This page intentionally left blank Wa l l ac e S t e v e ns a n d t h e A e s t h e t ic s of A b s t r ac t ion Edward Ragg’s study is the first to examine the role of abstraction throughout the work of Wallace Stevens By tracing the poet’s interest in abstraction from Harmonium through to his later works, Ragg argues that Stevens only fully appreciated and refined this interest within his later career Ragg’s detailed close-readings highlight the poet’s absorption of late nineteenth-century and early twentiethcentury painting, as well as the examples of philosophers and other poets’ work Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction will appeal to those studying Stevens as well as anyone interested in the relations between poetry and painting This valuable study embraces revealing philosophical and artistic perspectives, analysing Stevens’ place within and resistance to Modernist debates concerning literature, painting, representation and ‘the imagination’ edwa r d r ag g is a poet and teaches at Tsinghua University, Beijing He is co-editor of Wallace Stevens across the Atlantic (2008) Wa l l ace S t e v e ns a n d t h e A e s t h e t ic s of A bs t r ac t ion E dwa r d R ag g Tsinghua University, Beijing CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521190862 © Edward Ragg 2010 This publication is in copyright Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press First published in print format 2010 ISBN-13 978-0-511-78951-9 eBook (NetLibrary) ISBN-13 978-0-521-19086-2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate The poet striding among the cigar stores, Ryan’s lunch, hatters, insurance and medicines, Denies that abstraction is a vice except To the fatuous These are his infernal walls, A space of stone, of inexplicable base And peaks outsoaring possible adjectives One man, the idea of man, that is the space, The true abstract in which he promenades From ‘A Thought Revolved’ (1936), Wallace Stevens Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations page ix x Introduction: ‘Stevensian’ and the question of abstraction 1935–2009 1 The abstract impulse: from anecdote to ‘new romantic’ in Harmonium (1923) and Ideas of Order (1935) 30 The turn to abstraction: Owl’s Clover (1936) and the ‘un-locatable’ speaker in The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937) 55 The ‘in-visible’ abstract: Stevens’ idealism from Coleridge to Merleau-Ponty 78 3.1 Romantic adaptations: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Stevens 3.2 Abstract analogues: Blanchot, Merleau-Ponty, Stevens 3.3 The touch of Henri Focillon 3.4 Coda: the New Criticism and abstraction 78 88 101 107 4 Abstract figures: the curious case of the idealist ‘I’ 110 4.1 Taming ‘the guerrilla I’: the early poems of Parts of a World (1942) 4.2 From ‘robust poet’ to idealist ‘I’: ‘The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words’ (1942) and ‘The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet’ (1943) 4.3 The human abstract in ‘Landscape with Boat’ (1940) 5 Abstract appetites: food, wine and the idealist ‘I’ 5.1 Tasting ‘Certain Phenomena of Sound’ (1942) 5.2 Hartford Bourguignon: ‘Montrachet-Le-Jardin’ (1942) and Cymbeline vii 110 119 129 136 136 143 Contents viii The pure good of theory: a new abstract emphasis 6.1 ‘Major man’ revised: ‘Paisant Chronicle’ (1945) and ‘Description Without Place’ (1945) 6.2 Writing ‘beyond’: ‘Repetitions of a Young Captain’ (1944) and ‘Three Academic Pieces’ (1947) 6.3 Pragmatic abstraction v metaphor: ‘The Pure Good of Theory’ (1945) and Macbeth 166 166 174 185 7 Bourgeois abstraction: poetry, painting and the idea of mastery in late Stevens 204 Bibliography Index 232 244 7.1 Mastery of life: at home with Wallace Stevens 7.2 Conclusion 204 228 Bibliography 237 Hegel, G W F., Phenomenology of Spirit trans A V Miller, foreword and notes by J N Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977) Hevesi, J L., ed., Essays on Language and Literature (London: Wingate, 1947) Hines, Thomas