The magnificent cause of being : the function of the imagination in Wallace Stevens' poetry

The purpose of this study is to show how Wallace Stevens' interpretation of the imagination's function changed from his early poems to his later poems. Critics have agreed that an understanding of the imagination is vital to a clear view of the poems as individual works as well as a progressive whole, but there has been constant disagreement over the exact function of the imagination. While one interpretation saw the imagination as a transforming power able to approach reality through resemblance, still another recognized an imagination which required annihilation in order to approach reality more closely.

Neither theory is adequate. This study describes instead progression in the imagination's function throughout the poems. In the early poems the imagination is the faculty that makes man aware, through contrast, of the unpleasant characteristics of reality: flux, terror and mutability. Since these qualities make traditional beliefs invalid in the modern world, a new faith that would reconcile the unpleasantness of reality with the transforming power of the imagination is needed. Stevens' quest is essentially a search for belief in the imagination. He uses images of sun, moon, water and music in the early poems to symbolize a reconciliation that would allow belief, but, like Crispin in "The Comedian as the Letter C," he sees each image fail at bringing about a permanent

merging of the two forces.

With "The Man With the Blue Guitar" Stevens begins

to set forth propositions for the development of the concept of a fiction to take the place of traditional faith. Such a fiction would effect a reconciliation using the imagination as a force with powers equal to those of reality. The imagination can make the world comfortable by combatting the qualities of flux, terror and mutability

that make reality unbearable.

"Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" and "Esthetique du Mal" are representative of Stevens' later poems since they elaborate on the development of a ficticn by giving four explicit requirements: a fiction must change, be abstract, give pleasure and encompass evil. Belief in a supreme fiction fills the need caused by the absence of religious faith and makes the real world a tolerable place

for man.

The imagination is a key concept in understanding Wallace Stevens' poems, and study of its development helps to make clearer Stevens' progress as a poet as well as the relationships between his poems. When the imagination's interaction with reality is clarified, it can be seen that Stevens' poetry is the record of his quest for a habitable world.