder, an illusion, as it was, 26 Oh as, always too heavy for the sense 27 To seize, the obscurest as, the distant was . . . (CPP 378) 28 29 What is a “primitive like an orb”? Does the poem chime with “primitiv- 30 ism”? Even if Stevens’ poem is, broadly speaking, like a painterly “primi- 31 tive,” there remains an actual simile in Stevens’ title to tackle. An “orb” 32 may be defi ned not only as a “sphere,” “globe,” or “heavenly body,” but 33 also an “eyeball” or “eye” (OED). If the poem is similar to a “primitive” 34 painting, in the projection of domesticity suggested—note the picnic scene 35 of “Green guests and table in the woods”—we are invited to see something 36 larger than the physical poem, something possibly “too heavy for the sense 37 / To seize.” “A Primitive Like an Orb” itself plays on simile: “the obscur- 38 est as” becomes a fl eeting and abstract past event, “the distant was.” Like 39 the “necessary angel” of “Angel Surrounded by Paysans” who is “quickly, 40 too quickly . . . gone”—“Seen for a moment standing in the door” (CPP 41 423)—“The essential poem at the center of things” (CPP 377) can only 42 be approached through a refracted “primitive” imagination, which itself 43 resembles another perceptive or refl ective agent: an orb, an eye. 44 Stevens enjoys transmuting domestic scenes to “the woods.” In the 45 third and fi nal part of “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” “It Must Give 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 154154 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM Bourgeois Abstraction 155 Pleasure,” he reports that “merely going round is a fi nal good, / The way 1 wine comes at a table in a wood” (CPP 350). Perhaps, as in the notion of 2 “The Pleasures of Merely Circulating,” the idea of “merely going round” as 3 “a fi nal good” anticipates the imaginative sight expressed in “A Primitive 4 like an Orb,” which envisages “a poem of / The whole . . . / The roundness 5 that pulls tight the fi nal ring” (CPP 379): such are the circles of perception 6 in which Stevens’ mature abstraction specializes. 7 The 1954 poem “Dinner Bell in the Woods” observes: 8 9 He was facing phantasma when the bell rang. 10 The picnic of children came running then, 11 12 In a burst of shouts, under the trees 13 And through the air. The smaller ones 14 15 Came tinkling on the grass to the table 16 Where the fattest women belled the glass. 17 18 The point of it was the way he heard it, 19 In the green, outside the door of phantasma. (CPP 471) 20 21 Rousseau’s French woodland portraits are overtly green, their fi gures 22 almost caricatures not unlike Stevens’ “phantasma.” This late poem rel- 23 ishes placing an everyday object of bourgeois pretension (the dinner bell) in 24 an atypical context (the woods) as prelude to an aesthetic feast. The “picnic 25 of children” informs that metaphorical banquet; as do “the fattest women,” 26 whose rotund shapes “belled the glass”: the verb suggesting their voluble 27 shape as well as reconjuring the dinner bell itself. The statement “The point 28 of it was the way he heard it” applies as much to the poem’s reader as to the 29 fi gure who hears the bell and its summons. Accepting that “point” liber- 30 ates the fi gure in Stevens’ poem who can now stand “outside the door of 31 phantasma”—at liberty to enter or otherwise—rather than merely “facing” 32 such phenomena. 33 This poem recalls a pivotal comment in Stevens’ earlier career which 34 again focuses a picnic image. In 1940, the poet confessed: 35 36 About the time when I . . . began to feel round for a new romanticism, 37 I might naturally have been expected to start on a new cycle. Instead 38 of doing so, I began to feel that I was on the edge: that I wanted to get 39 to the center: that I was isolated, and that I wanted to share the com- 40 mon life. . . . People say that I live in a world of my own. . . . I have 41 been interested in what might be described as an attempt to achieve the 42 normal, the central. So stated, this puts the thing out of all proportion 43 in respect to its relation to the context of life. Of course, I don’t agree 44 with the people who say that I live in a world of my own; I think that 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 155155 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM 156 Edward Ragg 1 I am perfectly normal, but I see that there is a center. For instance, a 2 photograph of a lot of fat men and women in the woods, drinking beer 3 and singing Hi-li Hi-lo convinces me that there is a normal that I ought 4 to try to achieve. (L 352) 5 6 Stevens refers initially to the “new romantic” of Ideas of Order. The 7 goal of “sharing the common life” is not really a social aim, but an aes- 8 thetic justifi cation. Stevens’ penchant for abstraction, his obsession with 9 privacy—a 1954 issue of Vogue recounts “once, a discouraged Hart- 10 ford reporter wrote, ‘No one will ever know what Mr. Stevens eats for 11 breakfast’”—primed him not for “relentless contact” (L 352), which 12 implies being too involved, even cauterized by excessive stimulation, but 13 for “an attempt to achieve the normal.”10 Stevens tactically welcomed 14 rather than resolved this dilemma in his correspondence and poetry, rel- 15 ishing how such an “attempt” is already at once aesthetically removed 16 from “normality.” Admittedly, the poet is mindful of being “out of all 17 proportion” with respect to the nominal “center” and “its relation to 18 the context of life,” the above letter stemming from the period in which 19 Stevens was only beginning to be accommodated to abstraction (the poet 20 having been haunted in the 1930s by the notion that his own increasingly 21 abstract work might be “removed” from “reality”; see Ragg, Wallace Ste- 22 vens 55–77). But, whether the above “its” refers to the “center” or to Ste- 23 vens’ overall statement, the poet is inspired by being at the distance which 24 enables approach of a gorgeously unattainable, if haunting, “center.” 25 However, what is most captivating in this letter is its least quoted part. 26 Stevens’ idea of the “normal” does not comprise simply “a lot of fat men and 27 women in the woods, drinking beer and singing Hi-li Hi-lo.” He conceives 28 this picnic scene as “a photograph,” an abstract snapshot of the “good life.” 29 But what about “Hi-li Hi-lo”? Published in 1923 with music by Ira Schuster 30 and lyrics by Eugene West, this song should not be confused with “Hi-Lili, 31 Hi-Lo”—composed for the 1953 fi lm Lili—which obviously postdates Ste- 32 vens’ letter. The 1923 song was known, somewhat alarmingly, as a “Chop 33 Suey a la Fox-ee Trot-ee,” the fi rst line being “Into China far away, came 34 a little German band one day.”11 Certainly, this festive, quasi-“domestic” 35 scene—“Hi-Li, Hi-Lo” sounds like a camping-drinking song—becomes an 36 abstract, photographic “negative” to which the poet is drawn in “Dinner 37 Bell in the Woods” and elsewhere. 38 So was Stevens, in Seamus Heaney’s words, really “a home-based man 39 at home / In the end with little” (69)? The foreman who shuts the yard in 40 Heaney’s “Quitting Time” probably is at home “with little,” whereas Ste- 41 vens clearly required aesthetic stimulation from books, paintings, fruits, 42 and wine from far-fl ung corners of the globe. Nevertheless, Stevens does 43 aestheticize a domestic existence in which “less is more”: his self-denials 44 and acquisitions becoming fecund fl irtations with ascetic experience. If the 45 poet partially domesticated what entered his home, such objects had to 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 156156 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM Bourgeois Abstraction 157 be engagingly “bourgeois”: not mere kitsch or sentimental objet d’art, but 1 artifacts symbolically resisting “professional modernism” and constituting 2 refreshing changes from the Mondrians, Klees, and Kandinskys Stevens 3 valued outside Westerly Terrace. 4 Stevens also occasionally exhibited a violent desire to change his domes- 5 tic sphere, with New York acting indirectly as a catalyst for change: 6 7 If I could aff ord it I should throw away everything I have, each autumn, 8 . . . and start all over with all the latest inventions: radiant heating 9 ci-inclus, fresh walls, new pictures—and possibly a goat. One would 10 always like to bring home a goat from New York, for the humanity of 11 it. (L 659) 12 13 Presumably goats were more easily found in rural Connecticut than New 14 York City. But Stevens’ irony creates a deliberate tension between the cos- 15 mopolitan urban space from which such an animal might imaginatively be 16 coaxed and the renewed sense of “humanity” both goat and re-invented 17 domestic space could engender. 18 Stevens was wary too of the trappings of “bourgeois” life. In 1949 the 19 poet applauded novelist, scholar, and Nobel Prize winner Romain Rolland 20 for scorning his house-proud neighbors: 21 22 Rolland, apparently, lived in an apartment where his wife, Clothilde, 23 was no more hostile to a little dust than we are at home but [sic] the 24 neighbors seem to have moved the chairs every Thursday and cleaned 25 the windows every Friday, polished the kitchen fl oor every Saturday, 26 did the laundry on Sunday, dusted on Monday, etc. Rolland thought 27 that this was the last word in being bourgeois. How much more closely 28 that sort of thing brings one to Paris than remarks about the growth 29 of interest in Socialism, the artifi ciality of Sarah Bernhardt, the facility 30 with which Duse was able to weep on the stage, the slightly ironic sneer 31 that D’Annunzio always wore. (L 657) 32 33 Stevens welcomes the “little dust” not merely in Rolland’s apartment but 34 also at home in Westerly Terrace. The neighborly tension over “being bour- 35 geois” also reveals Paris “more closely” than the more earnest overtones 36 of Socialism, the dramatic “artifi ciality” of Bernhardt or Eleonora Duse, 37 and the visage of D’Annunzio combined. Stevens appropriates Rolland as 38 a literary fi gure whom he relishes as anything but “literary,” as if Rolland 39 exemplifi ed what Stevens described as a “mastery of life” (L 518), a hyper- 40 borean, hardly house-proud fi gure who is also removed from the overear- 41 nestness literature can inculcate, whether through biographical artifi ce (the 42 sneer D’Annunzio impossibly “always wore”) or dramatic make-believe. 