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Chapter 13 - Poetic Fiction

from Part III - Revisionary Readings of Stevens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2021

Bart Eeckhout
Affiliation:
Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
Gül Bilge Han
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

Apart from three early experiments in playwriting, Wallace Stevens was almost entirely a poet. Yet the fact that Stevens positioned himself so adamantly in the realm of poetry and kept away from the art of the novel does not mean he did not ponder questions of aesthetic affinity. In a 1948 letter, for instance, he shared his perspective on Marcel Proust: “The only really interesting thing about Proust that I have seen recently is something that concerned him as a poet. It seems like a revelation, but it is quite possible to say that that is exactly what he was and perhaps all that he was.” When we consider Proust’s use of similes as well as the way Proust intertwines his studies of the senses, time, and the resources of memory in his monumental work, we begin to grasp Stevens’s appreciation of the French novelist. Goldfarb’s chapter amplifies Proust’s presence in Stevens in three segments: the first addresses Stevens’s relation to modernist fiction; the second probes Stevens’s insight into Proust’s writing style; the third focuses on Proustian echoes in Stevens’s verse, particularly on the interlacing themes of the senses, time, and memory in shorter poems across different volumes.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Works Cited

Eeckhout, Bart. “‘And yet – and yet!’: Connections between Stevens’s Poetry and Joyce’s Ulysses.The Wallace Stevens Journal, vol. 42, no. 2, Fall 2018, pp. 143–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Vol. 1, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Random House, 1982.Google Scholar
Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Edited by Stevens, Holly, Alfred A. Knopf, 1966.Google Scholar
Stevens, Wallace Secretaries of the Moon: The Letters of Wallace Stevens and José Rodríguez Feo. Edited by Coyle, Beverly and Filreis, Alan, Duke UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Stevens, Wallace Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Edited by Kermode, Frank and Richardson, Joan, Library of America, 1997.Google Scholar
Vendler, Helen. “Wallace Stevens: Memory, Dead and Alive.The Wallace Stevens Journal, vol. 28, no. 2, Fall 2004, pp. 247–60.Google Scholar

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