Idea of Order at Key West

An excerpt from a paper I recently wrote:

Wallace Stevens was the essential American writer on many levels. It is perhaps on the physical level that he most aptly brings body to our image of the contemporary writer. Hailing from the New England urban center of Hartford, Connecticut he provided for his time amongst us primarily as an insurance salesman and secondarily as a poet. It would be difficult to look at Stevens’ footprint upon our collective psyche solely in terms of his experience as salesman. It was poetry that contributed both delight and understanding to even those, he failed to meet personally. Horace likely would have embraced the words of Wallace Stevens as excellent and very concrete examples of ideal poetry. Stevens’ works, and primarily “The Idea of Order at Key West”, has much to do with the very act of creation. Creation lies at the heart of poetry and imitation lies at the heart of creation.
Stevens opens “The Idea of Order at Key West” with the archetypical image of the Muse singing. There is no need to incite the Muse to song, she has already begun for us. While Stevens does not call her by name, her true identity is cleverly revealed. In the third stanza, Wallace writes: “For she was the maker of the song she sang” and “It was the spirit that we sought and knew.” (Stevens 1993, pg.61) Only a Muse can be the maker of song. She is divine and it is through her inspiration that we humans are capable of the arts that we craft. The Muses are spirits that we know and seek to such ends. Thei song, the root of Greek enthusiasm[1] and hence the art of mankind, has no conceivable place on this plane of existence. This is the level of the ocean. It is the realm of barbaric beast, an environment devoid of reason. One is drawn to the multi-layered, hierarchal universe of Shakespeare’s King Lear.[2] This is the oft forgotten ladder of universal existences that Plato would likely have openly embraced[3]. The level of nature and the level of gods are two distinctly different places with vastly opposing ideas of order. The gods of the upper level have no power to exude their sense of order upon this level of nature. This can only be done through man. A creation that, since the fall, has been descending through these layers of existence. Muses are an outward aspect of the divine realm and must utilize the descended man to produce their order. Both the Muse and the ocean blatantly represent what they truly are: “The sea was not a mask. No more was she.” (ibid.)
The Muse is this higher level descended upon the base level of nature. Yet, as stated before, this creature has no power here. Order must be created through man. The ocean, and view from shore, is that window upon nature’s level. The genius of the ocean is the root of that order. It is an order that nothing from the upper levels of the universe can understand. As fallen creatures of the gods, we still try to impose an unnatural order upon something that rejects it. Temporarily, an imposed order may reign. Given time, however, nature’s order will persist. This is not our level of existence. The Muse regards order in a much different sense than we do. Familiar with only existence solely at the divine level, nature is obscured and confused. One can look at Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for aspects of such confusion. Due to this confused sense of order she sings beyond the heart of order on the level of nature. “She sang beyond the genius of the sea.” (ibid.) She has no conception of order here and because of it our muse tries to sing past the pinnacle of that order. Only as residents of this realm can the narrator (and hence ourselves) see the genius at the centre of nature’s order.
The heart of that natural world responds to the muse with a cry that Stevens refers to as “Inhuman.” (ibid.) Nature and humanity stand polarized. They have different concepts of order, from different realms. If an idea of order were to be represented in the same light upon both levels of the universe, then their combined cries would become a medley. This they do not: “The song and water were not medleyed sound …” (ibid) These are two forces quarreling over a sense of order a meaning to their existence. The indigenous to this plane, appears to be winning this battle of cries. One man’s cry is another’s song. Such is the case in this poem. Alas, as the genius of the sea refuses to submit to the song of our Muse it becomes clear that no external order can be placed upon nature or at least a lasting order implemented from on high. Akin to a poem, this sense of order lies within its creator. It is a vain attempt by the Muse up to place a sense of being upon a reality in which it does not exist. This is the “Idea of order’ that Stevens plays witness to at Key West. Order lies within its particular level of the universe. The descended man may temporarily and rather sporactically place his own sense of order[4] upon nature. The alien Muse is incapable of such a feat. Order is created from within the human, because of the ordeal of what it is to be a transcendent being in these realms. The supreme level of the Muse is powerless in nature. The Golden Age is passed, and no longer do the ancient gods have the supreme power they once enjoyed. All aspects of the universe are now more or less disjointed, and because of this the only true power lies in that of the transcend man. He draws his creative powers from all the levels that he will or has at one time crossed. Man is the divine source of creation.
[1] Literally, in translation, to be filled with spirit.
[2] Due to the brevity of the particular paper, it may be necessary for the reader to look at examine Northrop Frye’s Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (Yale University Press, 1986). His essay on King Lear gives a succinct examination of the subject. See pg. 106.
[3] Hierarchal view of the universe as laid out in his discussion on poets.
[4] A hybrid sense of order created according to each man’s concept of order taken from both higher planes of existence and baser levels such as nature herself.