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ISSN 2278-9529

Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

www.galaxyimrj.com

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

The Creative Dominance: Probing the Presence of Black Colour as the

Condition for Imaginative Activity in Wallace StevensHarmonium
Sruthi B
Peet Memorial Training College
Mavelikara, Kerala
The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness,
and the power of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded
Let there be light and light appeared. God was pleased with what he
saw. Then he separated the light from darkness, and he named the day
light and the darkness night. (Genesis 1:1-5)
In the biblical account of creation, black preceded the creation of light. Even the
big bang theory wont prove the precedence of darkness wrong. This primordial colour in
mythologies is related to fertility.In Black: The History of a Color, Pastoureau mentions
that:
This originary black is also found in other mythologies, not only in Europe
but also in Asia and Africa. It is often fertile and fecund, as the Egyptian
black that symbolizes the silt deposited by the waters of the Nile, with its
beneficial floods that are anticipated hopefully each year, it is opposite of
the sterile red of the desert sand. Elsewhere, fertile black is simply
represented by big black clouds, heavy with rain, ready to fall upon the
earth to make it fruitful. In still other places it either graces the statuettes
of the protohistorical mother-goddesses or adorns certain divinities
associated with fertility (Cybele, Demeter, Ceres, Hecate, Isis, Kali); they
may have dark skin, hold or receive black objects, and demand that
animals be sacrificed to them. (21)
In the middle ages primordial black was associated with artisans, thus linking the
colour with creativity. It was not too late before the colour black was attributed with
negative dimensions. Black, darkness and night were soon linked with death, melancholy,
mourning, and evil, a concept which has been carried over centuries by artists and
writers.
The red, white, and black triad 1 became more and more popular during the
Middle Ages. But soon more colours like blue, yellow and green came to the scene. They
were soon followed by new colours, which were formed by the mixing of pigments.

About the year 1000 white signified the priestly class, red stood for warriors and black for

artisans. The black and white colours didnt represent the contrasting colours then.

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These experiments along with the new theories of perception gave for Newtons theory 2
on colours.
But the new order of colours didnt elevate the status of black. It began to be
regarded as a colourless colour. As Pastoureau describes in Black: The History of a color:
In this new order of colours there was no longer a place either for black or
for white. That constituted a revolution; black and white were no longer
colors, and black perhaps even less so than white. White, in effect, was
indirectly part of the spectrum since all the colors were contained within
it. But black was not. Hence it was situated outside of any chromatic
system, outside the world of color. (148)
Black had to face a terrible set back which the Romantics tried to revive. But the
earlier romantics were interested in blue and green in their eagerness to represent the
various faces of nature. But black started finding a place for itself among these colours
but only as a synonym for mourning, death and misery. It soon became the back drop for
gothic 3 novels and stories.
Black carried on with a negative status till World War 1st, soon after which black
was recognized a colour of authority and seriousness and was adopted as the color code
for judges, magistrates, professors, lawyers, postmen, customs officers, sailors etc. But
still there were oppositions 4 over the use of black colour for artistic purposes; driven by
the idea that black is not a colour as it doesnt include any colours like white. This was
based on the Newtons theories of dispersion of light and the laws of spectrum.
The whole attitude towards colours black and white again underwent a
stimulating change with the birth of photography,which was soon followed by the

The entry on colour in the 11th edition of Britannica encyclopedia records that according to

Newton the white light can be decomposed by the prism into red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
indigo and violet. White is thus the colour of the sunlight and is the basis of all the other colours
formed by the spectrum.
3

In his book Black: The History of a Color (2008), Michel Pastoureau mentions that The English

gothic novels had launched a trend in the macabre as early as the 1760s, with the castle of
Otranto by Horace Walpole, published in 1764. This trend continued into the turn of the century
The Mysteries of Udolfo by Ann Radcliffe (1794), The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis (1795) and
with it, black made its great comeback. This was the triumph of night and death, witches and
cemeteries, the strange and fantastic. Satan himself reappeared and became the hero of many
poems and stories. (166)
4

According to Gauguin Reject black and that mixture of black and white called gray. Nothing is

black and that mixture of black and white called gray. (Pastoureau,177)

