Harmonium (poetry Collection) - The Mind of China

The Mind of China

Stevens's interest in Asian art, notably the prints of Utamaro (See canto III of "Monocle") is discernible in his poetry, as in Harmonium's Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores. Should the reader note this and move on, or does it fortify the critiques of Stevens's aestheticism? Moore thought that Stevens's orientialism was a deep trait: "In his positiveness, aplomb, and verbal security, he has the mind of China." Buttel offers a nuanced judgment when he writes, "Purging the excesses of this mode from his verse, he became attracted to the dazzling color and exotic qualities of the American South, the Caribbean, Latin America, and modern French painting. Nomad Exquisite illustrates this shift in the later poems of Harmonium.

Even so, orientalism left its mark, in delicacy of effect and in such details as 'Utamaro's beauties,' 'umbrellas in Java,' and 'a woman of Lhassa.'" The latter refers to the final stanza of Anecdote of Men by the Thousands.

The dress of a woman in Llhassa,
In its place,
Is an invisible element of that place
Made visible.

The phrase "Utamaro's beauties" comes from canto III of "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle":

You know how Utamaro's beauties sought
The end of love in their all-speaking braids.

The phrase "umbrellas in Java" comes from Tea.

The influence of Japanese art, specifically haiku, is also notable. The first "landscape" in Six Significant Landscapes is a case in point, as is Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird. Buttel holds that "the objectivity, indirectness, and condensation" of haiku "seem to have had a more beneficial and lasting effect on his style than the merely ornamental details of orientalism." This effect may be responsible for the sense in which he honors the Imagist injunction to "Use no superfluous word," as in such poems as Valley Candle, which refers literally to an image, and The Load Of Sugar-Cane, with its image of a red turban. Light-hearted Imagism is evident in the parakeet of The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws.