Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

Sunday Morning
by Wallace Stevens
The poem asks the question, "What is the relationship between death and beauty?" Does death degrade beauty or enhance it? The title refers to the resurrection on Easter Sunday, how death led to a greater beauty. Some critics suggest that the poem is a denunciation of the Easter resurrection; rather than being at church, the character in stanza one is lounging amidst the sensual beauty of her surroundings.

In stanza one, Stevens offers a picture of beauty. Remember that his wife was a beauty queen and not a great wit; she didn't appreciate or understand his poems.

In all of the following stanzas save for the final two, he asks a question and then answers it with imagery that implies an idea.

In St. II his question is: "Why should beauty die?" He answers it with a series of questions and images that offer this idea, I think: Divinity (which is linked to death) comes to us in material beauty when we're alive; likewise, it's this earthly beauty which offers us a glimpse of the beauty that comes after death; the final images imply that beauty (both temporal and divine) lies in all things.

In St. III he asks "Isn't God separate from mankind?" in the first three lines. He answers this statement/question with images that imply we our humanity is intertwined with God's divinity. He asks a second question here: "Are we too human to reach heaven?" He answers it with an enigmatic "all will be resolved at the end."

In St. IV he asks, "What if natural beauty disappears?" and answers it by implying that all things pass; nothing beautiful lasts.

In St. V he asks, "Don't we need something beautiful on earth to last forever to remind us of divine beauty?" He answers with "Tough. Death is the mother of beauty -- nothing is beautiful without its impermanence on earth; the only permanence comes after death; interestingly, he links sex to death in this stanza as do so many other carpe diem poets.

In St. VI he asks "Is there any change after we die?" or, "Is there a second death or any decay after we die?" He answers with a series of questions that imply that the beauty of the afterlife is indescribable and transcendent and is the source of earthly beauty (kinda like Plato's cave metaphor).

In St. VII he stops asking questions and offers pictures of how we should worship -- sexual, primal, violent. He ends this stanza by suggesting that friendships now are better because of death. If you saw Shadowlands (movie) there's a great line that echoes this: "The suffering in the future makes our happiness now possible." or words to that effect. Ask the kids who saw the play if they remember this line. I don't know if it was in the play, though.

In St. VIII he suggests that Christ and the angels who were in the tomb on Easter "Sunday Morning" are no longer there -- they are part of the divine beauty in heaven now. And while beauty is underfood (with the deer and quail -- remember his great poem "13 ways of looking at a blackbird" and the wonderful stanza "O thin men of Haddam,/ Why do you imagine golden birds?/ Do you not see how the blackbird/ Walks around the feet/ Of the women arounnd you?") He ends this stanza with an image of the dying birds to show how death and beauty are inextricably linked.

In short, the poem is one of those "conversations between self and soul" that Donne and Frost and lots of other poets used to write.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I admire your blog. Not many Indonesians have such a strong command of written English. Kudos for your hard work.

Your blog is a fine example for being an ambassador of Indonesia through one's writing.

Best wishes,
Jennie S. Bev
www.JennieSBev.com
Sunday, April 09, 2006 10:17:00 am
PURWARNO said…
Thanks for your encouraging comment... I'm nothing but a baby in my field...
Wednesday, May 03, 2006 11:56:00 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Summary of Rolland Barthes' "From Work to Text"

Geoffrey Thurley in his work, “Counter-Modernism in Current Critical Theory” (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), asserts that Barthes's essay, "From Work to Text" is no more than an expression of a determination not to acknowledge the old ‘bourgeois’ literature, and we should waste our time chasing shadows if we tried to assign his phrases any concrete meaning" (Thurley, p. 228). Though this comment was meant as a criticism of Barthes's work, the second part of the sentence ironically approximates Barthes' own formulation of his essay because his essay offers "not argumentations but enunciations, ‘touches’, approaches that consent to remain metaphorical". In his essay, From Work to Text, Barthes argues that the relation of writer, reader and observer is changed by movement from work to text. In this light, we can observe Barthes's propositions of the differences between work and text in terms of method, genres, signs, plurality, filiation...
Read more

Analysis: The Fifth Stanza of William Blake's "The Tiger"

When the stars threw down their spears, And water’d heaven with their tears Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? The lines quoted above are the fifth stanza of William Blake’s poem, The Tiger in the Songs of Experience (1794). The Tiger is the most famous and impressive of Blake’s short poem that is the most frequently and elaborately interpreted. The poem is the product of much thoughtful revision, and is a triumph of conscious artistry. William Blake is a poet who gives spirit and motivation to human life in order to make human life better. Blake, in The Tiger, talks about human beings and the spirit that they have. The Tiger may be regarded as the pure poetry of Blake’s trust in cosmic forces. The tiger is Blake’s symbol for the fierce forces in the soul, which are needed to break the bonds of experience. God has created human beings possessing two powers. One is to act in good manner and another one is to act in evil manner. That is why human beings mus...
Read more

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales" as a Picture of Contemporary Society

CHAUCER’S “PROLOGUE TO CANTERBURY TALES” AS A PICTURE OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY by Purwarno Fakultas Sastra Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara, Medan Abstrak Artikel ini membahas tentang kehidupan sosial dan politik nasional di Inggris pada abad pertengahan yang digambarkan dalam karya terbesar Geoffrey Chaucer, “Prologue to Cantgerbury Tales”. Chaucer yang juga dikenal sebagai bapak puisi Inggris menggambarkan secara detail berbagai aspek sosial, budaya dan politik nasional pada masanya. Gambaran kehidupan masyarakat pada masa itu diramu dengan baik oleh Chaucer melalui presentasi tokoh-tokoh yang ditampilkan dalam karyanya tersebut sehingga dengan membaca artikel ini pembaca akan mendapat gambaran yang baik dan jelas tentang kehidupan dan situasi sebenarnya pada masa itu. Keywords: contemporary society, Middle Age, ecclesiastical characters, chronicler, medieval chivalry. INTRODUCTION Literature reflects the tendencies of the age in which it is produced and there is always a supreme lite...
Read more