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medium of cinema. The literary world went on giving negative impressions to the colour
black. Among the modern poets like Ezra Pound 5 , Rainer Maria Rilke and Hilda
Doolittle, who used black as an instrument to state symbolic relations, the poetry of
Wallace Stevens 6 stands out for his unique treatment of black colour. It was not just the
colour black that Stevens was interested in. Rather he was mesmerized by the whole
world of colours and experimented with different colours in the spectrum.His first
collection of poems,Harmonium 7 uses a wide spectrum of colours but has always tried to
experiment with the colours. His poems clearly portray his knowledge of Newtons

Refer to Pounds poem In a Station of the Metro

Wallace Stevens attended the Armory show of 1913, where Marcel Duchamps Nude

Descending the staircase was exhibited. Stevens soon became a part of Arsenburg Circle. The
circle met to discuss the latest art, film, music and photography. Some of Stevenss poems were
also read at the meetings. This gave him an opportunity to get introduced to the works of
Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Andre Derain, Francis
Picabia, Joseph Stella, Charles Sheeler, Constantin Brancusi, Henri
Rousseau,Paul Czanne, Henri Matisse, and Marcel Duchamp.
7

Wallace Stevens had started writing poems during his Harvard years (1897-1900). A new turn in

his poetic creation came when he started composing poems for Elsie Kachel, who later became
his wife. The seventy four poems that appear in Harmonium are not written before 1914 or 1915.
We are only familiar with the dates of publication as the date of creation remains unknown.
Harmonium, which was published in 1923 at the age of forty four doesnt include the thirty nine
poems that he published between 1914 and 1919. They dont appear in Collected poems as well,
which was published in 1953. He faced a lot of difficulty in collecting the poems for Harmonium
(refer the letter Wallace Stevens wrote to Harriet Monroe on December 21, 1922, that appear in
Letters of Wallace Stevens).
Harmonium, the title that he finally chose, demonstrates the strength of this demand, not simply
for order, but for an order that establishes a peaceful and aesthetically pleasing concord among
the parts of a unified and consistent whole harmony. This idea expresses Stevens feelings
about his work so completely that he wanted to call his collected poems The Whole of
Harmonium (Serio,24)

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colour theories. Though he seems to follow them, it is not an end for him. George
McFadden in his article Probings for an Integration: Color Symbolism in Wallace
Stevens has stated that Wallace Stevens requires a Newton of his own (186).
Black colour attains a distinct and unique standard in the poems that occur in
Harmonium. McFadden in his article Probings for an Integration: Color Symbolism in
Wallace Stevens states thatThe change which was all important for Stevens begins in
black and so does reality (188) 8. The change for Wallace Stevens lies in the imaginative
faculty. He considers it as the only element that links one to reality. It is one of the great
human powers (138) and embodies the liberty of the mind (138). In the essay
Imagination as Value that is included in his Necessary Angel, Stevens talks extensively
about imagination 9.
Imagination as metaphysics will lead us in one direction and, as art in
another. When we consider the imagination as metaphysics, we realize
that it is in the nature of the imagination itself that we should be quick to
accept it as the only clue to reality. (137)
For Stevens the black colour provides the condition for imaginative faculty to
flourish. It forms the backdrop where imagination flourishes. Black occupies a place
between reality and imagination and also forms a medium for the conception of new
thoughts coloured by imagination. The blackness of the nights gives way for those who
wish to dream and explore the secrets. Only those who can dream and imagine can
endure the night. For others it still stands for death and evil. Wallace Stevens often brings
in the moonlight that penetrates the darkness that persists.In The Cambridge Companion
to Wallace Stevens,John N. Serio mentions that Moonlight stands for the imagination,
because it belongs to the night and dreams and because it is at a remove, reflected and
shadowy (35)
Black for Stevens is neither the absence of a colour or a presence of colour. It exists in
reality and develops the imaginative. For him black is a dominant colour, which is
synonymous to night and darkness in Harmonium. In the poem Domination of
Black Stevens makes his perception of the colour clear. He seems to have carefully
chosen the title, Domination of Black 10with an aim to introduce the readers to the
setting right at the beginning. The predominance of black in the environment is reinstated
by starting the poem with At night (1)

Black Water breaking into reality (line 100,Extracts from the Addresses to the Academy of Fine

Ideas)
9

Refer Probings for an Integration : Color Symbolism in Wallace Stevens 186

10

Towards the middle of the poem we can see the lines that start with turning or turned. This

seems to be Stevenss experimentation that lays the foundation for later works in which Stevens
would keep line numbers stable but loosen the meter and give full rein to enjambment and
caesura as in Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction and The Man with the Blue Guitar.

