Wallace Stevens : a poetry beguiled by the sublime

Abstract

This present study seeks to throw light on the sublime poetry of Wallace Stevens. It claims that Stevens's poetry was, in one important way, made possible and simultaneously brought to an end by a perpetual fascination with the idea of the 'beyond'. The introduction throws light on the notion of the 'sublime' as understood by some of its most important exponents and outlines some of the ways in which distinguished critics of Stevens have approached the notion of the sublime in his works. The first chapter reveals that Stevens's relatively late first publication voices an uncertainty that leads the poet to an early renunciation of poetry. The poet's renewed faith in poetry, after thirteen long years, proclaims his deep commitment to the realm 'beyond' where 'things are exactly as they are'. The second chapter, in paying close heed to Martin Heidegger's discourse on language and 'being', explores the relation between the realm 'beyond' and the ec-static experience of the Orphic poet who succeeds in bringing the world into being. The third chapter sets out to demonstrate that Stevens's growing distrust in the power of the 'word' leads him to the awareness that due to the fictionality of poetry the desired sublimity of 'things as they are' may never in the end be brought forth. The fourth chapter consists of a close reading of those instances in Stevens's most poignant late poems, where it is apparent that Stevens expresses a desire to re-turn to the moment before the first 'word' was spoken. The writings of Maurice Blanchot here prove indispensable for a true appreciation of Stevens's thematic concerns in this period.