43 The domestic side of Stevens’ appetites emerges in “A Quiet Normal 44 Life”: 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 157157 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM 158 Edward Ragg 1 Here in his house and in his room, 2 In his chair, the most tranquil thought grew peaked . . . (CPP 443) 3 4 Although the house seemingly takes precedence over the imagination here, 5 the poem suggests the poet’s imaginative activity is stimulated by “his 6 house,” “his room.” “A Quiet Normal Life” leaves no trace of the banal, 7 but equally resists the “transcendent”: 8 9 There was no fury in transcendent forms. 10 But his actual candle blazed with artifice. (CPP 444) 11 12 This teasing fi nal line illustrates the impossibility of separating the mind’s 13 artifi ce from the “actual.” Yet note also the centrality of the domestic space 14 catalyzing Stevens’ imaginative appetite, transforming what “An Old Man 15 Asleep” playfully calls “your whole peculiar plot”—“plot” implying both 16 home-ground as well as personal narrative (CPP 427). 17 Nor are these merely incidental domestic refl ections confi ned to a few of 18 the late poems. “The Irish Cliff s of Moher” asks: “Who is my father in this 19 world, in this house, / At the spirit’s base?” (CPP 427). “The Plain Sense of 20 Things” observes how “The greenhouse never so badly needed paint,” that 21 “The chimney is fi fty years old and slants to one side” (CPP 428). “To an 22 Old Philosopher in Rome” famously focuses on George Santayana’s quasi- 23 domestic confi nes: “The bed, the books, the chair, the moving nuns” (CPP 24 432). “Vacancy in the Park” recounts: “It is like the feeling of a man / Come 25 back to see a certain house” (CPP 434). “The Poem That Took the Place of 26 a Mountain” emerges from an imaginative interior, “Even when the book 27 lay turned in the dust of his table” (CPP 435). “Final Soliloquy of the Inte- 28 rior Paramour” conceives its imagined interior “as in a room / In which we 29 rest” (CPP 444). The “houses of New England” impact another late poem, 30 “A Discovery of Thought” (CPP 459). “Two Letters” also reports in an 31 abstract vein: “One would have wanted more—more—more—/ Some true 32 interior to which to return, / A home against one’s self” (CPP 469). 33 Such refl ections did more than provide abstract credits. Stevens also 34 often visualized his surroundings, not least his own paintings, in gastro- 35 nomic terms. Writing of his Cavaillès, Stevens noted: 36 37 The picture grows on me. I found that what mattered was that it was 38 necessary for me to believe in it. In Havana taxicabs are blue, gold, red, 39 yellow, etc. So, in Cannes, small boats are of the green of the pistache, 40 various shades of blue, and docks are magenta and pink. It is as if one 41 lived in a world of patisserie. (L 833) 42 43 Stevens explained his cravings in an earlier letter to Wilson Taylor: “What 44 I want more than anything else in music, painting and poetry, in life and 45 in belief is the thrill that I experienced once in all the things that no longer 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 158158 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM Bourgeois Abstraction 159 thrill me at all. I am like a man in a grocery store that is sick and tired 1 of raisins and oyster crackers and who nevertheless is overwhelmed by 2 appetite” (L 604). 3 We saw earlier how Stevens dismissed derivative or “professional mod- 4 ernism” by contrasting the vibrant fruits in a New York shop window with 5 the unpromising exhibits at MoMA. A few months earlier, Stevens had 6 complained to Feo: 7 8 What music have I heard that has not been the music of an orchestra 9 of parrots and what books have I read that were not written for money 10 and how many men of ardent spirit and star-scimitar mind have I met? 11 Not a goddam one. . . . There is no music because the only music toler- 12 ated is modern music. There is no painting because the only painting 13 permitted is painting derived from Picasso and Matisse. . . . When I 14 go into a fruit store nowadays and fi nd there nothing but the fruits du 15 jour: apples, pears, oranges, I feel like throwing them at the Greek. 16 I expect, and you expect, sapodillas and South Shore bananas and 17 pineapples a foot high with spines fi t to stick in the helmet of a wild 18 chieftain. . . . Why should I answer questions from young philosophers 19 when I receive perfumed notes from Paris? (L 622) 20 21 That last question was intended to warn Feo away from presenting the 22 older Stevens with literary-philosophical conundrums. Rather, Stevens 23 craved details from Feo’s Cuban life, ideally as colorful as the exotic fruits 24 he expected Feo to “expect.” Although commonplace “fruits du jour” are 25 rejected in this letter—rather like those assembled in traditional “still life”— 26 it is an importantly paradoxical part of the poet’s quest for normality that 27 his experience be ordinary and exotic, even exotically commonplace. 28 Not for nothing, therefore, did Stevens maintain in another gastronomic 29 letter of 1952 that, for all his connoisseurship, such “ordinariness” was 30 essential to his imaginative health: “An ordinary day . . . does more for me 31 than an extraordinary day: the bread of life is better than any souffl e [sic]” 32 (L 741). This chapter has aimed to demonstrate how bourgeois abstraction 33 galvanized late Stevens; and how his gourmet imagination conceived the 34 allure of New York, both in actual visits and from the abstract vantage of 35 Hartford. We have also seen how the seeds for the germination of Stevens’ 36 later gastronomic abstractions were planted in his early experiences of New 37 York City, struggling as he did as a journalist then as a young lawyer to 38 combine aesthetic enjoyments with the realities of having to make a liv- 39 ing. Indeed, the value of the former was shot through with concerns of the 40 latter, Stevens experimenting in his early New York years with a creative 41 compromise that would shape his later dual career, maintaining poetry 42 as a reassuringly “uneconomic” activity. Stevens’ later dependence on not 43 retiring and, therefore, maintaining a presence at the offi ce right up until 44 his death is also illuminated by such a creative compromise or deliberate 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 159159 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM 160 Edward Ragg 1 exploitation of a tension between offi ce routine and the daily walks to 2 work—excursions that prompted realized poems. This was at least the poet 3 who, eventually capitulating to Alfred A. Knopf’s desire for a Collected 4 Poems, wrote in a true domestic vein, “it is good housekeeping for me to 5 do what I am doing” (L 832). 6 7 8 NOTES 9 10 1. Bernard Ragner, The Wines of France (publication details unknown), found 11 inside Stevens’ copy of Champion’s Racial Proverbs. For Stevens’ interest in wine, see also the discussion of de Cassagnac’s French Wines in Ragg, Wal- 12 lace Stevens 146ff . 13 2. Tony Sharpe notes the “domesticated vision” of “An Ordinary Evening in 14 New Haven,” arguing that, for all his disinclination to travel, “Stevens was 15 not the helpless victim of his rocking-chair” (179, 178). 16 3. For this aspect of “Someone Puts a Pineapple Together,” see Ragg, Wallace Stevens 179. 17 4. See Ragg, Wallace Stevens, Ch. 5, “Food, Wine and the Idealist ‘I.’” 18 5. See, in the Works Cited: Mongan; Van Gogh; Pach; Uhde; Rich; Klee; 19 Cheney; and Soby, Tanguy. 20 6. He also owned Soby’s Salvador Dali; Georges Rouault: Paintings and Prints; 21 Contemporary Painters; and, with Alfred H. Barr, Twentieth-Century Ital- ian Art. Soby even considered writing about Stevens, but found him hard to 22 engage personally: see Brazeau 117. 23 7. James Johnson Sweeney thought Stevens’ art collection “bourgeois” and 24 betrayed “playing it safe”; and Bernard Heringman lamented Stevens’ “estab- 25 lished bourgeois taste” (both qtd. in Brazeau 228, 201). 26 8. Moore astutely allied Stevens’ exoticism with Rousseau’s early work in “Well Moused, Lion” and “Unanimity and Fortitude” 271. 27 9. See Stevens’ copy of Rich, Henri Rousseau, plate opposite 22. 28 10. The full sentence from Vogue (1 Oct. 1954; consulted as part of the Wallace 29 Stevens Archive at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, Cali- 30 fornia) observes: “He [Stevens] dislikes publicity about either of his careers, 31 and vetoes any about his private life; once, a discouraged Hartford reporter wrote, ‘No one will ever know what Mr. Stevens eats for breakfast’” (127). 32 11. See “Hi lee, hi lo” (New York: Feist, 1923), Kirk Collection “Popular Song 33 Index” Part 4: 1923–1929, Indiana State University Library (http://odin.ind- 34 state.edu/about/units/rbsc/kirk/ps1923.html). 35 36 37 WORKS CITED 38 39 Anfam, David. Abstract Expressionism. London: Thames, 1990. Print. 40 Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biogra- phy. New York: Random House, 1983. Print. 41 Cassagnac, Paul de. French Wines. Trans. Guy Knowles. London: Chatto, 1930. 42 Print. 43 Champion, Selwyn Gurney. Racial Proverbs: A Selection of the World’s Proverbs. 44 London: Routledge, 1938. Print. 45 Cheney, Russell. Russell Cheney, 1881–1945: A Record of His Work. New York: Oxford UP, 1947. Print. 46

