Final Paper

Meghan O’Neal

Wallace Stevens as an Anti-Romantic

            Stevens, in Imagination as Value, states, "Then, too, before going on, we must somehow cleanse the imagination of the romantic... The imagination is the liberty of the mind. The romantic is a failure to make use of that liberty. It is to the imagination what sentimentality is to feeling." Stevens uses the imagination not to lie, but to reveal the truth. The romantic is a lie. The romantic allows us to lie to ourselves and live in a world that is not real. Imagination is not a lie, but a way to demonstrate the truth. However, if we allow the romantic into the imagination, if we allow ourselves to see the world through a romantic lens, we are not seeing the true world. Then, we are trying to live in a world that does not exist while the real world passes us by. How can we possibly truly live if life is a lie? In order to truly live and truly be happy, we cannot live a lie. Even if the truth is terrifying, and even if the truth is something that we do not want to hear, at least it is the truth, and at least we know what that truth is. Once we know that truth, we are able to move on and live in the real world, which is a beautiful world. But we cannot see this beautiful world if we are blinded by lies.

            Sentimentality mars feeling. Sentimentality creates something that is not real. Looking back, sentimentality can change feelings. Sentimentality breeds emotions that did not exist. It seems very real. It is easy to look back on a memory and create feelings that did not exist. I experience this feeling all the time. Take, for example, high school. Many times I look back and miss the simpler days when my mom cooked my food, homework was easy, and I didn’t have a care in the world. However, the reality of it is that high school was not that great. I was a sad, lonely teenager who just wanted to leave home and couldn’t wait to grow up. The reality is much different than the memory, but it is the sentimental memory that sometimes keeps me rooted in the past and keeps me longing for something that never existed instead of staying in the present and looking forward.

It is the same with the romantic and the imagination. The imagination can serve to illustrate reality, make reality beautiful. However, imagination with the romantic blinds reality. The romantic is not real. The romantic is what we want life to be, much like sentimentality is what we want feelings to be. The romantic does nothing to serve reality, and only serves as a crutch to those who cannot handle reality. The world of the romantic is a world of lies. 

Therefore, we must always be aware of reality when we use the imagination. In Anecdote of the Jar, it says:

“I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennesse.

Here, reality and imagination work together. The jar (reality) makes “the slovenly wilderness surround that hill” (imagination). The jar tames the wilderness as it grows around the jar because it is the presence of the jar that reminds us that the world is no longer wild and free, but tamed because of humanity. The jar serves as a reminder that , although the world is beautiful, there is still ugly, manmade things which, no matter how small, serve only to dominate nature instead of work alongside it: “It took dominion everywhere, the jar was grey and bare.” Although the imagination of the wilderness came all up and around it, and it itself was beautiful, the jar was still there and could not be ignored. So it is with the imagination and reality. Imagination can come up and around reality, it can work with reality, but it cannot be used to hide reality. It is when the jar is not covered, and when nature cannot overtake it that it becomes “like nothing else in Tennesse.” It may be ugly, and it might have been happier or more beautiful if the jar could just have been covered, but that is not reality, and reality has its own sort of unique beauty.

Imagination becomes dangerous when it is used to hide reality. Stevens, in Imagination as Value, states, "We live in the mind. One way of demonstrating what it means to live in the mind is to imagine a discussion of the world between two people born blind, able to describe their images, so far as they have images, without the use of images derived from other people." Later, he also says, "If we live in the mind, we live with the imagination." Imagination is something that we all have and we all have to live with. Imagination is all around us. Imagination is a part of us. We must be aware of this imagination and how to correctly use it. 

He also says, "What, then, is it to live in the mind with the imagination, yet not too near to the fountains of its rhetoric, so that one does not have a consciousness only of grandeurs, of incessant departures from the idiom, and of inherent altitudes? Only the reason stands between it and the reality for which the two are engaged in a struggle." Reason is the way we keep reality in the imagination. Reason is the way to stay away from the romantic and free the imagination.

Stevens illustrates this point in section II of The Rock, The Poem as Icon:

It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.

We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground

Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.

And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,

If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings

Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

The fiction of the leaves is the icon

Of the poem, the figuration of blessedness,

And the icon is the man. The pearled chaplet of spring,

The magnum wreath of summer, time's autumn snood,

Its copy of the sun, these cover the rock.

These leaves are the poem, the icon and the man.

These are a cure of the ground and of ourselves.

