Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1966 The Aspiring Clown of Wallace Stevens: a Study of 'The omediC an as the Letter C' as Preliminary Statement. George Stephan Lensing Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Lensing, George Stephan Jr, "The Aspiring Clown of Wallace Stevens: a Study of 'The omeC dian as the Letter C' as Preliminary Statement." (1966). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 1157. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/1157 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This dissertation has been „„ nrxrt 66-1U.9U7 microfilmed exactly as received LENSING, Jr., George Stephan, 1940- THE ASPIRING CLOWN OF WALLACE STEVENS: A STUDY OF ’’THE COMEDIAN AS THE LETTER C" AS PRELIMINARY STATEMENT. Louisiana State University, Ph.D., 1966 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE ASPIRING CLOWN OP WALLACE STEVENS* A STUDY- OP "THE COMEDIAN AS THE LETTER C" AS PRELIMINARY STATEMENT A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faoulty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Meohanioal College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by George Stephan Lensing, Jr. B.A., University of Notre Dame. 1962 May, 1966 ACKNOWLEDGMENT For his professional assistance and generous personal encouragement In the completion of this work, I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to my adviser, teacher, and friend, Dr. Donald E. Stanford. For their valuable criticisms, I further acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Fabian Gudas and Dr. Otis B. Wheeler. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENT. ............ ............. ii ABSTRACT. ................. ... •• iv CHAPTER I. THE MARVELOUS SOPHOMORE................. 1 II. CRISPIN MADE NEW. ................. 49 III. THE BOOK OF MOONLIGHT . ... .... 90 IV. TO MAKE A NEW INTELLIGENCE PREVAIL............. 132 V. A TRAGEDIAN *S TESTAMENT ........................ 184 BIBLIOGRAPHY............ 24l APPENDIX. 7. .... 250 VITA. .............. 263 ABSTRACT "The Comedian as the Letter C," the first long poem by Wallace Stevens, contains the major ideas, themes, and symbols with whioh Stevens was to be permanently concerned in his poetry. This study, "The Aspiring Clown of Wallace Stevensi A Study of •The Comedian as the Letter C* as Preliminary Statement," examines the poem from this perspective. The poem, 573 lines of blank verse, appeared in Stevens* first volume, Harmonium, in 1923, It is a narrative account of the voyage of the clown, Criispin, from Bordeaux, Prance, to Yucatan in Mexico, and finally up to Carolina, The voyage is couched in terms that relate specifically to the establishment of an aesthetic environment for the. poet. It is structured around a symbolic seasonal pattern depicting the ever-changing adjustment to be made between man and environment. The introductory chapter, "The Marvelous Sophomore," at­ tempts to define the poem as comedy. It explores various sources .of the poem, particularly in the history of the Crispin character. Various roles performed by Crispin within the poem itself are analyzed. Eccentricity of style and language is discussed, and the poem is examined in terms of its narrative character*.its use of irony, and its allegorical overtones. Crispin’s personal "decreation" is examined as representa­ tive of Stevens' own demand that man shed himself of all obsolete myth. Chapter II, "Crispin Made New," considers the Clown as he abandons his Old World romanticism and his lingering commitment to orthodox, religion. Crispin is ini­ tiated into the winter world of "nothingness" from which will later emerge the fullness of the summer imagination. Each of these decreative methods is related to Stevens* work generally. ' The third chapter, "The Book of Moonlight," focuses upon Crispin’s rejection of the moonlight-imagination. Stevens* general notions of the imagination as a transforming power, a consoling power, and a meditative power are defined in this context. In spite of himself, Crispin is found to greet the Carolina spring and summer as a locus of imaginative plenitude. ' Crispin’s projected colony and the statements of proposi­ tion by which that colony will be inaugurated are considered as a skeletal anticipation of Stevens* supreme fiction. In this way, Chapter IV, "To Make a New Intelligence Prevail," relates the poem to Stevens* later work, particularly the poem, "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction." Crispin, too, Is examined as Stevens* first poetic character specifically de­ fined as "hero." The final chapter, "A Tragedian’s Testament," explores Crispin’s abandonment of the colony and his lapse into the immediate world of sense pleasures and domestic passivity. In this sense, Crispin^ frustrated poetic aspiration typifies Vi Stevens* own failure to bring the supreme fiction to its full fruition. Crispin, as "Autumn’s compendium," anticipates Stevens* own later theme of frustration and defeat. This study of "The Comedian as the Letter C" is based upon the hypothesis that a detailed knowledge of these symbols and themes in a major early poem can serve to clarify for the reader and to enlarge his pleasure in the study of the later poetry. CHAPTER I THE MARVELOUS SOPHOMORE In the fall of 1921, two years.before the appearance of Wallace Stevens• first volume of poetry, Harmonium, a contest sponsored by the Poetry Society of South Carolina was announced in Poetry. Of the 350 submitted manuscripts, a long poem by Stevens, "Prom the Journal of Crispin," re­ ceived the top ranking among the honorable mentions, with the first prize, however, being awarded,by the judge, Amy Lowell, to a poem by Grace Hazard Conkling. Incredibly enough, there seems to be no-surviving copy of Stevens' entry, even though this poem, after much revision and rearrangement, was later to appear as "The Comedian, as the Letter C." One would like to speculate about that earlier poem. Samuel Frenoh Morse has made available some of the Jottings made by Stevens in preparation for ;the writing of the poem. Among them are included the following phrase st "A Nice Shady Home," "On Being One's Own Nativej" "The Man Who Wanted to Think of One Thing Only," "The Error of Crispin Approaching the Carolinas," "The Idea of a Colony," "The World Without Imagination," and "Book of Moonlight."1 1Samuel French Morse, "Wallace Stevens, Bergson, Pater, in The Act of the Mind, ed. Roy Harvey Pearce and J. Hillis Miller {Bal’EImqre, i<?65), p. 73- Some of these, of course, reappear as subheadings in the final version of the poem; others were deleted entirely. From them one oan infer, however, that the early poem, gen­ erally speaking, was shaped In a manner equivalent to the form in whloh we have it today. The final reworking of the poem was considerable. By September of the following year, 1922, Harriet Monroe, edi­ tor of Poetry, was asking for the publication of it. In answer to that request, Stevens wrote; • About the Crispin poem, Pitts Sanborn, one of my oldest friends, expects that he may be oalled upon to edit the Measure /sio7 one of these days for a period and, as I am under many obligations to him, I have promised to let him have this poem if he wants it. During the summer I re-wrote it and in its present form it would run to, possibly, the greater part of twenty pages of print. A long poem is what he wants, for of the three numbers that he would have to edit, this would account for one. And this promise I made to him long ago, when he went on that mmserable sheet. So there you are.2 The poem, 573 lines of blank verse, had absorbed the greater part of a year's attention by Stevens. Pitts Sanborn did not get "The Comedian as the Letter C." It appeared for the first time in Harmonium in 1923* That volume, which also in­ cluded "Sunday Morning," "The Snow Man," "The Emperor of Ioe Cream, " "Peter Quince at the Clavier," and same 70 other poems, sold fewer than a hundred copies.-' There was no ^orse, "Wallace Stevens, Bergson, Pater," p. 78. ^William Van O'Connor, The Shaping Spirit; A Study of Wallaoe Stevens (Chloago, 1<S>^6), p. I5. “ reticence on the part of the critics. Marianne Moore, Edmund Wilson, Louis Untermeyer, Mark Van Doren, John Gould Fletcher, and others reviewed Harmonium in the national press, and the controversies involving interpretations began. Few poems in the history of American letters have re­ ceived a more extreme and wide-ranging critical response than that accorded to "The Comedian as the Letter C." Ap­ proximately a dozen articles have been devoted exclusively to its.explication, and literally scores of critics have set out, in other exegeses of varying lengths, to explore its meaning. Perhaps all of them would agree on one point, that the meaning of the poem is elusive. Conrad Aiken has called it "A vastly misunderstood and underrated poem. Speaking of the poems in Harmonium. R. P. Blackmur called it "Mr. Stevens' longest and most important poem."^ More emphatically yet, Hi Simons declared in 19**0: "I would suggest that if this poem had been studied as attentively as 'The Waste Land,* Stevens would now be regarded as quite as significant« a contemporary ^figure as Eliot.On the ^Conrad Aiken, (Untitled remarks). Trinity Review, VIII (May, 195*0, 16. ■^R.P, Blackmur, "Examples of Wallace Stevens," The Achievement of Wallaoe Stevens. ed. Ashley Brown and Robert S. Haller (Philadelphia, 1962), p. 7/f. ^H1 Simons, "'The Comedian as the Letter C': Its Sense and Its Significance," The Southern Review, V (Winter, 19*«>), 453.