Anti-Christianity Thoughts in Wallace Stevens’ Sunday Morning
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Anti-Christianity Thoughts in Wallace Stevens’ Sunday Morning 1
Abstract 1
Key Words 1
摘要 1
关键词 1
Anti-Christianity Thoughts in Wallace Stevens’ Sunday Morning 2
1. Introduction 2
1.1. About the poet 2
1.2. About the poem 2
2. Anti-Christianity thoughts viewed from the poetic structure 3
2.1. The first confusion: what divinity is 3
2.2. The cond confusion: Impermanence or Permanence 4
2.3. The third confusion: Immortality or Transience 5
2.4. Replacements for Christianity 6
2.4.1. Worship of Nature and Mankind 6
2.4.2. The Dying God motif and “It is the belief and not the god that counts” 6
3. Anti-Christianity thoughts viewed from imagery 7
3.1. Imagery of the beautiful nature 7
3.2. Imagery of Jesus 8
3.3. Imagery of ancient Greece 8
4. Conclusion 9
References 10
Abstract
Sunday Morning is one of the most important poems of Wallace Stevens. Its religious theme wins most of the critics’ concern. The poet starts the poem from the picture of a woman enjoying herlf freely on a Sunday Morning. She then doubts the worship of Christianity and states bravely her thoughts against Christian deity. Sunday Morning reprents a struggle with the loss of belief in the Christian God. It conveys the poet’s hope to convert the worship of God to the worship of nature and humankind. This essay will focus on Anti-Christianity Thoughts of the poem from two aspects.
Key Words
Wallace Stevens； Sunday Morning；Anti-Christianity
摘要
《星期天早晨》是华莱士·史蒂文斯的成名代表作之一。诗中的宗教内涵历来为评论家所重视。诗中的反基督思想不啻为严肃的主题，但作者从一幅生活图景入手，使诗篇独具魅力。诗的开始描述了一位女子在一星期天的早晨享受自在的生活，并大胆地质疑基督教的信仰。《星期天早晨》代表在信仰丧失的社会中的挣扎与探询，表达了诗人放弃基督教崇拜，转向对自然，对人类本身的信仰的思想。本文的论述从两个角度展开.
关键词
华莱士·史蒂文斯；星期天早晨；反基督思想
中图分类号：I712
Anti-Christianity Thoughts in Wallace Stevens’ Sunday Morning
1. Introduction
1.1. About the poet
The 20th century American literature saw the emergence of two great amateur poets of which one was Wallace Stevens and the other William Carlos Williams. Wallace Stevens was an unusual poet: he had won great achievements in the fields of business and poetry which did not em compatible with one another. Beside his devotion to his business career, he spent most of his spare time writing poems. Elsie, his wife, once remarked after her husband’s death that his poetry was a “distraction that he found delight in, and which he kept entirely parate from his home life”. Stevens was a rather mysterious person. “A great big fellow” in appearance, he was called “a tough kid” becau he never troubled himlf in dealing with the relationship between work and life; DeVore described Stevens as a “super intellect”, yet he had a n of humor too rious to be accepted by others. As for his poetry, Arthur Polley, a fellow member of the board of directors of the H
artford Fire Insurance Company, confesd that it was “the biggest bunch of gobbledygook”. Even Stevens himlf once remarked about a copy of his book Harmonium, “When you read this, you won’t know what the hell it is all about.”
Stevens wrote about the time in a different way from other literary figures. “Waste-land painters ” tend to portray, to offer just a short list, Hemingway, Fitzgerald in fiction, Cummings, Frost and Sandburg in poetry; Ezra Pound saw in Chine history and the doctrine of Confucius a source of strength and wisdom with which to counterpart western gloom and confusion; as for Stevens, he saw the role of the poet as “Picnicking in the ruins that we live”, which was another way of saying that a poet should find beauty and pleasure and excitement and meaning in the sordidness of reality. In a few words, Stevens was definitely part and parcel of the group working to reprent the spirits of the time.
1.2. About the poem
This essay will focus on one of Stevens’ important poems “Sunday Morning”. “Sunday Mo
rning” is collected in Stevens’ first major volume of poetry Harmonium, and is regarded as “the poet’s first important poem to t a major influence on contemporary American poetry, a landmark and one of the greatest contemplative poems in the history of poetry”. The poem derves admiration in both artistry and thoughts. It is the first expression of Stevens’ quest for the fiction of an absolute; “The richness of the poem’s imagery” is a major characteristic of the poem. However, it is the religious theme that wins most of the critics’ concern. “Sunday Morning” reprents a struggle with the loss of belief in the Christian God. The poem portrays a woman, waking up late on a Sunday morning, instead of going to church, enjoying herlf in a natural and carefree life. She then queries bravely the Christian deity and become aware of the earthly beauty as against paradi.
This essay will focus on the topic from two aspects: on consideration of the systematic structure; on consideration of imagery. Details will be given in the following parts.
2. Anti-Christianity thoughts viewed from the poetic structure
The poem can be en as a dialogue between a feminine voice and a masculine voice (two animus figures that may be en as different aspects of a single consciousness). While the feminine voice falls into the confusion about the Christian deity, the masculine voice tries to persuade her and pull her out of the pond .They finally reach an agreement.
2.1. The first confusion: what divinity is
Sunday morning, it is the time for people to go to church. However, our heroine indulges herlf in “Complacencies of the peignoir, and late / Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, / And the green freedom of a cockatoo / Upon a rug mingle to dissipate /” It is the voiceless resistance against Christianity. Besides, women’s statue is lower than men’s in the doctrine of Christianity, the poem takes a woman as the character is another kind of denial of Christian worship. We can“e”a woman in our mind, sitting in a chair, enjoying the warm sunshine and tasty coffee and oranges, the freedom of cockatoo just like her free heart. She is concerned not only about the satisfaction of ns but also the needs of mind. Then she thinks of “The holy hush of ancient sacrifice /”the very thought which c
hanges oranges and green wings into “things in some procession of the dead /”. Meanwhile she is struggling to get out the darkness; no divinity shows light and helps her out.