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Düchting, Hajo. Paul Klee: Painting Music. Munich: Prestel, 1997. Print. 1 Heaney, Seamus. District and Circle. London: Faber, 2006. Print. 2 Ireson, Nancy. Interpreting Henri Rousseau. London: Tate, 2005. Print. 3 Klee, Paul. Dokumente und Bilder aus den Jahren 1896–1930. Bern: Benteli, 1949. Print. 4 MacLeod, Glen. Wallace Stevens and Modern Art: From the Armory Show to 5 Abstract Expressionism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. Print. 6 Mongan, Agnes, ed. One Hundred Master Drawings. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 7 1949. Print. 8 Moore, Marianne. “Unanimity and Fortitude.” Poetry 49.5 (1937): 268–72. Print. 9 . “Well Moused, Lion.” Dial 76 (1924): 84–91. Print. 10 Moszynka, Anna. Abstract Art. London: Thames, 1990. Print. 11 Pach, Walter, trans. The Journal of Eugene Delacroix. London: Cape, 1938. 12 Print. 13 . The Masters of Modern Art. New York: Huebsch, 1924. Print. Ragg, Edward. “Love, Wine, Desire: Stevens’ ‘Montrachet-Le-Jardin’ and Shake- 14 speare’s Cymbeline.” Wallace Stevens Journal 30.2 (2006): 183–209. Print. 15 . Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction. Cambridge: Cambridge 16 UP, 2010. Print. 17 Rich, Daniel Catton. Henri Rousseau. New York: MoMA, 1942. Print. 18 Sharpe, Tony. Wallace Stevens: A Literary Life. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. Print. 19 Soby, James Thrall. Contemporary Painters. New York: MoMA, 1948. Print. 20 . Georges Rouault: Paintings and Prints. New York: MoMA, 1945. Print. 21 . Salvador Dali. New York: MoMA, 1941. Print. 22 . Yves Tanguy. New York: MoMA, 1955. Print. 23 Soby, James Thrall, and Alfred H. Barr. Twentieth-Century Italian Art. New York: MoMA, 1949. Print. 24 Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Knopf, 25 1966. Print. 26 . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and 27 Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 28 Uhde, Wilhelm. Five Primitive Masters. Trans. Ralph Thompson. New York: Quadrangle, 1949. Print. 29 Van Gogh, Vincent. Letters to Emile Bernard. Trans. Douglas Lord. London: 30 Cresset, 1938. Print. 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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My title for this brief, whimsical coda is not actually “Wallace Stevens 1 and the New York School” but, rather, “Wallace Stevens of the New York 2 School.” I want to write less about Stevens’ infl uence on, for instance, John 3 Ashbery and Frank O’Hara than about Stevens (although he was older than 4 these then-emergent poets) as a kind of cohort, operating in the early 1950s 5 in a parallel universe of New York School-style non-narrative discontinu- 6 ity and I-do-this-I-do-that seriality—a mode that derived from some of the 7 same sources but separately, by way indirectly of modern and contempo- 8 rary painting more than directly through contemporary poetry. In the end, 9 my purpose is to construct a sample of New York School Stevens. 10 As the foregoing chapters have suggested, Stevens had always been tak- 11 ing the train into New York from Hartford, but this habit really accel- 12 erated in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1951 alone, this otherwise 13 reticent person (1) read at the YMHA Poetry Center (we know it now as 14 the 92nd Street Y); (2) lectured at the City College of New York; (3) gave 15 an acceptance speech at the National Book Awards ceremony (he won for 16 The Auroras of Autumn); (4) spoke at a banquet given by the Poetry Society 17 of America; and (5) gave a lecture on poetry and painting at the Museum 18 of Modern Art. 19 A week after Stevens gave the MoMA lecture, Monroe Wheeler wrote 20 a letter asking Stevens if they could print it (Brazeau 189–90). Stevens put 21 Wheeler in touch with Alfred Knopf, his publisher, and Knopf and MoMA’s 22 staff both felt it was time to put out a book of Stevens’ essays and talks. And 23 so, in a very real sense, the occasion of the MoMA lecture, “The Relations 24 Between Poetry and Painting,” made the book The Necessary Angel possi- 25 ble—that is, made possible Stevens’ foray into critical/theoretical prose. 26 Stevens could have given a poetry reading at MoMA, but Wheeler had 27 heard from the infl uential curator and art critic James Thrall Soby (who 28 lived in Hartford and was at the Atheneum there but also worked at and 29 with MoMA and spent ample time in New York) that Stevens loved to 30 wander the New York streets, stopping in at sometimes quite small, out- 31 of-the-way galleries and a few carefully planned visits to archives and art 32 museums. So Wheeler asked Stevens to talk about “what a poet feels about 33 34

