THE UNTVERSITY OF MANTTOBA V'IALLACE STEVENS' ''THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR'': STUDY IN THE CONTINUTTY OF IMAGES AND ICONIC FIGURATIONS by ALDEN R. TURNER A THBSIS SUB¡4TTTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES rìi PÀR.TÏAL FUtFrt-lqENT oF THE REQUTR-EMENTS EoR TFIE DEGREE OF MÀSTER OF ARTS DEPART}IENT OF ENGLISH IVÏNNTPEG, IVIANTTOBÀ I97B {t,r WALLACE STEVENS' ''THE MAN l¡JITH THE BLUT GUITAR'': A STUDY TN THE CONTINUITY OF IMAGES AND ICONIC FIGURATIONS BY ALDTN R. TURNER A dissertation subnritted to tl¡e Faculty of Graduate Studies of' the Ur¡iversity of Munit.rtia ili partill fulfillment ot'tl¡e requirements ol' tl¡e rlegrce of MASTER OF ARTS @ ' 1978 Per¡¡rission h¿rs bccn grarrtctl to thc LItsRARY OF TllD UNIVUR- SITY OF' MANITOIIA to lcn<i or scll copies of this rlisærtution, to tltc NATIONAL l-ltsRARY OF,'(:ANADA to ¡tricrofilrn thls dissertutio¡r and to lend or sell copies of the filnr, und UNIVURSTTY MICROF¡LMS to publish au abstract of tl¡is dissertation. The author rescrvcs other publicatit¡u rights, und ncitllcr thc dissertation nor extensivc cxtracts fronr it uray be printed or other- wise reproducecl without thc uutho¡''s writtc¡r ¡renuissiou. TABLB OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTTON. iii CHAPTER ONE "On An Old Guitar" CHAPTER TWO Wal-lace Stevens ¡ "Mid-Kingdom": The Man With the Blue Guitar 39 CHAPTER THR.EE yet "A Tune Beyond Us, Ourselves" 79 CONCLUSION. 116 l-20 INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the iconic material in "The Man wj-th the Blue Guitar" (Ig37) reveals üIal_Lace stevenst central concern with the tragedy inherent in manrs confronta- tion with the forces of the worrd. The ,,man,,and. the ,,br-ue guitar,,are icons which are incorporated into the work and dear with what the poet identifies as "the painter's problem of realization. .trying to see the world about me both as r see it and as it ís,, (Ltús 3r6).f Fo, Stevens, this "prob]em" generates a number of questions about the relations betr,^¡een the imagination and rea]ity, mind and. matter, subject q¿¿uânrì ôh+ô-i-¡=vL, qrru¡n¿t v! âft and life. These relations are discussed by J. Hil-lis i{i-l-1er, in his article ',stevensr Rock and criticism as cure,,, in terms oi the .oaradox oí the heral-dic mise en abqmez i^iithout the production of some schema, some "icon", there can be no glimpse of the abyss, ¡¡vnn rzar'|ì^^vÇ!L¿yu ^€(rr +1-r-rre underlying nothingness. À:ry such schena, however, both opens the chasm, creates it or reveal_s it, and at the same time iil-is it ug, covers it over by naming it, gives the Erou::Ciess a ground, the bottoml_ess a bo:toir. À¡:y such schema almost instantaneouslv' beco=es a triviaf mechanism, an artifice.2 The process of creatinE and decreating icons in an attempt to ,,realize,, some val-id il-1r:-qiination of man's ref ation to the world is represented elsewhere by lriller as a "series of momentary crystallizations or globulations of thought for-towed. by dissolution.,,3 Mirr-er,s approach iii to stevens' later work, such as "The Rock" (1950), is perceptive in terms of its general and specific statements about Stevens' view that one furiction of the poet is "to discover: by his own thought and feeling what seems to him to be poetry at that time,, (IüÄ viii) . Miller suggests here that the significance of stevens, aphorism, ,'progress in any aspect is a movement through changes of terminology" (op L57') l-eads to the view that stevens is "in the end, vurnerable, as Ernerson and I¡Ihitman are not, to an abyssing or dissolution of the self.,' rn other words, Stevens' sense of the sel-f moves toward d.isintegration whereas Bnerson's and l'lhitnan's sense of the self has led. to unity. Mir.ter goes on fo say that For Stevens the self-encl_osed sphere of the sel_i is broken. It is thereby engulfed in the chasm of its own bifurcation. This conflict beiween an at'i.empted self-subsistent enclosure ano tne Cou_bling, breaking apart, and abyssing of that enclosure may be seen in a1l the chief scenes of "The Rock".4 'Inl-srFl.,i - *-^^^ñ! .oies€i¡u >uuuÌ^!,.:t, sL¡9gesLs, howe-ver, that before Stevens reached. the less tu-rbulent stage of his career in which he wrote "The Rock,', he facec a crisis ol val-ues and of poetry Ítself in the r93o's. criticiz3: b-.':::s::lì:i;s ;er not l^rriting a pcetry of social conscious- ness' sievens ansriered in his slender vorr¡¡¡.e ov¡f ,s cfover (1935) to the effect that tÌ:e poet nust explore his rvorl_d in his own way. Dissatis- fied with this poetic ansiver, and still unresolved