Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

1. Week 2 | January 29 • Domination of Black 7; The Snow Man 8; Le Monocle de Mon Oncle 10; Metaphors of a Magnifico 15; The Doctor of Geneva 19; Another Weeping Woman 19; On the Surface of Things 45; A High Toned Old Christian Woman 47; The Place of the Solitaires 47; The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician 49; The Emperor of Ice Cream 50 • Major Poem: The Comedian as the Letter C 22 • Voices and Visions Film: Walt Whitman • Philosopher of the Week: William James • Painter of the Week: Paul Cezanne • Composer of the Week: Ludwig van Beethoven Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

2. Voices and Visions Film: Walt Whitman (1819-1892) • Whitman’s “advertisements for myself” • Whitman as the voice of America • Whitman as a gay voice • Whitman’s radical subject matter • Whitman as journalist • Whitman and “free verse” • Whitman and Pound/Eliot, Williams, Ginsberg Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

3. Voices and Visions Film: Walt Whitman (1819-1892) “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

4. Voices and Visions Film: Walt Whitman (1819-1892) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

5. Voices and Visions Film: Walt Whitman (1819-1892): “Song of Myself” I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul,I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,     this air,Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and     their parents the same,I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance,Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never     forgotten,I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,Nature without check with original energy. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

6. Voices and Visions Film: Walt Whitman (1819-1892) I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things to be. My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount. Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there, I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. Long I was hugg'd close - long and long. Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

7. Voices and Visions Film: Walt Whitman (1819-1892) Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

8. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

9. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) and Henry James (1843-1916) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

10. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

11. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

12. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

13. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

14. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities his pre-eminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary. And from the consciousness of this he should draw the lesson that his wants are to be trusted; that even when their gratification seems furthest off, the uneasiness they occasion is still the best guide of his life, and will lead him to issues entirely beyond his present power of reckoning. Prune down his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.—William James Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

15. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) The truth is that Experience is trained by both association and dissociation, and that psychology must be writ both in synthetic and in analytic terms. Our original sensible totals are, on the one hand, subdivided by discriminative attention, and, on the other, united with other totals, -- either through the agency of our own movements, carrying our senses from one part of space to another, or because new objects come successively and replace those by which we were at first impressed. The 'simple impression' of Hume, the 'simple idea' of Locke are both abstractions, never realized in experience. Experience, from the very first, presents us with concretized objects, vaguely continuous with the rest of the world which envelops them in space and time, and potentially divisible into inward elements and parts. These objects we break asunder and reunite. We must treat them in both ways for our knowledge of them to grow; and it is hard to say, on the whole, which way preponderates. But since the elements with which the traditional associationism performs its constructions -- 'simple sensations,' namely -- are all products of discrimination carried to a high pitch, it seems as if we ought to discuss the subject of analytic attention and discrimination first.(Principles of Psychology) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

16. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) [A]ny number of impressions, from any number of sensory sources, falling simultaneously on a mind which has not yet experienced them separately, will fuse into a single undivided object for that mind. The law is that all things fuse that canfuse, and nothing separates except what must. What makes impressions separate we have to study in this chapter. Although they separate easier if they come in through distinct nerves, yet distinct nerves are not an unconditional ground of their discrimination, as we shall presently see. The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the very end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space. There is no other reason than this why "the hand I touch and see coincides spatially with the hand I immediately feel." (Principles of Psychology) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

17. Philosopher of the Week: William James (1842-1910) Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness. Whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are there in all their completeness; definite types of mentality which probably have their field of applicability and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. They may determine attitudes, though they cannot furnish formulas; and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid our premature closing of accounts with reality. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

18. Composer of the Week: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

19. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

20. It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now to give it the perfect ending was a bit of the old Ludwig Van. Oh bliss, bliss and heaven. Oh it was gorgeousness and georgeosity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest spun heaven metal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship gravity all nonsense now as I slooshied I knew such pretty pictures. Play on YouTube (at 1:22) Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

21. Composer of the Week: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) “If Beethoven could look back on what he had accomplished and say that it was a collection of crumbs compared to what he had hoped to accomplish, where should I ever find a figure of speech adequate to size up the little that I have done compared to that which I had once hoped to do. Of course, I have had a happy and well-kept life. But I have not even begun to touch the spheres within spheres that might have been possible if, instead of devoting the principal amount of my time to making a living, I had devoted it to thought and poetry. Certainly it is as true as it ever was that whatever means most to one should receive all of one's time and that has not been true in my case. But, then, if I had been more determined about it, I might now be looking back not with a mere sense of regret but at some actual devastation. To be cheerful about it, I am now in the happy position of being able to say that I don't know what would have happened if I had had more time. This is very much better than to have had all the time in the world and have found oneself inadequate”—1950]. (Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed: Holly Stevens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966: 669.) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

