Invective Against Swans

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"Invective Against Swans" is a poem by Wallace Stevens from his first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923).

Contents

Invective against Swans

 The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks
 And far beyond the discords of the wind.

 A bronze rain from the sun descending marks
 The death of summer, which that time endures

 Like one who scrawls a listless testament
 Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,

 Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon
 And giving your bland motions to the air.

 Behold, already on the long parades
 The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.

 And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies
 Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.

Analysis

Stevens's ironic mode

It has been observed that Stevens has two modes. The first mode is a pure and orgiastic—Dionysian—celebration of life while the second is that of the malign and ironic observer. "Invective against Swans" can be classified as belonging to the latter. David Herd plausibly locates the insult at an abstract level.

One of the tasks Modernist poets set themselves, probably the chief task, was to resuscitate the all but clapped-out diction of English-language poetry. It was for this reason Wallace Stevens wrote his "Invective Against Swans"....Stevens wanted people to understand that the language of poetry (as it was passed down to him by his Victorian predecessors), with its over-dependence on swans and clouds, was all but obsolete, capable only of expressing a certain poetical mood—a mood of burdened over-sensitivity.

Arguably then, the poem is insulting not swans and clouds but rather both worn-out Victorian diction and the philosophical/poetic impulse to escape nature, the latter through that decrepit vehicle of the soul which figures in Platonic and Christian conceptions of immortality and a transcendent world. There is no reason to think that Stevens was comfortable in any such vehicle. In 1902 the 22-year-old Stevens enters in his journal, "An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself." In Adagia he writes, "After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." [1] See also "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman".

Re-imagining the natural world

The poem may be saying that the poet should re-imagine the natural world, neither escaping to Plato's world of Forms or the Christian heaven, nor relying on Victorian imagination. "Invective against Swans" perhaps "shows" how to do that re-imagining. Its allusion to Paphos, the mythical birthplace of Aphrodite—embodiment of the values of love, sex, and beauty—doesn't bespeak an attitude that exults in slipping "the surly bonds of Earth." Instead it expresses summer's end in a pungently non-Victorian way.

Publication history

"Invective Against Swans" was first published in Harmonium, prior to 1923 and is therefore in the public domain. [2]

Notes

  1. ↑ Kermode and Richardson, p. 900)
  2. ↑ "LibriVox Forum • View topic - COMPLETE: Public Domain Poems of W Stevens, Vol. 1 - PO/ez". librivox.org. Archived from the original on 2010-10-13. Retrieved 2007-01-30.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wallace Stevens</span> American poet (1879–1955)

Wallace Stevens was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut.

<i>Harmonium</i> (poetry collection) Book by Wallace Stevens

Harmonium is a book of poetry by American poet Wallace Stevens. His first book at the age of forty-four, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. This collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred. Harmonium was reissued in 1931 with three poems omitted and fourteen new poems added.

"The Worms at Heaven's Gate" is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published in 1916 and is therefore in the public domain.

"Infanta Marina" is one of a group of collected poems in Wallace Stevens' Harmonium, in this poem dealing with a seaside princess.

"Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1918.

"Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1921 and is therefore in the public domain.

"The Jack-Rabbit" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923).

"Of the Surface of Things" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published in 1919, so it is in the public domain.

"The Place of the Solitaires" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in the journal Poetry in October, 1919, so it is in the public domain.

"The Weeping Burgher" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. Originally published in 1919, it is in the public domain.

"The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was originally published in 1919, so it is in the public domain.

"Bantams in Pine-Woods" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1922 in the poetry journal Dial, along with five other poems, all under the title "Revue." It is in the public domain.

"Cortege for Rosenbloom" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book, Harmonium. First published in 1921, it is in the public domain in the United States and similar jurisdictions.

"Two Figures in Dense Violet Night" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1923. Only its first stanza is quoted here.

"To the One of Fictive Music" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. First published in 1922, it is in the public domain.

"The Death of a Soldier" is a poem by Wallace Stevens. It is among those added to the 1931 reissue of Stevens' first collection Harmonium. The poem was originally part of the unpublished Lettres d'un Soldat (1914–1915). The poem uses free verse to describe the death of a soldier.

"Sea Surface full of Clouds" is a poem from the second, 1931, edition of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1924, so it is restricted by copyright. However, brief parts of it are quoted here as fair use, and the whole poem is available elsewhere on the Internet.

"The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade" is a poem from the second edition (1931) of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.

"Lunar Paraphrase" is a poem from the second (1931) edition of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. One of Stevens's "war poems" from "Lettres d'un Soldat" (1918), it is in the public domain.

"Anatomy of Monotony" is a poem from the second edition (1931) of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. Unlike most of the poems in this collection, it was first published in 1931, so it is restricted by copyright until 2025 in America and similar jurisdictions, because of legislation like the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. However, it is quoted here in full, as justified by fair use for the purpose of scholarly commentary.

References

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