Sound And Sensation In Harmonium

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) dedicates his life to the exploration of the influence of the language and poetry on the world and modern people’s life. In Stevens’ first poetry anthology Harmonium, the poet employs sound and its particular rhythm patterns which bring reader different sensations so as to lead them to pound over life.This thesis, based on Stevens’ whole poetics and from the perspective of the sounds in the poems of Harmonium, probes into the role of sounds in Stevens’poetry in three aspects. First of all, it can be found that in this sound-dominated poem anthology Harmonium, the massive usage of sounds, both the sound images from nature and from human respectively, can prove that sound in his poetry is not merely a prosodic element or a stylistic device of limited significance, but an integral part of distinctive poetics. Then, Stevens’idea of creating poetry is expounded by his adopting such sound patterns as assonance and consonance, repetition of words and phrases and musical variation. Finally, it is found that the sound as a sensation functions as a bridge, which can deliver poet’s idea to its readers. The former part is concerned about the movement effect caused by the automatic change and movement of the sound and the melody. In other words, the movement effect is that the sound and the melody will resonate in reader’s reaction and produce its own meaning. The latter part relates sound in poetry and color in painting, to illustrate that both of them represents human being’s consciousness.In short, this thesis provides a relatively new perspective of understanding Stevens’poetry. After the research on the sounds in the poems of Harmonium, this thesis makes a thorough exploration on the unique role of the sound:sound is treated as a main material for poetry to display the poet’s poetics; and illustrates the principle on how the poetic theory can be presented by the sound, that is, as a sensation, sound can resonate with the readers.