J., The Later Poetry of Wallace Stevens: Phenomenological Parallels with Husserl and Heidegger (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1976) Howatson, M C., ed., The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) Howe, Irving, ‘Another Way of Looking at the Blackbird’ The New Republic (4 November 1957): 16–19 Hutchison, Percy, ‘Pure Poetry and Mr Wallace Stevens’ in Charles Doyle, ed., Wallace Stevens: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1985), 88–90 Ireson, Nancy, Interpreting Henri Rousseau (London: Tate Publishing, 2005) Irmscher, Christoph, ‘Theory as Mask in Wallace Stevens’ WSJ 16.2 (1992): 123–35 James, William, Pragmatism ed Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge and Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1981) Jameson, Fredric, ‘Wallace Stevens’ in Steven Gould Axelrod and Helen Deese, eds., Critical Essays on Wallace Stevens (Boston: G K Hall, 1988), 176–91 Jarrell, Randall, ‘Reflections on Wallace Stevens’ Partisan Review 18 (1951): 335–44 ‘Very Graceful Are the Uses of Culture’ Harper’s 209 (1954): 100 ‘The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens’ The Yale Review (1955): 340–53 Jenkins, Lee M., Wallace Stevens: Rage for Order (Brighton: Sussex University Press, 2000) Joyce, James, Ulysses: The 1922 Text ed Jeri Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) Kant, Immanuel, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics ed Gary Hatfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Kearney, Richard, Poetics of Imagining: From Husserl to Lyotard (London: Routledge, 1993) Keats, John, Keats: The Complete Poems ed Miriam Allott (London: Longman, 1970) Kermode, Frank, Wallace Stevens (London: Faber, [1960] 1989) ‘Dwelling Poetically In Connecticut’ in Frank Doggett and Robert Buttel, eds., Wallace Stevens: A Celebration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 256–73 Kierkegaard, Søren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to ‘Philosophical Fragments’ intro W Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941) Kladstrup, Don and Petie, Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001) Klee, Paul, Dokumente und Bilder aus den Jahren 1896–1930 (Bern: Verlag Benteli, 1949) 238 Bibliography La Guardia, David M., Advance on Chaos: The Sanctifying Imagination of Wallace Stevens (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983) Lawall, Sarah, ed., The Norton Anthology of Western Literature (New York: 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Williams, William Carlos, Collected Poems 1921–1931 (New York: The Objectivist Press, 1934) ‘Comment: Wallace Stevens’ Poetry 87.4 (1956): 234–9 Winters, Yvor, ‘Wallace Stevens, or The Hedonist’s Progress’ in The Anatomy of Nonsense (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1943), 88–119 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Notebooks 1914–16 trans G E M Anscombe (New York: Harper, 1969) Woolf, Virginia, Four Great Novels (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) Wordsworth, William, Complete Poetical Works ed Thomas Hutchinson rev Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936) The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850 ed Jonathan Wordsworth et al (New York: Norton, 1979) Yeats, W B., The Poems ed Daniel Albright (London: Dent, 1994) Ziarek, Krzysztof, Inflected Language: Toward a Hermeneutics of Nearness: Heidegger, Levinas, Stevens, Celan (Albany, NY: New York State University Press, 1994) ‘“Without Human Meaning”: Stevens, Heidegger and the Foreignness of Poetry’ in Bart Eeckhout and Edward Ragg, eds., Wallace Stevens across the Atlantic (London: Palgrave, 2008), 74–94 Index abstraction autotelic abstraction 213 and the bourgeois 5, 97, 107, 148, 162, 165, 167, 203, 231 ‘cool’ and ‘warm’ abstraction 2, 5, 20, 24, 25, 167, 205, 213, 230 and domesticity 5, 25, 146, 210, 216, 218, 220, 221, 223, 225, 229 expressions of 4, 25, 28, 210 and gastronomy See gastronomy as generalization 18, 19, 