In the predicate that there is nothing else.

They bud and bloom and bear their fruit without change.

They are more than leaves that cover the barren rock.

They bud the whitest eye, the pallidest sprout,

New senses in the engenderings of sense,

The desire to be at the end of distances,

The body quickened and the mind in root.

They bloom as a man loves, as he lives in love.

They bear their fruit so that the year is known,

As if its understanding was brown skin,

The honey in its pulp, the final found,

The plenty of the year and of the world.

In this plenty, the poem makes meanings of the rock,

Of such mixed motion and such imagery

That its barrenness becomes a thousand things

And so exists no more. This is the cure

Of leaves and of the ground and of ourselves.

His words are both the icon and the man.

            The cure of the ground is the imagination. Imagination is the moss that grows over top of the rock. The flowers that cover it and make it beautiful. The rock is still there. The rock will always be there, and we will always be aware of it. We must be aware of it. The rock is things the way they are. The rock is reality. The moss does not cover the rock in order to hide it, but it covers it in order to make it more beautiful. It enhances the rock, much like imagination enhances reality.

            Poetry is the imagination. Poetry is the leaves and the flowers that covers the rock. “In this plenty, the poem makes meanings of the rock,/Of such mixed motion and such imagery/That its barrenness becomes a thousand things/And so exists no more. This is the cure/Of leaves and of the ground and of ourselves./His words are both the icon and the man.” The imagination of poetry does not cover or hide the rock, but makes meaning of it. It uses the imagination of imagery and creates scenes and metaphors in order to illustrate reality, not cover it. Once the reality is shown using the imagination, the rock is not so cold and barren, but it becomes beautiful. Reality does not need to be hidden. Reality should not be hidden. Reality is not a cold, barren thing if looked at correctly. Once the imagination is used in this way, to beautify reality rather than hide it, once we see things the way they are rather than shying away from them, then we can truly live and be happy. It is then that we can move forward. It is then that we are free from the romanticization of the world. We can stop wishing for things that do not exist. Poetry, the imagination, is the cure. Poetry and the imagination free us from the confines of the romantic.

Stevens serves as a destructive character. He removes the romantic in order to reveal the truth beneath. Andrew Lakritz, in Modernism and the Other in Stevens, Frost, and Moore says, "The destructive character is just that: a storyteller who passes on situations." Stevens illustrates things the way they are. He does not lie in order to make things look nice. He writes reality. He is merely passing on situations to the reader.

As a destructive character, Stevens strives to separate the romantic from the imagination, as well as stripping the imagination of outside influences. Lakritz states (about The Snow Man), “It is… about finding ways to think and feel about one’s own experience in the world, ways that have diminished in the modern period precisely because one can regard and behold “nothing that is not there” – not adding gratuitously to the scene – and the “nothing that is, the emptiness of the land itself.” Being human, there are certain assumptions made, certain precedents set. It is difficult to see things the way they are when so many things are shown to be different. Stevens strives to remove these precedents and assumptions. He strips away common concepts that are said to be reality in order to reveal the truth.

And so, what is the truth? Returning to The Rock, Stevens writes in section I:

“It is an illusion that we were ever alive,

Lived in the houses of mothers, arranged ourselves

By our own motions in a freedom of air.

Regard the freedom of seventy years ago.

It is no longer air. The houses still stand,

Though they are rigid in rigid emptiness.”

We are nothing more than dust, small particles passing through this earth. Soon, we will be nothing, not even a memory. We can never make an impact on this earth that is big enough to be remembered forever. It is an illusion that we were ever alive. We are such small blips on the radar that it is as if we never existed. The world moves on so quickly, 70 years flies by and yet that may be a lifetime. “The houses still stand, though they are rigid in rigid emptiness.” The houses of 70 years ago are still around, yet they are not what they used to be and never will be. Time moves on, leaving us behind. We are nothing. Our lives are nothing. No matter what we do, all things will eventually fade. As if we never existed.

So how is the truth beautiful? How can removing the romantic from this truth make things better? If we can be happy lying to ourselves in our romantic world where we do have meaning and death is not the end, isn’t that better than facing this dark reality?

