Stevens' poem Ulysses seems to me to be well ahead of its time for 1954
both in what it says and its use of language.
Sally
Sally Evans
http://www.poetryscotland.co.uk
http://groups.msn.com/desktopsallye
http://www.myspace.com/poetsallyevans
----- Original Message -----
From: "kasper salonen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: Stevens TLS poet of last week
I agree with Stevens. I believe in the world in & immediately around poetry.
KS
On 22/02/2008, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> TLS February 12, 2008
>
> Presence of an External Master of Knowledge
> by Wallace Stevens;
>
> introduced by Mick Imlah
>
> "If one no longer believes in God (as truth)", Wallace Stevens once
> wrote,
> "it is not possible merely to disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe
> in
> something else."
>
> For Stevens, born into an affluent family in Pennsylvania in 1879, that
> "something else" was poetry, conceived of as an independent quest for
> meaning. This "belief" underpins his late poem, "Presence of an External
> Master of Knowledge"; the poem also relates to Tennyson's "Ulysses"
> (1842),
> whose ageing narrator resolves to "follow knowledge like a sinking star,
> /
> Beyond the utmost bound of human thought".
>
> The TLS published "Presence of an External Master of Knowledge in
> Stevens's
> seventy-fifth year, in 1954. He died the following summer.
>
>
> Presence of an External Master of Knowledge
>
> Under the shape of his sail, Ulysses,
> Symbol of the seeker, crossing by night
> The giant sea, read his own mind.
> He said, "As I know, I am and have
> The right to be." He guided his boat
> Beneath the middle stars and said:
>
> "Here I feel the human loneliness
> And that, in space and solitude,
> Which knowledge is: the world and fate,
> The right within me and about me,
> Joined in a triumphant vigor,
> Like a direction on which I depend . . .
>
> A longer, deeper breath sustains
> This eloquence of right, since knowing
> And being are one the right to know
> Is equal to the right to be.
> The great Omnium descends on me,
> Like an absolute out of this eloquence."
>
> The sharp sail of Ulysses seemed,
> In the breathings of that soliloquy,
> Alive with an enigma's flittering,
> And bodying, and being there,
> As he moved, straightly, on and on
> Through clumped stars dangling all the way.
>
> WALLACE STEVENS (1954)
>
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