Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1990

Thesis Director

Michael Loudon

Abstract

Using comparative studies as background, I develop a Zen model for reading Stevens, arguing that his poetry works in the manner of Zen anecdotes and that it can be understood better by understanding Zen. Three critical studies of Wallace Stevens and Zen assert the Zen-like qualities of Stevens' poetry. Stevens has affinities with Zen writers in three areas: use of language, explorations into the nature of thought, and the structure of anecdotes and poems.

I develop a terminology in order to construct my model, giving attention to the definitions and interrelations of terms such as logical thought, figurative thought, paradox, metaphor, imagination, koan, and enlightenment. In my discussion of each of these terms, I include a reading of one of Stevens' poems and references to several others. The major poems I discuss are: "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "The Idea of Order at Key West," "The World as Meditation," "Connoisseur of Chaos," "Anecdote of the Jar," "Of Mere Being," "The Snow Man" and "Not Ideas about the Thing But the Thing Itself."

Some Zen anecdotes suggest that language and thought are by nature figurative. Other anecdotes assert that both figurative and literal interpretations are ascribed rather than intrinsic in perception. Zen's preoccupation with language seeks to demonstrate the figurative nature of all thought beyond literal reality. I read Stevens' Imagination, his most common theme, from the perspective of Zen's treatment of the nature of thought and language. The imagination is man's ability to order the chaos of his perceptions of nature by ascribing figurative meaning to literal reality. Stevens celebrates the creative, ordering nature of the mind in many of his poems.

Zen anecdotes also point to the mind's tendency to treat metaphor as if it were literal, as in the story of the woman who pointed her finger at the moon and became so involved in her finger that she forgot the moon. Many of Stevens' poems also point to this tendency to assume metaphor as empirical description.

Zen has a linguistic device, the koan, which demonstrates that making metaphor absolute is insufficient for revealing figurative projections upon the literal existence of facts. A koan is a question, riddle or anecdote which appears logical in structure, yet resists structural analysis and logical comprehension. One "gets" a koan in the same way one "gets" a joke. When one "gets" a joke, suddenly the unreal universe of the joke becomes coherent: everything fits. The ensuing laughter results from an intuitive leap beyond logic. Koans work in the same manner.

Stevens has many poems which resist logical apprehension through structural analysis alone. I base my reading of these poems on my explanation of the koan. Structural analysis leads one to ask logical questions about the meaning of the poem. These questions lead to a closer reading of the poem; however, fuller apprehension of the poem (getting the poem) comes when, frustrated with rigid, dualistic explanations, one moves beyond them to an intuitive understanding of the unity of the oppositions. In this manner one moves beyond the structuralist oppositions that undermine intuitive understanding of the poems.

Enlightenment can be described as the response one has when one gets a koan. I use the concept of enlightenment to further develop my model. Enlightenment is the goal of Zen, but the goal is to be reached and sought anew constantly. To believe that when one is first enlightened, one is finished is a mistake. Zen encourages re-entering the world of metaphor and creation instead of remaining in the euphoric but unproductive state of self-gratifying enlightenment. Greater levels of enlightenment can always be sought.

Many of Stevens' poems can be read as enlightenment poems about the necessity of re-entering the world to strive for further enlightenment. By constructing a Zen model for reading Stevens' poetry, I hope to illuminate that dynamic of renewed perception and continual creativity found in his poetics.

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