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 163163 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM 164 Alan Filreis 1 painting” (qtd. in Brazeau 1990, italics added). This was an interesting way 2 of phrasing and framing the request, since Stevens was already infamous 3 for having lots of ideas but not many “feelings” about visual art. 4 Later Wheeler remembered thinking that “fi nally [Stevens] . . . didn’t 5 know a great deal about painting” (qtd. in Brazeau 190), but he meant 6 academically—and was not aware of the actual extent to which Stevens 7 pored over art magazines, dropped in at galleries on every visit to the city, 8 was writing letters knowingly about fairly new painters, and had for years 9 been engaged in a regular correspondence with his dealers (a father and 10 daughter) in Paris, exploring especially the inexpensive, war-disrupted 11 postwar market for paintings he bought sight-unseen. I have published 12 several essays about the complex semiotics of this indirect process and its 13 connection to both wartime and cold-war-era politics. In sum, it has been 14 my view that Stevens’ version of Serge Guilbault’s thesis that the postwar 15 period was a time when New York stole the idea of Modern Art from Paris 16 was something of a reversal of and a refusal to fl ow in the expected direc- 17 tion: for his own paintings, Stevens had always assumed he had to be look- 18 ing to New York, but just when (in what we now generally understand as a 19 triumphalist act of economic super-ascendancy) everyone started to look to 20 New York, he more than ever looked to Paris. 21 One example: for months, by mail he tried to ascertain what a certain 22 painting he coveted looked like—having only the words of his Parisian 23 dealer (writing in French, of course—a language secondary for the poet) 24 and several simple abstract sketches of the outlines and forms of this par- 25 ticular still life. Sometime during the process—and I found evidence that 26 it was certainly before the painting itself arrived in Hartford and he laid 27 eyes on it for the fi rst time—he wrote a poem bearing the same title as 28 the one he had informally given the painting, based on his dealer’s verbal 29 descriptions of it. The poem is a human narrative emerging from the mere 30 forms of the painting he had only known through translated hasty episto- 31 lary language written for commercial purposes. When the painting arrived, 32 he was indeed delighted by it—but it less than ever resembled the painting 33 rendered formally in the poem. 34 All this was exciting, but it was not New York—which is to say, in the 35 Stevensian mind, it was not reachable by train. It was not to be walked, 36 paced, visited, digressed into. 37 Then, soon after, came the MoMA invitation. The prospect of an art- 38 world audience. The buzz of the New York art world in 1951. There were 39 poetry-world people there, of course, but this was diff erent: he had been 40 invited into a contemporary aesthetic realm he had known mostly by way of 41 analogy—poetry is to painting as X is to Y. Had Frank O’Hara been already 42 working at MoMA by then, he would have been just the type to be in that 43 audience—the poet as member of the contemporary art community. (O’Hara 44 arrived—to a celebratory mock-tourist-junket drive around Manhattan—on 45 a hot day in August 1951, just a few months too late to catch Stevens. Was 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 164164 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM Coda 165 John Ashbery—who was one instigator of that summertime joy ride—there 1 at MoMA to hear Stevens? I will inform you in a moment.) 2 I think Stevens’ MoMA talk was a turning point in his aesthetic Amer- 3 icanism—in what I am somewhat puckishly here calling the New York 4 School Stevens. 5 If in his resistance to the fl ow of modern painting’s postwar economic 6 and cultural standing from Paris to New York, he had developed a Steven- 7 sian abstractness in his response to what had been put on the canvas—thrice 8 removed from the presence of the actual painted surface, his imagination 9 of modern and contemporary painting could fully tend toward pure form 10 (shape, color, formal idiom, decreated symbolism)—now, on the other 11 hand, he could have the painting’s surface right there in front of him, the 12 surprise of the painted-on, the action implicit in the analogy between set- 13 ting a word or phrase onto a page in a poem’s line, and dabbing, stroking, 14 sticking, adding to, even dripping (although he did not incline to Pollock). 15 If one is looking for the drama of this late transition in the lecture 16 itself—in “The Relations Between Poetry and Painting”—one will be dis- 17 appointed. Its categorizations are smart, but a bit stiff , a bit too predict- 18 ably academic. Its art-world references are mostly old, not new. But I want 19 to suggest that in context—as a cry of its occasion—it contains loads of 20 energy and was a kind of proto-New York School-ish coming out, a re- 21 orientation and re-entry. 22 We now read the printed text of a paper—and the careful, trite ordering 23 of its presentation, the dullish pattern of its argument, prevents us from 24 hearing what the MoMA hearers would have heard. Indeed, given how 25 such talks are ascertained, the New York art talk—a remarkable instance 26 of it, I think—its tendency (by the phrase) toward giddy manifesto, pleasur- 27 ably overstated dictum—is perhaps all that they really heard. Extract this 28 rhetoric and present it to the post-war art-world denizen of 1951 and it 29 would, I think, seem to him or her—whether abstract expressionist, serial 30 artist, proto-Beat, or trendy art critic—to fi t remarkably well into the ambi- 31 ent linguistic noise at some gallery opening: 32 33 “‘I see planes bestriding each other . . . ’” [quoting Cézanne]. (CPP 34 750) 35 36 “ . . . purifi ed, aggrandized, fateful.” (CPP 748) 37 38 “ . . . a generation that is experiencing essential poverty in spite of for- 39 tune.” (CPP 748) 40 41 “The extension of the mind beyond the range of the mind. . . .” (CPP 42 748) 43 44 “ . . . modern art is . . . bigoted. . . .” (CPP 745) 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 165165 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:461:55:46 PMPM 166 Alan Filreis 1 “ . . . too little or too much punctuation . . . have nothing to do with 2 being alive.” (CPP 746) 3 4 “‘The senses deform . . . ’” [quoting Braque]. (CPP 741) 5 6 “‘ . . . I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of 7 [art’s] process’” [quoting Henry James]. (CPP 747) 8 9 “ . . . the same sense of exquisite realization and the same sense of being 10 modern and living.” (CPP 746) 11 12 “The world about us would be desolate except for the world within 13 us.” (CPP 747) 14 15 “ . . . in France, . . . theory . . . is a normal activity . . . [and the artist] 16 must engage in such activity or be extirpated.” (CPP 749) 17 18 “There are imitations within imitations. . . .” (CPP 747) 19 20 “‘I wanted to be able to see anything as a composition . . . ’” [quoting 21 Leo Stein]. (CPP 742) 22 23 “ . . . a prodigious search of appearance, as if to fi nd a way of saying 24 and of establishing that all things . . . are . . . joined together, that we 25 can reach them.” (CPP 750) 26 27 “ . . . vital self-assertion in a world in which nothing but the self 28 remains, if that remains.” (CPP 748) 29 30 “ . . . reality is . . . the momentous world of [art]. Its instantaneities are 31 the familiar intelligence. . . .” (CPP 750) 32 33 The artist “need not display . . . authenticity in orphic works.” (CPP 34 748) 35 36 “One is better satisfi ed by particulars.” (CPP 740) 37 38 Had Ashbery been in the audience, he might have recognized his own 39 emergent poetics: there is the non- or anti-orphic, there is the conveying of 40 instantaneities, there is the satisfaction of particulars, there is the cogni- 41 zance that anything is available as composition, and doubts about the rem- 42 nant self, and the familiar intelligence, and imitations within imitations, 43 and there is the prodigious search for appearance. 44 Just to be certain Ashbery was not there, at MoMA in 1951, I asked 45 him. He told me that he did not attend the talk, cannot now recall if he 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 166166 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:471:55:47 PMPM Coda 167 was aware of it or not, and is certain O’Hara was not there (O’Hara began 1 at MoMA that fall). (Ashbery also reminded me that he had heard Stevens 2 give a poetry reading at Harvard a few years earlier.) 3 Six months before Stevens spoke at MoMA, in August 1950, Ashbery in 4 New York had written to O’Hara in Boston: 5 6 I’ve been reading tons of Wallace Stevens. . . . Please open Parts of a 7 World this instant and read a poem called “Yellow Afternoon.” That 8 poem has completely fl oored me with its greatness—every time I read 9 it I am ready to turn in my chips and become an osteopath. (qtd. in 10 Gooch 173) 11 12 A few months later, Ashbery mailed O’Hara a new poem, “Illustration”— 13 which Brad Gooch, O’Hara’s biographer, is not wrong to suggest is in part 14 a rewriting of “Yellow Afternoon,” although in the modernist-couplet form 15 Stevens used in almost every other poem in Parts of a World, except “Yellow 16 Afternoon.” (And, of course, when Ashbery’s fi rst book, Some Trees, was 17 published, including the poem “Illustration,” it was greeted by public praise 18 from O’Hara connecting him to Stevens: “the most beautiful fi rst book to 19 appear in America since [Stevens’] Harmonium” [“Rare Modern” 313].) 20 21 Much that is beautiful must be discarded 22 So that we may resemble a taller 23 24 Impression of ourselves. . . . But how could we tell 25 That of the truth we know, she was 26 27 The somber vestment? 28 29 But he came back again as one comes back from the sun 30 To lie on one’s bed in the dark, close to a face 31 Without eyes or mouth, that looks at one and speaks. 32 33 The fi rst part of what you have just read is from “Illustration” (Selected 34 Poems 18), the second from “Yellow Afternoon” (CPP 216). I am tempted 35 to say that the end of the Stevens poem is Ashberyian: dour yet surreal 36 (and thus antic in its downbeat selfl ess soliloquizing way) and open-ended: 37 “that looks at one and speaks.” (Shouldn’t the poem go on to say what was 38 spoken? No, because it does not matter. It is humanly moody about the 39 inhumanity of what remains of the self; it is a meta-poem, asking “how we 40 could tell that of the truth we know.”) 41 I am being historical here—not anachronistic and, alternatively, not 42 theoretical—and no eff ort is being made to assert, for instance, Ashbery’s 43 specifi c infl uence on Stevens. Moreover, despite the poem and speech I have 44 mentioned and quoted, the New York School Stevens in the early fi fties is 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 167167 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:471:55:47 PMPM 168 Alan Filreis 1 not to be found in the published poetry. Wallace Stevens, an old poetic dog 2 resistant to new tricks, was not going to tell you in a poem where he got 3 a sandwich for lunch on a hot Manhattan avenue, what hotel is best for 4 a haircut, what literary magazines he is reading just now as he is writing, 5 who in the art world is acting most ridiculously and therefore memorably. 6 But I would suggest that if you read the letters from, say, 1948 through 7 1952, and concentrate on those describing especially his many New York 8 visits, you will begin to witness a pre-writing of O’Hara’s Second Avenue 9 or Ashbery’s “And You Know” or “Decoy.” “We are fond of plotting itin- 10 eraries,” writes Ashbery in “Decoy,” “Seeking in occasions new sources of 11 memories, for memory is profi t / Until the day it spreads out all its accu- 12 mulation,. . . . / But until then foreshortened memories will keep us going” 13 (Selected Poems 101). Let me end this coda with a sample of an I-do-this-I- 14 do-that Stevens, strolling, contradictory, irritably loving New York’s stimu- 15 lation, mixing art and perishables. My sample is drawn from less than ten 16 pages (622–30) in the published Letters: 17 18 My day in New York was a particularly good one. 19 Salesmen disguised as catalogues get on one’s nerves. 20 At the Greek’s fruitery I expect sapodillas and South Shore 21 bananas and pineapples a foot high with spines fit to stick in the 22 helmet of a wild chieftain. 23 Matisse has a collection of Dubuffet’s drawings. 24 A few hasty oysters in the hole in the ground at Grand Central. 25 Abstract sculptors should be totally abstract, not half so. 26 Why should I answer questions from young philosophers when I 27 receive perfumed notes from Paris? What I really like to have from 28 you is news about chickens raised on red peppers. 29 The main stack contains endless incunabula. 30 Your secret self will be enriched. 31 I am going to carry that freedom forward. 32 These are the two poles of feeling in New York now: fantasy on 33 the one hand and realism on the other: evasion and evasion. 34 I cannot find out what has become of the poems, which makes me 35 feel that they thought them too rotten to spend postage on them. 36 In Radio City they have erected a Christmas tree, fir or spruce. 37 The rink was crawling with skaters. 38 I go to a place on Ninth Avenue, Manganaro’s, for some Dago 39 things, including grated Parmesan cheese. 40 I spent an hour at the Morgan looking at various things of 41 Piranesi’s. 42 He is too much a man of taste to be a leader. 43 Duveen’s is a citadel of routine. 44 I am interested in arranging for a series of postcards. 45 I have seen no-one in New York. 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 168168 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:471:55:47 PMPM Coda 169 I dropped into one or two bookshops where I know people. 1 We can have lunch and perhaps a little talk. 2 It is nice to feel that Christmas is not far behind us. 3 His things are prismatic raindrops. 4 Wildenstein has a larger collection of Courbet. 5 What a superb freedom it is to cut oneself loose from all ties and 6 all errands and to carry no parcels. 7 In the small gallery one is always in danger of knocking things 8 over with one’s elbows, particularly on a Saturday afternoon when 9 one has more elbows than usual. 10 I go into a fruit store nowadays and find there nothing but the 11 fruits du jour: apples, pears, oranges, I feel like throwing them at the 12 Greek. 13 One is so homeless over here. 14 I spend the time walking in the open air. 15 16 17 18 WORKS CITED 19 20 Ashbery, John. Selected Poems. New York: Viking, 1985. Print. 21 . Some Trees. New Haven: Yale UP, 1956. Print. 22 Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biogra- phy. New York: Random House, 1983. Print. 23 Filreis, Alan. “‘Beyond the Rhetorician’s Touch’: Stevens’s Painterly Abstractions.” 24 American Literary History 4.2 (1992): 230–63. Print. 25 . “Still Life without Substance: Wallace Stevens and the Language of 26 Agency.” Poetics Today 10.2 (1989): 345–72. Print. 27 Gooch, Brad. City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print. 28 O’Hara, Frank. “Rare Modern.” Poetry 89.5 (1957): 307–16. Print. 29 . Second Avenue. New York: Totem, 1960. Print. 30 Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Knopf, 31 1966. Print. 32 . Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. Print. 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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Bonnie Costello is Professor of English at Boston University and serves as Book Review Editor for The Wallace Stevens Journal. She is the author of many books and articles on modern and contemporary poetry, includ- ing, most recently, Shifting Ground: Reinventing Landscape in Modern American Poetry (2003) and Planets on Tables: Poetry, Still Life and the Turning World (2008), both of which include chapters on Stevens. She is General Editor of The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore (1997). Professor Costello also lectures and writes about relations between the arts and has contributed the chapter on Stevens and painting to The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens (2007) as well as the chap- ter on Stevens and Marianne Moore to The Cambridge Companion to Modern Poetry (2008). She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Bart Eeckhout, Editor of The Wallace Stevens Journal since 2011, is Asso- ciate Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He was a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at Fordham University (2001) and has been on the visiting faculty of NYU’s Galla- tin School (2009 & 2010). His books include Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing (2002) and, as (co)editor, The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropo- lis (1999), Post Ex Sub Dis: Urban Fragmentations and Constructions (2002), and Wallace Stevens across the Atlantic (2008). For The Wal- lace Stevens Journal he guest-edited two special issues: “International Perspectives on Wallace Stevens” (Fall 2001) and, with Edward Ragg, “Wallace Stevens and British Literature” (Spring 2006). He is a transla- tor of Stevens into Dutch and has contributed the chapter on Stevens and philosophy to The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens (2007).

