Harmonium by Wallace Stevens

Source of book: I own the complete Wallace Stevens in a Library of America edition - a gift from my in-laws.

I first discovered Wallace Stevens nine years ago when I read a delightful book on mathematics (specifically, the history of zero as a placeholder), The Nothing That Is by Robert Kaplan. The title for that book - which I highly recommend - is drawn from a Wallace Stevens poem, “The Snow Man.” Which I then read, and loved. More recently, at a faculty concert for our local state university, I got to hear a modern work, a song setting of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and was again entranced. Needless to say, when I received this book for Christmas last year, I knew I had to dive in and read some.

I think that musicians are particularly likely to enjoy Stevens’ poems, because his use of the language is highly musical. (You DO read poetry out loud, right? It isn’t the same otherwise…) Stevens wasn’t a musician by trade, however. He was, of all things, an insurance executive. Furthermore, he didn’t write his first published poem until age 35, and didn’t publish a collection until his mid 40s. He was a late bloomer to be sure. He did, however, write regularly thereafter, making him unusual as poets go in that many of his major works were written when most people have retired.

As I have tended to do for my poetry project of the last 10 years, I started with the first collection by the author. In this case, that would be Harmonium - I also included the poems added to the revised edition of that collection. In this case, I think I made a wise choice, because the two poems I mentioned above are in this collection, and I got to re-read them in context.

Stevens is a bit of a modernist; definitely a contrast to his contemporary Robert Frost in form, despite occasional overlap in themes and topics. For the most part, his poems do not utilize rhyme in the traditional sense, but they often have a recognizable meter. He also uses consonance and alliteration extensively, and both internal and end rhyme - the latter in unexpected ways, such as when a particular ending sound is used at irregular, but thematically significant intervals. If you just scan his poems, you might miss a lot of this, unless you are really searching for it. But read them out loud, and they will jump out of their hiding places on the page into life in a delightful and striking way.

For the most part, I loved this collection. I should mention one sour note, though. Harmonium was first published in 1923, and it reflects some of the attitudes of its time, unfortunately, in a few poems. Specifically, Stevens indulges in some racial stereotyping that is wince worthy in the 21st Century. It reminds me of reading Rudyard Kipling, or some of Mark Twain’s books. In Stevens’ case, it doesn’t seem malicious - he isn’t trying to denigrate anyone. He just...stereotypes. In a few poems, I just read it and moved on, disappointed.

This flaw aside, however, I found Stevens to be fascinating. In addition to the wonderfully creative use of language and rhythm, he has a knack for creative metaphors, deeply philosophical thinking, and unexpected twists on everyday reality. He is a good example of the way that poets do what prosaic philosophers cannot: express the inexpressible, fathom the imponderable, and speak truths which cannot be reduced to plain words. It is a way of expressing meaning and life shared with music: it is truth felt rather than intellectualized.

I selected ten poems from Harmonium that I really liked. As usual for me, I gravitated toward poems with nature or humanity in them.

Let’s start with this one. It is the second in the collection, and grabbed my attention sharply, both for its provocative title and its negative approach. Rather than eulogize nature to make a philosophical point, it disses the lovely and graceful swan - but in the end, undermines his own premise. It’s almost a negative hyperbole, a psychological mind trick. And it is poetry.

“Invective Against Swans”

The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks

And far beyond the discords of the wind.

A bronze rain from the sun descending marks

The death of summer, which that time endures

Like one who scrawls a listless testament

Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,

Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon

And giving your bland motions to the air.

Behold, already on the long parades

The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.

And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies

Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.

Every time I re-read it, it thrills me.

This next one is a master class in poetic use of sounds and words. You MUST read it aloud to get the effect. Whether you choose to read it as an ironic satire of romanticism in art - particularly early cinema - or as a less cynical tribute to the role of art in refreshing the human soul will depend on your mood.

“The Ordinary Women”

Then from their poverty they rose,

 From dry catarrhs, and to guitars

 They flitted

 Through the palace walls.

 They flung monotony behind,

 Turned from their want, and, nonchalant,

 They crowded

 The nocturnal halls.

 The lacquered loges huddled there

 Mumbled zay-zay and a-zay, a-zay.

 The moonlight fubbed the girandoles.

 And the cold dresses that they wore,

 In the vapid haze of the window-bays,

 Were tranquil

 As they leaned and looked

 From the window-sills at the alphabets,

 At beta b and gamma g,

 To study

 The canting curlicues

 Of heaven and of the heavenly script.

 And there they read of marriage-bed.

 Ti-lill-o!

 And they read right long.

 The gaunt guitarists on the strings

 Rumbled a-day and a-day, a-day.

 The moonlight

 Rose on the beachy floors.

 How explicit the coiffures became,

 The diamond point, the sapphire point,

 The sequins

 Of the civil fans!

 Insinuations of desire,

 Puissant speech, alike in each,

 Cried quittance

 To the wickless halls.

 Then from their poverty they rose,

 From dry guitars, and to catarrhs

 They flitted

 Through the palace walls.

The juxtaposition of “guitars” and “catarrhs” - and the way they are reversed at the end, is just one of the great wordplays in this poem. There is near continual internal rhyme, repetition, and a wash of sounds that I just love.

Also amazing for its use of words is the long narrative poem, “The Comedian as the Letter C.” Generally believed to be a kind of fable of Stevens’ own career and attempts at self-discovery and reinvention, it is certainly a humorous look at the idea of traveling to find one’s self. It is far too long to quote here, but worth reading in its entirety. I want to quote the first bit, though, just for the fantastic writing.

Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,

The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates

Of snails, musician of pears, principium

And lex. Sed quaeritur: is this same wig

Of things, this nincompated pedagogue,

Preceptor to the sea? Crispin at sea

Created, in his day, a touch of doubt.

