Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour, Wallace Stevens

[Diane]

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour, Wallace Stevens


Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one . . .
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

[mat james]

and I thought you were telling us that you weren't a "believer", Diane.

[Diane]

Mat, I think I would replace the word "God" with the word "emptiness", but I don't like to interfere with other people's work.

So there !

Diane

[mat james]

I think I would replace the word "God" with the word "emptiness"

Diane:

emptiness?
I love emptiness!

"void"?

Emptiness is rather Hinyanic
Void rather Taoistic
and both are pregnant , the womb of creation.

I remember Milton's God in Paradise Lost, "brooding o'r the vast Abyss, and madest it pregnant"
The Buddha would argue no doubt that the "vast abyss" was pregnant with that Brooder!
And the Chinese? Well they are inscrutable and those Taoists (that I love dearly) would argue that Emptiness/Void is the mother of being, so do not call Void empty and do not call emptiness, Void, they would say.

Me? No thing comes from no thing. Emptiness/Void and creation IS.

Thanks for your "empty" thoughts
It is strange what evolves from "emptiness".

Matj

[Diane]

Hi Mat,

And thanks for your empty thoughts. Yes, in Buddhist terms (and Buddhism evolved in part from Taoism), "emptiness" is a central concept. When the self loses the illusion that it is independent and fixed, it becomes empty, and at the same time full/complete. As you say, everything is created from 'the void' cos emptiness is the fundamental nature of everything, in the same way that all words issue from an immense silence.

Anyway, don't you think that is a lovely poem by Wallace Stevens, who, incidentally, was thought to be somewhat influenced by Buddhist thought.

Here's another of his poems:

The Snow Man, Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

-----------------------------------------------

Cheers,

Diane

Just noticed I got the title a bit wrong above, it is interior paramour, not internal.

[mat james]

Anyway, don't you think that is a lovely poem by Wallace Stevens, who, incidentally, was thought to be somewhat influenced by Buddhist thought.

Diane.

Yes I do.
On reading it I end up in a very tranquil mood, sauntering the Void ~~~~~~~~~~ quietly~~~

Same mood in the second poem.
You must have picked these poems up at your last Buddhist retreat. Lovely stuff Diane.
The emptiness of Buddha whispers through the Fullness of you.

Regards, Mat.

[Diane]

Cheers, Mat. I have posted this one, below, on here before, but I can't find it. So, any excuse to re-post, as it is my favourite of Stevens'. Just to keep them all together, like.


Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

[mat james]

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

succinct image! It is so clear and simple that it is almost a photograph, the light being words. The opposite of a koan, yet, zen-like clarity.

and then the drifting into at-one-ness,

a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

I like the jolt he experiences when he forgets he is human
and is the blackbird
(becomes the object of meditation)
in the lines above

Really, for reflection/meditation purposes, one only needs the first verse.
I would focus on that one verse~~~
~~~~~~then drift~~~~~~