From 1922, it’s called “A High-Toned
Old Christian Woman”, and it also marks the first use of a concept that would
later obsess Stevens, most famously in “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” that
of necessary fictions humans need to create to live full lives. This poem is
pretty famous in its own right. Here it is:
Poetry is the
supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral
law and make a nave of it
And from the
nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience
is converted into palms,
Like windy
citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in
principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing
law and make a peristyle,
And from the
peristyle project a masque
Beyond the
planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by
epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally
converted into palms,
Squiggling like
saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are
where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that
in the planetary scene
Your
disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their
muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such
novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and
tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely
may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial
hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make
widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will.
Wink most when widows wince.
Imagine, if you can, the curse of being born a poet in a household where the highest
value is fealty to the biblical word. The chief requirement for being a poet –
a topic Stevens would understandably come to explore time and again – is to take
direction from an oracle known as The Muse. She is, as has been demonstrated as
far back as Plato, an exclusive mistress who does not take the received wisdom of
others kindly, especially that which is designed to organize – a.k.a. control –
human society. Instead she urges her acolytes to remain in a state of
intoxicated mystery, forever reaching just beyond the surface of things for a truth
that dissolves just as it moves beyond the thing. The “poetry,” epithets and
hymns of the Christian religious tradition enforce, on the other hand, a rigid
set of beliefs in terms of right action, consequences and the will to
salvation. On the surface, however, they seem
to be poetry, the only true poetry, in fact, a pious believer (like Stevens’
mother) would unwaveringly conclude.
To be denied, thus, one’s calling to live life in the
heightened state of poetic awareness is in a real sense a tragedy – at least to
the sense of identity, place in the world and in the family. It is a primal
wound, in fact, so deep, it cannot be looked at directly, but deflected with a
series of “winces,” turned, in other words, into a gay but somewhat painful
comedy.
Stevens enlists help for his cause in the form of his
college mentor George Santayana, the philosopher of beauty, who argued in Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (the
book he published when he was friends with Stevens at Harvard) that religion
and poetry are both, equally, fictions, in that they express our longing for the ideal and give our lives direction. Aha, said the young Stevens, sharpening
his blade, but the older Stevens, having let for the sake of familial piety the
youthful possibility of poetry slip away (except in the courting of a woman his
parents disapproved of), knew all too well how impossible it was to use such a subtle
philosophical rock to move a high-toned old Christian woman from her hard place.
But now, almost a decade after her death, firmly ensconced in his poetry vapor
bar, he can carry on the argument in his head, on his own terms.
Suitably soused, he one-ups Santayana by declaring that
poetry is, in fact, the superior illusion (“the supreme fiction, madam”). He
proceeds, with an argument that grows progressively more convoluted, to tell us
why. The alert reader will detect the anger in the passage that follows:
Take the moral law and make a nave
of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.
It is at once an elegant and clear-headed description of how
religion may be perceived as a “fiction” as well as a vicious put-down of the
belief system of people like his mother. The emotional sense is poetically
expressed through the repetition of the word “nave.” Literally, a nave is the
central part of a Christian church, where the parishioners worship, but it
sounds exactly like “knave,” a dishonest or unscrupulous person. In the context
this suggests that the Christian church uses “moral law” (implied to be
objective in some sense) to make dishonest fools of people, who proceed to help
the church construct a “haunted” afterlife (implied to be a fantasy).
The attack only intensifies from here, if that’s possible:
Thus, / The conscience is converted
into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
Again, on one level it’s a seemingly innocuous philosophical proposition. The
believers transform their intuitively known moral law into grace through the use of symbols, in order to identify with the ideal who will bring to Earth the higher
law (in the form of the palm branches Jesus’ followers spread for his final
return to Jerusalem). They become vessels (cithern is a hollow-bodied stringed
instrument somewhere between a lute and a guitar) who live in the desire for God’s word. The passage could equally be read, however, as its messy poetic antithesis: that belief in the Christian dogmas turns the human conscience (and
by extension the soul) into a meaningless symbol, to be left with no more
consciousness and will than a musical instrument on which the meaningless choir book is played. This sense is heightened, once again, by word sound.
The word “cithern” echoes “cistern,” a holding tank for water that is at its linguistic
root a prison or dungeon but in Stevens time most commonly referred to toilet
tanks.
This bizarre Dr. Philosophy and Mr. Poetry schizophrenia
continues as if Mr. Poetry isn’t even
there: "We agree in principle. That's clear.” In other words,
the philosopher logically may be able to find some common ground (in theory)
for his sagacious understanding of the root of religious practice. It’s funny,
pathetic, bitter and tragic as the poet tries to assert it. This poet, like so many before and after, has a hard time explaining himself to others.
This “opposing law” of poetry is not exactly, however, what the
speaker has in mind with which to “make a peristyle … (a continuous porch of Greco/Roman columns around the perimeter of buildings, often enclosing, as in
this case, an courtyard) [that will] project a masque (a lavish dramatic
entertainment in the royal courts of Europe, usually based on classical rather
than Christian themes) / Beyond the planets.” The “opposing law” clearly
references – as a philosopher undoubtedly would – the ancient world, which had
its own moral laws and monuments to higher powers. It is opposing only because
it was opposed and ultimately defeated by Christianity, not because it
represents some contrasting principle of darkness or evil. The reference to
planets is also sly, given that the stars and planets were understood and named
in the classical world, while the Christian world was often mired in the cosmological
confusion created by the Bible. The idea is that the classical ideals could
aspire beyond the understood planets, to the great unknown, with the
implication that this was something unavailable to the Christian tradition.