Stevens says no. “Imagination, as metaphysics, leads us in one direction and, as art, in another. When we consider the imagination as metaphysics, we realize that it is in the nature of the imagination itself that we should be quick to accept it as the only clue to reality” (“Imagination as Value” 727). He uses an example of the dangers of the imagination as metaphysics from Professor Joad: “If . . . God is a metaphysical term, if, that is to say, He belongs to a reality which transcends the world of sense-experience . . . to say that He exists is neither true nor false. This position . . . is neither atheist nor agnostic; it cuts deeper than either, by asserting that all talk about God, whether pro or anti, is twaddle.” Imagination as metaphysics, imagination alongside the romantic is nothing more than supposings and musings. With no reality to base it on, it becomes null and void. How can one have a good, concrete thought when it is all based on the abstract? It is worthless. Twaddle.

Reality is not as grim as it may seem. In fact, once you recognize reality as it is and remove the romantic, it becomes downright sublime. You find the truth and you find meaning. In Stevens’ poem How To Live. What To Do. it says,

“Last evening the moon rose above this rock

Impure upon a world unpurged.

The man and his companion stopped

To rest before the heroic height.

Coldly the wind fell upon them

In many majesties of sound:

They that had left the flame-freaked sun

To seek a sun of fuller fire.

Instead there was this tufted rock

Massively rising high and bare

Beyond all trees, the ridges thrown

Like giant arms among the clouds.

There was neither voice nor crested image,

No chorister, nor priest. There was

Only the great height of the rock

And the two of them standing still to rest.

There was the cold wind and the sound

It made, away from the muck of the land

That they had left, heroic sound

Joyous and jubilant and sure.”

The man and his companion in this poem “left the flame-freaked sun to seek a sun of fuller fire.” They were searching for the romantic. They wanted a better, brighter sun, a sun which does not exist. It was a futile quest. However, they come upon this rock (reality), rising above the wilderness (imagination) and this catches their eye. This rock they find instead of the romantic sun they are looking for. And this rock, reaching up to touch the clouds, is far more beautiful than the false sun they sought. They had no pivotal moment with choruses, they had no religious understanding, no priest had to tell them what this was. They just saw reality as it was, and they knew what it was and how life was and it was beautiful. Then, they hear only the wind, but the sound of the wind, so simple and small, was “joyous and jubilant and sure.” They had gone out in search of the romantic, in search of something they knew that they wanted, but that was false. What they found instead was nothing more than the grey rock of reality, a simple thing, and yet this was more beautiful than anything they could have dreamed of. And in it, they not only find joy, but they are now sure.

This poem illustrates that this is the greatest thing reality can give: assuredness. Even if reality is not exactly what is expected or wanted, it is sure. Reality will always be reality. It is a rock; firm, steady, unfaltering. This is sublime. Knowing is sublime. Reality will never falter, and as long as you see reality as it is, without romanticizing it, you will experience the sublime existence.

Once the veil of romanticism is lifted, you can see the world the way it is. Romanticism hides the truth. Romanticism causes you to search for things that do not exist. Reality frees you from this. Reality allows you to understand things the way they are and only then can you move forward. Romanticism is nothing but chains, holding you to a false reality. Imagination without romance sets you free.

Stevens uses imagination to illustrate reality. The imagination of his poetry does not flourish or embellish reality, but shows reality as it really is. He strove only to show that reality, although harsh and ugly, is beautiful once it is understood. He lived the sublime, free from falsities and promises of things that would never be. Because he saw things the way they are instead of fighting it with the false possibility of things that could be, he remains grounded in reality and is therefore able to move forward and do the things that he needs to do in order to live this life. He is able to find true happiness in this world because he is not searching for things that don’t exist. He finds peace in this, even if reality is not all butterflies and hopscotch.

The true sublime is seeing things the way they are. The romantic only serves to blind.

Not Ideas About the Thing, But the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,

In March, a scrawny cry from outside

Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,

A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,

In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,

No longer a battered panache above snow…

It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism

Of sleep’s faded papier-mache…

The sun was coming from outside

That scrawny cry – it was

A chorister whose c preceded the choir.

It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,

Still far away. It was like

A new knowledge of reality.

Solaris

Solaris
The blue ball reminded my of a "sun of fuller fire." It struck me that that was what the people were doing... Looking out for a sun of fuller fire.

As the research and are around Solaris, they are visited by these people from their past. But these people aren't the same as their real versions. And they know this. Because of this, the visions will never what the people want them to be. It is because they aren't real. They are the romantic versions of the people. The one in the people's heads. They are made from memories, nothing more. They are also a cause of depression because they know that the visitors aren't real. They know they are only in their heads and yet they keep on believing. They are unable to rid themselves of the romantic and it keeps a hold of them.

