Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/wsj.2023.a910933
Bart Eeckhout, Glen MacLeod
News and Comments Bart Eeckhout and Glen MacLeod The eleventh John N. Serio Award for the Best Article Published in The Wallace Stevens Journal was awarded to Juliette Utard for her contribution entitled “Epistolary Stevens” (Spring 2021). The award was judged by a committee of three Editorial Board Members (Tony Sharpe, Rachel Malkin, and Patrick Redding). It was officially presented at the 2023 MLA Convention in San Francisco. Please join us in congratulating the author. ________ The centenary of Harmonium, commemorated in this special issue, is stimulating various public occasions in the course of 2023 as well. The President of the Wallace Stevens Society, Lisa Goldfarb, reports, for instance, that she will be organizing a three-part Roundtable at the 92nd Street Y in New York City in October and November of this year. 92NY is itself celebrating 150 years of service to cultural life in the city. ________ In its February 13, 2023, issue, The New Yorker published a poem by Mark Strand entitled “Wallace Stevens Comes Back to Read His Poems at the 92nd Street Y.” This poem was presented as having been bought by the magazine in 1994 and typeset for publication in early 1995 but somehow lost. The poem is supposed to have disappeared from the radar for more than a quarter century so that it failed to appear even in Strand’s Collected Poems. ________ The 2022 Wallace Stevens Award of the Academy of American Poets, a $100,000 lifetime achievement award “for outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry,” went to Marilyn Nelson. [End Page 267] ________ In May 2023, Helen Vendler, the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor Emerita at Harvard University and one of the most influential Stevens experts from the past half-century, was awarded a Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This is the Academy’s highest honor for excellence in the arts. We devoted a special issue of the Journal to Vendler’s achievements as a Stevens scholar and her long-term impact on the understanding of Stevens’s poetry in the fall of 2014. ________ Aaron Caycedo-Kimura and Frederick-Douglass Knowles II were the featured poets at the 2023 Rose Garden Reading, which returned to Elizabeth Park in Hartford, Connecticut, after last year’s move to a nearby church. Originally planned on June 17 with Cristina J. Baptista as a speaker instead of Mr. Caycedo-Kimura, the reading had to be postponed due to weather conditions and was rescheduled to September 9. The event was sponsored by the Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens with the cooperation of the Elizabeth Park Conservancy. Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is the author of two collections of poetry whose honors include a MacDowell Fellowship, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize. Frederick-Douglass Knowles II, the author of BlackRoseCity, is a Professor of English at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, Connecticut, and the inau
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/wsj.2023.a910918
Kathryn Mudgett
Harmonium in a Time of War: Stevens and Contemporary Ukrainian Poets Kathryn Mudgett You do not know the things that are taught by him who falls. I do know. —Eugène Lemercier, letter of October 15, 1914 IntroductIon: RegardIng the PaIn of Others IS IT POSSIBLE to convey the experience of war to others through language? Those of us who have regarded war from a distance, from a safe country, or city, or home, are not privy to the experience of those in war zones, as are soldiers, military support staff, or civilians, to whom war comes expectedly through engagement with the enemy or unexpectedly through an incendiary device or unprovoked attack. To suggest