i OSCILLATIONS OF THE ABSOLUTE: An Examination of the Implications of Wallace Stevens* '^Central Poetry" by Keith Darrel Eccleston B.A., The University of British Columbia, 1959 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts in the Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, 196k. In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study* I further agree that per• mission, for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that, copying or publi• cation of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission* Department of Ibri^lisL The University of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, Canada Date 11 ABSTRACT The Inadequacy of the image has ever been the besetting problem of idealist esthetics. The discrepancy between the absolute and the contingent, between the thing, the idea of the thing and the experience of the thing provides common cause for the compositions of hermetic art. The basic affir• mation of this thesis is that the theory of Wallace Stevens offers a demonstrable solution to the problem and that his relational use of images in The Collected Poems overcomes the inadequacy of those images. In practice, however, this thesis involves the delinea• tion of that solution less than the dialectics necessary to determine its nature. Such a method is dictated by an initial acceptance of deliberate obscuration as one of the formative principles of Stevens' esthetic. The introduction to this paper is little more than an examination of the causes and values of obscuration in Stevens' prose and in his poems and a defence of the method adopted herein to deal with those values; in it, Stevens' poems are vievred as acts appropriate to the practical process of transcendence - a process designed to attain, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, "One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God." The theoretic validity of transcendence as process becomes the onus proband! of "Part I". It constitutes an attempt to appease apparent ambigiiities in Stevens' theory of poetry - ambiguities that have plagued critics who would perceive in his poems the principles of his theory - by determining the nature and implications of Stevens' concept of "central poetry." The source, nature, and mode of existence of that concept - used herein as generic name for Stevens' total theory - are charac• terized by the image of oscillations contained in the thesis title. Basically, the discipline of the "central poet" is analogous to that involved in the via affirmativa and via negativa of religious art, but the phrase 'oscillations of the absolute* more easily manifests the character of his symbols. The phrase describes both the movement of the mind from in• volvement in the limitations of images and ideas to free con• templation and the nature of the 'existent images' which become adequate objects for that contemplation. The coupling of oscillations in the image with movements of the mind dictates the kind of study projected in "Part II" of this paper. Therein Stevens' theory is compared to the tenets of symbolism, in terms both of the creation of the in• dividual symbol and of the symbolic work - specifically with Mallarme's concept of "the Book." The architectonics of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens - the variation and repeti• tion of image, the incorporations of allusion, the progression in the volume from positings of the contingent to existent images of the absolute - are indicated, and the karmic process of the mind as it dramatizes itself in that created architecture is described. Decreation, abstraction, composition, and repeti• tion are treated as the major aspects of the movement of the mind towards the unfettered experience of the absolute. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a concept of the nature of Stevens' poetic that will prove efficacious as a iv critical approach to his poems. Its validity, therefore, is dependent upon the degree to which the concept herein evolved provides an insight into the experience of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. V TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE PRELIMINARY: An Introduction to Obscurity and a Defence of Method 1 PART I - Central Poetry: Morphology 32 PART II - Central Poetry: Syntax 115 CONCLUSION 170 FOOTNOTES 172 BIBLIOGRAPHY 182 1 PRELIMINARY: An Introduction to Obscurity and a Defence of Method. Singular Teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! ... Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crocihetsj a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. "How paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, "what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar off of the unspeakable?" We ask in turn: Why perplex these times, profane as they are, with need• less obscurity, by omission and by commission? Not mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and in• volves himself ... in eye-bewildering chiaroscuro. Carlyle - Sartor Resartus To embark upon a study of the poetry and prose of Wallace Stevens by exploring the possibilities of an analogy between him and Teufelsdrb'ckh may appear bizarre, yet the points of resem• blance, not only between the two but also between Teufelsdrockh's English editor and a Stevens* critlc-in-the-abstract, are such that the exploration becomes well-nigh inescapable once conceived. The possibilities are such, at least, as to facilitate an orderly introduction to the thesis of this study. There is, initially, the fact to face that the outcry against obscurity contained in the epigraph of this Introduction has often been voiced by the critics of Stevens and with more cause than Teufelsdrb'ckh's editor could show. As the composer of an esthetic theory couched almost wholly in terms both idiosyncratic and ambig• uous, Stevens must inevitably evoke the kind of response expressed by Graham Hough: The critical essays (of Stevens] either say, with ponder• ous mannerism, nothing at all; or something so elemen• tary that one can hardly believe It to be the result of such an elaborate procedure... Outside his own peculiar poetic vein he cannot have been a very intelligent man. This is not a thing that can be said of many poets and one would not wish to say it of Stevens, except that the pretensions to a speculative intelligence bulk so 2 largely in his work. Stranger still, the subject of these meandering pronouncements - the relation between reality and Imagination - is the very one that lies at the centre of his poetry.1 If the prose of The Necessary Angel and Opus Posthumous can have this effect, it is not surprising that Stevens' poetry, based as ' it is on his theory, should elicit displays of animosity and acrid wit of the kind used by Winters who, in objecting to Stevens* "perverse ingenuity in confusing the statement of essentially simple themes," characterized the poetry by quoting Stevens* poem "The Revolutionists Stop For Orangeade": Hang a feather by your eye Nod and look a little sly.2 The analogy between the obscurity of Teufelsdrockh and that of Stevens is not trivial. There are at least two kinds of obscurity - that amorphous kind which comes from vagueness of motive or vacillation in the execution of idea and act, and that unavoidable kind which comes when one seeks to embody the ineffable. Both are equally Indefinable in terms of a "clear logical Picture." But Teuf elsdrb'ckh had his' defense; deliberate obscurity is the only way open, in "profane times," to speak "of the unspeakable." One of the products of this analogy then, is a pronouncement that the purpose of this present study of Stevens' work is to provide a like defense for him by proving that the element of obscurity in his work is a necessary and deliberate aspect of his attempt to speak the unspeakable in honest speech. It may here be objected that what one man finds abstruse is to another obtuse, that Teufelsdrockh's philosophy was not really obscure, and that allegations of obscurity in writers usually arise because of a penchant in buffoons like Teufelsdrbckh's 3 editor for treating private misreadings as though they were public. Indeed, the probability of such an objection actually occurring can be.adequately assessed by reference to the fact that an ear• lier version of this study of Stevens was rejected on the grounds that it made abstruse what else was perfectly clear to everyone. In face of such objections, it is not enough to apostrophize the perversity of the gods, nor is it possible to become an apostate from the view that Stevens, by deliberate obscurations, sought to bring into being the ineffable. An apologia is needed that will Justify both the attribution of obscurity to Stevens1 work and the method used in this study to bring that obscurity to bear. It is easy enough to prove that Stevens was an advocate of obscurity in poetry. Both the superficial statement and the illustration provided by the poem "Man Carrying Thing" make the point evident: The poem must resist the intelligence Almost successfully. Illustration? A brune figure in winter evening resists Identity. The thing he carries resists The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then, As secondary (parts not quite perceived- Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt, Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow Out .of a storm we must endure all night, Out of a storm of secondary things), A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.