23 and the habitual 83, 94, 133, 227 as human task 8, 26, 132, 179, 205, 229 and idealism See philosophy for ‘idealism’ and inhumanity 8, 138, 203 and mediation 76, 94, 98, 134, 163, 170, 172, 174, 180, 183, 199 and mental processes and metaphor 103, 176–8, 185–203 misunderstandings concerning 4, 9, 133 pejorative abstraction 7, 20, 25, 45, 49, 53, 56, 57, 58, 67, 68, 69, 72, 74, 80, 82, 104, 129, 138, 193 and philosophy 3, 4, See also philosophy for ‘idealism’ and the physical 13, 26, 29, 51, 60, 73, 87, 93–6, 100, 102, 116, 132, 133, 134–5, 155, 156, 160, 214, 221 and pleasure 29, 92 poet as abstract 3, 100, 101, 189 pragmatic abstraction 185–203 and pure poetry See pure poetry and the real 19, 23, 26 as removal 1, 3, 52, 57, 58–9, 67, 213 senses of abstraction 21–3, 58–60, 99, 114 as sensory 15, 17, 23, 29, 180, 199 and the sensual 132–3 Stevens’ ambivalence concerning 2, 49, 54, 59, 60, 72, 74–5, 80 in Stevens criticism 4, 6–29 Stevens’ embracing of 4, 77, 87, 97, 182, 184–5 in Stevens’ later career 2–3, 99, 185, 209 Stevens’ modifying of 5, 11, 143, 165, 166, 172, 174, 229 and textual speakers 4, 27, 55, 58, 60, 63, 66–76, 77, 86, 87, 90, 95, 97, 98, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 118, 119, 121, 126, 127, 131, 134, 135, 156, 229, See also idealist ‘I’ and time 91, 102, 189–98 and the visual 19, 26–7, 60, 76, 86, 94, 95–7 Aestheticism Alcestis Press, The 31, 36, 49, 55, 56, 155 Altieri, Charles 6, 23, 26–7, 28, 80, 134, 142 Arensberg, Walter 218 Ariadne 126, 127–9 Armory Show, The 209, 212 Arnold, Matthew 80, 81 Arp, Jean 213–14 art and art-collecting See painting Auberjonois, René Victor 217 Auden, W H 7, 75–6 Avignon 220 Babbitt, Irving 37 Bacon, Francis 95, 130, 138 Barr, Alfred H 210, 212 Basel 208 Bates, Milton J Baudelaire, Charles Bauhaus, The 213 Bayes, Nora 73 Beethoven, Ludwig van 230 Bell, Graham 116 Benamou, Michel 15, 83, 94 Benét, William Rose 206 Béranger, Pierre Jean de 1–2 Bergmann, Gustav 190 Bergonzi, Bernard 15, 18 Bernard, Émile 115–16, 118 244 Index Bernhardt, Sarah 224 Berryman, John 138 Bewley, Marius 18 Bezombes, Roger 227 Bishop, Elizabeth 49 Blackmur, R P 14, 15–16, 139 Blake, William 179 Blanchot, Maurice 4, 22, 29, 33, 60, 81, 84, 88–92, 93, 95, 99, 104, 184, 229 Bloom, Harold 6, 11–12, 28, 192 Bogan, Louise 143 Bombois, Camille 219–20 Bornstein, George 37–8, 85 Botticelli, Sandro 103 Bové, Paul 12 Brancusi, Constantin 214 Braque, Georges 115, 211, 219–20 Brianchon, Maurice 215 Brinnin, John Malcolm 15–16, 35 Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught 9, 112–13, 167, 172 Brooks, Cleanth 45, 107, 110, 162 Brooks, Van Wyck 9, 143, 144, 162 Burgundy See gastronomy Burke, Kenneth 19, 108 Burnshaw, Stanley 4, 56 Byron, George Gordon (Lord) 30 Caesar, Julius 147 Cairo 204 Cannes 225 Cassagnac, Paul de 146, 149–51 Cavaillès, Jean 211, 215, 217, 225 Cavell, Stanley 206 Cézanne, Paul 5, 16, 76, 95, 100, 106, 115–18, 119, 121, 125, 127, 209, 218 Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon 106 Cheney, Russell 210 Chocorua 127 Chronos 187 Church, Barbara 147, 152, 217, 224 Church, Henry 92–3, 136, 160, 224 Cleghorn, Angus 9, 10, 130 Cogniat, Raymond 214 Cohen, Josh 90, 130 Cold War, the 147 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 9, 13, 21, 41–3, 60, 76, 78–88, 91, 96, 97, 99, 111, 117, 120, 123–4, 127, 133, 178, 181, 192, 194, 208, 229 Biographia Literaria 13, 80, 83–4, 85–7, 123 ‘Dejection: An Ode’ 80 ‘Frost at Midnight’ 43 ‘Kubla Khan’ 41–4, 46 commonality 6, 17, 21–2, 205–6 Communism 37 245 Conkling, Grace Hazard 32 Cook, Eleanor 21–2 Costello, Bonnie 94 Cotton Club, The 73 Crane, Hart Critchley, Simon 27–8 Croce, Benedetto 122 Cummington Press, The 9, 49, 155 Cunningham, J V 14 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 224 Daedalus 128 Dalin, Ebba 150 dandyism 7, 228 Dante, Alighieri 122, 189 Dasenbrock, Reed Way 201 Davidson, Donald 177, 200–3 de Chirico, Giorgio 2, 16, 211 de Kooning, Willem 95 Delacroix, Ferdinand Victor Eugène 106 Delaunay, Robert 