The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

178 Pages·1951·2.63 MB·English

by  Wallace Stevens

These are Borzoi Books
published by ALFRED A KNOPF
The poetry of WALLACE STEVENS
Harmonium (I 923, I 93 I, I 947)
Ideas of Order (I936)
The Man with the Blue GUltar (1937)
Parts of a World (I942, 195I)
Transport to Summer (1947)
The Auroras of Autumn ( 950 )
I
NOT E
The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937) includes Owl's
Clover; Transport to Summer (1 947) includes Es
thetique du Mal and Notes toward a Supreme Ftetion.
The Man with the Blue Guitar and Ideas of Order are
scheduled for republicatIOn in 1952 in a single volume
to carry the title The Man with the Blue Gwtar
THE
NECESSARY ANGEL
THE
ANGEL
NECESS~A.RY
Essays on Reahty and the Imagination
BY
WALLACE STEVENS
New York ALFRED A KNOPF 195 I
L C catalog card number 51-12072
~ THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK,
~, PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A KNOPF, INC
COPYRIGHT 1942, 1944, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1951 by WALL-\CE
STEVENS All TIghts reserved No part of thIS book may be repro
duced In any forin WIthout perm!SSlOn In wntmg from the pub
lISher, except by'ta revzewer who may quote bnef passages In a
revzew to be pmited In a magazme or newspaper Manufactured
m the Umted States of Amenca Publzshed Slmultaneously In
Canada by McClelland 6 Stewart Lzm!ted
FIRST EDITION
· . . I am the necessary angel of earth,
S~nce, tn my s~ght, you see the earth agam.
THE AURORAS OF AUTUMN
[vii]
INTRODUCTION
ONE FUNCTION of the poet at any time is to discover
by his own thought and feelmg what seems to him to be
poetry at that tIme Ordinanly he will dIsclose what he
nnds in his own poetry by way of the poetry itself He
exercises thIS functIon most often without being con
SCIOUS of it, so that the disclosures m rus poetry, while
they define what seems to him to be poetry, are dis
closures of poetry, not disclosures of definItions of poetry
The papers that have been collected here are intended to
dIsclose definitions of poetry In short, they are intended
to be contrlbutlons to the theory of poetry and it is this
and thIS alone that binds them together
Obviously, they are not the carefully organized notes
of systematic study Except for the paper on one of Miss
Moore's poems, they were WrItten to be spoken and tlllS
affects their character. While all of them were publIshed,
after they had served the purposes for which they were
written, I had no thought of makmg a book out of them
Several years ago, when trus was suggested, I felt that
theIr occasional and more or less informal character made
it desirable at least to postpone coming to a deciSIOn The
theory of poetry, as a subject of study, was something
with respect to which I had nothing but the most ardent
Vlll INTRODUCTION
ambitions. It seemed to me to be one of the great subjects
of study. I do not mean one more Ars Poenca having to
do, say, with the technIques of poetry and perhaps with
Its history I mean poetry itself, the naked poem, the Im~
agination manifesting itself in its domination of words.
The few pages that follow are, now, alas I the only reali~
zation possIble to me of those excited ambitions.
But to their extent they are a realization; and it is be~
cause that IS true, that is to say, because they seem to
me to commUnIcate to the reader the portent of the sub
ject, If nothing more, that they are presented here. Only
recently I spoke of certain poetic acts as subtilizing ex~
penence and varying appearance: "The real is constantly
being engulfed in the unreal. . . . [Poetry] is an i1lumi~
nation of a surface, the movement of a self In the rock."
A force capable of bringing about fluctuations in reality
in words free from mysticism is a force independent of
one's deSIre to elevate it. It needs no elevation. It has
only to be presented, as best one is able to present it.
These are not pages of criticism nor of philosophy. Nor
are they merely literary pages. They are pages that have
to do with one of the enlargements of life. They are with~
out pretence beyond my desire to add my own definition
to poetry's many eXIsting definitions.
WALLACE STEVENS
[ix]
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words was read at
Prmceton, as one of a group of essays by several persons
on The Language of Poetry, made posslble by the mterest
and generosity of Mr. and Mrs Henry Church, and was
published by the Princeton University Press m 1942-
The Language of Poetry was edlted by Allen Tate The
Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet was read at the En
tretlens de Pontlgny, a conference held at Mount Holyoke
College in 1943. The essay was pubhshed m Sewanee
ReVIew the followmg year. Three AcademIc Pieces was
read at Harvard on the basis of the Morns Gray Fund
Later,ln 1947, lt was published by Partisan Review and
also by Cummington Press About One of Marianne
Moore's Poems was pubhshed in Quarterly ReVIew of
Literature m 1948 m a number in honor of Miss Moore.
Effects of Analogy was read as a Bergen lecture at Yale
and was pubhshed a httle later, in 1948, m the Yale Re
VIew Imagination as Value was read at Columbia before
the Enghsh Instttute and was mcluded in the volume of
English Institute Essays 1948 pubhshed by the Colum
bia University Press m 1949 The Relations between
Poetry and Pamting was read in New York at the Mu
seum of Modern Art in 195 I and was thereafter pub-
x ACKNOWLEDGMENT
1ished by the Museum as a pamphlet. In The Relations
between Poetry and Painting the quotatton from Leo
Stem's Appreciation tS printed with permisswn of Crown
Publishers (copyright 1947 by Leo Stem)
The author tS happy to say thanks to all these and, in
particular, to the magazmes and presses for the assign
ments of copynghts whtch have made posstble to gather
1t
these essays together.