Two Figures in Dense Violet Night

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"Two Figures in Dense Violet Night" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1923. [1] Only its first stanza is quoted here.

Contents

Two Figures in Dense Violet Night

I had as lief be embraced by the porter at the hotel
As to get no more from the moonlight
Than your moist hand.
.
.
.
.

Interpretation

Buttel reads the poem as about the "humorous disparity between gauche male and suave female". [2] But it can also be read as neither humorous nor gender-specific, but rather as a meditation on the lover's otherness or `alterity'. The former assimilates it to such poems as "Plot Against The Giant", the latter to such as "Le Monocle De Mon Oncle". Related to the latter reading is the suggestion that the poem addresses the relationship of a poet to the reader, who is enjoined to match the poet's imaginative response to the world.

Stevens endows the poem with pace by use of the imperative mood.

Notes

  1. Buttel, p. 122.
  2. Buttel, p. 24

Related Research Articles

<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.

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References