Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Wallace Stevens was an American poet who took birth on October 2, 1879, in Reading, Pennsylvania. He was a law scholar from New York Law School. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetic collection titled Collected Poems in 1955.
His first poetic collection was titled Harmonium which was published in 1923. Harmonium contains 85 poems and one of them is Anecdote of the Jar which was first published in 1919.
Wallace Stevens was known as a symbolist philosophical poet and Anecdote of the Jar is a good example of that. It is an imagist symbolic poem in which Stevens explores if human creativity can surpass nature in some way. Stevens concludes that art can be much more beautiful than nature itself in many ways but it cannot be as creative as nature.
Structure of Anecdote of the Jar :
Anecdote of the Jar is a 12 lines long short poem composed in three stanzas written in iambic tetrameter with no specific rhyming scheme. Occasional end rhyming makes the poem interesting (hill/hill, air/everywhere/bare). The poem uses Alliteration, Assonance, Caesura, Consonance, and Enjambment. Metaphor, Personification, Symbolism, and Hyperbole. It can also be termed as an allusion to John to Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn."
Summary of Anedote of the Jar:
The poem is set in Tennessee. Just like many of his other poems, Anecdote of the Jar is very easy to understand but it can be interpreted in a myriad of ways and that makes it difficult and ambiguous. The poet describes the after story of one of his acts in past.
First Stanza
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The narrator says that he placed an ordinary jar on the top of a hill in Tennessee. The jar was round and it was manageable enough that the narrator alone could lift and take it to the top of the hill and place it. It is a man-made jar, an artificial thing, a thing of art. The jar is beautiful and makes the surrounding nature appear lacking or inferior. The perfection of the jar makes the hill look more untidy in contrast to the jar. Here, the narrator himself is observing all this. The poet uses personification, metaphors, and symbolism to suggest that the jar made it necessary for the surroundings to change for to better as the hill appears surrounded by “Slovenly Wildnerness” because of the presence of the jar. The jar represents artificial beauty, industrialization, and modernity. While the hill represents natural wilderness which appears untidy, unmanaged, and dirty. A jar is not a human, it cannot bring any change or do anything, and a jar cannot persuade, and thus the poet personifies it in the third line.
Second Stanza
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
The poet uses personification of nature and suggests that nature gets influenced by the beauty of the jar and gets animated. Nature surrenders and accepts that the jar is much better and thus, strives to change and get better, like the jar. The jar appears to be a tall leader of all natural things surrounding it as it changes the wilderness of nature to a tidiness, managed landscape. And gradually, the jar got control of all the surroundings, reducing the wilderness.
Third Stanza
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
The poet then symbolizes the change brought upon by the jar in the third stanza. The jar continues to dominate the surrounding and gradually takes control of everything natural and it becomes unnatural. The wilderness gets away as the artificial beauty takes hold of it. Everything is now tidy, managed, and ordered. The jar becomes the universal leader and then the poet notices that the jar was gray and bare, it was barren. It couldn’t give birth to a bird or bush. Now when the jar has dominion over the whole surrounding, everything in Tennessee is as barren, gray, and bare, as the jar was.
Themes of Anecdote of the Jar:
The main theme of the poem is within the imagery and symbolism. Stevens offers strong images of the order of the artificial world in form of dominating jar. The hills and surroundings are the images of the subservient nature, tamed by human intellect and cleverness. The wilderness represents adaptability of the nature that tries to attain the same order and tidiness as that of the jar. These images and symbols can be interpreted in several ways from different philosophical perspectives.
The proper place for a jar could be a kitchen with other utensils. But somehow, the jar is left behind in the wilderness, alone. Nature consequently adapts to the alienated jar, not letting it alone.
The jar represents art, which is a human endeavor. The poet suggests that despite all its beauty, there is a limit to human art, innovativeness, and artificial creativity which can never match the ability of nature. Human art and imagination are beautiful but ultimately do not have the power to the creation of nature and reality represented by the wilderness. The poet is demonstrating the acceptance of the limits of imagination in reality.
Another interpretation could be the harmful effect of modernism and industrialization on the earth, atmosphere, and overall environment. The poet suggests that being artificial, aided with human cleverness, the artificial is dominant enough to subjugate nature but in the end, it leads to barrenness, synonymous with death. However, unlike the environmentalists, who often act holier than thou, the poet doesn’t engage in criticizing humankind, rather, he uses ‘I’ at the beginning and accepts the blame for the imagined barrenness.
Another interpretation could be the limits of any revolutionary idea. The United States rose as a brilliant idea of human liberty and progress that inspired the whole of the world. But gradually, the US started losing its shine while the world continued to grow and become better.
There can be politico-philosophical interpretations too. Some feminist critics suggest that the jar represents the patriarchial male ego dominating mother nature, a female environment, and that causes mayhem and destruction. The same jar can be said to represent industrial imperialism, destroying the environment and manipulating the wilderness. As one can see, such a short and succinct poem by Wallace Stevens can perfectly be interpreted in so many ways aligning with different philosophical connotations.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected to the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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