Stone Melody/Wallace Stevens, a little

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

Its true that the melody is pure New Years Eve, but everyone 
reads a little something extra into those bits of books which
are special to them.  So this becomes perhaps a personal note.
Wallace  Stevens' very late, very great poem "The Rock" is 
divided into three parts. The last part is called
Forms of The Rock In a Night Hymn. I'm not pretending any great
concordance here--for there are differences of theme and register.
Yet there is something which resonates between these two small
lyrical nodes at the edge of monumental achievement. 
If any of you don't know the poem, I hope you enjoy this excerpt:

                  III

Forms of the Rock In A Night-Hymn

The rock is the grey particular of man's life,
the stone from which he rises up-and-ho,
The step to the bleaker depths of his descents...

The rock is the stern particular of the air,
The mirror of the planets, one by one,
But through man's eye, their silent rhapsodist,

Turquoise the rock, at odious evening bright
With redness that sticks fast to dreams;
The difficult rightness of half-risen day.

The rock is the habitation of the whole,
Its strength and measure, that which is near,
point A
In a perspective that begins again

At B: the origin of the mango's rind.
It is the rock where tranquil must adduce
Its tranquil self, the main of things, the mind,

The starting point of the human and the end,
That in which space itself is contained, the gate
To the enclosure, day, the things illumined

By day, night and that which night illumines,
Night and its midnight-minting fragrances,
Night's hymn of the rock, as in a vivid sleep.



 
Eric Alan Weinstein
Centre For English Studies
University Of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk