Imagination versus Reality

One of the most consistent ideas found within Stevens’ pieces is that of the imagined versus the real and similarly the conscious versus the unconscious. When looking at his pieces as a whole it becomes easy for the reader to stream these ideas throughout the majority of them, where Stevens opinions on their relationship becomes undoubtedly clear. Despite the fact the he feels that reality cannot exist without imagination and vice versa, he does not see them as co existing together; the imagination can never fully exist in reality, as reality is actually a product of the imagination. These two components are so utterly significant to poetry, as it is essential for the reader to experience both within a piece in order to fully grasp, comprehend, and feel what the poem is truly saying. Reality is always something relatable to the reader that can connect them to the plotline or the narrators voice on an accessible level, whereas the imagination allows the reader to leave this ‘certain’ area and give a deeper meaning to something as it is carried past the factual information and into the imagined. Stevens is highly successful in intertwining the two of these elements within each of his pieces, and especially with those found in one of his later collections, “The Rock”. Practically every poem in this book harps on some aspect of nature, which is one of the most accessible subject areas to write about as nature is the simplest element of the world and is experienced by everyone. However, amidst his realistic and detailed observations of the beautiful world around him, Stevens’ ability to transform this concrete observation into something so much deeper, inquisitive, and based off of the imagination is extremely expert. While this can be found in practically all of Stevens’ poems, two of the strongest examples are his poems “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” and “The Rock”. Beginning “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” with what initially appears to be a concrete and reality-based experience in which someone “light[s] the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest” (course reader 36), Stevens swiftly transforms reality into an experience more mystical “and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good” (course reader 36). Stevens then goes on to refer to this influence of imagination as “a single shawl Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth, A light, a power, the miraculous influence” (course reader 36), which takes the characters within the poem as well as the reader to an entirely new illusory level which ignites their thoughts and brings a normally tangible experience to a fantastical journey. Stevens highly successful transformation of the real to the imagined can similarly be found within “The Rock”, where immediately he opens up by stating how “It is an illusion that we were ever alive, Lived in the houses of mother, arranged ourselves By our own motions in a freedom of air” (course reader 36). By questioning the entire existence of humankind Stevens also questions how much of a construct reality actually is from our imagination, as if reality is individually and specifically created from each person’s imagination, then how is it possible to determine whether we are living in reality, in the imagined, or in both? Stevens further this argument later on in the poem, where he determines that “The words spoken Were not and are not. It is not to be believed. The meeting at noon at the edge of the field seems like An invention, an embrace between one desperate clod And another in a fantastic consciousness, In a queer assertion of humanity” (course reader 36). In this excerpt, Stevens makes it appear as though these concrete events that have occurred in reality are only a construct of our imagination, as they are “not to be believed” and only derive from human’s individual thoughts. The line that Stevens draws between reality and the imagined can be found within practically all of his pieces, where he questions which state humans actually live in, posing concrete images juxtaposed with an imagined sense of reality which skews the reader from truly grasping what is constructed and what is not. Stevens clearly had an affixation with the human mind and the ability to intermix reality and the imagination, and his success in relaying this through his poems, which in turn juxtaposed these two ideas themselves, truly blends this line of the concrete and the imagined.