22. Painter of the Week: Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

23. Painter of the Week: Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) Nature is on the inside.—Paul Cezanne [Painting] gives visible existence to what profane vision believes to be invisible; thanks to it we do not need a "muscular sense" in order to possess the voluminosity of the world. This voracious vision, reaching beyond the "visual givens," opens upon a texture of Being of which the discrete sensorial messages are only the punctuations or the caesurae. The eye lives in this texture as a man lives in his house.—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Eye and Mind" Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

24. Cezanne: The Great Pine Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

25. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens Cezanne: The Bay from L'Estaque

26. Cezanne: Corner of Quarry Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

27. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens Cezanne: Mount Saint-Victore

28. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens Cezanne: House of the Hanged Man

29. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens Cezanne: Chrysanthemums

30. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens Cezanne: Ginger, Jar, and Fruit

31. Cezanne: Well, Millstone, Cistern Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

32. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens Cezanne: Turning Road at Montgeroult

33. Published in 1923—Stevens was 43. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

34. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

35. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

36. Domination Of Black (7) At night, by the fire, The colors of the bushes And of the fallen leaves, Repeating themselves, Turned in the room, Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks Came striding. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. The colors of their tails Were like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, In the twilight wind. They swept over the room, Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks March 1916 Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

37. Domination Of Black Down to the ground. I heard them cry -- the peacocks. Was it a cry against the twilight Or against the leaves themselves Turning in the wind, Turning as the flames Turned in the fire, Turning as the tails of the peacocks Turned in the loud fire, Loud as the hemlocks Full of the cry of the peacocks? Or was it a cry against the hemlocks? Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

38. Domination Of Black Out of the window, I saw how the planets gathered Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. I saw how the night came, Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks I felt afraid. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

39. The Snow Man (8) One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. October 1921 Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

40. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle(10) I "Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds, O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon, There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing, Like the clashed edges of two words that kill." And so I mocked her in magnificent measure. Or was it that I mocked myself alone? I wish that I might be a thinking stone. The sea of spuming thought foists up again The radiant bubble that she was. And then A deep up-pouring from some saltier well Within me, bursts its watery syllable. December 1918 Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

41. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle II A red bird flies across the golden floor. It is a red bird that seeks out his choir Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing. A torrent will fall from him when he finds. Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing? I am a man of fortune greeting heirs; For it has come that thus I greet the spring. These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell. No spring can follow past meridian. Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss To make believe a starry connaissance. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

42. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle III Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese Sat tittivating by their mountain pools Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards? I shall not play the flat historic scale. You know how Utamaro’s beauties sought The end of love in their all-speaking braids. You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath. Alas! Have all the barbers lived in vain That not one curl in nature has survived? Why, without pity on these studious ghosts, Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep? Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

43. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle IV This luscious and impeccable fruit of life Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth. When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet, Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air. An apple serves as well as any skull To be the book in which to read a round, And is as excellent, in that it is composed Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground. But it excels in this, that as the fruit Of love, it is a book too mad to read Before one merely reads to pass the time. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

44. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle V In the high west there burns a furious star. It is for fiery boys that star was set And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them. The measure of the intensity of love Is measure, also, of the verve of earth. For me, the firefly’s quick, electric stroke Ticks tediously the time of one more year. And you? Remember how the crickets came Out of their mother grass, like little kin, In the pale nights, when your first imagery Found inklings of your bond to all that dust. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

45. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle VI If men at forty will be painting lakes The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one, The basic slate, the universal hue. There is a substance in us that prevails. But in our amours amorists discern Such fluctuations that their scrivening Is breathless to attend each quirky turn. When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink Into the compass and curriculum Of introspective exiles, lecturing. It is a theme for Hyacinth alone. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

46. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle VII The mules that angels ride come slowly down The blazing passes, from beyond the sun. Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive. These muleteers are dainty of their way. Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards. This parable, in sense, amounts to this: The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once. Suppose these couriers brought amid their train A damsel heightened by eternal bloom. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

47. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle VIII Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love, An ancient aspect touching a new mind. It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies. This trivial trope reveals a way of truth. Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof. Two golden gourds distended on our vines, Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost, Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque. We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed, The laughing sky will see the two of us Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

48. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle IX In verses wild with motion, full of din, Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure As the deadly thought of men accomplishing Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate The faith of forty, ward of Cupido. Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit Is not too lusty for your broadening. I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything For the music and manner of the paladins To make oblation fit. Where shall I find Bravura adequate to this great hymn? Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

49. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle X The fops of fancy in their poems leave Memorabilia of the mystic spouts, Spontaneously watering their gritty soils. I am a yeoman, as such fellows go. I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs, No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits. But, after all, I know a tree that bears A semblance to the thing I have in mind. It stands gigantic, with a certain tip To which all birds come sometime in their time. But when they go that tip still tips the tree. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens

50. Le Monocle de Mon Oncle XI If sex were all, then every trembling hand Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words. But note the unconscionable treachery of fate, That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth From madness or delight, without regard To that first, foremost law. Anguishing hour! Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink, Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes, Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog Boomed from his very belly odious chords. Major American Writers: Wallace Stevens