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American Literature
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Stevens and Surrealism: The Genesis of
"The Man with the Blue Guitar"1
GLEN MAcLEOD
I I am grateful to the late Peter Brazeau for first suggesting to me that Stevens'
relation to Surrealism was a topic needing investigation.
2 Page references in the text refer to Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens
(New York: Knopf, I966), abbreviated "L"; Opus Posthumous, ed. Samuel French Morse
(New York: Knopf, 1957), "OP"; and The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the
Imagination (New York: Knopf, I95I), "NA."
3 The best account of "Owl's Clover" as an important but failed experiment is in
A. Walton Litz, Introspective Voyager: The Poetic Development of Wallace Stevens (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 203-28.
American Literature, Volume 59, Number 3, October I987. Copyright ?D I987 by the
Duke University Press. CCC 0002-983I/87/$I.50.
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360 American Literature
4 Quoted in Russell Lynes, Good Old Modem: An Intimate Portrait of the Museum of
Modern Art (New York: Atheneum, 1973), pp. 142-43.
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Stevens and Surrealism 361
It seems a pity that some kind of historical introduction could not have
been arranged; for thus the uninstructed visitor might be brought to
realize that what he or she may perhaps consider a recent and entirely
gratuitous form of intellectual vagary is as old as the creative impulse
itself, and that the love of the fantastic, singular and terrible, has its
roots in the deepest recesses of the human spirit. Did not Fuseli-to
go back only a hundred years-devour raw beef before retiring to bed
that his nocturnal visions should be the more highly coloured?6
s Peter Quennell, "The Surrealist Exhibition," New Statesman and Nation, 20 June
1936, p- 967-
6 p. 967-
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362 American Literature
7 P. 968.
8 Stevens' fear of being classified as a Surrealist was well founded. Even so sympathetic
a spirit as Henry Church, who was perhaps his closest friend and whose opinions he
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Stevens and Surrealism 363
greatly respected, considered that Stevens' group of poems "A Thought Revolved" (1936)
was "tainted with surrealisme." (Letter from Henry Church to Wallace Stevens, dated 17
April I939, in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.)
9 Edward Alden Jewell, "Proteus of Modernism," New York Times, I Nov. 1936, Sec.
IO, p. 9.
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364 American Literature
the I9Ios. And he had had the opportunity two years before to
consider that artist's entire achievement at the first major Picasso
retrospective in America, held at the Wadsworth Atheneum in
1934.10 But Stevens' knowledge of Picasso was not confined to
events this side of the Atlantic. An article by Clive Bell, entitled
simply, "Picasso," in the New Statesman and Nation of 30 May
1936, provides the key to Stevens' thinking about Picasso in that
year. Bell is reporting on the recent celebration of Picasso in
Paris:
10 For details about this show, and for a history of the Atheneum during its modernist
heyday in the 1930s, see Eugene R. Gaddis, ed., Avery Memorial, Wadsworth Atheneum:
The First Modern Museum (Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1984).
I1 Clive Bell, "Picasso," New Statesman and Nation, 30 May 1936, p. 857.
12 I shall cite stanza numbers rather than page numbers for quotations from "The
Man with the Blue Guitar," so that the reader may easily consult either CP or The Palm
at the End of the Mind.
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Stevens and Surrealism 365
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366 American Literature
16Andre Breton, Surrealism and Painting, tr. Simon Watson Taylor (New York:
Harper and Row, 1972), p. 7.
17 "Picasso Poete," Cahiers dArt, IO (1935), i85.
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Stevens and Surrealism 367
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368 American Literature
20 William Rubin, ed., Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective (New York: Museum of Modern
Art, I980), pp. 308-og.
21 "Fait Social et Vision Cosmique," Cahiers d'Art, 10 (1935), 145.
22 P. 150.
23 For a thorough discussion of the significance of the term "pure poetry" for Stevens
in the 1930S, see A. Walton Litz, "Wallace Stevens' Defense of Poetry: La Poesie Pure,
the New Romantic, and the Pressure of Reality," in George Bornstein, ed., Romantic and
Modern (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), pp. 11 1-32.