Solaris is the sun of fuller fire. It is the romanticized world, the world that can make things better, a world that creates the romantic. However, what it creates is not real.

The characters are unable to experience the sublime because they are unable to forget the past. They are unable to remove themselves from the romantic.

Wallace Stevens Wikipedia

Wallace Stevens, born in Reading, Pennsylvania on October 2, 1879, was a great American poet. Basing his philosophy on the teachings of Lucretius, Stevens strove to reveal reality through the imagination of poetry. He used poetry in order to remove the romantic from the imagination in order to show the reality beneath.

Stevens strove to use poetry in order to show his readers How to Live and What to Do. His poetry illustrated to his readers that reality is beautiful, more beautiful than the reality we may create for ourselves. He explored the concept of the imagination as a tool to express reality rather than hide it.

As a poet, Stevens works as a destructive character. He destroys our typical views of the world and replaces them with reality. He shows his readers that reality, although harsh, is all the more beautiful because it is what is real. Ultimately, he wishes his readers to see the world as it truly is and to stop creating a false reality. Because only then can a person experience what is truly sublime.

In Conclusion

It's funny because this entire semester there have been a lot of things about Stevens that I've been struggling with. Sometimes I think I almost get what he's saying, but most of the time he's way off in another dimension. I've been struggling with a lot of his points and I've tended to disagree with him in a lot of ways.

Until today.

I was working on my project and it just kind of clicked. Things the way they are. Devoid of the romantic. We, as humanity, tend to lie to ourselves in order to make ourselves feel better. We think about the white light, what happens when we die. We like to think that we're important and that each person as an individual makes a deep impact on this earth and everyone is important. But we're wrong. No one is important. We all eventually fade away and there will be nothing marking our existence. It will be like we were never here at all.

I always understood this. I had no difficulty understanding this mindset. But my question was, why is this bad? Why can't we lie to ourselves? If it makes us feel better, then why should we have to face reality? Why must we feel insignificant? I'm perfectly okay lying to myself.

But then, as I wrote my paper, I realized how dangerous this mindset is. It leaves us longing for things that do not exist and will never be. It leaves us striving for a nonexistent goal, not one that is too far beyond our reach, but one that is not even there at all. What kind of life is this? What kind of life is one lived for something that doesn't exist? I think I'd almost rather waste my life doing nothing than strive towards something that will never be. At least then I'd be fat, lazy and happy.

You can lie to yourself. You can pretend you're happy moving towards a nonexistent goal. But what good does that do you or the people around you? In order to move forward, you must know reality. You must be aware of things as they are. Only then can you move towards something productive. You'll know that the things you do don't and won't matter. You'll know that it may be futile. You'll know all this, but at least you'll know. At least your goals will have this in mind. And maybe, then, just maybe you might be able to work towards a greater progress. Maybe you might make a tiny knick in time, and maybe it won't fade away so soon.

But even if you are not able to do this, you will be better as an individual, and you won't waste your life. And that is what is important. You won't make a lasting difference, but you are still you and you are still important to yourself and those around you. So, knowing the truth, knowing reality, you can now be free to make a difference in the lives of those around you. It may not be remembered forever, it may not make a great change in the universe, but it will be remembered and appreciated now, and that's all you can do.

I guess, I just wanted to conclude this class by saying, I was skeptical, but it turns out that I did learn something from Wallace Stevens, and it was no small thing to learn. And for that I am grateful.

Insignificance

Feeling insignificant is something that obviously everyone has felt. It's funny, though, because we've been talking about insignificance in terms of the universe and how small we are and how we're just a blip in the vast expanse of infinite, but that's not where I find insignificance. In fact, I feel quite the opposite. The fact that I'm still here and living and breathing while there is so much more kind of gives me meaning and makes me feel important. There must be a reason for it all.

However, I find my insignificance in the little things. A forgotten toy. A lonely park bench. Falling leaves. I find it in the forgotten things and the unnoticed.

I see this in the poetry of Wallace Stevens. I thought about this today after I recited my poem and we watched that planets movie.

Vacancy in the Park

March... Someone has walked across the snow
Someone looking for he knows not what.

It is like a boat that has pulled away
From a shore at night and disappeared.

It is like a guitar left on a table
By a woman who has forgotten it.

