FINAL SOLILOQUY OF THE INTERIOR PARAMOUR
The 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.
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R:
I think the thoughts are the way the speaker expresses the sentiments. Take the first stanza:
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 soliloquy is spoken by the "interior paramour," our somewhat shameful love for our own selves, not god. The "small reason" and "think" (not "know") also expresses hesitation about the belief expressed, and the poem as a whole expresses the tentativeness with which this view must be held, in contrast to the certainty of believers. (Of course believers have their own problem, ie., disbelief, but it is usually much more dramatic given the nature of the belief.)
So my paraphrase would describe the various expressions of the tentative state of mind that the poem expresses about what (you elucidate the "what"), and how it does it. But I don't enjoy doing it. It seems clumsy compared to the poem.
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Me:
I read you to say we differ in that I see good lyric poems as finally or ultimately expressing ideas, themes—and I have a specific idea about theme, which is what the poem is “saying”, and which can be briefly stated—and you see poems as the, can I say? dramatization or dramatic expression of thoughts.
I remember our difference in that now, and I won’t go on about why I disagree with you. So, I’ll just repeat that I see no exclusiveness between the two approaches and any difference dissolves in a holistic approach.
At this point more interesting to me is coming to better terms with Stevens’ poem, which I’ve looked at more and thought more about. I need to adjust my own initial emphasis
The poem concerns those of us who are “interior paramours”.
And in that, different from you, I see no shameful self love, no hesitation about what the speaker sets out, no tentativeness, no contrast with what believers believe, their certainty. And even if I disagree, don’t you see, as I do, that your description of the ways the tentativeness come across adds up to your own idea of what the poem is about, which is to say, its theme.
Me, more than before, I see a continuity between what’s set out in the first stanza and the heights of things in the last two stanzas. The first stanza is the seeds of what finally culminate in what’s “enough”. The interior paramour isn’t a self lover but rather the lover of innerness, which includes thought and imagination leading to inner illumination.
We start at beginnings: the beginning of light, “the first light of evening”, just as evening is the beginning of darkness, and so the first light of illumination in that darkening; the beginning of the soliloquy, where one speaks to oneself, consistent with the love of innerness; the beginning of “rest”, of calmness, tranquility; the beginning of thought, “for small reason”; the beginning of understanding the interrelation among thought, imagination and beneficence:
we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
And we have the beginning of a self conscious meditation cast in poetry—“as in a room”.
The imagistic and thematic links among the beginnings in the first stanza and the culmination of things in the last two stanzas dispel, I argue, your view of what the first stanza introduces and your characterizations of the sentiments with which I’ve taken issue.
The “small reason” and what we “ think” blossom into the “central mind”. Our initial thought of “the world imagined as the ultimate good” evolves into the fullest and highest synthesis of mind intertwined with imagination as inner illumination:
“Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one... “
From the first lighting the first light of evening, an inner illumination as well as an outer one, we get to “How high that highest candle lights the dark.”
And out of that light, our brightest inner illumination, and out of our connection to the order of things, at first “obscure”, out of the connection to the central mind, we release ourselves from our contraction, our movement into ourselves, over the course of the poem: “the intensest rendezvous”; “we collect ourselves…into one thing”; “within a single thing”; “wrapped tightly around us”. From out of that process, which is a leaving behind of “indifferences”, a forgetting of “each other and ourselves”, we “feel”, and “think” of, “that which arranged the “rendezvous”.
The release from the contraction, the movement to within, is this freeing:
“Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air”
So the beginnings are good. “This is”, which begins the second stanza, refers to the thought that “the world imagined is the ultimate good.” As the speaker says, using the language of logic, “This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.”
So as I say, we have at the highest height of things a kind of symbiosis of knowledge, thought, imagination, God and the light of inner illumination.
There is no end to what can be noted. So I’ll stop here.
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R:
I would prefer to say the poem depicts a person who. . . etc. I think of poems as verbal portraits based on sentiments expressed. If you think the smile on the Mona Lisa is the theme of the picture, then we agree. But I do agree that sentiments (feeling charged ideas, like a feeling charged face) are the material of the portrait. The Latin tag for my view is ut pictura poesis. "As portraits are so are lyric poems." I thought you paraphrased to make the theme clearer, but one cannot paraphrase a portrait. The words of the poem in that order are the paint. One makes of the paint a portrait, one makes of the words a portrait, not paraphraseable thoughts. Two very different ways of taking words. De Santis wasn't popular not because of what he said but his "presentation of self" was not appealing. (So it was said).
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