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Stevens and Surrealism 369
For those who, truly loving the way Picasso's work constantly gives
fresh value to the concrete, might fear that he could sacrifice to poetry
the magnificent part of that same concreteness that is the material of
his art-since poetry, which has other powers, has not that of putting
the object before our eyes-let me hasten to tell an anecdote. It taught
me first of all about the placement of Picasso's poems in the particular
place where 1, like anyone else, must see them inscribed because he
has accustomed me to this form of particular perception toward his
creations. Several days ago I saw Picasso give, as a present to a woman
who had just given birth, a miniature guitar; then, only after he had
given it to her, he had the idea of writing a poem that he could pin on
this guitar. At that instant, this is how he conceived of such a poem,
before it had taken shape; the important thing is that his conception
required that the poem be placed very precisely between what looked
like a toy and what was the beginning of life....25
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370 American Literature
Since the French "espace" can mean both "space" and "place,"
it seems likely that Stevens here is composing a paradoxical
meditation on the phrase Breton used to capsulize the main point
of his anecdote. Returning to the spatial metaphor in Stanza
xxxii, his conception is again close to Breton's:
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Stevens and Surrealism 371
26 p. i88.
27 Breton, Anthologie de L'Humour Noir (Paris: Editions du Sagittaire, C. 1943, 1950).
28 "Picasso Pokte," p. i86. "Le free instrument, que j'ai tenu sans songer a le faire
resonner, m'a paru muet de l'attente de ce poeme meme, comme inversement il me
semble que j'aurais moims bien compris, sans cc que le peintre disposait jadis aupres
d'eux, tout ce qui peut s'attacher de valeur emotionnelle a la reproduction d'un titre de
journal ou d'un bout de chanson d'es rues. Cette guitare prenait figure de support ideal
en la circonstance: c'etait bien le meme que celui de tant de tableaux, de sculptures. Le
poeme en puissance se deroulait contre cette guitarL a la faqon de la banderole-oriflamme
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372 American Literature
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Stevens and Surrealism 373
30 P. i86. "On saisit par Ia le besoin d'expression totale qui le possede et lui impose
de remedier de la sorte a l'insuffisance relative d'un art par rapport a l'autre."
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374 American Literature
life that are worth the trouble. I understand that whatever may
come to pass, it is towards these windows that, not only for a
whole country but for an entire world, Picasso raises his eyes; it
is towards these windows that, from the outset to the last return,
he will use in concert all the artifices of seduction."'" This image
of the artist as guitarist / lover surely relates to Stevens' concep-
tion of his own guitarist serenading an unidentified audience at
the beginning of "The Man with the Blue Guitar." As Breton
presents it, Picasso's impassioned serenade, aimed at seducing
his audience into accepting his gorgeous inventions as real, is not
less worthwhile for being imaginary: if one is to make compro-
mises (or "bargains") in this life, as one surely must, then it is
with such elevated visions in mind that "one concludes the only
bargains of life that are worth the trouble." Stevens makes the
same point:
31 P. ;86. "Et cette guitare avait au-dessus d'elle toute la hauteur des balcons espagnols
d'ou l'on &oute, des feneres croulantes de geraniums et de capucines, que l'on entr'ouvre
dans la nuit et par lesquelles se concluent les seuls marches de la vie qui en vaillent la
piene. Ces fenetres, j'ai compris que, quoi qu'il fasse, c'est vers elles que, non seulement
pour tout un pays mais pour tout un monde, Picasso leve les yeux, c7est vers elles que,
du depart au dernier retour, il usera a 1'envi tous les artifices de la seduction."
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Stevens and Surrealism 375
32 Renato Poggioli, ed., Mattino Domenicale ed Altre Poesie (Turin: Giulio Einaudi
Editore, I954), p- I79.
33 "Fait Social et Vision Cosmique," p. I50.
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376 American Literature
There can be little doubt that Stevens would have associated the
image of the nailed wing with Surrealism. In the small pamphlet
that accompanied the I931 Surrealist exhibition in Hartford-an
exhibition Stevens attended "Not just once, but quite a number
of times," according to James Thrall Soby 34-there was printed
one sample of Surrealist prose. It was a brief excerpt from Andre
Breton's collection of automatic pieces entitled Soluble Fish. One
sentence in that short paragraph reads: "The prostitute begins
her song in the country of the nailed Wing." 35
By identifying with Picasso in "The Man with the Blue Gui-
tar," Stevens was able to give full play to those elements of
Surrealism that most suited his poetic talent and, at the same
time, to assert his own individuality as a poet. In hindsight,
therefore, Stevens' summary comments on the Surrealists at the
end of "The Irrational Element in Poetry" can be seen to be
remarkably prophetic: "They are extraordinarily alive and that
they make it possible for us to read poetry that seems filled with
gaiety and youth, just when we were beginning to despair of
gaiety and youth, is immensely to the good.... They, in time,
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Stevens and Surrealism 377
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