Wallace Stevens and Martin Heidegger: Poetry as Appropriative Proximity

199 Pages·2022·1.362 MB·English

by  Ian Tan

AMERICAN LITERATURE READINGS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Wallace Stevens and
Martin Heidegger
Poetry as Appropriative Proximity
Ian Tan
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
Series Editor
Linda Wagner-Martin
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC, USA
American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century publishes
works by contemporary authors that help shape critical opinion regarding
American literature of the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-
first centuries. The books treat fiction, poetry, memoir, drama and criti-
cism itself—ranging from William Dow’s Narrating Class in American
Fiction and Amy Strong’s Race and Identity in Hemingway’s Fiction, to
Maisha L. Wester’s African American Gothic and Guy Davidson’s Queer
Commodities: Contemporary U. S. Fiction, Consumer Culture, and Lesbian
Subcultures .
Beginning in 2004, the series is now well established and continues to
welcome new book proposals. Manuscripts run between 80,000 and
90,000 words, while the Pivot format accommodates shorter books of
25,000 to 50,000 words. This series also accepts essay collections; among
our bestsellers have been collections on David Foster Wallace, Norman
Mailer, Contemporary U.S. Latina/o Literary Criticism, Kurt Vonnegut,
Kate Chopin, Carson McCullers, George Saunders, and Arthur Miller
(written by members of the Miller Society).
All texts are designed to create valuable interactions globally as well as
within English-speaking countries.
Editorial Board:
Professor Derek Maus, SUNY Potsdam, USA
Professor Thomas Fahy, Long Island University, USA
Professor Deborah E. McDowell, University of Virginia and Director of
the Carter G. Woodson Institute, USA
Professor Laura Rattray, University of Glasgow, UK
More information about this series at
https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14765
Ian Tan
Wallace Stevens and
Martin Heidegger
Poetry as Appropriative Proximity
Ian Tan
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore, Singapore
ISSN 2634-579X ISSN 2634-5803 (electronic)
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
ISBN 978-3-030-99248-4 ISBN 978-3-030-99249-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99249-1
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: James Thew / Alamy Stock Photo.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
C
ontents
1 Introduction: Language as “Quasi”-Transcendental
Presence—Phenomenology and Poetry 1
2 “Not Ours Although We Understood”: The Language of
Stevens and Heidegger 21
3 The Neighbouring of Poetry and Philosophy: Thinking
from/with the Event of Ereignis 49
4 Considering Presence and Place in Stevens’ Harmonium 63
5 Ideology, Politics and Life in the Polis for Heidegger,
Stevens and American Poetry in the 1930s 83
6 Stevens’ Supreme Fiction and the Location of Truth as/in
Philosophy 119
7 To See Things as They Finally Are: The Question of Being
in the Late Poetry 139
v
vi CoNTENTS
8 Conclusion: The Task of the Heideggerian Critic and the
Adventure of Poetry’s Being 165
Bibliography 175
Name Index 189
Subject Index 195
A
bbreviAtions
Works by Martin Heidegger
BT Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson.
oxford: Blackwell, 1962.
CP Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). Trans. Parvis
Emad and Kenneth Maly. Indiana: Indiana UP, 1999.
CPC Country Path Conversations. Trans. Bret W. Davis. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2010.
E The Event. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2013.
EB Existence and Being. Trans. R.F.C. Hull and Alan Crick. London:
Vision Press, 1968.
EGT Early Greek Thinking. Trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank
A. Capuzzi. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.
EHP Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry. Trans. Keith Hoeller.
New York: Humanity Books, 2000.
HHTI Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister”. Trans. William McNeill and Julia
Davis. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1996.
ID Identity and Difference. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York:
Harper and Row, 1969.
M Mindfulness. Trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary. London:
Continuum, 2006.
N1 Nietzsche: Volume One: The Will to Power as Art. Trans. David
Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.
vii
viii ABBREVIATIoNS
N2 Nietzsche: Volume Two: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same.
Trans. David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1984.
N4 Nietzsche: Volume Four: Nihilism. Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi. Ed.
David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
NHS Nature, History, State. Trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt.
London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
OBT Off the Beaten Track. Trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.
OWL On the Way to Language. Trans. Peter D. Hertz. New York:
Harper and Row, 1971.
P Pathmarks. Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, William McNeill and John
Sallis. Ed. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
PLT Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York:
Harper and Row, 1971.
PRL The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Trans. Matthias Fritsch and
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004.
SGU The Self-Assertion of the German University. The Heidegger
Controversy: A Critical Reader. Trans. William S. Lewis. Ed.
Richard Wolin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Pg. 29–39.
WIT What is a Thing? Trans. W.B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch.
South Bend: Regnery/Gateway, Inc., 1967.
Works by Wallace Stevens
CPP Collected Poetry and Prose. Eds. Frank Kermode and Joan
Richardson. New York: The Library of America, 1997.
L Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1966.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Language as “Quasi”-
Transcendental Presence—Phenomenology
and Poetry
Phenomenology and Poetry
This book theorises a thinking of situatedness which frames the philo-
sophical significance of poetry as a force which sustains us in relation to an
openness of meaning that can be rendered through phenomenological
analysis. This coming-into-presence of meaning, which for Derrida is
inseparable from the awareness of the trace that erases philosophical
notions of originality and teleological finality, helps us situate the place of
Wallace Stevens’ understanding of poetry as an event that comes “after
one has abandoned a belief in god” (CPP 901), but which also aims to
engender belief in itself as an alternative to religious piety. This poetry can-
not but be self-consciously aware of belatedness, and responds to the
implicit accusation of being an inadequate compensatory system of
thought by locating its significatory strength in linguistic transcendence.
For Stevens, this transcendence cannot recoup an empty mode of belief in
an otherworldly realm, but instead embeds perception more keenly
towards the phenomenal world which we are all already situated in. If the
link between phenomenology and literature is foregrounded through the
essential concept of “world” (Kozin & Staehler 365), then this book is an
extended consideration of how Stevens’ poetry can be understood phe-
nomenologically as an attempt to generate imaginative engagements with
reality as an ontological realm of meaning. This homology is expressed by
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2022
I. Tan, Wallace Stevens and Martin Heidegger, American Literature
Readings in the 21st Century,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99249-1_1