It is like the feeling of a man
Come back to see a certain house.

The four winds blow through the rustic arbor,
Under its mattresses of vines.

It's poems like this that make me feel insignificant. The image of a boat disappearing. A forgotten guitar. A man searching for something he lost a long time ago.

The last stanza serves as a reminder that man is fleeting, but nature will remain forever. The line "mattresses of vines" makes me think of those post-apocalyptic movies where they show  cities taken over by trees and nature, where everything made by man is slowly decaying.

This poem reminds me that I am fleeting. It reminds me that it is so easy to be forgotten. It reminds me that loneliness is just around the corner. It reminds me that I am nothing but a small girl lost in the bustle of the world, and that I will soon be gone, forgotten.

This poem is about insignificance.

Umbrella Trees

Well, I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I have had absolutely no idea as to what to post about. So, today I just took a peek in the Adagia to see if anything caught my eye, and, lo and behold, it did...

"All of our ideas come from the natural world: Trees = umbrellas."

I don't really know why this caught my eye - maybe because when I read this, I immediately thought of umbrella trees, which made me think of Dr. Seuss, and then I went on a long thought tangent about how awesome Dr. Seuss is - but that is far beside the point.

I'm not entirely sure if I even fully understand this quote, but it made me think a little about seeing things the way they are and where exactly inspiration, and how there is nothing that is truly original. This quote is so true, and it is lovely to think about. Of course all of our ideas come from nature. What else have we ever needed except nature? It is because of nature that we are able to survive. It is nature that was here before us, and it will be nature that will be here long after we are gone... We would be idiotic to think that we are so much better than nature that we can come up with better ideas than nature. We should be inspired by nature.

I also thought that it was interesting how, in this statement, Stevens is merely stating a truth (things the way they are). However, in stating this truth, he uses the imagination in order to illustrate reality. It was because of my imagination, and how I immediately pictured umbrella trees, that I was able to (kind of) understand what Stevens is saying. Yet again, he shows the relationship between the imagination and reality by explaining reality using the imagination.

Trying...

So, today I, again, attempted to take a stab at some Stevens poetry analysation to see where I got. Although I almost definitely barely even scratched the surface....

This as Including That

This rock and the dry birds
Fluttering in blue leaves,

This rock and the priest,
The priest of nothingness who intones -

It is true that you live on this rock
And in it. It is wholly you.

It is true that there are thoughts
That move in the air as large as air,

That are almost not our own, but thoughts
To which we are related,

In an association like yours
With the rock and mine with you.

The iron settee is cold.
A fly crawls on the balustrades.

I guess, to put a broad term upon this poem, I would say this is a poem about connectivity. I kind of feel like this is an almost obvious statement, though, because isn't that kind of what Stevens is all about? It's a very Lucretian idea. We are all just atoms, therefore we are all the same.

This can definitely be seen in the line "It is true that you live on this rock/ And in it. It is wholly you." I took the rock to mean the Earth. What is the Earth except a giant rock floating through space? We live on this rock, and we are a part of this rock. We are one and the same.

Lucretius says,
"Confess then, naught from nothing can become,
Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow,
Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.
Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves
Into their primal bodies again, and naught
Perishes ever to annihilation."

He is saying that nothing comes from nothing. Everything comes from something. And we don't dissolve into nothing, either. Our bodies, our atoms, everything will merely change. We will become something else (even if we, as ourselves, may not be aware of this change). Therefore, we are of the Earth. The Earth is us. Our bodies, our matter, we are nothing new. We are only different. And when our souls are gone, our bodies will remain to continue with this Earth. Because of this, we are connected to everything, because everything is a part of us. We are the rock.

I thought the "camera movement" in this poem was interesting. As I read it, I pictured a close-up of birds fluttering in blue leaves. Then the "camera" moved back a bit to reveal the rock and the priest. It moved back even more to reveal thoughts in the air "as large as air," to thoughts "that are almost not our own," which I think is the largest, then closer in to "an association like yours with the rock and mine with you," and, finally, it ends with another close-up of the iron settee and the fly.

To me, this serves to further show our connectivity. We are connected to the birds, and the leaves, and the thoughts that flow through the air, not even ours, to the Earth, to the fly, to the settee. We are connected to everything, big and small, and that is beautiful.

And there one piece to this poem that I really connected with. I know that it is only a sliver of what I could discover, but that is the one piece that I found to be wonderful.