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It is the burning fire alone that pierces the darkness that pertains in the room. The
fire brings back to the room the colours of the bushes, falling leaves and hemlocks. There
is a play of yellow, brown and red colours of the fall mixed with the evergreen colour of
the hemlocks in the backdrop of the black colour. The colours appear like the colourful
drawings on a blackboard.
This description suddenly takes a turn by the out of place description of the cry
of the peacocks (10). Peacocks flying down from the boughs of the hemlocks (16) is
something unrealistic, stating that it is just the creation of the poetic imagination like the
other colours in the room. The existing colours are now mixed with the dark blue and
green colours of the tails of the peacocks. These dark colours are closer to the black
colour which reasserts the prominence of the colour black. The comparison of the arrival
of night with the dark green colour of the heavy hemlocks (8) in the last stanza proves
this.
It is in the background created by the colour black that the poetic imagination
visualizes the play of different colours in the fire. These colours will lose their identity in
the light of the day. Each colour assumes its real quality in the presence of black.
The colours of the bushes and fallen leaves repeating themselves (4) suggest the
poets recollection of the colours. So does the word remembered (10), which is
repeated twice in the poem. Throughout the poem there is a frequent reference to the cry
of the peacocks which the poet assumes to be against the twilight or against the
approaching darkness. The cry comes piercing the darkness like the other colours. Here
the black colour absorbs and recreates the colours of the day. Black gives life to
imagination and creativity in the poem.
Domination of Black places the colour black at the center of the spectrum. It is
no more a colourless colour but a colour where all the other colours reside. Newtons
colour theory talks about black as a colour which absorbs all the colours of the spectrum
and reflects none. The theory itself proves the presence of all other colours and thus
makes it more predominant a colour than anything else.
This domination of colour black was propagated by Kazimir Malevich through his
black square. Malevich launched a new movement called Suprematismin Russia in
December 1915. He placed his black square on the top corner of his display. This place is
normally occupied by the icon in a traditional, orthodox Russian home. This position
made the square, the first Suprematist painting, a representative of a transcendental truth.
The painting is based on a mechanism where the non-objective 11 painting transforms
itself into a figurative one.
11

Malevich tried to create an abstract style through the movement called Suprematism, which

was aimed at proving that the supreme reality in this world is pure feeling which attaches to no
object (Gardner, 404). According to Malevich under Suprematism I understand the supremacy
of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world
are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as which quite apart from the
environment in which it is called forth. (Gardner,404)

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Figure 1. Black Square, Oil and Canvas from Kazimir

http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/kazimir-malevich/black-square-1915

Malevich,

The Black Square 12 of Malevich 13 is embedded on a white background, which

also takes the form of a square. The black square appears distinct and stands out
compared to the white canvas on which it is painted. It appears as if the white
background on which the black square is embossed, is completely absorbed by the
blackness.
The flat surface of the black square merges with the white background, thus
producing a contrast between the two. The white background appears void and seems to
lack the presence of any other component. It is being absorbed in by the blackness of the
black square, from which all the residue of illusion has been removed. While the black

12

The Black Square was first displayed in December 1915. Over the next twenty years he

repeated the black square almost three times. The techniques used in painting were the same,
which is oil and canvas. The idea of the Black Square originated from the scenery for the
production of the opera, Victory over the Sun, 1913.
13

Refer to Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying.