Alan Filreis is Kelly Professor of English, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writ- ers House, and Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. He is cofounder and codirec- tor, with Charles Bernstein, of PennSound. His books include Secretaries

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 171171 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:471:55:47 PMPM 172 Contributors 1 of the Moon: The Letters of Wallace Stevens and José Rodríguez Feo 2 (coedited with Beverly Coyle, 1986), Wallace Stevens and the Actual 3 World (1991), Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the 4 Thirties, and Literary Radicalism (1994), and most recently, Counter- 5 revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 6 1945–1960 (2008). He is on the Editorial Board of The Wallace Stevens 7 Journal and his current book project is about poetics in 1960. 8 9 Barbara Milberg Fisher is Professor Emerita of English at the City College 10 of CUNY, and a former soloist with the New York City Ballet under 11 George Balanchine. Her books include Wallace Stevens: The Intensest 12 Rendezvous (1990), Noble Numbers, Subtle Words: The Art of Math- 13 ematics in the Science of Storytelling (1997), and In Balanchine’s Com- 14 pany: A Dancer’s Memoir (2006). She has contributed essays and reviews 15 to The Wallace Stevens Journal, The William Carlos Williams Review, 16 Bucknell Review, and Talisman, and a chapter to Melita Schaum’s Wal- 17 lace Stevens and the Feminine (1993). Her comprehensive entry on Wal- 18 lace Stevens appeared in Oxford’s American National Biography (1999); 19 more recently, she contributed the essay “Some Other Where: Romeo 20 and Juliet as Ballet, as Musical” to The New Kittredge Shakespeare edi- 21 tion of that play (2008). 22 23 Lisa Goldfarb, President of The Wallace Stevens Society and Associate Edi- 24 tor of The Wallace Stevens Journal since 2011, is Associate Dean and 25 Associate Professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individ- 26 ualized Study, where she teaches interdisciplinary courses focusing on 27 poetry in English and French, music, and aesthetics. She has published 28 essays on modern poetry in a variety of journals, including The Romanic 29 Review, Journal of Modern Literature, and Fulcrum, and is a frequent 30 contributor to The Wallace Stevens Journal. She is the author of The Fig- 31 ure Concealed: Wallace Stevens, Music, and Valéryan Echoes (2011). 32 In March 2010, she organized the international conference “Wallace 33 Stevens, New York, and Modernism,” out of which the current volume 34 emerges. 35 36 George S. Lensing is Mann Family Distinguished Professor of English and 37 Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel 38 Hill. He was on the Editorial Board and served as Book Review Editor 39 for The Wallace Stevens Journal from 1982 to 2010. He is the author 40 of two books on Stevens, Wallace Stevens: A Poet’s Growth (1986) and 41 Wallace Stevens and the Seasons (2001), in addition to essays and public 42 presentations on the poet. He is currently preparing the entry on Ste- 43 vens in the forthcoming Cambridge History of American Poetry. He has 44 also published on various other American, British, and Irish poets of the 45 twentieth century. 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 172172 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:471:55:47 PMPM Contributors 173 Glen MacLeod, Vice President of The Wallace Stevens Society, is Professor 1 of English at the University of Connecticut, Waterbury. He is the author 2 of Wallace Stevens and Company: The Harmonium Years, 1913–1923 3 (1983) and Wallace Stevens and Modern Art: From the Armory Show 4 to Abstract Expressionism (1993). In 1995, he cocurated (with Sandra 5 Kraskin) the art exhibition “Painting in Poetry/Poetry in Painting: Wal- 6 lace Stevens and Modern Art” at Baruch College in Manhattan. In 2004, 7 he coorganized (with Charles Mahoney) the international conference 8 “Celebrating Wallace Stevens: The Poet of Poets in Connecticut” at the 9 University of Connecticut. He is on the Editorial Boards of The Wallace 10 Stevens Journal, The William Carlos Williams Review, and Paideuma, 11 and recently guest-edited a special issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal 12 on “Wallace Stevens and Henry James” (2010). His current research 13 involves Stevens as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and the 14 concept of authenticity in American art and literature. 15 16 Axel Nesme is Full Professor of American Literature at the University of 17 Lyon in France. He has published work on Theodore Roethke, Eliza- 18 beth Bishop, Ted Hughes, and Wallace Stevens, and has just completed a 19 book on the poetry of mourning, L’Autre sans visage: lecture de l’élégie 20 américaine, forthcoming in France (July 2012) with Editions Honoré 21 Champion. Professor Nesme has also translated several books from Ger- 22 man into French, including Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle, both pub- 23 lished by the prestigious literary publisher Hachette in 2000. 24 25 Edward Ragg is a poet, an Associate Professor in English at Tsinghua Uni- 26 versity, Beijing, and cofounder of Dragon Phoenix Wine Consulting. 27 He is the author of Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction 28 (2010)—a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title for 2011—and 29 coeditor, with Bart Eeckhout, of Wallace Stevens across the Atlantic 30 (2008). With Eeckhout he also edited a special issue of The Wallace Ste- 31 vens Journal devoted to “Wallace Stevens and British Literature” (2006) 32 and organized the fi rst major European conference on Stevens, “Fifty 33 Years On: Wallace Stevens in Europe” (2005). Ragg won the 2012 Cin- 34 namon Press Poetry Award and his fi rst volume of poetry, The Force 35 That Takes, will be published in 2013. His poems have also been anthol- 36 ogized in Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam (2012), Jericho & 37 Other Stories & Poems (2012), Visiting Wallace: Poems Inspired by the 38 Life and Work of Wallace Stevens (2009), and Carcanet’s New Poetries 39 IV (2007). He is a former Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute 40 and has taught at Cambridge University. 41 42 Juliette Utard is Associate Professor of American Literature at the Univer- 43 sity of Paris IV—Sorbonne. Her dissertation, Verse and Irreversibility in 44 the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, which is forthcoming in French, off ered a 45 46

T&F Proofs: Not For Distribution GGoldfarboldfarb & EEeckhouteckhout 22ndnd ppages.inddages.indd 173173 44/26/2012/26/2012 1:55:471:55:47 PMPM 174 Contributors 1 close reading of Stevens’ late poetry and was written partly in the U.S., 2 between the Huntington Library and Tulane University, where she held 3 a teaching position. She is the author of several articles in The Wal- 4 lace Stevens Journal, whose Editorial Board she has joined in 2011. Her 5 recent work has centered on Stevens’ relation to the French language and 6 French literature, and she is now starting work on the fi rst biography of 7 Stevens in French. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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A Victorian style, 3, 93, 95 Abbott, Berenice, 87 Arensberg, Louise, 12–13, 14, 28, 37, abstract expressionism, 51, 150, 165 55, 88 abstraction, 6, 17–18, 38, 41, 60, 62, Arensberg, Walter Conrad, 8, 12–13, 69n5, 73, 78, 79, 95, 100, 125, 14, 19n4, 27–29, 35, 37, 55, 88, 128, 129, 135, 144–61, 164, 152 165, 168 Armory Show, 13, 27–28 Alexander, John, 44 Arnold, Matthew, 31, 32 Allen, Woody, 2–4 Arp, Jean, 51 “Whore of Mensa, The,” 2–4 Ashbery, John, 18, 135, 163, 165, Alonso, Alicia, 82 166–68 Alonso, Fernando, 82 “And You Know,” 168 Altieri, Charles, 38 “Decoy,” 168 America/American, 1, 8, 11, 12, 14, “Illustration,” 167 16–17, 18, 27, 40–41, 43–48, Some Trees, 167 50, 52n2, 64, 68n1, 72, 82, 85, Astaire, Fred, 82 86, 96, 98, 100, 105–06, 118, 122, 124–29, 131n12, 134, B 144–45, 148, 150, 165, 167 Bacon, Francis, 23 American Abstract Artists Association, “Of Friendship,” 23 150 Baird, James, 100 American Bonding Company, 23, 75 Balzac, Honoré de, 138 American Society of Painters in Water Eugénie Grandet, 138 Colors, 44 Barbizon School (painting), 40, 152 Anfam, David, 150 Barnes, Djuna, 96 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 6 “Come into the Roof Garden, architecture, 12, 13, 14, 15, 29, Maud,” 96 85–104, 128 Barr, Alfred H., 150 Beaux Arts style, 12, 91, 98, 101 Barrymore, Ethel, 34 City Beautiful movement, 91 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 82 critical regionalism, 103 Bates, Milton, 41 Gothic (revival) style, 86, 93, 98, Baudelaire, Charles, 16, 25, 105, 110, 105 115 International style, 93 Painter of Modern Life, The, 16, 105 Italian Renaissance style, 96 Bayes, Nora, 69n4 roof gardens, 15, 96, 99 Belgium, 50–51 typologies in Stevens’ works, 15, 89, Benjamin, Walter, 95, 106, 110 97–100 “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” vernacular style, 93 110