219 Delille, Abbé 150 Depression, the 2, 7, 31, 49, 53, 55, 162, 209 Derrida, Jacques 12, 13, 28 Deutsch, Babette 14, 17, 18 Dewey, John 49, 192 Dickinson, Emily 107, 108 Dionysus 128 Doggett, Frank 13, 23, 81 Donoghue, Denis 6, 10, 23 Douglas, Keith 91, 144 Dowling, Allan 147 Du Pont, Pierre 207 Dubuffet, Jean 215 Duchamp, Marcel 212 Dufy, Raoul 211, 215, 216, 217 Duse, Eleonora 224 Eberhart, Richard 13, 228 Eeckhout, Bart 17, 27, 28, 97, 129, 130, 132–3, 138, 213 Eliot, T S 7, 134, 207 Ellmann, Richard 13 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 9, 11, 12, 80, 81, 209 Eulalia, St 141–2 Fatima 40, 41 Feo, José Rodríguez 106, 107, 135, 136, 152, 169–70, 171, 173, 191, 212, 213, 226, 228 Filreis, Alan 9, 10, 15, 22, 122, 123, 126, 173, 214 First World War, the 138, 147 Fleming, Atherton 149 Fletcher, John Gould 31 246 Index Focillon, Henri 4, 22, 24, 29, 60, 76, 81, 83, 88, 91, 97, 99, 101–7, 113, 117, 124, 125, 209, 229 Fontainebleau 111 Fontaine-Gagnard, Domaine 146 Ford, Charles Henri 211 Foscolo, Ugo 122 Frankenburg, Lloyd 14, 16 French Revolution, the 80 Freytag-Loringhofen, Baroness Elsa von 30 Friar, Kimon 35, 44, 51 Fribourg 204 Frost, Robert 14, 159, 160 Frye, Northrop 6, 10 Furst, Herbert 110–11, 209 Gagnard, Jean-Noël, Domaine 146 Gagnard-Delagrange, Domaine 146 Gallatin, A E 212 gastronomy 5, 14, 41, 93, 119, 129, 134, 135, 136–65, 210, 212, 215, 224, 229 Bordeaux 162 Burgundy Bâtard-Montrachet 145–6, 152 Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet 145 Chablis 136, 151, 152 Chambolle-Musigny 145, 152 Chassagne-Montrachet 145–6, 151 Chevalier-Montrachet 145, 146, 162 Côte d’Or 147 Côte de Beaune 145 Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet 145 Gevrey-Chambertin 145, 150 La Romanée 145 Le Chambertin 145 Le Corton 136 Le Montrachet 136, 145–7, 148–9, 150, 158, 160, 165 Le Musigny 145 Meursault 136, 140, 151, 152 Puligny-Montrachet 145, 146 Vosne-Romanée 145 café as Stevensian milieu 139, 171–2, 192 Champagne 136 Loire Valley 150 Mosel 140 Moselle 135, 140, 147 Rhine regions 93, 100, 134, 135 Stevens’ passion for wine 93, 100, 119, 134, 135, 136, 151–2, 212 Tuscany 226 Geyzel, Leonard van 150 Giorgione, Barbarelli da Castelfranco 217 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 212 Goldfarb, Lisa 29 Goodman, Nelson 201–2, 203 Gottlieb, Adolph 22 Gromaire, Marcel 211, 217 Halliday, Mark Hammer, Victor 224 Hardy, Thomas 76–7, 79, 115 Harrison, Tony 207 Hartford 211, 222 Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, the 3, 40, 94 Hartley, David 85 Havana 31, 35, 40–1, 43–4, 45, 48, 50, 54, 69, 179, 225 Heaney, Seamus 223 Hecht, Anthony 13 Hegel, G W F 19, 81, 86, 93, 94, 97–101, 103, 111, 117, 134, 170, 172, 184, 229 Heidegger, Martin 12–13, 88, 90, 136, 167 Heringman, Bernard 211, 228 Hillyer, Robert 206 historicism 7–10, 230 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 26 Howe, Irving 20 humanism 169 Hume, David 85, 86 Hutchison, Percy 53 idealist ‘I’ 5, 27, 53, 75, 81, 91, 97, 99, 109, 110–35, 139, 141–3, 158, 165, 167, 180, 229, See also philosophy for ‘idealism’ ideas 5, 15, 16, 21, 25, 26, 27, 29, 60, 61, 71, 72, 76, 85, 86, 87, 92, 95, 99, 105, 129, 168–9, 214 Mallarméan poetry of the ‘Idea’ 2, 205 imagination 8, 10, 13, 14, 24, 38, 45, 46, 49, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 60–1, 63, 65, 66, 68, 70, 73, 74, 76–7, 78–9, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86–7, 88, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96–7, 99, 101, 119, 120–2, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 132, 133–5, 137, 139, 140, 141, 150, 158, 160–1, 165, 166, 167, 169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178–9, 181, 182, 184, 188–9, 191, 196, 203, 205, 206, 211, 212, 213, 219, 221, 224, 225, 228, 229, 230 Imagism 52 insurance v, 1, 7, 35, 40, 41, 134, 207 inter-textuality 24 isolationism 10, 22, 91, 167 Ivory Tower rhetoric 44–5, 51, 162 James, William 11, 80, 81, 191 Jameson, Fredric 21 Jarrell, Randall 14, 15, 18–19, 23, 25, 