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square that is painted on the white background absorbs the whiteness of the white and
seems to contain a wide array of colours, which gives it its blackness. It seems to be the
center, like a black hole, to which all the other colours get attracted and resides. What is
aimed at is an imaginative transcendence in the minds eye, through the mediation of
black colour. Here the objective world ceases to exist and states the predominance of
colour black as in Wallace Stevens poem Domination of Black.
Like Malevich, for whom the Black Square becomes the center or medium for the
transcendence mind to embrace creativity through imagination, Wallace Stevens also
tries to state the imaginative transcendence with black forming a back drop or the
physical condition. The relation of the black, as a medium for imaginative transcendence
appears in the later works of Stevens where he talks extensively about the importance of
the imaginative faculty. He considers the imagination as one reality on which we can
depend. Blackness, a physical reality links us to the imaginative, becoming one with the
imaginative, making the unreal appearing real. Wallace Stevens examines the merging of
the reality with imagination in his poems Another Weeping Woman and Valley
Candle.
Though the poem Another Weeping Woman addresses a woman who is
grieving over the death of someone she loved, the poet uses this context to comment on
the significance of imagination rather than consoling the weeping woman. For the poet
she is just another weeping woman that he has encountered.
In the poem black (6) is used as an adjective for blooms. But the poet suggests
that these blooms grow out of tears and breed poison (4). Thus black (6) suggests
melancholy and thus gains a negative attribute. Even though it is considered poisonous
and thereby evil, the black blossoms still suggest life and creativity. Thus here as well
black defines the creative spirit. Darkness pertains in this poem as the poem Domination
of Black.
In the last two stanzas of the poem Another Weeping Woman Wallace Stevens
writes:
The magnificent cause of being,
The imagination, the only reality
In the imagined world
Leaves you
With him for whom no phantasy moves,
And you are pierced by a death. (7-12)
In these two stanzas the poet states that the cause of human existence or beingness
is the power of imagination. The world exists on the foundation of reality created by
imagination. But it is strange for mortal beings as the phantasy (11) doesnt move for
them. The inability to imagine leaves one lifeless.
The quest to blur the dividing line between reality and imagination is evident in
later poems of Wallace Stevens especially in Valley Candle. Thus imagination
becomes one with the reality and black becomes the colour which mediates this. Black
exists in reality and helps imagination embrace reality. He states imagination as
something that human beings look forward to or crave for. In one of his later poems, To
the One of Fictive Music he writes in the last couplet:
Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:

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The imagination that we spurned and craved

This concept of the relation between the imagination and reality and the point of
convergence of both is widely portrayed in the poem Valley Candle 14. The climax of
the poem explores the power of reality that is advocated over the imagination. The poem
ends by passes through a phase that finally culminates into silence:
My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it,
Until the wind blew.
Then the beams of the huge night
Converged upon its image,
Until the wind blew.
Through this poem Wallace Stevens tries to intrigue into the tryst between
imagination and reality. It can be considered as one of his greatest experiments to find the
point of encounter of reality with imagination. He has used brilliant symbols like
candle (1), valley (1) and wind (3) to explore the shift that happens when
imagination encounters reality.
In the poem the candle (1) of imagination burns in the valley (1) of the poets
mind with the beams of the huge night (2) embracing it. Here the night acts as a
medium for the candle to burn and the adjective huge (2) explains the darkness of the
night. But the wind representing the reality with its vast powers blows over the candle.
Here we perceive the immediate shift to reality happening, by the imagination giving way
for reality. But its image (5) still persists in the mind without being disturbed by the
reality. Even when this image (5) is disturbed by the wind (6), it is not deterred.
Thus imagination wins over the powers of reality. Or rather imagination embraces reality
and becomes one with it.
It would be interesting to note that Wallace Stevens in the poem Another Weeping
Woman describes imagination as the one reality (8) that exist in this imagined
world (9). I wonder whether Stevens idea of imagination becoming one with reality had
gained foot in his journey from Another Weeping Woman to Valley Candle, which
succeeds the former in the Harmonium.
Valley Candle resembles Domination of Black with the common factor that in
both the poems, it is the night or darkness that provokes or forms a medium that
celebrates the poets tryst with imagination. Black forms the border between reality and
imagination. The colour is a realistic element which inspires one into imagination.
Wallace Stevens fascination to explore the proximity of imagination by relating it to
darkness is an element that is worth exploring.