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Berger, Charles, 131n12 Chicago, Illinois, 19n3, 85, 86, 91, Berks County, Pennsylvania, 41 134, 141n5 Berlin, Germany, 5 Chicago Tribune, 144 Bernhardt, Sarah, 34, 142n11, 157 China, 27, 29–30, 46, 47, 156 Bible, The, 135 Church, Barbara, 51, 75–76, 130n9, Book of Proverbs, The, 31 146 Psalms, 135 Church, Henry, 75, 148 Binyon, Laurence, 24, 30 Cleveland, Grover, 96 Blount, J. Donald, 55, 69n3–4 Clous, Arthur, 94 Bolender, Todd, 72 Cole, Thomas, 45 Still Point, The, 72 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 74, 91, 110, Bombois, Camille, 153–54 137 Bonnefoy, Yves, 134, 142n6 “Kubla Khan,” 91 Boston, Massachusetts, 5, 19n3, 46, Concerto Barocco (Balanchine), 82 90, 124, 167 Connecticut, 1, 8, 23, 74, 103, 151, Boswell, James, 34 157. See also Farmington; Hart- Life of Samuel Johnson, The, 34 ford; Woodbury Bourget, Paul, 34 Cook, Eleanor, 9, 107 Idylle Tragique, Une, 34 Corbusier, Le (Charles-Édouard Jean- Bradbury, Malcolm, 10 neret), 87, 93, 98 Braque, Georges, 41, 150, 153–54, 166 Corot, Jean-Baptiste Camille, 40, 43 Brazeau, Peter, 51, 54, 76–77, 121 Costello, Bonnie, 14, 57, 86, 89, 100, British Columbia, Canada, 94 152 Brown, Marshall, 69n5 Courbet, Gustave, 169 Brueghel, Pieter, 72 Crane, Hart, 15, 17, 89, 95, 100, Bruges, Belgium, 50–51 103n2, 133 Buci-Glucksmann, Christine, 106, Bridge, The, 103n2 109–10, 112, 113, 116, 118 Crane, Stephen, 91, 148 Burgundy region, France, 144–45, 148, Critic, The, 126 149 Croce, Arlene, 80, 83n4 Burnham, Daniel H., 86, 91 cubism, 11, 13, 27, 41, 150, 152 Burns, Ric, 11 Cummings, E. E., 87–88 Butler, Walter, 56 “at the ferocious phenomenon . . . ,” Buttel, Robert, 22, 28 87–88 Bynner, Witter, 35, 55, 126, 130n8, 149 D Dadaism, 13 C dance, 13, 14, 15, 18, 71–84, 101, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 61, 62, 92, 106, 111. See also entries for 124 individual artists Cannes, France, 158 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 157 Carman, Bliss, 24 Darwin, Charles, 4 Cassagnac, Paul de, 160n1 Debussy, Claude, 55, 69n1, 72, 102 Catullus, 14, 34 Degas, Edgar, 128 Carmina, 34 Delaunay, Robert, 153 Cavaillès, Jean, 151, 158 City of Paris, The, 153 Cazin, Jean Charles, 46 Deleuze, Gilles, 16, 106, 111 Departure of Night, 46 Demuth, Charles, 39, 41 Ceylon, 1 Number 5, 39 Cézanne, Paul, 152, 165 Dickinson, G. Lowes, 29 Champion, Selwyn Gurney, 144 Dos Passos, John, 90, 134 Charleston, South Carolina, 134 Dreiser, Theodore, 10 Chase, William Merritt, 41 Sister Carrie, 10 Cheney, Russell, 149 Du Bellay, Joachim, 107, 136

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Regrets, The, 107, 136 Gilbert, Roger, 64, 131n12 Dubuff et, Jean, 51, 168 Gilmartin, Gregory, 99 Duchamp, Marcel, 13, 14, 27–28, 87 Glazunov, Alexander, 58–59 Nude Descending a Staircase, 27–28 Goldberger, Paul, 86 Dunbar, David S., 5 Goldfarb, Lisa, 14–15, 76, 88, 93, Durand, Asher B., 44 106 Duse, Eleonora, 157 Gooch, Brad, 167 Graham, Martha, 82 E Gray, David, 24 East Orange, New Jersey, 7, 37, 38, 49, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 97 141n1 Grennan, Eamon, 94 Eaton, Charles Warren, 50 Grimaldi, Nicolas, 17, 136, 137 Eeckhout, Bart, 15, 64 Guatemala, 9 Eliot, T. S., 15, 25, 72, 90, 100, 125 Guilbault, Serge, 164 Four Quartets, 72 “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, H The,” 115 Hals, Franz, 51 “Preludes,” 25 Handel, George Frideric, 103n3 “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” 25 Hardy, Oliver, 85 “Waste Land, The,” 100 Hardy, Thomas, 122 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 88, 94 Under the Greenwood Tree, 122 England, 5, 92, 110 Harpers Weekly, 86 Equitable Surety Company, 23 Hartford Accident and Indemnity Europe, 11, 41, 42, 69n1, 98, 108, 124, Company, 8, 21, 23, 56, 76, 77 127, 142n13, 144, 150 Hartford, Connecticut, 1, 7, 8, 13, 18, expressionism, 149 21, 27, 35, 41, 54, 64, 69n6, 75, 76, 89, 91, 97, 133, 134, 140, F 141, 143n18, 145–46, 149, 156, Fantin-Latour, Henri, 49 159, 160n10, 163, 164 Farmington, Connecticut, 128, 129, Hartley, Marsden, 41 131n11 Harvard Advocate, 21, 90, 119n3 Feo, José Rodríguez, 51, 150–51, 159 Harvard University, 7, 8, 19n4, 21–23, Ferriss, Hugh, 87 25, 26, 27, 35, 42, 87, 88, Filreis, Alan, 18–19, 70n9 89–90, 92, 93, 96, 108, 124, Fisher, Barbara, 14, 15 125, 126, 147, 149, 167 Florida, 124, 125 Havana, Cuba, 60, 158 Fogel, Daniel Mark, 123 Heaney, Seamus, 156 Frampton, Kenneth, 103 “Quitting Time,” 156 France, 22, 27, 41, 46, 47, 73, 76, 79, Hearn, Lafcadio, 69n7 82, 92, 110, 113, 117, 128, 136, Heidegger, Martin, 103 140, 144–45, 148, 150, 151, Heringman, Bernard, 160n7 155, 164, 166 Hollander, John, 9 French, David Chester, 46 Homberger, Eric, 11–12, 19n3 Freud, Sigmund, 11, 16, 105, 107–08 Homer, 107 “Mourning and Melancholia,” 107 Odyssey, 137 “On Transience,” 105, 107–08 Hovey, Richard, 24 Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa von, 13 Hughes, Langston, 15, 72 Frost, Robert, 4 “Dancer,” 72 futurism, 11, 13, 123 Hulme, T. E., 22 G I Gallatin, A. E., 150 imagism, 22, 30, 102 Germany, 5, 7, 11, 22, 48, 60, 74, 150, impressionism, 38, 40–41, 49, 109, 156 128, 129, 149

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insurance companies, 8, 23, 140. See Knopf, Alfred A., 7, 9, 11, 141n3, 160, also under company names 163 Ireland, 11, 22, 60, 82, 99, 158 Kreymborg, Alfred, 8 Irving, Washington, 18 Ives, Charles, 69n1, 93 L Central Park in the Dark, 93 LaFarge, John, 44 Laforgue, Jules, 25 J Lamartine, Alphonse de, 112 Jackson, Kenneth T., 5 Laurel, Stan, 85 Jainsen, Wilson, 77 Lawson-Peebles, Robert, 18 James, Henry, 11, 16–17, 34, 105–06, Lebanon, 135 118, 121–32, 137–38, 139–40, Lee, Peter H., 65 166 Lemercier, Eugène Emmanuel, 69n2 “Altar of the Dead, The,” 123 Lensing, George, 12–14, 46, 47 American, The, 125 Leopardi, Giacomo, 14, 31 American Scene, The, 16–17, Pensieri, 31 105–06, 124, 125–26, 128, Lili (fi lm), 156 130n5, 131n12 Lloyd, Harold, 85, 92 Autobiography, 124, 125, 126, 127, Loines, Russell, 147 130n10 Lombardi, Thomas Francis, 29 Daisy Miller, 124 London, England, 5, 22, 25, 46, 92 Golden Bowl, The, 122, 125 Longenbach, James, 61, 69n7, 107, 108 Small Boy and Others, A, 124, 127, Lopate, Phillip, 9 130n10 Lorca, Federico García, 133, 142n7 Washington Square, 16, 17, 121–22, Lorrain, Claude, 43, 51 137–40 Lowell, Amy, 118 Wings of the Dove, The, 122, 125 “Fugitive,” 118 James, William, 122, 124, 125–26 Lyadov, Anatoly, 63 Japan, 14, 27, 29–30, 38, 47, 82 japonisme, 14, 46 M Jenks, Richard Pulling, 130n10 MacGreevy, Thomas, 51, 83n3, 151 Jenny, Laurent, 118 Mackail, J. W., 31 Jersey City, New Jersey, 95 MacLeod, Glen, 13, 16–17, 19n4, 27, Johnson, James Weldon, 87 38, 55, 69n2, 138 “My City,” 87 MacRae, Wendell, 87 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 34 K Maistre, Xavier de, 130n9 Kachel (Stevens), Elsie Viola, 7–8, 16, Malherbe, François de, 117 21, 22, 24–25, 27, 28, 29–30, “Consolation à M. du Périer,” 117 31, 36n6, 38, 44, 46–48, 49–51, Mallarmé, Stéphane, 78, 80, 83n4 53n4, 55, 56, 58–63, 66, 69n3, Divagations, 78, 80 74–75, 89, 94–97, 107, 121–23, Manet, Édouard, 41, 128 130n1, 134, 135–37, 139, Woman with Parrot, 41 141n1, 142n12, 143n17, 148 Martiny, Philip, 46 Kandinsky, Wassily, 149, 150–51, 157 Marvell, Andrew, 117 Keaton, Buster, 85 “To His Coy Mistress,” 117 Keats, John, 14, 16, 34, 35n1, 57, 88, Marxism, 11 107, 108 Massachusetts. See Boston; Cam- “Belle Dame Sans Merci, La,” 57 bridge; Great Barrington “When I have fears that I may cease Massengale, John Montague, 99 to be,” 107 Masses, The, 11 Kermode, Frank, 142n11 Matisse, Henri, 159, 168 Kertész, André, 87 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 89 Klee, Paul, 51, 149, 150–51, 157 McKim, Charles, 90–91

