WALLACE STEVENS
899
level than its meaning, which is extremely difficult to excerpt. The
poem has been relatively overpraised within the body of Stevens'
work, and it would hardly be worth the trouble of interpreting, except
that it provides one of the most admirable opportunities in Stevens
for studying the interaction of imagery between his early and late
poems. Two extreme interpretations which would contradict each
other seem possible, depending on whom one chooses as the villain of
the piece, Azcan or the inchling. An interpretation internally con–
sistent, and more or less in harmony with the context provided by
Stevens' poetry as a whole, can be worked out in either direction.
And if Azcan seems a preferable hero to me, I am not forgetting
that Mr. William Van O'Connor in a recent article on Stevens of–
fered evidence in favor of the inchling. In actual fact, I believe that
the real meaning is complex enough to release them both from the
glory or responsibility of being either wholly hero or wholly villain.
The poem seems to be, more than anything else, an investigation of
the relationship between the imagination and reality in an anti–
imaginative society. Read in this light it offers a comment on one
of the more complex facets of Stevens' belief.
To begin: there is some evidence that Azcan is a symbol of
the imagination. His height alone associates him with the "tall and
unfretted" Capitan of the other poem, who was "high in the height
that is our total height," and it associates him also with that "giant,
on the horizon, glistening," who is used as the symbol for imagination
in Stevens' recent poem,
A Primitive like an Orh.*
But there are
important differences. The Most Merciful Capitan is so successfully
a state of mind that he can be visualized only as the elegant sweep–
ing flare in the brim of a quite irresistible hat-the sort of sombrero
that rationalists would wear if they studied the ellipse of the half–
moon. But what is most noticeable is that the relationship of Azcan
and the Capitan to their respective environments is dissimilar. Azcan
is not on friendly terms with the inchling, who represents his environ–
ment, and therefore reality; but the Capitan has evidently culminated
a successful resistance ("The formidable helmet is nothing now")
which leaves him free to look forward to "the green flauntings of the
hours of peace."
*
A Prospero Pamphlet, printed by the Banyan Press, March, 1948.
