In Shakespeare’s “A midsummer night’s dream”, Peter Quince, a carpenter with literary pretentions presents an interlude with his unskilled actors on the occasion of the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. In Steven’s poem Peter Quince is a serious thinker on the relationship between music and feeling. He is seen presenting a musical rendering of Susanna’s story on a clavier (a keyboard musical instrument). Stevens framed this poem just like sonata, a musical symphony with four parts; exposition, development, recapitulation and conclusion or coda. The four distinct parts with formal features and rhythms reveal the changes in mood, tempo and emphasis. This poem is suggestive of Keats’s famous lines “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
The first
part shows the lustful and sensual attitude of the elders who were fascinated
by Susanna’s body when she was bathing in a pool. The second part describes the
pure aesthetic delight felt by Susanna while she was bathing and enjoying the
cool touch of refreshing waters and the touch of dew on green leaves. She hears
music in various sounds of Nature and senses a unity in everything around her.
Only the last two lines hint at the cruel authority which tries to destroy her
serene mood. (A cymbal crashed/ and roaring horns.”)
In the third part in five tightly rhymed
couplets the point of view of her weak-willed attendants who arrived too late
to help her is shown. The last part shifts from brief and concise nature of
Susanna’s story to deeply reflective and philosophical tone. The sixteen rhymed
lines of this part show the tight and reasoned argument and logic of a sonnet.
Though
beauty is momentary it is immortal in our minds. The narrator on seeing his
beloved reflects on the beauty of Susanna whose beauty lives in his beloved and
in Quince’s musical attempt to consecrate Susanna’s beauty by re-telling her
story. The last six lines are said to be the most gorgeous in English language
and place Stevens in the company of great poets like Sappho, Shakespeare and
Keats. The poem develops the theme that music is feeling by combining poetic
devices like alliteration, assonance and consonance. The phrase “pulse
pizicatti of Hosanna” mimics the plucking of strings. (piozzicato means in Italian "to pluck the strings of a stringed instrument")
Stevens uses carefully selected and arranged colours to frame the physical and temporal context of the two different segments of the poem. The blue-shadowed silk suggests the beauty of his beloved and his power of imagination. The green evening and the green water indicate the natural and pure charm of Susanna and her chaste heart. The phrase “red-eyed elders” suggest the lustful attitude of elders. Similarly, “the bawdy strings of those white elders” in contrast to green life suggest a condition deprived of colour and warmth. The phrase “clear viol of her memory” indicates a beauty removed from senses to immortal level. Thus, the colours are symbolic of characters’ attitudes and they set up a framework for plot development.
Music, according to the poet, is not sounds but acts on spirit producing feelings. So, the lovely feelings aroused in the poet on contemplation of his beloved’s beauty is like the heart-throbbing music. Here the poet refers to the beauty of Susanna bathing in green waters of the garden which aroused similar feelings in the red eyes of elders who secretly watched her. The chords of their bosoms were plucked by her bewitching beauty. Susanna too felt refreshed by touching the springs of fresh water and experienced calmness by the touch of dew on green leaves. As she walked upon the grass the winds accompanied her like timid maids to cover her body. She felt the hot breath on her hand and turned with awe. Her sense of panic is suggested by the sounds of crashing cymbals and roaring ng horns. The attendants entered soon with the sound of loud tambourines. The elders’ voices accusing Susanna swept like whispering sound of rain through willows. The attendants uplifted their flames and beheld the bare body of Susanna. They fled away with loud sound of tambourines.
Here the poet praises the concept of beauty
concretely expressed or manifested through body. It always lives like the
beauty of evening or a wave continuously flowing. The abstract beauty is vague
like a momentary flash seen through a portal. A maiden’s beauty always remains
in memory like the fragrance of the garden after the plants die. It lingers
like the scent of flowers in bleak winter. The poet compares the death of
lovely maidens to choral celebrations as their beauty lives immortalized in
art. Death’s ironic scraping sound will not atop her beauty being praised by
art, which is as holy as sacrament, a kind of purificatory rite. The elders
with their villainy exposed had to listen to the harsh sound of death. Susanna’s
beauty is immortalized by Peter Quince’s music which represents art. The whole
poem is a musical architecture which organically serves to portray the thematic
and emotional feelings. The style is very sensuous and lyrical with smooth flowing
rhythm.
Thus, the
poet in this poem shows the relationship between art and beauty. Art in this
poem is represented by music played by Peter Quince. Beauty is represented by
Susanna. Beauty and art are interdependent. “Beauty is momentary in mind—/The
fitful tracing of a portal; /But in flesh it is immortal.” The vague notion of
beauty in mind cannot be felt whereas the physical beauty is sensuous and can
be experienced by senses and by heart. “The body dies; the body’s beauty lives”
reiterates the permanence of physical beauty immortalized by art and fond
memories in mind. Beauty is sanctified like the auroral celebration of a
maiden’s choral and is made a sacrament (a sacred rite) by the magic touch of
art and music. The poet uses religious terms to indicate the noble influence of
chaste beauty and art. The poet believes that art and imagination can impose
order on this chaotic world. In his view true harmony is achieved through a
transformation of factual reality into poetic reality. Poetry for him is like a
missal (a book of prayers) and is verily a substitute for religion in the
modern world which has lost faith.
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18th January, 2021 Somaseshu Gutala
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