Furthermore, due to Stevens' lack of vivid details or new ideas regarding pears, I, as the reader, am left simply with concrete details. This triggers my mind to think of pears out of the box. Perhaps this was Stevens' intent for he, rather abruptly, ends his poem with, "The pears are not seen / As the observer wills" (lines 23-24). Do we too often pay attention to the ordinary characteristics and fail to recognize the extraordinariness of objects? Certainly. Do we alter our viewpoints of certain objects to fit in? Most definitely. Therefore, pears, among other objects, aren't typically seen as we, the observers, would like for them to be seen. However, because this "ordinary" perception becomes the norm, we feel forced to deny extraordinariness of objects so our thoughts are considered "normal." Perhaps the observer wills the pear to be viewed for its extraordinariness, but this is too often overlooked. This could also work the other way around: pears could be viewed for their extraordinariness, much to the observers' dismay, when instead they (the observers) would rather see the pears for their use to them only: as an object to be consumed, much like Ponge with bread.
As far as the relationship (if any) between reading philosophy and poetry, for me personally, I feel that philosophy and poetry are closely related in the sense of the act of doing so being an experience. When reading (or writing) poetry or philosophy, I feel this desire to explore different realms of thought. In doing so, my perspective of the world is transformed, or at least altered a bit. Though the two disciplines differ, they both are equidistant to the heart of the matter at hand, but just view the matter through different lenses.
What I find most fascinating about your reading is that you do, indeed, see the pears "as [you] will"-- by that, I mean Stevens doesn't mention taste, juiciness, or texture in the poem, yet you (and I, for that matter) read these things into the pears upon reading the poem. He doesn't even mention them as objects of consumption, yet almost automatically we begin thinking of them this way.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if his final line has anything do do with what MP says about imagination and reality. He says that, despite the power of the imagination, the brain never for a moment questions what is real and what is imagined. The word "wills" in the final line suggests, to me, an imaginative power-- the power (in this case) responsible for endowing upon the pears our feelings of hunger. The problem with this interpretation is that it conflicts with Stevens', because we do see these pears as we imagine them... perhaps there is a suggestion here of two different kinds of seeing: our imaginative seeing, and a sort of pre-conscious seeing, upon which the imagination holds no power? Does that make sense?
Noelle, I think it does make sense. I do feel that it is hard to pinpoint or even activate our pre-conscious seeing without the use of our imagination, though. Our imagination, in this light, is instinctual. Stevens also says at the end, "Yet the absence of the imagination had itself to be imagined," probably because activating our imagination is instinctual; we cannot differentiate between thinking with our imagination or without it.
DeleteI think you're right about that. But this reminds me of something we read earlier (it may have been James), wherein the mind was described as entirely subjective--in that its perception is based always upon its mood--but that it relies upon and recognizes a constant reality which exists not within our consciousness, but still within our perception. So, we might see a pear in a bad mood and think of it as a filthy piece of garbage, or see it in a good mood and consider it a sublime gift from heaven, and we might only see the pear in these two ways, but there is something beyond our consciousness that knows there is an unchanging, indifferent pear beneath both of our visions of it. Our daily functioning relies upon it the constant pear. perhaps this is the pear that cannot be seen as the observer wills?
DeleteYes, the pear will always in and of itself be a pear. But our "string of beads" of various moods will cause our imagination to view it differently.
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DeleteYes, the last line of this poem is what makes it the enigma that it is. Stevens is always driven toward the idea of "things as they really are," ie, "not as the observer wills." Catherine, I think I read that line a little differently than you do -- I see it as saying, not so much that we can't see the pears the heightened way we would like to see pears, but rather that we don't exist in a world of pure subjectivism, that we can't just make the pears be whatever we want them to be: they have a definite form that objectively exists. The trouble with this interpretation, though, is that his description (which is actually of a painting of pears, not of the pears themselves)seems to highlight some of the ways that representations of a thing fail to match the real object (which helps explain the lines "in the way they are modelled/There are bits of blue" -- ever seen a pear with bits of blue?) So imagination always seems to play a role, both in the perception and in the representation of objects. So the question becomes, what do we do with that last line? Is it meant ironically, or is the attempt to get to the "real thing" a genuine and important one in Stevens' view...even if it's doomed to failure? I think lots of Stevens' poems raise this same question (notably "The Plain Sense of Things").
DeleteI like your comparison to Ponge. On the surface, Stevens is doing the same thing as Ponge-- taking a close look at a normally overlooked object. However, as you say, they do so in very different ways. While Ponge looks at the essence, the inner workings, Stevens merely describes it physical features. However, this should not discredit Stevens, because as you say, his poem somehow performs in a way to make us each imagine different ideas about the pears. He wants us to each discover our own ideas about pears instead of telling us directly what he sees, as Ponge does.
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