91, 144 Jenkins, Lee Index Johnson, Jeri 70 Joyce, James 70, 192, 194 Kandinsky, Wassily 211, 212–13, 223 Kant, Immanuel 19, 81, 86, 97, 98, 198 Kaper, Bronisław 223 Katahdin 127 Keats, John 1, 81, 179 Kermode, Frank 6, 20–1, 88, 138, 149, 179 Kierkegaard, Søren 89 Kladstrup, Don 148 Kladstrup, Petie 148 Klee, Paul 16, 95, 138, 211, 212–13, 214–15, 223 Knopf, Alfred A 31, 32, 105, 149, 227 La Guardia, David M 81 Larkin, Philip 207 Latimer, Ronald Lane 30–1, 36, 49, 56, 74, 75, 92 Le Havre 118 Lee, Peter 88, 204, 205, 228 Leggett, B J 10, 12, 13, 19, 21, 23–5, 85, 87, 101, 105, 132 Lensing, George 35 Lentricchia, Frank 135 Leonard, Robert Z 73 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 97, 210 Levin, Jonathan 81 Longenbach, James 22, 113, 144, 205, 206 Louvre, the 114–16, 117–18, 218 Lowell, Robert 227 McGreevy, Thomas 150, 213 MacLeish, Archibald 9, 91, 143, 144, 162 MacLeod, Glen 58, 70, 71, 130 Mallarmé, Stéphane 1, 2, 33, 52, 83, 84, 88, 90, 113, 130, 133, 138, 166, 173, 204, 205 Margaux, Château 150 Martz, Louis M 14, 16, 23 Marxism 152 Matisse, Henri 19, 111, 115, 211, 226 Mauron, Charles 29, 76, 124, 137–8, 139, 151, 199, 205 Mediterranean, the 131, 132 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 4, 19, 27, 29, 60, 76, 78, 81, 88, 95–6, 98, 99, 115, 229 Metastasio, Pietro 224 Miller, Henry 143 Miller, J Hillis 6, 15, 24, 128 Milton, John 189 Minos and the Minotaur 127–8 Miró, Joan 16 Modernism 3, 4, 5, 26, 80, 88, 108, 134, 143, 209, 210, 211–12, 215, 216, 219, 220, 230, See also painting little magazines 3, 30, 31–2 247 role of faith in Stevens’ aversion to ‘professional modernism’ 2, 111, 211, 215, 216, 223, 226 Mondrian, Piet 132, 212–13, 223 Monroe, Harriet 32 Moore, Marianne 7, 36–8, 49, 134, 219 Morey, Albert, Domaine 146 Morey, Bernard, Domaine 146 Morey, Jean-Marc, Domaine 146 Morey, Marc et Fils, Domaine 146 Morey-Coffinet, Michel, Domaine 146 Morse, Samuel French 14, 17–18, 41 Moszynska, Anna 213 Motherwell, Robert 113, 138 Museum of Living Art, the 212 Museum of Modern Art, the (MOMA) 2, 210, 212, 215–16, 219, 226 Musset, Alfred de 150 Napoleon (Bonaparte) 145 Napoleonic inheritance law 145 nationalism 9, 91, 123, 143 Naxos 128 New Criticism, the 9, 81, 107–9, 129, 134, 144, 207 New York City i, 1, 9, 118, 134, 147, 151, 192, 207, 209, 212, 215, 223, 224, 226 Nietzsche, Friedrich 11, 128, 169, 207–8 Norworth, Jack 73 O’Connor, William Van 14, 16–17, 18 O’Hara, Frank 1–3 Objectivism 112–13 Pach, Walter 210 Pack, Robert 22 painting Abstract Expressionism 10, 22, 58, 95, 130, 212 abstraction in 1, 26, 58, 71–2, 74, 95, 111, 116, 117, 130, 138, 209, 212–18 Art Concret Art Informel Constructivism 213 Cubism 19, 70, 115, 212, 216 Dutch Masters, the 210 Expressionism 210 Impressionism 4, 210 Modernist painting 2, Primitivism 210, 218–22 regionalism 212 social realism 22, 144, 212 Stevens’ art collection 5, 209–12 Surrealism 70, 110, 138, 210, 212 Tachisme 248 Index Paris 96, 150, 152, 219, 224, 226 Pater, Walter 80 Patke, Rajeev 13 Pearce, Roy Harvey 15, 24 Perloff, Marjorie 5, 9, 173, 231 Personism 1–3 Peterson, Margaret 80, 84 Petrarch (Petrarca), Francesco 122 philosophy deconstruction epistemology 23, 25, 27, 72, 75, 117 idealism 4, 13, 15, 19, 21, 23, 24, 76, 78–82, 84, 86, 87–8, 94, 97, 99, 100, 101–2, 105, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117–18, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 131–4, 135, 136, 165, 166, 167, 174, 180, 181, 191–2, 194, 198, 207, 212, 213, 229 and abstraction 81–2, 84, 99, 209 German Idealists 81, 88 metaphysics 2, 9, 12, 18, 27, 46, 82, 85, 126, 127, 132, 185, 193, 207, 212, 213, 214–15 nominalism 44, 45 ontology 185 phenomenology 4, 76, 81, 88, 111, 167, 168, 229 and poetry See poetry pragmatism 11, 12, 131, 172, 192, 200 subject and object 81, 86, 96, 97–9, 118 universalism 37, 44, 45 Picabia, Francis 212 Picasso, Pablo 4, 19, 70–2, 74, 95, 110–12, 115, 117, 130, 209, 211, 219, 226 Plato 15, 119–21, 189 Poe, Edgar Allan 52, 53 poetry and ‘literariness’ 52, 168, 185, 205, 206, 207, 224, 228, 229 and nomination 6, 173, 174 and office life 3, 93, 94, 135, 204 and philosophy 1, 3, 17, 20, 27–9, 126 and politics 8, 9, 56, 123, 147, 167, 168 and wine See gastronomy Poggioli, Renato 63, 68, 69, 71, 73 Poirier, Richard 9, 81 Pollock, Jackson 95 Pontigny, Les Entretiens de 122 popular songs ‘Hi lee, hi lo’ 223 ‘Shine On Harvest Moon’ 73 ‘Stormy Weather’ 73 Pound, Ezra 7, 134, 206, 207 Proust, Marcel 29, 76, 101, 104, 106, 116, 134, 193, 229 pure poetry 2, 4, 7, 31, 46, 47, 50, 55, 113, 120, 166, 173, 228 and abstraction 52–3 Mallarméan 2, 83, 205, 206 la poésie pure 1–2, 52 Stevens’ modernizing of Rabelais, Franỗois 164 Ragner, Bernard 147 Ransom, John Crowe 105, 107–8, 143, 206 Raphael (Raphaello), Sanzio de Urbino 101 Raymond, Marcel 138 Reading, Peter 207 Rehder, Robert 41, 137 Renard, Jules 207 Rhys, Ernest 84 Rich, Daniel Catton 218–19 Richards, I A 13, 21, 82–3, 85, 87 Richardson, Joan 12, 149 Ricoeur, Paul 178 Riddel, Joseph N 15, 20, 24 Rolland, Romain 223–4 Romanticism 7, 36, 37, 38, 78, 80–1, 84, 97, 107, 108, 125, 129, 134, 191, 194, 229 British Romantics 4, 7, 11, 30, 38, 80–1, 84, 88, 108, 124, 209, 229 Rorty, Richard 12–13, 28, 79, 190–1, 192 Rosenberg, Harold 138 Rossini, Gioachino Semiramide and Semiramide 141–2 Rothko, Mark 22 Rousseau, Henri 212, 218–22 Roy, Jean Le 53 Rubens, Peter Paul 215 Sanborn, Pitts 32 Santayana, George 26, 83, 91, 136 Sartre, Jean-Paul 95 Schaum, Melita 9, 167, 173 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von 88 Schlegel, Friedrich von 90 Schulze, Robin G 37–8 Schuster, Ira 223 Schwartz, Delmore 14, 15, 19, 41, 77 Second World War, the 7, 91, 130, 143, 205, 212 Pearl Harbor 22, 91, 143 Serge, Victor 143 Shakespeare, William 19, 67, 144, 156, 160, 162, 189, 196 Cymbeline 144, 151, 156–60, 162, 163 Hamlet 157 King Lear 68 Macbeth 185, 189, 195–7, 200 Shapiro, Karl 91, 144 Sharpe, Tony 210 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 81, 84, 108, 124, 125, 127, 133 Index Simons, Hi 53, 92, 130, 166 Soby, James Thrall 144, 210–11 Socialism 147, 224 Socrates 21, 120, 121 Stevens, Elsie (Kachel) 40 Stevens, Holly 14, 35 Stevens, Wallace ‘Stevensian’ as derived critical idiom 1, 11–13, 218, 230 Stevens, Wallace (figures and themes in) the actual world 52, 59, 72, 78, 82, 87, 115, 167, 173, 176, 192, 209, 230 agreement with reality 122, 123, 126, 173 analogy 5, 167 anecdote 30–4, 38, 39, 48, 50, 52, 56 ‘Chair of Poetry’ 92, 99, 160, 224 death of the gods 3, 10, 77, 82, 166 decreation 24 description 5, 167–8, 173 the determining personality 100, 106, 116, 117, 118, 121, 127 fiction 9, 11, 12, 21, 22, 23, 24, 52, 57, 84, 85, 87, 89, 90–1, 93, 105, 106, 107, 126, 169–72, 174, 192 figure[s] of capable imagination 77, 165 the first idea 10, 11, 12, 83, 97, 130, 163, 166, 168, 169, 173, 194 fluent mundo 10, 11, 84, 106, 166, 167, 173, 174, 206 harmonious whole 10, 83, 105 ideas of order 34, 35, 48, 49, 228 major man 6, 10, 13, 21, 22, 97, 164, 166, 168, 170–2, 173, 185 mastery of life 135, 192, 204–5, 217 mastery of reality 165, 192, 207–8 metaphor 5, 168, 176, 186, 188, 200 new romantic 10, 30, 31, 35–9, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 85, 100, 101, 165, 222, 228 the normal 17, 77, 167, 175, 192, 205–6, 222, 223, 226, 227, 229 poetry as an unofficial view of being 125 possible poet 59, 101, 174, 189 poverty 51, 56, 136, 151 pressure of reality 125 reality–imagination complex 10, 84, 121, 122, 125 resemblance 5, 167, 168, 174–5, 176–7, 200 resistance 59, 159, 167, 227 rhetoric 60, 87, 155, 174, 180–3, 184, 195, 196, 228 the robust poet 121, 123, 127 the romantic 35–9 sound 114, 121–2, 139–43, 164, 167, 168, 185, 198, 228 249 supreme fiction 5–6, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 24, 54, 57, 81, 82, 89, 91, 93–4, 97, 99, 100, 108, 113, 130, 134, 135, 153, 165, 166, 168, 169–70, 173, 205, 208, 229 supreme fiction as abstract 93, 152 theory of poetry 92, 99 the ultimate poem 5, 168 Stevens, Wallace (works of) ‘A High-Toned Old Christian Woman’ 6, 56 ‘A Postcard from the Volcano’ 50 ‘A Primitive Like an Orb’ 220–1 ‘A Quiet Normal Life’ 205, 225 ‘A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts’ 15 ‘A Study of Two Pears’ 16 ‘A Thought Revolved’ v, 72 ‘Academic Discourse at Havana’ 31, 35, 39–51, 54, 69, 179 ‘Adagia’ 82, 87 ‘An Old Man Asleep’ 225 ‘An Ordinary Evening in New Haven’ 96, 168, 210 ‘Anecdote of Canna’ 179 ‘Anecdote of the Jar’ 32, 37, 179 ‘Angel Surrounded by Paysans’ 212, 214, 215, 221 ‘Anything Is Beautiful If You Say It Is’ 139 ‘Arrival at the Waldorf ’ 192 ‘As at a Theatre’ 20 ‘As You Leave the Room’ 25, 205 ‘Bantams in Pine-Woods’ 52, 55 ‘Botanist on Alp (No 1)’ 51 ‘Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight’ 203, 220 ‘Canonica’ 112, 122, 129 ‘Certain Phenomena of Sound’ 5, 119, 129, 135, 136–43, 147, 148 ‘Chocorua to Its Neighbor’ 127, 168, 196 Collected Poems 10, 15, 18, 49, 55, 56, 83, 153, 204, 220, 227, 228 Collected Poetry and Prose 149 ‘Connoisseur of Chaos’ 149 ‘Credences of Summer’ 168 ‘Cuisine Bourgeoise’ 224 ‘Cy est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et les Unze Mille Vierges’ 34 ‘Dance of the Macabre Mice’ 50 ‘Depression Before Spring’ 38 ‘Description Without Place’ 6, 9, 106, 122, 166, 172–4, 175, 185, 191, 196, 206, 207, 208 ‘Dinner Bell in the Woods’ 221, 223 ‘Discourse in a Cantina at Havana’ 35 ‘Domination of Black’ 52 ‘Earthy Anecdote’ 32 ‘Esthétique du Mal’ 143, 144, 159, 164, 167, 171 250 Index Stevens, Wallace (cont.) ‘Examination of the Hero in a Time of War’ 155, 181–3 ‘Explanation’ 52 ‘Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas’ 93, 119, 153, 155, 200 ‘Farewell to Florida’ 38, 39, 48, 51, 57 ‘Farewell Without a Guitar’ 188–9, 198 ‘First Warmth’ 205 ‘Flyer’s Fall’ 170 ‘Forces, the Will & the Weather’ 171 ‘From the Journal of Crispin’ 32–3 Harmonium 3, 4, 7, 10, 18, 20, 27, 30–5, 38–9, 46–54, 56–7, 83, 166, 228 ‘Holiday in Reality’ 129, 139 Ideas of Order 3–4, 30–1, 34–40, 47–54, 55–7, 94, 100, 166, 222 ‘Imagination as Value’ 38 ‘Invective Against Swans’ 52 ‘Landscape with Boat’ 83, 119, 129–33, 138 ‘Large Red Man Reading’ 19 ‘Le Monocle de Mon Oncle’ 32, 57, 144 ‘Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery’ 54 ‘Metaphors of a Magnifico’ 52 ‘Montrachet-Le-Jardin’ 6, 45, 93, 107, 119, 135, 140, 143–65, 196, 230 ‘Mozart, 1935’ 51, 55 ‘Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself ’ 25 Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction 9, 14, 16, 49, 108, 185 ‘Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction’ 5–6, 9, 11, 16, 21, 22, 24, 54, 57, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, 97, 108, 113, 114, 115, 130, 140, 152–3, 154, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168–9, 170, 172, 173, 174, 180, 183, 184, 185, 194, 205, 208, 229 ‘It Must Be Abstract’ 16, 61, 85, 87, 91, 108, 172 ‘It Must Be Human’ as proposed section 6, 172 ‘It Must Give Pleasure’ 151, 221 ‘Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb’ 53 ‘Of Mere Being’ 20, 25, 205 ‘Of Modern Poetry’ 37 ‘Of the Surface of Things’ 52 Opus Posthumous 25 Owl’s Clover 55, 58 ‘Owl’s Clover’ 55–9, 66, 69, 209 ‘Page from a Tale’ 220 ‘Paisant Chronicle’ 6, 166, 170–2, 185, 192 Parts of a World 17, 25, 54, 58, 82, 83, 84, 93, 110, 112, 129, 143, 149, 154, 155, 164, 166, 167, 170, 172, 229 ‘Pecksniffiana’ 32 ‘Peter Quince at the Clavier’ 52 ‘Pieces’ 202 ‘Prelude to Objects’ 114–19, 218 ‘Reality Is an Activity of the Most August Imagination’ 25, 205 ‘Repetitions of a Young Captain’ 168, 169, 172, 174–84, 189, 193, 217 ‘Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz’ 51 ‘Sailing after Lunch’ 36 ‘Sea Surface Full of Clouds’ 48 Selected Poems 18, 204 ‘Six Significant Landscapes’ 52 ‘Snow and Stars’ 50 ‘Someone Puts a Pineapple Together’ 177, 178, 179, 183 ‘Song of Fixed Accord’ 38 ‘Sunday Morning’ 57 ‘Surety and Fidelity Claims’ 135 ‘The Apostrophe to Vincentine’ 52 The Auroras of Autumn 18–19, 20, 25, 204, 205 ‘The Brave Man’ 50 ‘The Candle a Saint’ 58 ‘The