The Greek alternative referenced here is also, of course,
the birthplace of poetry muses and man as the measure of all things. “Thus” it offers a richer source of expression than the rigid church:
Thus, our bawdiness, / Unpurged
by epitaph, indulged at last, / Is equally converted into palms, / Squiggling
like saxophones.
The Greek tradition honored the principle of life by
elevating the temple prostitute as the most revered of humans. The term “bawd”
means prostitute, so it’s not as simple as saying sexual debauchery is equal to
religious ritual (although that is clearly what the passage suggests). “Indulged
at last” invokes the firm hand of puritanical repression yes, but “Unpurged by
epitaph” evokes a focus on life rather than the Christian preoccupation with
death, or rather, viewing life only in terms of a final accounting. A less constricted, more sexual human “is equally converted” (bringing back Santayana’s
formulation) to palms, a symbol of victory over death that ironically predates Greek
as well as Christian cultures but was shared by both.* The meaning, of course,
is that immortality is not limited to the Christian religion. But into this
straightforward formulation comes again our Mr. Poetry, with the line that I
personally would kill for: “palms, squiggling like saxophones.” It’s hard to
get lustier than saxophones, or more evocative of the
heightened state of being our decadent modern life can create for us. Yet the
simile, for all the rich associations it connects, does not mean anything
literal. The heaven of poetry is equally as elusive as that of Christianity.
Thus, “palm for palm, / Madame, we are where we began.” Neither
the poet nor the unnamed Christian woman have unobstructed access into ultimate
truth. And neither Stevens nor his mother can ever find common ground in what
are, truly, separate spheres of reality.
“Allow, / Therefore,” – the note of desperate pleading
comically made to seem like an uncontestable formulation …
that in the planetary scene / Your
disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed, / Smacking their muzzy bellies in
parade, / Proud of such novelties of the sublime, / Such tink and tank and
tunk-a-tunk-tunk, / May, merely may, madame, / whip from themselves / A jovial
hullabaloo among the spheres.
The key word here is “flagellants,” a long-standing Christian
cult who furiously whip themselves in public while singing hymns in order to pay
penance and honor the suffering of Jesus. They are qualified as “disaffected”
(unwilling to support the authorities) because for most of Christian history such
practices were considered heretical, to the point that many flagellants were
burned at the stake! They are “well-stuffed”
because, like play animals and dolls, their insides (in this case blood) come
out when the skin is ripped. They exhibit the Christian sin of “pride” in “smacking”
[hitting] their “muzzy” [woozy] “bellies on parade” [in public display]. Stevens
drippingly dismisses their novelty “of the sublime,” presenting them, perhaps the
most extreme yet pious of true believers, as representative of the
Christian faith. He even mimics the sound they make as they walk along whipping
themselves, as if it was a popular tune. While the bitter poet has scorched the
earth with his high-rhetorical bludgeon, the philosopher is still willing to
concede that this self-flagellation “may, merely may” create a connection with
the higher planes of consciousness, or as the poet more sensually (and
quotably) shows (rather than tells), “a jovial hullaballoo among the spheres.”
Then, just as we begin to believe this poetic rant
disguised as argument can’t get any weirder, widows make their appearance:
This will make widows wince. But
fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most
when widows wince.
What is the “this” that “will make widows wince?” The
sight of zealots whipping themselves? The reminder in the sight of heavenly
hullaballoo that their husbands are no longer with them? The blasphemy of
comparing the penitential sacrament to something as unsacred as poetry? Instead
of clarifying, the poem distances itself further into the mystery: “fictive
things / Wink as they will.” Leaving aside the enigma of just what a “fictive
thing” is, “wink” could be read in any of three ways: to close and open one eye
to acknowledge something shared between two, to pretend not to notice something
bad or illegal, or to shine or flash intermittently, like a star. “Fictive
things”, read as things created by the imagination, poetry specifically (since
it is “the supreme fiction”), really do all of these kinds of winking: they
acknowledge shared secrets and jokes, avoid topics that aren’t “poetic,” and
can assume the quality of natural or ethereal objects. As we’ve seen, these
qualities are not predictable, and cannot be produced systematically, they more
or less naturally appear (“as they will”).
There’s a marvelous sense of freedom expressed here, that
the responses of the widows (for whom we are presumably supposed to feel
compassion) don’t have to be explained or accounted for, because the spirit of
poetry metes out its own, ineffable sense of justice. The muse, rather than
being traumatized by the sight of widows/mothers wincing, is actually
strengthened by it, because the emotional material that comes out of such pain
creates great art. Thus after purging all the anger of being denied, the poet
can finally earn out of the experience the palm branch of victory.
*It is also an important
symbol to Stevens, as indicated by the title of the very book we are using for
this series, The Palm at the End of the
Mind.