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McKim, Mead, and White (architects), All Aboard, 56 12, 90–91, 96, 101 Billy Elliot, 82 McKinley, William, 96 Blue Mouse, The, 56 McWhirter, David, 125 Climax, The, 56 Measure, The, 28 Kitty Grey, 56 Melville, Herman, 3, 26 Midnight Suns, The, 56 Billy Budd, 3 Motor Girl, The, 56 Moby Dick, 26 Mr. Hamlet of Broadway, 56 Mengel, Levi, 42 Prima Donna, The, 56 Meredith, George, 34 Three Twins, The, 56 “Lark Ascending, The,” 34 ragtime, Metchnikoff , Elie, 34 “Harlem Rag,” 55 Mexico, 148, 153 “Maple Leaf Rag,” 55 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 93, 98 songs, Milton, John, 3, 82, 107 “Have You Ever Seen a Dream “L’Allegro,” 82 Girl Walking,” 56 Paradise Lost, 3 “Hi-li Hi-lo.” See Schuster; West modernism/modernity, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, “Hi-Lili Hi-Lo,” 156 13, 15, 16, 19, 22, 25, 27–28, “In Arcady,” 55 38–39, 41, 43, 52, 55, 60, 64, 76, 85–89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, N 98–100, 101, 103, 103n2, 105– National Association for the Advance- 06, 109, 119, 123, 125, 126, ment of Colored People, 11 128, 133, 149–50, 151, 153–54, Nepos, Cornelius, 130–31n10 157, 158, 163–65, 166, 167 Nesme, Axel, 16, 129 Mondrian, Piet, 51, 150, 127 New Amsterdam, 5, 7, 9 Monet, Claude, 41, 109, 128 New England, 38, 124, 128, 158 Nymphéas, 109 New Hampshire, 125–26. See also money economy, 2, 4–5, 89, 105, Mount Chocorua 124–25, 135, 139, 141n2, New Jersey, 7, 23, 37, 66, 141n1. See 143n15, 159 also East Orange; Jersey City; Monroe, Harriet, 8, 123, 140, 141, Montclair 143n18 New Jersey Palisades, 76, 88, 95 Montclair, New Jersey, 37, 49 New Republic, The, 123 Moore, Marianne, 15, 44, 72, 89, 125, New York City, New York, 153, 160n8 American Art Galleries, 34, 45, 46, “Arthur Mitchell,” 72 47, 52n2 “When I Buy Pictures,” 44 Ansonia Hotel, 12 More, Paul Elmer, 31, 34, 61, 117 Art Students League, 46 Morrison, Arthur, 14, 30 Astor Library, 14, 34 Morse, Samuel F. B., 44 Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, 95 Moselle region, France, 144 Battery, 138 Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire, Belasco Theatre, 96 126 Belvedere Castle, 93 Mount Penn, Pennsylvania, 29, 99 Biltmore Hotel, 77 Mount Vernon, Virginia, 128 Bowery, 135 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 60, 86 Brevoort Hotel, 28 music, 8, 9, 13, 14–15, 16, 18, 19, Broadway, 56, 65, 86, 96, 105 22, 25, 27, 33, 47, 54–70, 72, Bronx, 7, 95 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 88, 91, 97, Bronx Park, 34 103n3, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, Brooklyn, 6–7, 21, 50, 95 156, 158, 159. See also entries Brooklyn Bridge, 12, 89, 95, 96, for individual composers 101 musicals and comic operas, Brooklyn Museum, 34

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Carnegie Hall, 14, 34 Metropolitan Life Tower, 96–97, Central Park, 65, 66–67, 93–94, 95 103n3 Chambers Street, 65 Metropolitan Museum, 14, 34, 41 Chelsea, 7, 100 MoMA, 19, 149, 151–52, 153, 159, Chelsea Square, 92 163–65, 167 Chrysler Building, 87 Morgan Library, 51, 168 City College of New York, 163 Morningside Heights, 90 Columbia University, 34, 90 Murray Hill, 96 Coney Island, 12, 99 Museum of Modern Art (see Cooper Union, 46 MoMA) Duveen’s, 169 National Academy of Design, 14, 34, East Twenty-fourth Street, 94 44–45 East River, 12, 95 National Arts Club, 45 Eighth Avenue, 67 Neighborhood Playhouse, 101 Ellis Island, 11, 106 New York Botanical Gardens, 14, Empire State Building, 87 34, 65, 95 Equitable Building, 87 New York City Ballet, 15, 72 Fifth Avenue, 32, 47, 97 New York Law School, 7 Fifth Avenue Hotel, 49, 67 New York Public Library, 75 Financial District, 105 New York Times Tower, 86 Fine-Art Society, 30 Ninety-fi rst Street, 65 Flatiron Building (see Fuller Ninety-second Street Y, 10, 163 Building) Ninth Avenue, 168 Fordham Heights, 7, 55 North River, 66 Fourteenth Street, 106 Park Avenue, 75, 96 Fuller Building, 86 Park Avenue Hotel, 56 Gillender Building, 87 Park Row, 91 Grace Church, 65 Penn Station, 12 Gramercy Park, 45, 96 Players Club, 96 Grand Central Terminal, 12, 168 Plaza Hotel, 3 Greenwich Village, 7, 11 Pratt Institute, 50 Harlem, 55, 72, 135 Princeton Club, 96 Harvard Club, 96, 147 Queensboro Bridge, 12 Herald Square, 12 Radio City, 168 Hispanic Museum, 34, 48 Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, 32, 93 Holland Society, 7 Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, 6 Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, Seth Low Library (see Low Library) 95 Singer Building, 96 Hudson River, 7, 88, 95 Spuyten Duyvill, 65 Hunter College, 3 Stuyvesant Theatre, 96 “Kleindeutschland,” 11 Times Square, 4, 86 Long Acre Square (see Times Square) Tract Society Building, 91–92 Lower East Side, 11 Trinity Church, 105 Low Library, 34, 90–91 Van Cortlandt Park, 65 Macy’s, 12 Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 9, 77, 99 Madison Square, 46, 47, 57, 87, Wall Street, 87 96–97 Wanamakers, 94 Madison Square Garden, 12, 95 Washington Bridge, 34 Manganaro’s, 168 Washington Square, 106 Manhattan, 2, 4, 11, 17, 37, 65, 87, Water Color Society, 44 95, 96, 99, 101, 103n2, 134, West Street, 66 165, 168 West Thirty-fi fth Street, 149 Manhattan Bridge, 12, 95 Wildenstein Gallery, 169 Manhattan Municipal Building, 101 Williamsburg, 6

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Woolworth Building, 86, 87–88 Plato, 71, 78, 80, 81–82, 113 World Building, 91 Dialogues, 71, 78 YMHA Poetry Center, 163 Ion, 78, 81 Yorkville, 135 Symposium, 78 New Yorker, The, 1–4, 80 Poetry, 137 New York School (poetry), 18–19, Poetry Society of America, 163 70n9, 163–69 Pollock, Jackson, 165 New York Times, 44, 48, 122, 124 Pope, Alfred Atmore, 128 New York Tribune, 7, 44, 46–48, 86, Posnock, Ross, 125 123, 143n15 postimpressionism, 13, 27 Niehaus, Charles, 46 Pound, Ezra, 22, 125 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 93, 106, 111 Poussin, Nicholas, 51 Gay Science, The, 106 Powers, James, 76–77 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 82 Powers, Margaret, 76–77 Norberg-Schulz, Christian, 103 Propertius, 34 Nyack, New York, 65 Proust, Marcel, 61, 69n5 Provincetown Players, 11 O Prudhomme, Sully, 14, 34 O’Hara, Frank, 18, 163, 165, 167, 168 Second Avenue, 168 Q Okakura, Kakuzo, 29 Quinney, Laura, 135–36, 142n8 O’Keeff e, Georgia, 41, 87 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 93 R Oppenheim, James, 87 Ragg, Edward, 17–18 “New York, from a Skyscraper,” 87 Ragner, Bernard, 144–45 Others, 39 Raphael (Raff aello Sanzio da Urbino), 51 P Reading, Pennsylvania, 7, 21, 23, 24, Pach, Walter, 13, 40–41 29, 37, 41–42, 46, 94, 95, 99, painting, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 27–30, 133, 143n18, 145 37–53, 55, 57, 72, 86, 87, realism, 10, 40, 48, 83n4, 168 88, 98, 105, 109, 128–29, Rembrandt van Rijn, 49–50 144–61, 163–65. See also Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 102 entries for individual artists and Ricciardi, Alessia, 108 movements Rich, Daniel Catton, 152, 153 Paris, France, 13, 27, 86, 141n4, 151, Richardson, Joan, 1, 13, 37, 54–55, 153, 157, 159, 164–65, 168 68n1, 130n1, 142n11 Pascal, Blaise, 31 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 17, 108, 136 Pavlova, Anna, 82 Letters to a Young Poet, 136 Pearce, Roy Harvey, 125–26 Rivera, Diego, 87 Peckham, W. G., 7, 94 Rochefoucauld, François de La, 31 Pennsylvania, 64, 75, 76, 88, 94. See Roethke, Theodore, 72 also Berks County; Mount “My Papa’s Waltz,” 72 Penn; Philadelphia; Reading Rolland, Clothilde, 157 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19n3–4, Rolland, Romain, 157 92 romanticism, 8, 23, 68, 73, 88, 91, 92, philosophy, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 26, 32, 35, 93–94, 97, 127, 142n8, 153, 52, 72, 78–82, 112–14, 136, 155–56 139, 142n9–10, 158, 159, 168 Rome, Italy, 35, 52, 61, 69n6, 136, 158 Picabia, Francis, 13 Roosevelt, Theodore, 12 Picasso, Pablo, 41, 153, 159 Rousseau, Henri, 28–29, 152–55, pictorialism, 38–41, 51, 86, 97 160n8 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 51–52, 87, Carnival Evening, 154 98, 168 Football Players, The, 153, 154