14

In Wallace Stevens: An Introduction to the Poetry, Susan B. Weston says that there are many

anecdote poems in Harmonium poems, that is, that seem apropros of some more abstract
discussion, with obviously allegorical particulars. Valley Candle is an example, with the candle
representing imagination, and the wind the vaster powers of reality.(27)

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The ability of the darkness, night or black to trigger imagination and involve in
creativity attributes the colour with femininity 15. Wallace Stevens in Six Significant
Landscapes writes, night, the female (14), which states the feminine characteristics
attributed to the colour black.
Night becomes the dark womb that involves itself and witnesses the process of
creation. The colour black becomes that feminine medium which makes ground for
imagination that leads to creativity. In order to attribute femininity to night, Wallace
Stevens has used words like cradle and conceive in his poems.
In her work Wallace Stevens and the Feminine, MelitaShaum remarks that:
From Stevens, black is neither absence of colour nor lack of light, but an
erotic and enveloping ambience rich with anticipation and the suggestion
of limitless possibilities. It is the essential dark the originating materium
out of which all creation flows. (215)
Two poems that represent the feminine nature of the black are Two Figures in
Dense Violet Light and Stars at Tallapoosa.
The night conceives and gives birth to strong emotions under the stars and
moonlight. The moonlight which belongs to the night and dreams stands for imagination.
Night becomes the cradle where imagination finds its abode. The femininity of the black
night is revealed here.
The poem Stars at Tallapoosa discusses this nature of the night. The stars and
the lines (1) between the stars belong to the secret night which belongs to the dreamers
and night hunters. At the beginning of the poem itself the speaker confirms that the night
does not belong to the desolate criers (3). The darkness is not the abode for sadness. It
cradles and nurtures the night hunters (9) or dreamers.
The absence of moon and the dark (4) and sharp (4) lines between the stars
confirm the intensity of the darkness that pertains. One wont be able to find oneself in
the blackness that persists around. But this blackness demands the transcendence of
imagination where the body becomes the witness to the transformation in the minds eye.
The imagination is ignited and the unidentifiable and intangible lines between the stars is
defined and woven in the minds eye. This delight rests with the secretive hunter (9) of
the night, who studies the night and weaves the imaginative lines that occupy the space
between the stars.
One could find in the lines the characteristics which are incomparable. That
makes them fresh, young and delightful for the secretive hunter (9). These lines of
imagination are like the brilliant arrows (15) that penetrate the darkness and fill the
minds eye. Wallace Stevens has brilliantly used the elements related to hunting to

15

Dependence on the feminine is something really important to Wallace Stevens. He has used

female characters in his early as well later poems while dealing with subjects of philosophical,
metaphysical importance, of which Sunday Morning and the World as Mediation are important
examples. He invokes a female muse in his poem To the One of Fictive Music. In his later
poetry the masculine and feminine were considered equal or rather they became one.

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explain the transcendence of imagination. Wallace Stevens writes in the last stanza of the
poem:
Their pleasure that is all bright-edged and cold;
Or, if not arrows, then the nimblest motions,
Making recoveries of young nakedness
And the lost vehemence the midnights hold. (17-20)
The imagination that penetrates the darkness is explained through the arrows
(18) and nimblest motions (18) of a hunter. The poet demands the transcendence of
imagination in the blackness like a hunter who is swift in his movements and finds
pleasure in the secrecy of darkness. This transcendence could reveal the freshness of the
night and bring back the lost vehemence (20) of the night.
Like in many other poems darkness or blackness becomes the backdrop for the
imagination to flourish. The blackness of the night appears as a cradle which nurtures the
imagination thus revealing the feminine nature of the night. There are references to lines
between stars, sea-lines (10) and earth lines (11) which seem to be appearing like
geometric figures. This will form a fine ground for comparing Wallace Stevens interest
in painting especially impressionism 16.
Another poem, as mentioned earlier, that reveals the femininity of night is Two
Figures in Dense Violet light. The setting of the poem Two Figures in Dense Violet
Light is the dark night. In the poem violet represents the pregnant darkness of the night.
The night is given the colour violet. In this context violet is more of dark blue which is
almost equivalent to black. Thus it is a version of blackness that pertains.
Sources prove that before and after the year 1000, the colour black was used
widely for centuries in the paintings representing the devil and other figures closely
associated with the devil. It was not only black that was used for this purpose, but also
other colours like brown, gray, purple and even blue, which were not much popular then
but were considered as dark colours. These colours started to be differentiated only after
the twelfth century. Michel Pastoureau mentions in Black: The History of a Color that
Dark blue was often considered and perceived as equivalent to black, semi-black or subblack, used notably for painting hell and demons.

