The Idea of A Solitary Reaper at Key West

I believe I’ve written here before about Wallace Stevens’ political poem The Idea of Order at Key West. 

Well, I’ve written about it somewhere – that the poem is a reply to Ramon Fernandez’s “Lettre ouverte à André Gide" in the Nouvelle Revue Francaise (“Judging that Marxism did not encompass reality (i.e., literature and art –ed.), nor all the possibilities of the mind, I wished to illumine that margin ignored by the revolutionists in their zeal for action.”) and that it even salvages Steven’s statement “Money is a kind of poetry” which otherwise would be something only an a-hole would say.

And yes I know Stevens said that Ramon Fernandez was made up, wasn't anybody.  He was lying. Lying, lying, lying. He thought he could get away with that by thinking that HIS Ramon Fernandez was exactly like the historic French critic and Marxist/Fascist Fernandez.  But he can't. Not with me, no sir.  All poets lie. Get used to it.

But I believe I’ve stumbled on (oh, maybe everyone already knew this, I am so behind the curve usually) another source spring for The IofOatKW.

It’s Wordsworth’s The Solitary Reaper, which is also about hearing a solitary singer in a deserted scape.  I think there is also a tenuous link between them thematically.  Wordsworth can’t forget the song of the woman reaper, and for Wallace the song of the woman by the sea also imbeds it self, but in much wider area.

I’ve alternated stanzas below (and left out one of Wallace’s – did anyone ever call him Wally? – it’s appended at the end) and indicated some of the rhythmic and aural coincidences. Wordsworth’s is in rhymed tetrameter while Steven’s is varied along a pentameter base, with rhyme only for emphasis, and enjoyment. The Stevens stanzas are in italic.

The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth

The Idea of Order at Key West
Wallace Stevens

Behold her, single in the field,   
Yon solitary Highland Lass!   
Reaping and singing by herself;   
Stop here, or gently pass!   
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,         
And sings a melancholy strain;   
O listen! for the Vale profound   
Is overflowing with the sound.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt   
More welcome notes to weary bands   
Of travellers in some shady haunt,   
Among Arabian sands:   
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard   
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,   
Breaking the silence of the seas   
Among the farthest Hebrides.   

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—   
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow   
For old, unhappy, far-off things,   
And battles long ago:   
Or is it some more humble lay,   
Familiar matter of to-day?   
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,   
That has been, and may be again?   

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang   
As if her song could have no ending;   
I saw her singing at her work,   
And o'er the sickle bending;—   
I listen'd, motionless and still;   
And, as I mounted up the hill,   
The music in my heart I bore,   
Long after it was heard no more.   

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
(missing stanza here)
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Appendix: missing stanza

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.