Abstract Poetry Of Wallace Stevens

Why must poetry be abstract? In Wallace Stevens' theory of poetry and poeticcreation, abstract is a dynamic creative act, which conflates "reality" and"imagination,""the first idea" and symbol, to form "supreme fiction." On the onehand, abstract deals with reality, through a series of acts such as seeing, stripping,getting rid of, withdrawing, killing, destroying, and undoing and processes such asperception, reduction, return, generalization, and conceptualization, to reach theinternalization of reality, i.e. the formation of idea, the final form of which is the firstidea. On the other hand, abstract deals with imagination to form symbols through aseries of acts such as to find, to discover, to metamorphose, to merge, to make, tocreate, and to decreate. Supreme fiction is the central concept of Stevens' theory ofpoetry, which is the extension of reality, the conflation of the real and the unreal, andthe fulfillment of one's will to believe. Thus, abstract becomes an element to organizesuch important concepts in Stevens' theory of poetry as supreme fiction, the first idea,symbol, idea, reality, and imagination. Abstract confers Stevens' poetry thepotentiality to generate meaning continuously.To investigate Stevens' view of abstract from the perspectives of the expressivetheories and mimetic theories is more helpful for us to observe the essentialcharacteristics of Stevens' theory of poetry than the customary treatments whichsubsume Stevens' poetry either under the Romantic tradition or under differentmodernist schools. The overall inclination of expressive theories emphasizes theabstract and the universal, not the concrete and the particular. Stevens' unique view ofabstract originates from this inclination. Stevens' comments on Plato, Kant,Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, Whitman, Rimbaud, Mallarmé,Valéry, Yeats, especially his response to such important issues as idea, ideal, abstract,symbol, and expression, are helpful for us to understand his theory of poetry and viewof abstract.Stevens is a modernist poet not because of his relation with a certain modernistschool of poetry, but because of his interaction with the time and reality. His view ofabstract is inseparable from the development of modern science, the decline ofreligion, and the turn of philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century. Stevens' elitistview of the poet's function also influences his style.Stevens' view of abstract is coherent throughout his career as a poet. Combingthrough Stevens' deployment of abstract in his journals, letters, essays, poetic dramas,and poems, we can delineate a contour of the evolution of his view of abstract, ofwhich Three Travellers Watch a Sunrise,"The Comedian as the Letter C," The Manwith the Blue Guitar, and Notes toward a Supreme Fiction signify the turning points.