16

Wallace Stevens was fond of impressionism and cubism which was a result of the Armory

show that he attended in 1913 and his interaction with the Arsenburg Circle.

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Figure 2.Painted cieling of church in Zillis (Switzerland,c.1120-25);rpt.in Michel

Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Paris,2008;print)
Pastoureau uses this figure in his book to explain the alternative use of blue and
black. The Romanesque paintings used any colour to paint devil as far as it was dark.
Here the fur of the devil is colored blue.
This interchangeable use of blue and black was not just prominent in the West. In
Sanskrit there is only one word, Krishnaa that signifies both black and blue. Dark blue
is the colour of Lord Krishna, Goddess Kali and even Draupadi. Draupadi is called by the
name Krishnaa as her colour was dark blue. The colour of Lord Krishna, which
represents the dark rain clouds (kaarmukil), is also dark blue.
Wallace Stevens who always experimented with colours would surely have
known the interchangeability of black and blue 17. This might have prompted him to give
the night violet colour, which is closer to blue or dark blue in the poem Two Figures in
Dense Violet Light.

17

In the poem The Man with the Blue Guitar, the blue colour symbolizes imagination. It does the

same function as black. Dark blue was also used by Wallace Stevens in some of his poems like
Variations on a Summer Day, Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas,

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The poem takes course from the conversation with two people, a man and his
lover. Under the moonlight the one of them asks the other to share the imagination or the
voice (4) that the night carries in its abode. Darkness of the night carries in its womb
dark secrets which can be claimed only with the power of human imagination. The
dusky words (5), dusky images (5) and the darkened speech suggest he words and
images coloured by the imagination. The blackness acts a medium to reveal the secrets
buried in the minds eye.
The speaker does not desire for listening to whatever is being said by the other.
There exists an expectation to understand each others thoughts and imagination. The
unsaid words are understood. They conceive words like the night conceives the sea
sounds. Like a woman the night conceives and gives birth to wonderful serenades.
The night assumes a feminine nature as in Stars at Tallapoosa. The sea sounds
conceived in silence (10) transform into a serenade (12) of imagination.
Night remains obscure for mere perceivers. But the blackness reveals the secret to
those imaginative minds like the palms becoming clear in the blue. It is the blackness of
the night that possesses the moonlight (2) or rather imagination.
While examining the predominance and the significant position that black
occupies in the poems of Wallace Stevens, it also becomes important to find the contrast
between the colours black and white, that Stevens presents in his poems. Black has
always been associated with death and evil while white stands for purity. This was an age
old tradition which has some roots in Christianity. Pastoureau in Black: The History of a
Color explains the use of the colours white, red and black in the celebrations under
Roman Christian tradition of eleventh and twelfth centuries. According to them:
White, the symbol of purity, was used for all celebrations of Christ as well
those of the angels, virgins and confessors; red which recalls the blood
spilled by and for Christ, was used for celebrations of the apostles and
martyrs, the cross, and the Holy Spirit, notably Pentecost; as for black, it
was used for times of waiting and penitence (Advent, Lent), as well as for
the masses for the dead and for Holy Friday. (39-40)
This distinction of black and white was carried on for centuries and soon they
were started to be regarded as adversaries. Newtons colour theories revealed the
scientific differences between these colours. According to the 1911 edition of the
Britannica Encyclopedia, a white object will reflect all the light of all the colours while a
black object absorbs almost all the colours. Wallace Stevens has tried to show the
purpose of these chromatic contraries in Harmonium.
The Snow Man which follows the poem Domination of Black brings out a
contrast between the colours black and white. The darkness of the night in Domination
of Black gives way for a snow covered landscape.Eleanor Cook writes in A Readers
Guide to Wallace Stevens that:
The Snow Man is so placed that it makes a companion poem to
Domination of Black in a fine contrast of black versus white, night
versus day, fire versus ice, past tense versus present, I versus one,
haunting memory versus purged memory, charm poem versus riddle
poem. Not that this poem represents a domination of white: it is a poem
written against any domination. (35-36)

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Stevens presents a snowman, an immobile witness of the winter who is cold as

well as dispassionate to the surroundings. Only a snowman can have perfect absorption
into the surroundings.
Everything that is present in the landscape is white and there is no sign of life.
The evergreen boughs of the pine trees, junipers and spruces are covered with snow and
glitter in the sun. The only sound that one can hear is the sound of the few leaves (9)
that remain when the wind blows over the landscape. Nothing else tends to disturb the
bare (12) and peaceful atmosphere that exists. This would appear quiet strange when
one moves from a night filled with the cry of peacocks on the boughs of hemlocks to a
bare landscape.
The poet claims that to enjoy the atmosphere one must be a snow man who
wishes to embrace the frost without thinking of any misery in the atmosphere that
pertains around. This suggests that one should live in reality without giving way for
imagination to embrace the winter and enjoy it. There is absolutely no scope for
imagination, to think of nothing that is there (15) and nothing that is (15). Through
this poem Wallace Stevens might be trying to say how difficult it would be for human
beings to separate their perceptions from their imagination.
While in the domination of black the imagination gets life, here the sight of snow
or whiteness around makes the poet demand the suppression of thoughts. Black for
Wallace Stevens becomes a medium where the thoughts flourish and creativity looms.
But imagination cant flourish unless there is a stage where one perceives the objects as
they are as suggested in the Snow Man.
The winter explained in Snow Man will soon give way to colours. One cannot
skip the season of winter to embrace spring, the season of colours when the evergreen
spruces, junipers and pines will shed the snow and takes its real form which was buried
under the snow for long. So the season of snow with its whiteness everywhere is essential
to understand the importance of the spring season and its colours. Similarly without a
season of suppressed thoughts one will not be able to create for themselves a season of
imagination.
The poem Snow Man is not aimed at portraying the barrenness of white or
promoting the immense possibilities of the colour black. Rather the poem tries to
distinguish the use of black and white colours by Wallace Stevens and look deeply into
the nature of imagination that functions only with the existence of reality. Without
knowing the real, one will not be able to experience the imagined.
As the poems of Wallace Stevens from Harmonium reveals, the transcendence of
reality into imagination happens with the presence of black colour. This colour which
defined the evil and the dead for years assumes a feminine nature and carries the burden
of mediating creation or life in Wallace Stevenss poems.
Works Cited:
Stevens, Wallace. Harmonium. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. Print.
. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. print.
. Necessary Angel : Essays on Reality and the Imagination. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc, 1942. print.
. Opus Posthumus. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1972. print.

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www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

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Onlline
Concordance
to
Wallace
Stevens
Poetry.
n.d.
web.
<http://www.wallacestevens.com/concordance/WSdb.cgi>.
Kermode, Frank. Wallace Stevens. London: Olover and Boyd, 1960. print.
Ehrrenpreis, Irvin. A Critical Anthology. Harmondsworth: Penguin books Ltd., 1972.
print.
Sharpe, Tony. Wallace Stevens: A Literary Life. London: Macmillain, 2000. print.
Weston, Susan B. Wallace Stevens: An Introduction to Poetry. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1974. Print.
Gelpi, Albert. Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridege
University Press, 1985. Print.
Shaum, Melita. Wallace Stevens and the Feminine. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 1993. print.
Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1967. print.
Pastoureau, Michel. Black: The History of a Color. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2008. web.
Serio, John N., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Wallace stevens. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. print.
Cook, Eleanor. A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2007. print.
Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner's Art through the Ages: A Concise Global History. 2. Boston:
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2006. web.
MacFadden, George. "Probings for an Integration: Color Symbolism in Wallace
Stevens." Modern Philology: A Journal Devoted to Research in Medieval and
Modern Literature (1961): 186-93. JSTOR.
Benamou, Michel. "Wallace Stevens: Some Relations between Poetry and Painting."
Comparative Literature (1959 winter): 47-60. JSTOR.
Britannica Encyclopaedia. 11. 1910-11. web.
<http://www.archive.org/stream/EncyclopaediaBritannicaDict.a.s.l.g.i.11thed.chisholm.1
910-1911-1922.33vols/06.EncyBrit.11th.1910.v.6.CHACON.#page/n733/mode/2up>.
Malevich, Kazimir. Black Square. 1915. Oil and Canvas.web.
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/kazimir-malevich/black-square-1915
A Blue Devil. Painted ceiling in Zillis (Switzerland, c.1120-25); rpt.in Michel
Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Princeton, 2008; print)

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