"Peter Quince at the Clavier" is a poem from

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

's first book of poetry, ''

Harmonium The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. Th ...

''. The poem was first published in 1915 in the "

little magazine In the United States, a little magazine is a magazine genre consisting of "artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses", according to a 1942 study by Frederick J. Hoffman, ...

" '' Others: A Magazine of the New Verse'' (New York), edited by

Alfred Kreymborg Alfred Francis Kreymborg (December 10, 1883 – August 14, 1966) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, literary editor and anthologist. Early life and associations He was born in New York City to Hermann and Louisa Kreymborg (née Nasher), ...

. It is a "musical" allusion to the apocryphal story of Susanna, a beautiful young wife, bathing, spied upon and desired by the elders. The

Peter Quince Peter Quince is a character in William Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. He is one of the six mechanicals of Athens who perform the play which Quince himself authored, "The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and This ...

of the title is the character of one of the "mechanicals" in

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's '' A Midsummer Night's Dream''. Stevens' poem titles are not necessarily a reliable indicator of the meaning of his poems, but Milton Bates suggests that it serves as ironic stage direction, the image of "Shakespear's rude mechanical pressing the delicate keyboard with his thick fingers" expressing the poet's self-deprecation and betraying Stevens's discomfort with the role of "serious poet" in those early years. The poem is very sensual— Mark Halliday calls it Stevens' "most convincing expression of sexual desire". (Honorable mention might go to " Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges".) But "Peter Quince" has dimensions beyond Susanna's ablutions and the elders' desire. For instance, the poem's Part IV contains a stunning inversion of

Platonism Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at l ...

and related theories about

universals In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For exa ...

, such as the universal (property, feature) ''beauty''. Instead of saying that beauty is an abstract unchanging

Platonic Form Platonic realism is the philosophical position that universals or abstract objects exist objectively and outside of human minds. It is named after the Greek philosopher Plato who applied realism to such universals, which he considered ideal for ...

existing perfectly in a world separate from the five senses, or an abstract unchanging concept in the mind, the poem says that,

paradox A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...

ically, "Beauty is momentary in the mind": only transient beauty in the flesh is immortal. Kessler notes that "Unlike Plato or Kant, Stevens strives to unite idea and image." Robert Buttel observes that each of the four sections has its "appropriate rhythms and tonalities", reading the poem as "part of the general movement to bring music and poetry closer together".Buttel
/ref> He describes Stevens as "the musical

imagist Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism is someti ...

" and credits the musical architecture with organically unifying the poem. Some don't like it. For the ''New York Times'' poetry critic writing in 1931, it is a specimen of the "pure poetry" of the age that "cannot endure" because it is a "stunt" in the fantastic and the bizarre. "Turning of music into words, and words into music, continues throughout the poem," according to Janet Mcann, "becoming metaphor as well as genuine verbal music." She instances the line "Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna" as mimicking the plucking of strings as well as suggesting the sexual itch. Because music is feeling, not sound, the analogy between music and poetry is tight. Poetry is feeling too. Other commentators bring out Stevens' use of color images: "blue-shadowed silk", "green evening", "in the green water", even the "red-eyed elders". This is a reminder that he insisted also on the analogy between poetry and painting. In ''The Necessary Angel'' Stevens speaks of identity rather than analogy: "...it is the identity of poetry revealed as between poetry in words and poetry in paint."Stevens, p. 159. Eugene Nassar explores a more abstract reading (and a more contentious one), according to which the poem is about the poet's "imaginative faculty", and Susanna represents the poem and the creative process of writing it. Laurence Perrine objects that Nassar's reading does violence to the poem and the story it leans on, naively ignoring Stevens" own "violence" in yoking a character from '' A Midsummer Night's Dream'' named in the title with a biblical narrative alluded to in ''

The Merchant of Venice ''The Merchant of Venice'' is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. Although classified as ...

''. The greatest "violence" that Stevens' poem does, though, is to Susanna's biblical reputation for righteousness.

Adaptations

With all its innate musicality, it is not surprising that the poem has been adapted for music twice. Dominick Argento set it as a "Sonatina for Mixed Chorus and Piano Concertante (1979)," and Gerald Berg set it for bass voice, clarinets, percussion and piano. Both works have been recorded.

Notes

References

* Bates, Milton J. ''Wallace Stevens: a mythology of self''. 1985: University of California Press. * Kessler, Edward. ''Images of Wallace Stevens''. 1972: Rutgers University Press. * Nassar, Eugene. ''College English'', volume 26. * Perrine, Laurence. ''College English'', volume 27. * Stevens, Wallace. ''The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination''. (1942: Knopf) {{Wallace Stevens 1915 poems American poems Poetry by Wallace Stevens Works originally published in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse