Theodore
Sampson begins his compelling study by arguing that
Wallace Stevens' (1859-1955) poetry defies
interpretation, that his long poems, particularly,
remain too open-ended for rational paraphrase. Most
critics of Stevens, faced with his complexities, have
none the less attempted to make critical discourse
(if not sense) out of them.
This
has led, in Sampson's view, to critical excesses and
undue deformation of language.
Drawing
its essential insights from the perspectivist thought
of Emerson, Nietzsche, William James and Paul Valery,
the book examines Stevens' deeply fragmented sense of
self and world as projected in Harmonium,
and then proceeds to investigate the poet's stance as
an Emersonian pragmatist or `connoisseur of chaos',
who must constantly `throw away the lights' and write
his poems `in the dark'; a valuation that stresses
the dominant role of `the irrational element' in
Stevens' verse.
"Written with grace and lucidity, thoroughly
seeped in the work of preceding critics, Sampson's
challenging study offers a convincing rationale for
the most irrational aspects of Stevens' work...I
found Sampson's book a well-argued, highly readable,
and important contribution to the study of Stevens'
complex rhetoric."
--Wallace Stevens Journal
Table of Contents
Theodore Sampson is Professor of American literature
at the University of Athens. His other publications
include an anthology of contemporary Canadian poetry
on Greece, a monograph on Wallace Stevens, and
several volumes of modern Greek fiction translated
into English.
212 pages, bibliography, index
Paperback ISBN: 1-55164-148-8 $19.99
Hardcover ISBN: 1-55164-149-6 $48.99
Cultural Studies/Literary Criticism
September 1999
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