Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T19:44:06.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Critics at the Harmonium: Blackmur and Winters on Stevens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

Philip Hobsbaum
Get access

Extract

It is nothing new to find critics disagreeing about a poet. What does not seem to be generally recognized, however, is that such disagreements can shed light on the work under consideration. Certainly this is the case with Wallace Stevens. The key essays on this great and difficult poet remain those by R.P. Blackmur and Yvor Winters, and they each represent a possible approach to his writings. Blackmur adopts a texrural approach, concerned mainly with Stevens's language; while Winters discusses his ideas and the nature of his themes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies , Volume 11 , December 1965 , pp. 43 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for American Studies 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Blackmur, R.P., Language as Gesture (1954), p. 221.Google Scholar
2.Stevens, Wallace, Collected Poems, pp. 55–56.Google Scholar
3.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 224.Google Scholar
4.Stevens, Wallace, Collected Poems, p. 89.Google Scholar
5.Stevens, Wallace, Collected Poems, p. 392.Google Scholar
6.Winters, Yvor, In Defense of Reason (1947), p. 69.Google Scholar
7.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 249.Google Scholar
8.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 243.Google Scholar
9.Winters, Yvor, op. cit., p. 458.Google Scholar
10.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 243.Google Scholar
11.Winters, Yvor, op. cit., p. 439.Google Scholar
12.Stevens, Wallace, Collected Poems, p. 28, 29, 32, 34, 33.Google Scholar
13.Stevens, Wallace, The Necessary Angel (1957), p. 142.Google Scholar
14.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 244.Google Scholar
15.Winters, Yvor, op. cit., p. 440.Google Scholar
16.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 245.Google Scholar
17.Winters, Yvor, op. cit., p. 440.Google Scholar
18.Blockmur, R.P., op.cit., p. 247.Google Scholar
19.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 442.Google Scholar
20.Blackmur, R.P., op.cit., p. 247.Google Scholar
21.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 442.Google Scholar
22.Winters, Yvor, op.cit.Google Scholar
23.Blackmur, R.P., op.cit., p. 248.Google Scholar
24.Blackmur, R.P., op.cit.Google Scholar
25.Stevens, Wallace, Collected Poems, p. 41.Google Scholar
26.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 443.Google Scholar
27.Blackmur, R.P., op.cit., p. 248.Google Scholar
28.Stevens, Wallace, Collected Poems, p. 34.Google Scholar
29.Blackmur, R.P., op.cit., p. 436.Google Scholar
30.Blackmur, R.P., op.cit., p. 221.Google Scholar
31.Blackmur, R.P., op.cit., p. 19.Google Scholar
32.Bewley, Marius, The Complex Fate (1952), pp. 175 ff.Google Scholar
33.Blackmur, R.P., op.cit., p. 242.Google Scholar
34.Alvarez, A., The Shaping Spirit (1958), p. 137.Google Scholar
35.Bewley, Marius, op.cit., p. 187.Google Scholar
36.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 438.Google Scholar
37.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 439.Google Scholar
38.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 431.Google Scholar
39.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 236–7.Google Scholar
40.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 433.Google Scholar
41.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 433.Google Scholar
42.Stevens, Wallace, Collected Poems, p. 66–67.Google Scholar
43.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 236.Google Scholar
44.Blackmur, R.P., op. cit., p. 236–7.Google Scholar
45.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 447.Google Scholar
46.Winters, Yvor, op.cit., p. 447–8.Google Scholar
47.Jarrell, Randall, Poetry and the Age, (1955), p. 128.Google Scholar
48.Alvarez, A., op. cit., p. 138.Google Scholar
49.The gloomy impression many critics seem to have taken away from this essay is, perhaps, partly owing to his proposition that, because of the self-imposed boundaries of his hedonism, Stevens had written himself out (Winters, op. cit., pp. 433, 444, 446). This might even have been justified from internal evidence for some years after the publication of Winters's essay, since Ideas of Order, The Man with the Blue Guitar and Parts of a World contain much verse that seems to be self-imitation and nothing which has as much to offer as the Harmonium poems already mentioned. But, like many long-lived poets, Stevens shows surprising powers of self-renewal. Transport to Summer, which came out well after Blackmur and Winters had written their essays, contains Esthetique du Mal, Less and less human, O savage spirit, The House was Quiet and the World was Calm and Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, and was accounted by Marius Bewley (op.cit., p. 189) and A. Alvarez (op. c i t., p. 125) his best book. This was followed by The Auroras of Autumn over whose author's powers the obsequies were pronounced – particularly by Randall Jarrell (op.cit., p. 132). Even this proved to be premature. The Rock, which is the final section of the definitive Collected Poems, contains work which is beginning to find acceptance among the established favourites, and three poems, The Plain Sense of Things, The World as Meditation and Note on Moonlight which, in two different appreciations of Stevens's later work, Ralph J. Mills (Gemini, Spring 1960) and D.T. Millar (Delta, Spring 1956) ranked with the best work of his early and middle periods. However, there has not been time for criticism of his later work to accrue sufficient to justify the procedure which has been adopted with Harmonium.Google Scholar