Review of Harmonium
1924 essay by a frustrated Edmund Wilson.
March 19, 1924
Harmonium, by Wallace Stevens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2.00.
r. Wallace Stevens is the master of a style: that is the most remarkable thing about him. His gift for combining words is fantastic but sure: even when you do not know what he is saying, you know that he is saying it well. He derives plainly from several French sources of the last fifty years but he never--except for a fleeting phrase or two--really sounds like any of them. You could not mistake even a title by Wallace Stevens for a title by anyone else: Invective Against Swans, Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores, A High-Toned Old Christian Woman, The Emperor of Ice-Cream, Exposition of the Contents of a Cab, The Bird with the Coppery Keen Claws, Two Figures in Dense Violet Night, Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion, and Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.
These titles also represent Mr. Stevens's curious ironic imagination at its very best. The poems themselves--ingenious, charming and sometimes beautiful as they are--do not always quite satisfy the expectation aroused by the titles. When you read a few poems of Mr. Stevens, you get the impression from the richness of his verbal imagination that he is a poet of rich personality, but when you come to read the whole volume through you are struck by a sort of aridity. Mr. Stevens, who is so observant and has so distinguished a fancy, seems to have emotion neither in abundance nor in intensity. He is ironic a little in Mr. Eliot's manner; but he is not poignantly, not tragically ironic. Emotion seems to emerge only furtively in the cryptic images of his poetry, as if it had been driven, as he seems to hint, into the remotest crannies of sleep or disposed of by being dexterously turned into exquisite amusing words. Nothing could be more perfect in its tone and nothing by itself could be more satisfactory than such a thing as Last Looks at the Lilacs. But when we have gone all through Mr. Stevens, we find ourselves putting to him the same question which he, in the last poem of his book, puts To a Roaring Wind:
What syllable are you seeking,
Vocallissimus,
In the distances of sleep?
Speak it.
March 19, 1924
Harmonium, by Wallace Stevens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2.00.
r. Wallace Stevens is the master of a style: that is the most remarkable thing about him. His gift for combining words is fantastic but sure: even when you do not know what he is saying, you know that he is saying it well. He derives plainly from several French sources of the last fifty years but he never--except for a fleeting phrase or two--really sounds like any of them. You could not mistake even a title by Wallace Stevens for a title by anyone else: Invective Against Swans, Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores, A High-Toned Old Christian Woman, The Emperor of Ice-Cream, Exposition of the Contents of a Cab, The Bird with the Coppery Keen Claws, Two Figures in Dense Violet Night, Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion, and Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.
These titles also represent Mr. Stevens's curious ironic imagination at its very best. The poems themselves--ingenious, charming and sometimes beautiful as they are--do not always quite satisfy the expectation aroused by the titles. When you read a few poems of Mr. Stevens, you get the impression from the richness of his verbal imagination that he is a poet of rich personality, but when you come to read the whole volume through you are struck by a sort of aridity. Mr. Stevens, who is so observant and has so distinguished a fancy, seems to have emotion neither in abundance nor in intensity. He is ironic a little in Mr. Eliot's manner; but he is not poignantly, not tragically ironic. Emotion seems to emerge only furtively in the cryptic images of his poetry, as if it had been driven, as he seems to hint, into the remotest crannies of sleep or disposed of by being dexterously turned into exquisite amusing words. Nothing could be more perfect in its tone and nothing by itself could be more satisfactory than such a thing as Last Looks at the Lilacs. But when we have gone all through Mr. Stevens, we find ourselves putting to him the same question which he, in the last poem of his book, puts To a Roaring Wind:
What syllable are you seeking,
Vocallissimus,
In the distances of sleep?
Speak it.