we can imagine their pain or fear is to trivialize their lived experience. Yet war can affect our psyche as well, even if we remain observers from afar. Susan Sontag has called “Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country . . . a quintessential modern experience.” Our access to conflicts through digital, social, and broadcast media allows us real-time tracking of events in other hemispheres and time zones: “Wars are now also living room sights and sounds” (18). Our psychic proximity to war began with the early modern period itself, what Sontag calls the “era of shock . . . in 1914.” Language suddenly seemed incapable of conveying the horrors of the trenches: “The nightmare of suicidally lethal military engagement from which the warring countries were unable to extricate themselves . . . seemed to many to have exceeded the capacity of words to describe” (25). Philip Larkin, born four years after the end of World War I, memorialized the psychological break with our past relationship to war in “MCMXIV.” As British men wait “patiently” in “long uneven lines” to sign up for war service, “Grinning as if it were all / An August Bank Holiday lark,” the speaker marks the end of their innocent world: “Never such innocence, / Never before or since, / As changed itself to past / Without a word” (Larkin 127). Contrast this with Thomas Hardy’s 1914 poem “Channel Firing,” where God speaks to the dead awakened by “great guns” off-shore: [End Page 210] “It’s gunnery practice out at sea / Just as before you went below; / The world is as it used to be” (285). Perhaps “as it used to be” in its belligerent tendencies, but with a diabolical lethality unknown before. Wallace Stevens felt an ineluctable break with the past even before the outbreak of what was then known as the Great War. He described the decades before the war as a time of “happy oblivion” for many, when “the sea was full of yachts and the yachts were full of millionaires.” This prosperous period “was like a stage-setting that since then has been taken down and trucked away” (CPP 788). When the theater had been “changed / To something else,” Stevens had to “learn the speech of the place,” to “construct a new stage” from which to address his “invisible audience” (CPP 218–19). This task remains so for poets: to find words that will suff
战争时期的风琴:史蒂文斯与当代乌克兰诗人凯瑟琳·马吉特你不知道跌倒的人教给你的东西。我知道。——欧格伦·莱默西耶，1914年10月15日的信引言:关于他人的痛苦是否有可能通过语言向他人传达战争的经历?我们这些从远处看待战争的人，从安全的国家、城市或家园来看战争，并不了解那些在战区的人的经历，就像士兵、军事支援人员或平民一样，对他们来说，战争是预料之中的，要么是与敌人交战，要么是意外地通过燃烧装置或无端攻击。认为我们可以想象他们的痛苦或恐惧是轻视他们的生活经历。然而，战争也会影响我们的心灵，即使我们只是远处的旁观者。苏珊·桑塔格说:“作为一个旁观者，灾难发生在另一个国家……”一种典型的现代体验。”我们通过数字媒体、社交媒体和广播媒体了解冲突，使我们能够实时跟踪其他半球和时区的事件:“战争现在也是客厅里的景象和声音”(18)。我们对战争的心理接近始于近代早期，桑塔格称之为“震惊时代”。1914年。”语言突然间似乎无法传达战壕中的恐怖:“交战各国无法自拔的自杀式致命军事交战的噩梦……对许多人来说似乎已经超出了语言的能力来描述。第一次世界大战结束四年后出生的菲利普·拉金(Philip Larkin)在《MCMXIV》中纪念了我们与过去战争关系的心理决裂。当英国男人“耐心地”在“长长的不平衡的队伍”中等待参军时，“笑得好像这就是一切/八月银行假日的百灵鸟”，说话者标志着他们天真世界的结束:“从来没有这样的天真，/从来没有之前或之后，/变成了过去/没有一句话”(拉金127)。与此形成对比的是，托马斯·哈代在1914年的诗《海峡射击》(Channel Firing)中，上帝对那些被离岸的“大炮”唤醒的死者说话:“这是海上的射击练习/就像你下到海底之前一样;/世界还是过去的样子”(285)。也许是“一如既往”的好战倾向，但却有着前所未有的恶魔般的杀伤力。华莱士·史蒂文斯(Wallace Stevens)甚至在第一次世界大战爆发之前就感到与过去不可避免地决裂了。他将战前的几十年描述为许多人“快乐遗忘”的时期，当时“海上满是游艇，游艇上满是百万富翁”。这个繁荣时期“就像一个舞台布景，从那时起就被拆掉，用卡车运走了”(CPP 788)。当剧院被“改变/变成别的东西”时，史蒂文斯不得不“学习这个地方的语言”，“构建一个新的舞台”，从这个舞台上向他的“看不见的观众”讲话(CPP 218-19)。诗人的任务仍然是:寻找适合他们生活时代的语言。战争及其破坏力仍然是我们这个时代的中心问题。与德国哲学家西奥多·阿多诺(Theodor Adorno)的断言“奥斯维辛之后写诗是野蛮的”(“文化”第34页)相呼应，乌克兰诗人阿纳斯塔西娅·阿法纳西娃(Anastasia Afanasieva)问道:“在……之后还能有诗吗?”/ krasnyi - lunch，顿涅茨克，卢甘斯克/ After /将休息的尸体与垂死的人分开/将饥饿的人与散步的人分开[?]演讲者列举了顿巴斯地区的城镇，这些城镇自2014年以来都遭受了暴力的冲击，他表示，面对战争，“诗歌变成了‘自恋的胡言乱语’。”社会交流变成了一场斗争:“不可能说别的，/说话变得不可能”(Maksymchuk and Rosochinsky 17;凯文·沃恩和玛丽亚·霍蒂姆斯基译)。阿多诺和阿法纳西娃都认为，针对人类的蓄意暴力会腐蚀一个社会，使其无法通过艺术的恢复性语言来应对野蛮行为。但阿多诺和阿法纳西耶娃对这些威胁的回应都不恰当。阿多诺在多年的批评和歪曲之后，澄清了他关于奥斯维辛的陈述:[J]只是……