Comedian as the Letter C’ 32–4, 38, 39, 47, 56 ‘The Creations of Sound’ 19, 96, 122, 168, 179 ‘The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician’ 53, 206 ‘The Doctor of Geneva’ 32, 52 ‘The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet’ 102, 117, 119, 122–9, 173 ‘The Green Plant’ 229 ‘The Greenest Continent’ 111 ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ 47–8 ‘The Irrational Element in Poetry’ 59–60, 87 ‘The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad’ 52 The Man with the Blue Guitar 4, 19, 20, 49, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60, 94, 96, 110, 119, 165 ‘The Man with the Blue Guitar’ 56–8, 59, 60, 82, 86, 87, 90, 97, 98, 99, 110, 111, 115, 118, 119, 126, 131, 134, 154, 164, 209, 228, 231 ‘The Motive for Metaphor’ 203 The Necessary Angel 121, 125, 129, 174, 177, 204, 206 ‘The News and the Weather’ 139 ‘The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words’ 59, 82, 114, 119–22, 124, 126, 127, 183–4, 189 ‘The Novel’ 107 ‘The Old Woman and the Statue’ 56 ‘The Ordinary Women’ 47 ‘The Owl in the Sarcophagus’ 205 Index ‘The Planet on the Table’ 25 ‘The Poems of Our Climate’ 112–14, 115, 130 ‘The Public Square’ ‘The Pure Good of Theory’ 6, 168, 170, 174, 177, 178, 181, 184, 185–203, 228 ‘The Relations Between Poetry and Painting’ 2, 71, 138, 213 ‘The River of Rivers in Connecticut’ 24, 229 The Rock 18–19, 24–5, 205 ‘The Sail of Ulysses’ 25 ‘The Snow Man’ 12, 52, 56, 132 ‘The Sun This March’ 50 ‘Theory’ 52, 56 ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ 52, 56 ‘This Solitude of Cataracts’ 19 ‘Three Academic Pieces’ 103, 174–82, 200, 229 ‘To the One of Fictive Music’ 52, 55 Transport to Summer 9, 15, 168, 204, 229 ‘Two Figures in Dense Violet Night’ 52 ‘Valley Candle’ 32 Sweeney, James Johnson 211 Symbolism 2, 7, 19, 52, 53, 55, 83, 84, 88, 206 Symons, Julian 72 Tal-Coat, Pierre 211, 212, 214–15, 216, 217, 221 Tanguy, Yves 210 Tate, Allen 9, 107–8, 143, 144, 206, 207 Taylor, Wilson E 225 Tchelitchew, Pavel 211 Theosophy 212 Theseus 128 Thomas, Dylan 206 Thomas, R S 18, 138 Tomlinson, Charles 26–7 transcendence 3, 26, 36, 225 Trilling, Lionel 143 Uhde, Wilhelm 218 Valéry, Paul 21, 28–9, 59, 87, 90, 94, 134, 135, 138 Van Gogh, Vincent 207–8, 209 Vechten, Carl Van 32 251 Vendler, Helen 6, 8, 10 Venturi, Lionello 117 Vidal, Anatole 150 Vidal, Paule 88, 150, 214, 216, 220 Villena, Rubén Martínez 48 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène Emmanuel 83 Viollot, ‘Mesdemoiselles’ 146 Virgil 171 Vivin, Louis 218 Vogüé, Comte de 152 Vogüé, Comte de, Domaine 152 Vogüé, Nelly de 152 Voltaire [Franỗois-Marie Arouet] 1478, 151 Candide 1478, 162 Wadsworth Athenaeum, the 212 Wagner, C Ronald 228 Wahl, Jean 122, 206 Walker, David 133 Warren, Robert Penn 107 Waters, Ethel 73 Weinstock, Herbert 105 West, Eugene 223 Whicher, George Frisbee 107 Whiting, Anthony 80 Whitman, Walt 2, 209 Whorf, Benjamin Lee 94 Williams, William Carlos 2, 7, 15, 36, 51, 74, 112, 134, 143, 162–3 Wilson, T C 37 Winters, Yvor 110 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 27 Woolf, Virginia 134, 158 Wordsworth, William 60, 78–82, 84–5, 87, 97, 99, 111, 114, 117, 181, 192, 229 The Prelude 78–80, 87, 181, 186 Yeats, William Butler 7, 8, 14, 80, 148, 220 Zervos, Christian 71, 74, 110, 111 Ziarek, Krzysztof 28 Ziegfeld, Florenz 73 Zigrosser, Carl 53 ... as well as the examples of philosophers and other poets’ work Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction will appeal to those studying Stevens as well as anyone interested in the relations... Lyric’ in Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism ed Albert Gelpi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 41–64 10 Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction of Sound’ and ‘Montrachet-Le-Jardin’)... Melita Schaum, Wallace Stevens and the Critical Schools (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1988), 100–28, 129–82 8 Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction and it has been