Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks
"Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was one of the few Harmonium poems first published in that volume,[1] so it is still under copyright. However, it is quoted here as justified by Fair use to facilitate scholarly commentary.
In the moonlight
I met Berserk,
In the moonlight
On the bushy plain.
Oh, sharp he was
As the sleepless!
And, "Why are you red
In this milky blue?"
I said.
"Why sun-colored,
As if awake
In the midst of sleep?"
"You that wander,"
So he said,
"On the bushy plain,
Forget so soon.
But I set my traps
In the midst of dreams."
I knew from this
That the blue ground
Was full of blocks
And blocking steel.
I knew the dread
Of the bushy plain,
And the beauty
Of the moonlight
Falling there,
Falling
As sleep falls
In the innocent air.
Interpretation
The poem marks Stevens's realization that the life of the imagination is more complex and fraught with peril than he had once supposed.
Robert Buttel is impressed by an "eerie collocation of colors" which contributes to the "disturbing effect of the invasion of the world of moonlight and dream by Berserk, who personifies the violence of day."[1]
Vendler understands the poem as Stevens meeting his own potential madness. The prince of peacocks, the poet, meets Berserk, who will not be evaded even in dreams. She thinks that the initial promise of the poem, the brutal encounter between the prince and Berserk, is dissipated in the final stanza, "an unrewarding ending".[2]
It may be that Vendler understands the dread in the penultimate stanza to take as its object only the bushy plain. The scope of the dread is narrow. But if the scope is broad, encompassing the final stanza, then the prince knows the dread of the beauty of the moonlight. The eeriness that Buttel mentioned continues to the end of the poem. There isn't a retreat from brutality to incantation, as Vendler sees it, but rather the brutality of the blocks and blocking steel extends into the final stanza.
Compare "The Public Square" for the shared architectural motif.
Notes
- ^ a b Buttel, p. 160
- ^ Vendler, p. 16
References
- Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press.
- Vendler, Helen. Words Chosen Out Of Desire. 1984: University of Tennessee Press.
- v
- t
- e
- "Earthy Anecdote"
- "Invective Against Swans"
- "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"
- "The Plot Against the Giant"
- "Infanta Marina"
- "Domination of Black"
- "The Snow Man"
- "The Ordinary Women"
- "The Load Of Sugar-Cane"
- "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle"
- "Nuances of a Theme by Williams"
- "Metaphors of a Magnifico"
- "Ploughing on Sunday"
- "Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges"
- "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores"
- "Fabliau of Florida"
- "Doctor of Geneva"
- "Homunculus et la Belle Etoile"
- "The Comedian as the Letter C"
- "From the Misery of Don Joost"
- "O Florida, Venereal Soil"
- "Last Looks at the Lilacs"
- "The Worms at Heaven's Gate"
- "The Jack-Rabbit"
- "Valley Candle"
- "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand"
- "The Apostrophe to Vincentine"
- "Floral Decorations for Bananas"
- "Anecdote of Canna"
- "On the Manner of Addressing Clouds"
- "Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb "
- "Of the Surface of Things"
- "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks"
- "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman"
- "The Place of the Solitaires"
- "The Weeping Burgher"
- "The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician"
- "Banal Sojourn"
- "Depression Before Spring"
- "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"
- "The Cuban Doctor"
- "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon"
- "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"
- "Sunday Morning"
- "The Virgin Carrying a Lantern"
- "Stars at Tallapoosa"
- "Explanation"
- "Six Significant Landscapes"
- "Bantam in Pine-Woods"
- "Anecdote of the Jar"
- "Palace of the Babies"
- "Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs"
- "Jasmine's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow"
- "Cortège for Rosenbloom"
- "Tattoo"
- "The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws"
- "Life Is Motion"
- "The Wind Shifts"
- "Colloquy with a Polish Aunt"
- "Gubbinal"
- "Two Figures in Dense Violet Night"
- "Theory"
- "To the One of Fictive Music"
- "Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion"
- "Peter Quince at the Clavier"
- "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
- "Nomad Exquisite"
- "The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad"
- "The Death of a Soldier"
- "Negation"
- "The Surprises of the Superhuman"
- "Sea Surface Full of Clouds"
- "The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade"
- "Lunar Paraphrase"
- "Anatomy of Monotony"
- "The Public Square"
- "Indian River"
- "Tea"