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/wsj.2023.a910921
Abdul-Karim Mustapha, Jonah Shallit, Jungmin Yoo
Poetic Models of History and Time in Harmonium Abdul-Karim Mustapha, Jonah Shallit, and Jungmin Yoo IN HARMONIUM, Wallace Stevens builds poetic models of history and time, juxtaposing quotidian and historical chronologies to capture the interrelations between ephemeral moments and grand narratives. Stevens thinks historically while remaining critical of history, searching across time for poetic subjects while steadfastly refusing to “play the flat historic scale” with them (CPP 11). As has been widely noted, the supposed objectivity of the historical method became the target of criticism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings, for example, the rumination of historical consciousness endangers the mere act of living (“Uses” 62), while in Hayden White’s formulation, historical telling reshapes disparate events into narratives of a completed diachronic process, necessarily sorting the stuff of life into cause and effect, significant and insignificant (6). From such a perspective, history unfolds as an encyclopedic repository of moments abstracted from mundane experiences and organized by temporal linearity. But might there be a different way to envision history? How might one give expression to everyday moments and experiences left out by grand narratives? And to what extent can poetry offer an alternative to the standard ways of interpreting history and time? Rereading Harmonium as Stevens’s attempt to wrestle with such questions, this essay explores the ways in which his poems break down the grand narrative of history and its steady, onward-moving temporality into recurring moments of ephemerality lived and felt at the level of the everyday. Stevens’s poetic imagination reconceptualizes history as an outburst of fluttering moments interwoven through an idiosyncratic temporality, and this conception of history resonates with the Nietzschean notion of eternal recurrence as well as a Paterian aesthetics that consecrates the sensuous moment. In Harmonium, Stevens presents poetry as an alternative historical method in its own right. The type of temporality that Stevens is interested in shifts attention away from linear progression and toward small moments of ephemerality, rupture, and recurrence. He terms this modality “perpetual undulation” in “The Place of the Solitaires” (CPP 47), a poem that envisions the titular site as a place saturated with a constant renewal of motions and noises following one after another. Here, renewal happens primarily as the recurrence of the same in the undulating forms of “restless iteration” (CPP 48). [End Page 236] Similar imagery reappears throughout Harmonium, as in “The Comedian as the Letter C,” where the heroic Crispin’s grand colonial ambitions slip away in the “motionless march” of chirping crickets and other mundane and pastoral rhythms (CPP 34). Stevens’s attention to these undulations of rhythmic repetition, like the “endless tread” of Rosenbloom’s mourners in “Cortèg
阿卜杜勒-卡里姆·穆斯塔法、乔纳·沙利特和刘俊民在《和谐》一书中，华莱士·史蒂文斯建立了历史和时间的诗意模型，将日常生活和历史年表并列，以捕捉短暂时刻和宏大叙事之间的相互关系。史蒂文斯在对历史持批判态度的同时进行历史思考，在时间长河中寻找诗意的主题，同时坚定地拒绝用它们“演奏平坦的历史音阶”(CPP 11)。正如人们普遍注意到的那样，在19世纪末和20世纪，历史方法的所谓客观性成为了批评的目标。例如，在弗里德里希·尼采(Friedrich Nietzsche)的著作中，对历史意识的反思危及单纯的生活行为(“Uses”62)，而在海登·怀特(Hayden White)的表述中，历史叙事将完全不同的事件重新塑造成一个完整的历时过程的叙事，必然将生活中的东西分类为因果、重要和无关紧要(6)。历史就像百科全书一样，从平凡的经历中抽象出来，并按时间线性组织起来。但有没有另一种看待历史的方式呢?一个人如何表达被宏大叙事遗漏的日常时刻和经历?在多大程度上，诗歌可以为解释历史和时间的标准方式提供另一种选择?重读《和谐》是史蒂文斯试图与这些问题作斗争的作品，本文探讨了他的诗歌是如何将历史的宏大叙事及其稳定、向前发展的短暂性分解为在日常生活中反复出现的短暂时刻的。史蒂文斯的诗意想象将历史重新定义为一种特殊的时间性交织在一起的飘动时刻的爆发，这种历史概念与尼采的永恒再现概念以及帕特利亚美学的共鸣，帕特利亚美学将感官时刻神圣化。在《和谐》一书中，史蒂文斯将诗歌作为一种独立的历史研究方法。史蒂文斯感兴趣的暂时性类型将注意力从线性进展转移到短暂、断裂和复发的小时刻。他在《孤独者之地》(The Place of The Solitaires, CPP 47)中将这种形态称为“永恒的波动”，这首诗将名义上的地点想象成一个充满了不断更新的运动和噪音的地方，一个接一个。