An Exploration Of Wallace Stevens’s Painterly Abstraction

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) proclaims in the first subtitle to Notes Toward aSupreme Fiction (1942) that poetry “must be abstract”. In his manifesto for anabstract poetics, Stevens conveyed the principal impulse of the modern aesthetic—theurge towards abstraction. When Stevens wrote Notes, abstract painting was rapidlyemerging as the dominant trend in America. The1913New York Armory Show firstopened the window for Americans to witness the radical change from realism to purerabstraction in Europe. Later, Abstract Expressionism emerges as the first paintingtrend born in America. It would not be a mere coincidence that Stevens-who hadextraordinary, lifelong interest in painting—announced his poetic meditation ofabstraction at this particular historical moment. Stevens’ poetic abstraction has beenextensively elucidated from the perspective of modern philosophies. However, thisthesis aims to tentatively claim the painterly abstraction in the20th century visual artsas a pivotal influential factor for his poetic unintelligibility.In this thesis, three parts are contributed to interpreting Stevens’ painterlyabstraction. The first part traces the influential factors in shaping Stevens’s painterlypoems, ranging from European abstract painting trends, American AbstractExpressionism to Chinese landscape painting. The second part explores Stevens’spoetic meditation on abstraction that draws inspiration from abstract aesthetic theoriesand abstract painters. A comparative study between Stevens’ poetics and theoreticalprinciples in abstract visual arts endeavors to reveal that Stevens takes an analogy ofabstract painting to explicate his own poetic meditation. The third part intends toanalyze the literary adaptation of crafts of abstract painting, such as technique ofperspective, collage, and abstract use of color in his poetry.Through probing into Stevens’s essays, journals, letters and poems, this thesisarticulates a pivotal influential factor of technical and philosophical innovation ofabstract art on his literary abstractions. The revelation of affinities between modernistpainting trends and Stevens’s abstraction can facilitate a better understanding of hisobscure poems.