| STEVENS ASSERTSthat there
is a universal poetry, of which literary poetry and painting are manifestations.
Art and composition are one; poetry and painting alike create through composition.
"Where the poet does his job by virtue of an effort of the mind he is in
rapport with the painter, who does his job with respect to the problems
of form and color" (000). Comparing the prose of Proust and the paintings
of Villon he finds that these works were deliciae of the spirit
as distinguished from delectationes of the senses, for one found
in them both "the labor of calculation, the appetite for perfection." Stevens
speculates that "it may be that we are dealing with something that has
no significance, something that is the result of imitation" (000). He quotes
De Quincy, distinguishing between the poet and the painter as between two
imitators, one moral, the other physical, and he suggests, "There are imitations
within imitations and the relations between poetry and painting may present
nothing more" (000). However, notes Stevens, in our own time the search
for the supreme truth has been a search for some supremely acceptable fiction.
Poets and painters alike make that assumption; it brings poetry and painting
into relation as sources of our present conception of reality. It reaffirms
a philosophical center through which reality may be repossessed and re-created
with poetic acts. (Jean Jacobson.) |