Harmonium (poetry Collection) - 'true Subject' Versus 'the Poetry of The Subject'

'true Subject' Versus 'the Poetry of The Subject'

Stevens's symbolism is in aid of a polarity between "things as they are" and "things imagined". This is at least often the true subject of his poetry. However, as the exchange between Joan Richarson and Helen Vendler attests, the true subject of a poem can be a matter of some controversy. For one thing, it can look 'up' to the ideas about imagination/reality, or it can look 'down' to the problems or pathologies of Stevens's life.

Up for grabs is whether "things as they are" are to be understood in naturalistic terms (a tree is a tree) or in idealist or perspectival terms (a tree reduces to the various tree-perspectives) or Kantian terms (there is something, whatever it is, that is responsible for the tree, or the various tree-perspectives: Kant's ding-an-sich). The tree in Of the Surface of Things poses an interesting test of such philosophical interpretations. Also there is a moment in Stevens's poetic development when he realizes that the polarity of things as they are and things imagined is not safe, when red bleeds into blue in Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks, Stevens's brutal encounter with Berserk. (See also The Cuban Doctor for a comparable encounter with the Indian.)

With an emphatic warning about the danger of depending on mechanical symbol mapping to understand Stevens's poems, one can propose that imagination, order and the ideal are often symbolized by blue, the moon, the polar north, winter, music, poetry, and art. Actuality and disorder are often represented by yellow, the sun, the tropic south, summer, physical nature. For instance, sun and moon represent this duality in Harmonium's The Comedian as the letter C, in which the protagonist, Crispin, conceives his voyage of self-discovery as a poet to be

An up and down between two elements,
A fluctuating between sun and moon,

Sun and Moon comprise an important polarity for Stevens. according to Edward Kessler, who also picks out North and South, Music and the Sea, the Statue and the Wilderness, and Colors and "Domination of Black".

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