Letter 399 To Hi Simons (January 18 1940)
“Obviously, it is not possible to tell what one’s own poems mean, or were intended to mean. On the other hand, it is not the simplest thing in the world to tell what one’s own poems mean, or were intended to mean. I thought of it this way this morning: a poem is like a man walking on the bank of a river, whose shadow is reflected in the water. If you explain a poem, you are quite likely to do it either in terms of the man or in terms of the shadow, but you have to explain it in terms of the whole. When I said recently that a poem was what was on a page, it seems to me now that I was wrong because that is explaining in terms of the man. But the thing and its double always go together”.
Letter 426 To John Pauker (June 3 1941)
“Just one thing more: your remark that the final authority is always the poet is one of the things that I am given to contradicting. The final authority is the poem itself.”
(uit: Stevens, Holly (red.) 1996. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Berkeley: University of California Press).
I
Die digter Wallace Stevens het skynbaar gedigte gekomponeer, terwyl hy gewandel het. Verskillende skribbels of weergawes is te siene op stukkies papier. In ‘n gesaghebbende studie Wallace Stevens, The making of the poem, wys Frank Doggett op al die kwessies rondom sy uitsprake oor die digkuns.
Was hy net ‘n Sondagdigter? Het hy teen die einde van sy loopbaan as digter net vir homself geskryf?
Roy Harvey Pearce in The Continuity of American Poetry (1961: 405) skryf oor ‘n ongepubliseerde en posthume artikel deur ene James Baird. Dit handel oor die eksistensialisme by Stevens. Pearce het die referaat gehoor by die American Literature Group of the Modern Language Association in 1957.
Só interpreteer Baird die beroemde gedig:
I Search for the ultimate poem
II The ‘real poem’ is behind the poem
III The search for meaning of meaning
IV The absence in the belief of God, the mind turns to its own creations and examines them, not alone from the aesthetic point of view, but for what they reveal, for what they validate and invalidate, for the support that they give.
Pearce is wel krities oor die volgende siening:
“Yet Mr. Baird I think, is in error when he wants to save Stevens for some form of theism.” Hierdie leser gaan akkoord met Pearce en Baird se lesing. Daar is wél in die gedig ‘n soort religieuse dimensie aanwesig.
Hierdie gedig loop sy eie pad, weg van Stevens se bedoeling.
In 1955 het Stevens, toe hy gediagnoseer is met maagkanker, Katoliek geword.
II
In An Ordinary Evening in New Haven staan daar:
As part of the never-ending meditation,
Part of the question that is a giant himself:
Of what is this house composed if not of the sun, (I)
En:
IX
We keep coming back and coming back
To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns
That fall upon it out of the wind. We seek
The poem of pure reality, untouched
By trope or deviation, straight to the word,
Straight to the transfixing object, to the object
At the exactest point at which it is itself,
Transfixing by being purely what it is,
A view of New Haven, say, through the certain eye,
The eye made clear of uncertainty, with the sight
Of simple seeing, without reflection.
We seek Nothing beyond reality. Within it,
Everything, the spirit’s alchemicana
Included, the spirit that goes roundabout
And through included, not merely the visible
‘n Soektog na die volmaakte gedig, maar eweneens ‘n spirituele belewenis. En die briewe van Stevens is saamgestel deur sy dogter, Holly, oorlede in 1992 op ouderdom 67. Deur die jare het hierdie leser geweldig baie studies oor Stevens gelees. O.a. ook oor sy Kubaanse fantasie.
En natuurlik Harold Bloom wat deur Frank Kermode beskou word as die grootste leser van sy werk.
Joan Hambidge
28 Junie 2024
(Word vervolg)
Bronne:
Doggett, Frank A. 1980. Wallace Stevens, The Making of the Poem. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.
Doyle, Charles (red.). 1985. Wallace Stevens: The Critical Heritage. Londen: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Gelpi, Albert (red.). 1985. Wallace Stevens: The poetics of Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leonard, J.S. & Wharton, C.E.. 1988. The Fluent Mundo: Wallace Stevens and the Structure of Reality. Londen: The University of Georgia Press.
Longenbach, James.1991. Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McNamara, Peter L. (red.). 1972. Critics on Wallace Stevens. Florida: University of Miami Press.
Pearce, Roy Harvey. 1961. The Continuity of American Poetry. New Jersey: Princeton.
Stevens, Holly (red.) 1996. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Die plattegrond: die ondergrond
Wallace Stevens
Die nou teen die verlede
bring beleef en onthou
bloot hoop, veral berou:
hoe sal ons regmaak
opmaak ná die uitmaak
só word ons uitrangeer:
‘n vrou skryf ‘n nota klein
op ‘n gewone aand in New Haven,
skeur dit op, verbrand dit dan:
die werklikheid is fragiel,
breekbaar ten spyte van
die groter gedig, ‘n gehoor wyer:
die filosoof soos die digter
oefen toonlere op ‘n klavier
donker dinge só verklap.
© Joan Hambidge