Syllabus
Introduction 2/10
ARR. MALEŠICE 9/10
::::: Zdeněk Vančura, Afterword to Muž s modrou kytarou ::::: Jan Zábrana, selected entries from Celý život (246–47, 403–04, 865) stevens poems
::::: The Snow Man ::::: Domination of Black ::::: Anecdote of the Jar ::::: The House Was Quite and the World Was Calm ::::: Dry Loaf
A PARENT IN THE FRENCH SENSE 16/10
Paul Valéry
::::: Le Cimetière marin ::::: Palme ::::: La Jeune Parque (1st 4 sections, beginning, «Qui pleure là», «Quel repli de désirs», «Va! je n’ai pas plus des besoins», «Mais je tremblais») (French original of La Jeune Parque in Elliot translation)
Valéry translated
::::: Derek Mahon, The Seaside Cemetery ::::: James Merrill, Palm ::::: Josef Palivec, Palma, Mladá parka, Hřbitov u moře ::::: Bohuslav Reynek, Hřbitov u moře ::::: Alistair Elliot, 1st 4 sections of La Jeune Parque
LIGHT FALL 23/10 stevens poem
::::: The Auroras of Autumn
ROMANTIC 30/10
::::: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc ::::: William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey ::::: John Keats, Ode on Melancholy stevens poems
::::: The Idea of Order at Key West ::::: The American Sublime ::::: Sunday Morning :::::Sailing After Lunch
HAMMER 6/11
::::: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer
GOD 13/11 stevens poems
::::: The Latest Freed Man ::::: Evening without Angels stevens essay
::::: Two or Three Ideas
GROUND 20/11
::::: Frank Kermode, Wallace Stevens: Dwelling Poetically in Connecticut, from An Appetite for Poetry ::::: Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking stevens poems
::::: Of Mere Being ::::: A Primitive Like an Orb
WE ARE EXPANSIVE 27/11
::::: Marvin Campbell, Stevens and Race: Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery Revisited ::::: Black Lives Matter, “What We Believe” stevens poem
::::: Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery
EDIFICE 4/12 stevens poem
::::: Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
NATIONALIZED 11/12
::::: Roy Harvey Pearce, The Continuity of American Poetry, Afterword ::::: Helen Vendler, Wallace Stevens as an American Poet [video] stevens poems
::::: Bantams in Pinewoods ::::: The Rock ::::: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird ::::: Esthétique du Mal (XV)
PLANET 18/12
::::: Lee Jenkins, Wallace Stevens and World Literature ::::: Jahan Ramazani, Poetry in a Global Age, ch. 7 stevens poem
::::: The Planet on the Table
Annotation
This is less a course about Wallace Stevens than a course that begins from Wallace Stevens and goes in many different directions. While acknowledging traditional categories such as American Poet and Late Romantic poet, we will explore a broader universe that takes us into different languages, disciplines, critical ideologies and other poets.
Each week we will read poems by Stevens and combine these with other texts, discovering how Stevens (like most human beings) is a cosmos.