Harmonium (poetry Collection) - Emotional Deprivation

Emotional Deprivation

At least as controversial as the question about symbolism is whether and how Stevens's personal life should be read into his poetry. William Carlos Williams was not reluctant to do so, writing some months after Stevens's death, "He was a dandy at heart. You never saw Stephens in sloppy clothes. His poems are the result." The remarkable "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" is particularly disputed with regard to the relevance of the biographical. Referring to the fact that Stevens's marriage to Elsie turned cold, Milton Bates writes, "Emotional deprivation became to some extent the condition of his craft, the somber backdrop for the motley antics of Harmonium." ("Monocle" may be compared to "From the Misery of Don Joost".) To balance the ledger, the love poem "Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow" may be contrasted with "Monocle".

Another dimension of deprivation to be taken into account is addressed by Stevens in "The Place of the Solitaires, which touches on the solitary discipline of writing poetry. See also "Two Figures In Dense Violet Night", which can be read as a humorous anecdote about the gauche male, or a meditation on the lover's otherness, or the poet's challenge to the imagination of the reader.

As Vendler notes in a discussion of the fluidity of self-reference in Stevens, the impersonal "one" is sometimes favored over "I" in order to enable disclosure of suffering: "One has a malady, here, a malady". And he often refers to himself in the third-person as part of an effort to see himself from the outside: "When this yokel comes maundering". however, note the use of the first-person in "The Man whose Pharynx was bad".