在这里，更新主要发生在“不安宁迭代”的波动形式中相同的重复(CPP 48)。类似的形象在《Harmonium》中反复出现，比如在《The comedy as The Letter C》中，英勇的克里斯平(Crispin)的宏大殖民野心在蟋蟀啁啾的“静止行军”和其他世俗和田园节奏中悄然消逝(CPP 34)。史蒂文斯对这些有节奏重复的波动的关注，就像罗森布鲁姆在“为罗森布鲁姆而唱的歌”(CPP 64)中哀悼者的“无尽的脚步”，暗示了与尼采的永恒轮回概念的亲密关系，或者“所有事物的无条件和无限重复的循环过程”(Ecce 273-74)。尼采哲学对存在的完成或整体不太感兴趣，而更感兴趣的是存在的可能性的制定，它们的多种形成方式，以及它们无尽的展开。尼采的时间必然是一个“不安”的问题，正如内德·卢卡切指出的(7)，因为时间的持续时间是永远的，总是永恒的。通过对时间的双重运作进行诗意的表达——在尼采的意义上，时间是短暂的，但却是永恒的——史蒂文斯承认了一个循环中每个时期的活力所创造的积极可能性。史蒂文斯对时间的召唤具有启发式的功能，引导读者进入无顺序、无约束和无限的节奏和波动。因此，重新定义的时间需要另一种历史方法:按时间顺序记录重大事件不再是捕捉《和谐》中非线性、递归时间感的合适模型。在永恒的循环中反复出现的短暂时刻，不仅违背了时间顺序，而且也相信，为了被记录，时刻必须是伟大的:平凡或普通，只要它不断地被重复，也可能成为一个“永恒波动”的场所。当史蒂文斯把“一个世纪的风浓缩在一口气”，或者发现Crispin剩下的整个生命“缩小到一个声音的弹奏……
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/wsj.2023.a910915
Charles Altieri
Stevens as Modernist: The Intensities of Harmonium Charles Altieri FOR THIS CELEBRATION of Harmonium’s centenary, my central concern is to provide an account of how I see crucial aspects of the book as establishing the most intelligent and possibly the most intensely moving of the founding poetic texts in American modernism. I mean by “modernist” an imaginative resistance to Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Romantic intellectual practices achieved primarily by stylistic means. Modernist strategies seek to release potential affective and contemplative investments blocked by these orientations of consciousness. My guide here is Wallace Stevens’s interest in Friedrich Nietzsche. But for now I will be content with mentioning B. J. Leggett’s superb commentary on Stevens’s interest in that philosopher.1 I have to devote my time instead to arguing that Stevens’s 1923 volume is considerably more experimental in its pursuit of imaginative processes for mapping new ways of thinking, feeling, and writing than is T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. In my view, Eliot’s poem is the best Victorian poem ever written, with essentially the same laments as Matthew Arnold’s “The Scholar-Gypsy,” but modernized in two important ways. Rather than envisioning the poem as an expressive act by a speaker, Eliot treats the poem as virtually an expressive act performed by a culture in need of a cure for its anomie. In order to have what seems almost the entire white Euro-American culture represent itself, Eliot has to deploy a full modernist array of stylistic innovations—from the force of acute juxtapositions to devices that produce a continually incomplete presentation, where what is not said often seems more telling than the actual words spoken. The second mode of modernization is thematic and structural. The poem does not merely lament the death of god but foregrounds by means of the suffering the poem exhibits a need for something like a global religious conversion made appealing most strikingly by Eliot’s invocation of Sanskrit wisdom. But in this poem the wisdom cannot be acted upon because the three kernels of wisdom must be interpreted in conceptual terms, and interpretation inevitably reinstitutes the modes of self-interest and self-concealment that were major features of the cultural problems producing a waste land in the first place. [End Page 156] What does Stevens do differently that more fully adapts modernist stylistic innovations to what are plausible cultural needs? Let me enumerate the ways by commenting on five particular poems, with the final poem enabling me to offer some comments about the volume as a whole. My opening discussion will be of an intimately connected pair of poems stressing Stevens’s sense of the intellectual crisis he thought poetry had to address. The first dramatic gesture captures the difficulties involved in escaping Romantic ideals grounded in the powers of subjective expression. “Nuances of a Theme by Williams” dramatizes William Carlos W
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