in his mind over the vagaries of his world, stevens approached the writing of his great poem "The Man with the Blue Guitar." The movement of the poem reflects V his qirarrel with his contemporaries: they have tried to telr him how to speak; he has responded that he must speak as he can, as he sees. He indicates that his concern with man's tragedy emanates from the unconquerable variety of things, the sense of chaos in the environment. Man strays, he suggests, from the images of his own creation, images that have provided continuity to his otherwise chaotic existence Yet man returns to these same images. He does so because the images are icons, or figures of fixed meaníng in a discouragingly relative world. SÈevens uses these icons to maintain the vital tension between the two great contraries of his worrd z progress, the great American shibboleih of becoining; and change, the eternal human recognition of death. îhrough this sustained tension, stevens affirms the poetic imagination rvhich attempts to "penetrate to basic images, basic enotio::s, and so to co¡lpose a fundamental poetry older than the ancient world" (¡,'¿. 145) . Chapter One deals with "The lvlan wj-th the Blue Guitar in terms of stevens' "rnan" and "guitar" images as they appear in the earlier work. The contexts of rnusic, painting and poetry alIow the poet to incorporate the technioues o,= ii::-oz-ovìsation and repetition, and abstraction, with a ficr']r¡f -ir,-e l:*:í:'-=::5 1-L:'j. ¡¡rz maÁi ato âc â e^r¡yl :_rv= :=-:e++: * _.!*J ¡lLuu¿qçe, ce of meaning and belief , between the onqoi::g cvcles of destruction and creation in both nature and culture- This earìy poetry establishes a basis for what were co become Stevens' aesthetic concerns and specific comments about "The Man with the Blue Guitar" at the time of its composition and publication- The second interprets Stevens' materials and techniques in "The Irlan vr- \'üith'the Blue Guitar" by emphasizing the sense in which the ,,brue guitar" is the "blues guitar" of the American black cultural tradi-tion. This allusion to the colLective dispossession, alienation and suffering of a people faciritates the poet's exproration of man's capacity to express and cope with the world's oppressive realities. stevens, poetic use of materials adopted from the work of picasso, specifically the artist's blue period work, "The ord Guitarist" (r9o3), effectively extends the treatment of the images of the "man" and the "blue guitar', as I "this 'hoard / of destructions, a pícture of ourselves,, (,,MBG,, XV: cP Ll3) - The final chapter suggests that iconorogy is a criticalry valuable approach to Stevens' v¡ork. The poet,s use of the accessible and signìficant iconic material of Picasso's work is a major infruence on his or'¡n artistic sensibitities and on his attempt to fuse together a bifurcated cul-turar trad.ition. trùall-ace stevens, ,,The l,jan with the BÌue Gui tar" cortes Èo terrns with a creative and destructive cultural tradition that is confronted and ar_-r:ont.c¿t hrrl- nnl vindicated: Ti:e extension of the mind beyond the range of Èhe minC, the projecÈion of reality beyond reality, the determination to cover the ground çhatever ìi nay be, the determination not to 'np ,v vv:r::::=u,:¡¡ f i n¡â +l-rauire f€Câpture of intensity and "i n;==est, -uh€ enlargement of the spirit at €ïerv tine, j_n every way, these are the unities, the rejations, to be summarized aq n:rem^,ìñ+ no-r¡. (¡¿ I71) Finally I'lilter's mjse en abgme may be said to describe Stevens t treatment ,'blue of the images of the "man" and the guitar" but it must be recognized that these materials are girounded in the bifurcations of a continuity of culture, American and. European, within which its vl.f. benef,iciaries are both confined to and riberated by the poetic illumination of the reality of íts artifice. vi i. i. Footnotes Introduction -wallace1 stevens, Letters of ï,/al-l-ace ^gteyens, êd. Ilolly stevens (New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 1966) is abbreviated -LtrtlS throughout the thesis. Further references to volumes of Stevens' work will be cited in the text of Èhe thesis with the following abbreviations z Cp: The coLLected Poems waLLace (New york: of .steyens Alfred A. Knopf , 1954) ¡ oP: opus Posthumous, êd. samuer French Morse (New york: Alfred A. Knopf , L957) ¡ and ItÀ : The /vecessarg Anget.- E'ssays on Real_itg and the Imagination (New York: Random House, l95l). 2- J. .H.l_l_-Ll_s I'lilJ-er, "Stevens' Rock and Criticism as Cure ,,, The gevLa:a-^^--: ^ aevlcw,-^---'^-- 30 (Spring-summer l-975), p.