Wallace Stevens and the definition of a late-modernist.

Depending on one’s definition, the artistic and literary period known as modernism ended with the Second World War. Such a definition, however, does not account for the striking style of American poet Wallace Stevens, hence the usefulness of the moniker “late modernism”. A precise time frame for late modernism is hard to pin down. By its nature, the modernist movement was rule defying, thus allowing for a fuzzy understanding of start and end dates. It is clear that the poetry of Wallace Stevens falls clearly into the modernist collective, though is more precisely defined as late modernism for a few key reasons. First, the bulk of Stevens’ work was published decades after the early modernists began production, with key volumes such as The Rock (1954) and Late Poems (1955) being published not long before Stevens’ death in 1955 (at age 75). [By comparison, consider Freud published ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ in 1899, Eliot’s The Waste Land first published 1922, Ballet mécanique first screened in 1924.] Second, Stevens was still attempting to resolve modernist issues such as defiance of the social conventions, and a rejection of mimesis, however he was doing so as much in response to earlier modernists as he was forging new ground himself. Third, Stevens was largely writing toward the end of his life and career, and as such his work mostly tended to embody evidence of a “late style” (a term coined by Theodor Adorno in his study of Beethoven), such as a deeper contemplation of the natural world, and the purpose of existence.

Stevens’ style is well described as abstract and elliptical. This style is exemplified in his poem ‘Note on Moonlight’, published in the collection of The Rock. The poems in this volume are mostly of a contemplative style, typically revelling in Stevens’ love of the natural world. In this particular poem, Stevens uses a contemplation of the moon and its light to trigger an examination of the nature of his existence and the possibility of alternate worlds and realities. At once this poem is different from earlier poets writing on nature as a metaphor for the human condition, such as William Wordsworth in ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’ or Percy Bysshe Shelly in ‘Ode to the West Wind’, and as such, Stevens identifies himself as a modernist poet. In each of these earlier poems (both typical of the Romantic period), observations of nature and a description of the scene being considered takes precedence over conclusions one might draw from the scene as to the purpose of existence and the state of the world. They are markedly different from Stevens stylistically as well, as both have easily identifiable rhyming and metrical patterns. Stevens, however, writes without attention to rhyme or metre, instead focusing on extensive tropological language, namely extended metaphor and simile. One sees this from the first stanza, where he begins speaking of “the one moonlight” illuminating the ordinariness and impersonal nature of the world, or, “the mere objectiveness of things.” In the middle of this statement he also includes a simile comparing the moonlight with a poet disenchanted with the “sameness of his various universe”.

Putting aside style for a moment, the content of this verse is markedly different from its Romantic forebears, and notably modern in its tone and approach. Stevens’ poem recalls the writings of T. S. Eliot, these first four lines for example akin to sections of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917), and there are many more such comparisons to be had. Not only here is Stevens forging his own conclusions with regard to the meaning of life, he is doing so through a study of nature, whilst rejecting mimesis and the previous century’s conventions, and instead recalling earlier modernists at the same time.

Back to style, in ‘Note on Moonlight’, Stevens also manipulates diction and punctuation to great effect. Rather than the metrical and rhyming regularity of aforementioned Romantic examples, Stevens’ lines are weighed down by multi-syllabic words, frequent caesura (i.e. line breaks, for example through use of a comma) and end-stop lines, alliteration and assonance. For example, many of these are seen in the seventh line of the poem, “Of what one sees, the purpose that comes first,”. Here, alliteration is rife as like sounds are repeated in the first half of the line in “what” and “one”, and an “s” sound is repeated in the second half of the line in “purpose”, “comes” and “first”. The line is also broken up through use of a comma. The effect of all this is to dramatically slow the pace of the verse, achieving a more contemplative air, and to heighten the gravity of Stevens’ reflections on the universe and its meaning. Whilst such stylistic techniques are not new, and some were seen together in much earlier poetry, for example Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, the use of them all, together with the weight of his content, rejection of poetic convention and recollection of earlier modernists, mark Stevens as without question a modernist poet. One is then prompted to ask, though: is he best classified as a late-modernist poet, or an early post-modernist poet?