"The Course of a Particular" by Wallace Stevens

Note: I apologize for the shuffling of papers in the audio. Clearly I need a stapler. 

Mea culpa: "In a dark time" is a pyrrhic-spondee motion, not an anapest-trochee one. 

Topics discussed in this episode include: 

-The multifarious talent of Wallace Stevens
-Stevens' theory of a "Supreme Fiction"
-The incoherence of this theory
-From subjectivism to objectivism
-Stevens's poem, "The Snow Man"
-Clutch your pearls, this is free verse! 
-Accentual vs. Accentual-Syllabic meter 
-How to write with the "ghost of meter." 
-Anglo-Saxon verse is no slouch 
-It's cold outside = nihilism? 
-The fallacy most pathetic 
-Maybe things DO exist independent of my mind. Huh. 
-Less fantasizing, more listening. 
-A part apart from parts cannot be whole. Take that, mysticism. 
-Anaphora, the catnip of free verse poets and Roman rhetoricians alike. 
-It's God! It's ghosts! It's people! It's... just leaves. 
-Destruction of the self vs. destruction of self-centeredness 
-The particulars of this particular particular, and the course, of course. 

Text of the poem: 

The Course of a Particular
 
Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, 
Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less. 
It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow. 

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry. 
It is a busy cry, concerning someone else. 
And though one says that one is part of everything, 

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved; 
And being part is an exertion that declines: 
One feels the life of that which gives life as it is. 

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention, 
Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry. 
It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves, 

In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more 
Than they are in the final finding of the ear, 
in the thing Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all. 

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Art by David Anthony Klug 

Transcript

Versecraft Episode 5: Wallace Stevens, “The Course of A Particular”

(Music) 

Today we’ll be looking at a late, philosophically significant work by the modernist poet Wallace Stevens. Stevens, who lived from 1879-1955, is a poet who hardly needs an introduction. Contemporary critical opinion often identifies him as the greatest poet of the 20th century, and whether or not we agree with this assessment, it’s clear that he had a phenomenal poetic talent: his rich and exotic diction, sensuous and evocative imagery, effortless melodiousness, mastery of both metrical and non-metrical prosody, and philosophical subtlety made him a favorite both of traditionalists, who were enamored of his aesthetic qualities and Romantic leanings, and modernists, who were fascinated by his forays into phenomenology and surrealism. 

Stevens is a fascinating figure I could spend hours talking about—for our purposes however, it is only necessary to delve into those aspects of him which will help us to better appreciate our poem for today, entitled The Course of A Particular. Apart from the intrinsic subject matter of this poem, which is interesting in itself, this piece is extrinsically interesting because of the place it occupies in Stevens’ overall body of work. This poem was written late in Stevens’ career, and to a large extent it expresses an almost unique repudiation of the philosophical perspective from which he had written the vast majority of his previous poetry. Typically, the perspective embodied in a Stevens poem is that our perceptions of reality are largely if not entirely dictated by our personal conceptions of reality—that is, our imaginations play a formative role not only in creating meaning in life, but in determining how we experience the world. For Stevens, our minds are always engaging in poetic activity, using imagination to impose what he called “ideas of order” onto reality, in the hopes of creating what he called a “supreme fiction” by which one could live one’s life. In his book of essays entitled Opus Posthumous, he writes: 

“The final belief is to believe in a fiction which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction that you believe wittingly.” 

We don’t need to reflect long upon this statement to realize that it asks the impossible: simply put, it is a contradiction in terms to genuinely believe in what you know is a fiction. Stevens attempted, both in his life and in his poetry, to use the beauty of self-conscious poetic imagination as a substitute for religion, yet found, after years of struggle, that he could not literally live a lie. This is where our poem comes in: in it, Stevens turns his back on his subjectivist fantasies and embraces an austere realism that acknowledges that things are what they are, and nothing else. It is a mature and chilling poem, written from the perspective of an old and disillusioned man who has finally attained the stoic “mind of winter” he once wrote of in his famous poem “The Snow Man:” a mind that “beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.” The poem goes like this: 

The Course of a Particular

 Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, 
 Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
 It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry.
 It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
 And though one says that one is part of everything, 

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved; 
 And being part is an exertion that declines: 
 One feels the life of that which gives life as it is. 

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention, 
 Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry. 
 It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves, 

In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more 
 Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing 
 Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all. 

