Wallace Stevens and Richard Wilbur on the Good Life

What is it about?

In "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" Wallace Stevens contrasts a summary of the woman's Christianity with a similar summary of classical paganism. The summaries end by implying similar outcomes, so that placing them side by side further implies that both are merely projections of human desires. Both are examples of what Stevens calls "supreme fictions," stories which have helped people get by in a meaningless world, but which (because they are entirely contingent) have become obsolete and need to be updated or even replaced. Richard Wilbur's "A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra" also compares and contrasts a classical pagan understanding of the world with a Christian understanding of the world (as these are implied by two different styles of fountain). Like Stevens, Wilbur recognizes that each view is limited and contingent, but in his poem each representation of what the world is like offers something true. The poem does not recommend getting rid of, or replacing, either view, but instead commends learning from each.

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Why is it important?

The essay points towards the importance of unstated presuppositions for the development of each poem and also for any reader's assessment of their meaning.