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Jardin du Luxembourg, 154 skyscrapers. See individual skyscraper Myself, Portrait-Landscape, 153 names under New York City Old Junier’s Cart, 153 Soby, James Thrall, 149, 160n6, Poet’s Bouquet, 154 163–64 Portrait of a Lady, 153 Society of Independent Artists, 41 Wedding, The, 153, 154 Sorolla y Bastida, Joaquin, 48 Rousseau, Théodore Pierre Etienne, South Africa, 74, 134 40, 49, 152 Spain, 48, 75, 111 Rubens, Peter Paul, 41, 151 Spenser, Edmund, 82 Susanna and the Elders, 41 Faerie Queene, The, 82 Steendam, Jacob, 9 S Steichen, Edward, 87 Safety Last (fi lm), 85 Stein, Gertrude, 123 Saint-Saens, Camille, 55 Stein, Leo, 166 Sanborn, Pitts, 35, 36n2, 55, 69n2 Stella, Joseph, 87 Sanders, James, 11 Stern, Robert A. M., 99 Santayana, George, 35, 42, 52, 158 Stevens, Elsie. See Kachel Sargent, John, 48 Stevens, Garrett B., 121, 137, 139–40, Schickel, Richard, 85 142n14 Schmidt, Elizabeth, 9 Stevens, Holly, 6, 37, 53n3, 76, 125 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 31 Stevens, Wallace, Schorer, Suki, 83n1 “Academic Discourse at Havana,” Schubert, Franz, 56, 61, 62, 63 60 “Unfi nished” Symphony, 56, 61, “Adagia,” 9, 31, 72, 137 62, 63 “Agenda,” 134 Schumpeter, Joseph, 87 “American Sublime, The,” 46 Schuster, Ira, 156 “And even as I passed . . . ,” 108–09 “Hi-li Hi-lo,” 156 “Anecdote of the Abnormal,” 51 Schwartz, Delmore, 37, 38 “Angel Surrounded by Paysans,” Scott, Sir Walter, 21 150, 151, 154 Scriabin, Alexander, 55 “Architecture,” 91 Séchan, Louis, 78, 80 “Arrival at the Waldorf,” 9 Seldes, Gilbert, 143n18 “Asides on the Oboe,” 134 Sellar, W. Y., 34 “Auroras of Autumn, The,” 67, 100 Shakespeare, William, 34, 96, 116, Auroras of Autumn, The, 163 123, 145 “Ballade of the Pink Parasol,” 16, Cymbeline, 116, 145 22, 25, 110–12, 113, 119n3 Hamlet, 109, 111, 116, 142n11 Book of Verses, A, 25 Tempest, The, 123 “Bouquet, The,” 154 Sharpe, Tony, 160n2 “Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight,” 154 Shearer, Christopher, 41–42, 46 Carlos Among the Candles, 101–02, Sheeler, Charles, 87 123 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 16, 83, 97, 107, “Carnet de Voyage,” 44, 51 108 “Certain Phenomena of Sound,” 61, “Ozymandias,” 107 144 “To a Sky-Lark,” 97 “Chiaroscuro,” 114, 116 Shields, Roger, 55, 68n1 “Chocorua to Its Neighbor,” 125 Sigmans, Anthony, 56 Collected Poetry, 7 Silentiarius, Paulus, 14, 31 “Comedian as the Letter C, The,” Simmel, Georg, 5–6, 92–93 100 “Metropolis and Mental Life, The,” “Come, said the world . . . ,” 23 5–6, 92–93 “Concert of Fishes, A,” 35n2 Sinclair, Upton, 134 “Connecticut Composed,” 103 Jungle, The, 134 “Connoisseur of Chaos,” 15, 73–74

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“Credences of Summer,” 65, 67 “Of Modern Poetry,” 76 “Curtains in the House of the Meta- “Of the Manner of Addressing physician, The,” 74 Clouds,” 61, 111, 112–14, 117 “Dance of the Macabre Mice,” 100 “Old Man Asleep, An,” 158 “Death of a Soldier, The,” 31 “On an Old Horn,” 60 “Description Without Place,” 63, “Ordinary Evening in New Haven, 66 An,” 17, 59, 64, 100, 129, “Desire to Make Love in a Pagoda, 131n12, 160n2 The,” 29 “Ordinary Women, The,” 118 “Dinner Bell in the Woods,” 18, “Owl’s Clover,” 46, 74, 83, 100, 134 146, 155, 156 Parts of a World, 167 “Discovery of Thought, A,” 158 “Peter Quince at the Clavier,” 41, “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” 63, 69n7, 123 30 “Phases,” 51 “Esthétique du Mal,” 31, 60 “Plain Sense of Things, The,” “Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet, 142n12, 148, 158 The,” 74, 98 “Pleasures of Merely Circulating, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Par- The,” 74, 77, 155 amour,” 158 “Poem That Took the Place of a “Fish-Scale Sunrise, A,” 15, 76–77 Mountain, The,” 158 “Floral Decorations for Bananas,” “Poem Written at Morning,” 51 28 “Prelude to Objects,” 152 “From Pieces of Paper,” 31 “Primitive Like an Orb, A,” 18, 146, “From the Packet of Anacharsis,” 51 154–55 “Go not, young cloud . . . ,” 112–13 “Primordia,” 44, 51 Harmonium, 22, 28, 30, 73, 82, “Public Square, The,” 28 85, 91, 108, 112, 118, 141n3, “Quiet Normal Life, A,” 18, 146, 141n5, 167 157–58 “Idea of Order at Key West, The,” “Relations Between Poetry and 41 Painting, The,” 19, 150, 163, Ideas of Order, 22, 51, 77, 156 165 “If we are leaves that fall . . . ,” 107 “Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz,” 74 “In the Sun,” 33 “Schemata,” 31 “Irish Cliff s of Moher, The,” 158 “Sea Surface Full of Clouds,” 15, “Lettres d’un Soldat,” 51 65, 73 “Life Is Motion,” 82 “Shower,” 16, 29, 109 Little June Book, The, 16, 25, 29, “Six Signifi cant Landscapes,” 30 35n2, 109, 114, 117 “Someone Puts a Pineapple “Man on the Dump, The,” 130n10 Together,” 147 “Man with the Blue Guitar, The,” “Sunday Morning,” 33, 41, 69n6–7, 149 82, 86, 107–09, 111 “Metaphors of a Magnifi co,” 117 “Things of August,” 60 “Monocle de Mon Oncle, Le,” 30 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a “Montrachet-le-Jardin,” 63, 144–45 Blackbird,” 65, 67 “Mozart, 1935,” 60 “Three Academic Pieces,” 147 Necessary Angel, The, 119n5, 163 Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise, “New England Verses,” 38 130, 137 “Noble Rider and the Sound of “Tradition,” 46 Words, The,” 62, 99, 100, “Two Letters,” 158 103n1, 126, 130n9–10 “Two Tales of Liadoff ,” 63 “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” “Vacancy in the Park,” 158 51, 71, 98, 154 “Valley Candle,” 30, 102 “Novel, The,” 48 “Variations on a Summer Day,” 65, “Of Hartford in a Purple Light,” 41 118

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“When I think of all the centuries . Eupalinos, 15, 76, 77 . . ,” 107 “Jeune Parque, La,” 70n8 “Window in the Slums, A,” 24 Van Vechten, Carl, 13, 55, 69n2 “Worms at Heaven’s Gate, The,” 116 Vaux, Calvert, 93 “Yellow Afternoon,” 167 Vendler, Helen, 123 St. Gaudens, Augustus, 46 Venice, Italy, 97 Stieglitz, Alfred, 41, 86, 87 Vidal, Paule, 151, 154 Strand, Paul, 87 Villon, François, 110 Stravinsky, Igor, 55, 69n1 “Ballade des dames du temps jadis,” Styles of Radical Will (Susan Sontag), 110 3 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène, 98 sublime, 46, 92, 93, 95, 101, 102 Virgil, 107 surrealism, 149, 167 Vogue, 156, 160n10 Sweden, 48, 99, 151–52 Sweeney, James Johnson, 160n7 W Switzerland, 87, 126–27 Ward, Lyman, 8, 23 Warner, Olin, 46 T Washington, D. C., 91 Taglioni, Filippo, 82 Weber, Max, 93 Taglioni, Marie, 82 Weinman, Adolph, 45–46, 100 Tal-Coat, Pierre, 150, 151–52 West, Eugene, 156 Tanguy, Yves, 149 “Hi-li Hi-lo,” 156 Taylor, Wilson, 1, 158 West Point, New York, 67 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, 56 Wharton, Edith, 11 Fifth Symphony, 56 House of Mirth, The, 11 Swan Lake, 82 Wheeler, Monroe, 163–64 Teasdale, Sara, 87 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 128 “From the Woolworth Tower,” 87 Whitman, Walt, 17, 18, 88, 94, 102, Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 21 133 “Maud,” 34 Wilbur, Richard, 1–2, 5 Tharp, Twyla, 82 Williams, William Carlos, 13, 15, 39, 72 Thoreau, Henry David, 100, 125 “Dance, The,” 72 Töpff er, Charles, 127 “Danse Russe,” 72 Töpff er, Rodolphe, 126–27, 130n9–10 “Great Figure, The,” 39 Voyages en zigzag, 126–27, 130n9 Wolf, Stephen, 9 Trend, 36n2 Woodbury, Connecticut, 149 Turner, William, 49 Woolf, Virginia, 22 Twain, Mark, 96 Wordsworth, William, 88, 92, 94, 103n1, 110, 135 U Lyrical Ballads, 21, 110 Uhde, Wilhelm, 152 “[Sonnet] Composed upon Westmin- United States of America. See America/ ster Bridge,” 92 American Wright, Frank Lloyd, 98 Utard, Juliette, 17, 129 Y V Yeats, William Butler, 17, 22, 82, 136, 137 Valencia, Spain, 48 “Among School Children,” 82 Valéry, Paul, 15, 69–70n8, 75–76, Per Amica Silentia Lunae, 136 77–82, 83n4 L’Âme et la Danse, 15, 76, 78–81 Z Dialogues, 76, 78 Ziegfeld, Florenz, 69n4

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