            Formally speaking, the first thing we immediately notice about this poem is that it has no rhyme, and what’s more, no apparent meter. I admit that I’m here breaking my own rule for this podcast—this is not strictly speaking a poem in verse, but I think that from time to time it’s important to showcase what non-metrical poetry looks like when done well. In this case, even though we have no meter and no rhyme, we do have a very artful suggestion of meter, for two reasons. The first is that several lines in this poem do have strongly iambic rhythms. The second is the fact that the majority of the lines in this poem have six accents, and those that vary from this norm only vary by one accent more or less. Let’s take the first three lines for example: 

ToDAY the LEAVES CRY, HANGing on BRANches SWEPT by WIND

Seven accents.

YET the NOthingness of WINter beCOMES a little LESS

Five or six accents, depending on how you read it. 

and THOUGH one SAYS that ONE is PART of EVERy THING

Six accents. And note that this is also a perfect iambic hexameter line. That is, it is a line of six iambs in a row: (repeat line). Even though an iambic meter is never established in the poem at large, an iambic rhythm here suggests it. Other lines sprinkled throughout this poem also have strong iambic rhythms, which further suggests what T.S. Eliot once called the “ghost” of meter. 

Now let’s get back to accents. If all the lines in this poem did have the same number of accents, we would actually have a metrical poem. It wouldn’t be in the kind of meter we have dealt with so far, and which we usually see in modern English verse—that meter, if you remember, is built out of patterns of accented and unaccented syllables called “feet,” such as iambs and trochees, and the feet are used to count the meter. That type of meter is called accentual-syllabic meter, because it is counted by considering a combination of accents and syllables. The most precise definition of iambic pentameter, for example, is a line of ten to eleven syllables, with accents on the even numbered syllables. In the poem we are dealing with here however, we have a simpler kind of meter, called accentual meter, which only counts the number of accents in a line—the number of syllables doesn’t matter. This type of meter is perhaps best known for its use in Anglo-Saxon poetry such as Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon poetry, it must be said, has other constraints which make up for this looser meter, such as particular patterns of alliteration and caesuras which must be maintained. By suggesting accentual meter, and even occasionally iambic meter, Stevens imbues a subtle rhythm to this poem which gives it a sense of movement while still retaining its somber, plainspoken character. If you’re looking at the poem, you will also notice that it is organized into five three-line stanzas. This adds a sense of visual order to the poem which, in combination with the suggestion of meter, allows it to have the air of formal verse without technically being so. 

Now let’s dive into the meaning of this somewhat oblique poem. The first stanza reads:

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, 
 Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
 It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

            In order to understand these lines fully, we must have prior knowledge of a much earlier poem by Stevens entitled “The Snow Man.” Indeed, this poem is in some ways a response to that more famous one. In “The Snow Man,” Stevens declares that one must have a “mind of winter” “and have been cold a long time” “not to think/ of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves.” What he means is that one would have to be cold-hearted, insensitive, almost inhuman, not to be reminded of human wailing by the sound of winter wind blowing through dead leaves. At the end of that poem, Stevens remarks that such a person listening to the wind, who is “nothing himself, beholds/nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” The sublime winter setting, and the listener’s inability to humanize it, to relate it to themselves, effectively erases the listener’s identity—they become nothing. They behold “nothing that is not there,” That is, they do not project any illusory meaning onto their surroundings, and this enables them to perceive “the nothing that is:” a world of cold emptiness, devoid of meaning. 

            You may wonder if I’ve forgotten which poem we’re supposed to be analyzing here—but this background is important. Let’s read those opening lines again:

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, 
 Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
 It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

We can see now that this poem is going to be a revision of “The Snow Man.” As in that poem, Stevens speaks of the sound of the wind through leaves. He describes the leaves as “crying”—unlike the “Snow Man” he is still capable of projecting human emotions onto non-human things, a tactic which in literature is known as the “pathetic fallacy.” Later however, as we will see, he will correct this sentimental gesture. For now, he must go on to correct his past self in “The Snow Man.” He says: “Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less./It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.” He is effectively saying: “even though the leaves sound like they’re crying, I refuse to let that persuade me to view this winter landscape as melancholy and nihilistic; the nothingness of winter which I spoke of in my previous poem is not nothingness after all: one must admit the tangible presence of ice and snow.” It sounds somewhat silly to put it in these words, but this thought marks something significant: Stevens has transitioned from someone who sees the world entirely in reference to themselves and has instead learned to appreciate it objectively. He once dreaded becoming a “Snow Man—” now he can see the merit in viewing things as they are; doing so does not lead to nihilism, but simply to an encounter with reality. 

