Homunculus et la Belle Etoile

Homunculus et la Belle Etoile

Homunculus et la Belle Etoile is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1919. [Buttel, p. 212. See also the LibriVox site for the complete public domain poems of Wallace Stevens. [http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4077] ]

The poem pursues a contrast between poeticimagination and philosophical reasoning, the latter understood asabstract system-building associated with the rationalist traditiongoing back to Plato. Stevens implicitly contrasts the philosophers'Plato with `the ultimate Plato'. Both seek the supreme good, butPlato and the other philosophers look for it in something abstractlike Plato's `Forms' — a gaunt fugitive phantom. The poet findsthe highest good in the sensuous lived experience of an evening inBiscayne, where the good light of Venus, the Evening Star, reveals itto the poet as wanton, abundantly beautiful, eager, fecund. Plato's supreme good is accessible only to a very few intelligent people who have been trainedfor many years to disregard the senses. The ultimate Plato by contrastis accessible not only to the poet but also the drunkard, widows, andladies soon to be married. Stevens may be invoking some American populismon behalf of the imagination. (For comparison see Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock.)

Notes

References

  • Buttel, Robert. "William Stevens: The Making of Harmonium". 1967: Princeton University Press.

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