An eye most apt in gelatines and jupes,

Berries of villages, a barber's eye,

An eye of land, of simple salad-beds,

Of honest quilts, the eye of Crispin, hung

On porpoises, instead of apricots,

And on silentious porpoises, whose snouts

Dibbled in waves that were mustachios,

Inscrutable hair in an inscrutable world.

Only a genius could come up with “Socrates of Snails.” I love that phrase.

This next one is definitely a favorite. It needs no comment, really.

“The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician”

It comes about that the drifting of these curtains

 Is full of long motions, as the ponderous

 Deflations of distance; or as clouds

 Inseparable from their afternoons;

 Or the changing of light, the dropping

 Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude

 Of night, in which all motion

 Is beyond us, as the firmament,

 Up-rising and down-falling, bares

 The last largeness, bold to see.

I love poems that paint a vivid, yet amorphous, picture like that. Here is another. Each of the six sections could stand alone as a poem. I couldn’t decide which parts to quote, so I quote the whole. The last is particularly delightful.

“Six Significant Landscapes”

I

 An old man sits

 In the shadow of a pine tree

 In China.

 He sees larkspur,

 Blue and white,

 At the edge of the shadow,

 Move in the wind.

 His beard moves in the wind.

 The pine tree moves in the wind.

 Thus water flows

 Over weeds.

         II

 The night is of the colour

 Of a woman's arm:

 Night, the female,

 Obscure,

 Fragrant and supple,

 Conceals herself.

 A pool shines,

 Like a bracelet

 Shaken in a dance.

         III

 I measure myself

 Against a tall tree.

 I find that I am much taller,

 For I reach right up to the sun,

 With my eye;

 And I reach to the shore of the sea

 With my ear.

 Nevertheless, I dislike

 The way ants crawl

 In and out of my shadow.

         IV

 When my dream was near the moon,

 The white folds of its gown

 Filled with yellow light.

 The soles of its feet

 Grew red.

 Its hair filled

 With certain blue crystallizations

 From stars,

 Not far off.

         V

 Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,

 Nor the chisels of the long streets,

 Nor the mallets of the domes

 And high towers,

 Can carve

 What one star can carve,

 Shining through the grape-leaves.

         VI

 Rationalists, wearing square hats,

 Think, in square rooms,

 Looking at the floor,

 Looking at the ceiling.

 They confine themselves

 To right-angled triangles.

 If they tried rhomboids,

 Cones, waving lines, ellipses --

 As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --

 Rationalists would wear sombreros.

Here is another one that I love.

“Tattoo”

The light is like a spider.

 It crawls over the water.

 It crawls over the edges of the snow.

 It crawls under your eyelids

 And spreads its webs there—

 Its two webs.

 The webs of your eyes

 Are fastened

 To the flesh and bones of you

 As to rafters of grass.

 There are filaments of your eyes

 On the surface of the water

 And in the edges of the snow.

This is one of several poems which explicitly draws an unexpected connection between nature and humanity - human nature as a metaphor for nature, rather than the other way around. Here is another, which I find striking.

“The Wind Shifts”

This is how the wind shifts:

 Like the thoughts of an old human,

 Who still thinks eagerly

 And despairingly.

 The wind shifts like this:

 Like a human without illusions,

 Who still feels irrational things within her.

 The wind shifts like this:

 Like humans approaching proudly,

 Like humans approaching angrily.

 This is how the wind shifts:

 Like a human, heavy and heavy,

 Who does not care.

The next poem is way too long too quote, but I will link it here. It is remarkable to me because it has an element of legalese in it. Each section shares form and words - but Stevens has “filled in the blanks” so to speak, with different pictures. The poem appears to have been inspired by a cruise Stevens and his wife took along the coast of Mexico. Both of them wrote diaries of the voyage, and Stevens borrowed some phrases from her impressions. Some critics have seen the poem as an extended metaphor for Stevens’ sexual relationship with his wife, which I find a bit of a stretch. (There was a time not that long ago when literature - and particularly poetry - was given the Freudian treatment. While there is plenty of eroticism in poetry, it got a bit out of hand, in my opinion.) Perhaps this poem has a hidden double meaning. Or maybe many meanings. In any event, it is one worth reading for its ever-shifting view of the effect of clouds reflected on the ocean.

I already mentioned the last two poems as ones I enjoyed before reading Harmonium. I love them enough to quote them again.

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,   

The only moving thing   

Was the eye of the blackbird.   

II

I was of three minds,   

Like a tree   

In which there are three blackbirds.   

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   

It was a small part of the pantomime.   

IV

A man and a woman   

Are one.   

A man and a woman and a blackbird   

Are one.   

V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendoes,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after.   

VI

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.   

The shadow of the blackbird   

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in the shadow   

An indecipherable cause.   

VII

O thin men of Haddam,   

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird   

Walks around the feet   

Of the women about you?   

VIII

I know noble accents   

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   

But I know, too,   

That the blackbird is involved   

In what I know.   

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,   

It marked the edge   

Of one of many circles.   

X

At the sight of blackbirds   

Flying in a green light,   

Even the bawds of euphony   

Would cry out sharply.   

XI

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.   

XII

The river is moving.   

The blackbird must be flying.   

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

There is a lot of the haiku in there - in influence, not in specific form. Speaking of blackbirds (or, perhaps, black birds, I can think of eleven that I have seen locally), from the giant California Condor down to the European Starling. Each is a perspective in itself.

I’ll end with the one that started it all. This image has stuck with me for the last decade, and I keep finding myself returning to read the poem over and over. Do we really know anything? Can we perceive reality apart from ourselves and our perspectives? There are layers to this poem that reveal themselves only on repeated reading. I hope it resonates with you too.

“The Snow Man”

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.