            Before we move on, I would like you to notice the aural beauty of the phrase “icy shades and shapen snow.” This is a good example of Stevens’ wonderful gift for musicality. It’s an alliteration enclosing another alliteration: icy shades, shapen snow.” Not only is this pleasant on the ears, but the soft, symmetrical sounds imply a tender, smooth beauty in the winter scene described. 

Let’s begin again and continue on to the next two lines: 

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, 
 Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
 It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry.
 It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
 
 

Here, Stevens is refusing to use the sound of the leaves to indulge himself in any flights of poetic imagination—he simply listens. He recognizes that the cry is part of a process in nature which, rather than being bound up with and dependent upon his consciousness, really has very little to do with him. 

Let’s now continue through the third stanza: 

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, 
 Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
 It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry.
 It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
 And though one says that one is part of everything, 

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved; 
 And being part is an exertion that declines: 
 One feels the life of that which gives life as it is. 

Stevens would like to use the truism that “one is a part of everything,” to embrace a mystical union with the world, a fusion of subject and object, but finds, like Bowers in Episode 1, that he cannot: his mind is resistant. It is resistant, he says, because “being part is an exertion that declines.” That is to say, the fact that he is part of everything does not bring him closer to the world, it actually separates him—he is, after all, not the whole world, but only a part, and therefore apart from other parts. His status as a part “declines” the acceptance of other parts as himself. In doing so however, he paradoxically “feels the life of that which gives life as it is.” By recognizing his own nature as a separate entity, he comes closer to understanding the nature of the cosmic order which organizes itself into separate entities in the first place. This is a complex idea, and the fact that Stevens is able to compress it into so few lines is impressive, though he does sacrifice some clarity in the process. 

Let’s move on and briefly consider the next two lines: 

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention, 
 Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry. 
 
 

            At this point, three out of the four stanzas we have considered begin with the phrase “the leaves cry.” This repetition of a phrase at the beginning of a line is called anaphora, and is a technique often used in non-metrical poems to add a sense of structure and rhythm, as well as rhetorical force. This cry, Stevens pontificates, should not be interpreted with mystical or sentimental pretensions: it is not the voice of God, nor the ghosts of heroes past, nor is it indicative of any human character. Once more, Stevens rebukes his past self in the “Snow Man,” who would have thought of “misery in the sound of the wind.” Incidentally, the phrase “smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes” is classic Stevens: an eccentrically original, borderline goofy image that is nevertheless strikingly vivid. 

Now let’s begin once more, this time reading through to the end: 

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, 
 Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
 It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry.
 It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
 And though one says that one is part of everything, 

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved; 
 And being part is an exertion that declines: 
 One feels the life of that which gives life as it is. 

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention, 
 Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry. 
 It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves, 

In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more 
 Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing 
 Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all. 

The leaves “do not transcend themselves.” They are just leaves, and that is enough. They mean nothing more than the neutral sound they present to the ear, which is however the sound of reality itself, the thing which all poetic imagination is trying so extravagantly to grasp. “At last, the cry concerns no one at all.” Whereas in “The Snow-Man” a consideration of objective reality leads to the destruction of the self, here, a consideration of objective reality leads to the destruction merely of all selfish pretentions, and an ability to exist in peace alongside the monumentally indifferent yet very existent universe. By ceasing to attempt to invent meaning, Stevens has finally allowed meaning to reveal itself to him. By giving up existential war, he has found essential peace. 

What about the title, “The Course of A Particular?” It sounds pretty dry, but it is apt and elegant, given the subject matter at hand. Stevens chose the word “particular” specifically to imply the rejection of its opposite term, “universal.” Stevens is dealing in this poem with concrete objects in themselves, not attempting to have the objects serve as symbols for other things or representatives of abstract concepts. What is the particular in question? It may be the cry of the leaves, or it may be Stevens himself—both go on a journey, a course: physically through nature, and mentally through the mind of Stevens, who sheds his preconceptions bit by bit until he comes to a full acceptance of life as it is and his relation to it.  

With all that we’ve learned and explored, let’s encounter the poem one last time as an old friend: 

The Course of a Particular

 Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, 
 Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
 It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry.
 It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
 And though one says that one is part of everything, 

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved; 
 And being part is an exertion that declines: 
 One feels the life of that which gives life as it is. 

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention, 
 Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry. 
 It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves, 

In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more 
 Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing 
 Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all.