"Of Mere Being" by Wallace Stevens

Of Mere Being                                                            

Wallace Stevens

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

 You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

 The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

                              — Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

An insurance salesman who wrote poetry on the side, with little interest in running around with other poets, Wallace Stevens sold claims to protect future clients from potential perils. If man spent more time thinking about the world and life beyond the here and now, and invested his hopes and dreams in what is, though it cannot be seen, he would enjoy more peace and joy, less fear and dread, and he would dream more than ruminate.

If any poem better typifies Romantic Irony, it is "Of Mere Being". As a trend of literature. Romantic Irony exemplifies man's attempts to express the ineffable, finds a remarkable finish in Wallace Stevens' poem. This type of irony is “Romantic” not for its emphasis on hearts and flowers, but on tradition, emotion, and intuition instead of reason and classical learning. The author pokes fun at his own work, exposing the limits of language and character, upending traditional narrative while deflating the otherwise cosmic notions of his writing. Romantic Irony can be playful, as in George Gordon, Lord Byron's tone poem "Don Juan". It can also cruel or forlorn, as in the "French Lieutenant's Woman" or "Madame Bovary", in which the writers are either perplexed or moved with pity by the select and selected fates of their characters.

In "Of Mere Being", Stevens explodes the limits of man's thinking, feeling, and reason. He not only mocks the limits of man's capacities to understand, his poem comforts man with the beautiful, breath-taking caption of a world beyond his comprehension, that his feckless incompetence to believe based on his own merits does not mean that he is forced to face the end. "Of Mere Being" is the most subtle of ironic titles, for "being" is not only not "mere", but floods the thinking and feeling man with truth and certainties greater than his five senses or reasoning faculties can fathom.

"The palm at the end of the mind," begins the poet. The mind is a nebulous thing in Western Thought. From the Greeks to the Modern Day progressives of moral relativism, man has relied on his thinking, on his learning to explain, design, and control everything. Emerson praised this singular capacity of man in one public discourse "Man Thinking," though he could not overcome the distressing grief of having lost his children to the great equalizer Death, or reconcile a nation divided over the primacy of all man: his liberty. The triumph of reason created the state, the holocaust, Communism, and the welfare state, all of which erupted on this earth the very tyrannies and plagues that man was trying to eradicate.

 For the poet, the mind has an end, one that may be self-imposed or culturally taught, but a limit nonetheless. Stevens plays with such empty toys as boundaries, and discovers a palm, one that "rises." The ambiguity of this verse permits the reader to imagine the viewer approaching the palm, whose presence slowly soars above the horizon; or perhaps this palm is springing forth in a place where originally it was not.

 What is a palm, but a tall, extravagant tree, one which survives harshness, heat, and heath without much trouble? Where there is water, there is the palm tree. Whether there is desert, whether there is loss, or confusion, or unmitigated distance, there is still the palm tree, towering above the bland expanse of troubles in this fallen world.

 Just when man assumes that he has though everything through, when he puts forth "the last thought", this palm tree resists his arbitrary and artificial limits. Around this tree hugs a "bronze decor", a unique conjunction, for bronze speaks of judgment, of authority, yet decor is an effete, effeminate connotation. Neither man nor woman, right or wrong, or any other dichotomies of the human mind, will overwhelm this tree.

 "Beyond the last thought." Can a final thought be thought? Can it ever be final? The racing pace of man's speculation permits man no rest. The Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard spent the greater part of a Postscript explaining the source of man's eternal happiness, a postscript which was twice as long as the original text.

 Where does man go, if he cannot think? He believes, he takes by inference, by tradition, or by trust, that the great Beyond is greater than the present mundaness of this world.

What sways in this palm tree? A "gold-feathered bird" sings aloud and aloft in this tree. The nature of his song is "without human meaning, / Without human feeling, a foreign song." We cannot understand it, we cannot even discern it with our senses. Yet the song is there, the song reaches out to us. By faith, then, by trust in something beyond our mind, we can appreciate the song of this creature, whose feathers, colored in divinity, proclaim something.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

 Boldly, the poet addresses you and me, the readers who cannot make sense of this engaging piece. "The reason" is not treated capitally. Whose reason is the poet referring to, then? Reason in general, reason as ideology, as philosophy, or as religion? Whatever reason that the poet indicates here, it makes no difference. Reason is of such light importance, for it neither makes man "happy or unhappy,," once again signaling an element which rises above the dialectic of human ponderings, beyond the searches of pro and con, right and wrong, but surges forth to life, light, and beauty, to elements of eternal verities, which are there, but cannot be explained.

Reason is irrelevant to this gold-feathered creature — or creation — which sings, whose feathers shine. "Shine" by dint of what? A sun, whose bronze fringes are lighting on this animal. "The bronze decor" of the first stanza may have referred to a setting or a rising sun, certainly a change in seasons, an ending, which leads to a new beginning.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

 This palm is standing, unmoved and unaffected. This stability is so lacking in a world in which conviction has given way to convincing arguments of mind and sense, both of which have a limit in that they never end, they never establish anything certain or sustained. The tree stands, the wind blows. The wind is the most mystical of all natural phenomena, a something that we know exists, but not by perception. We know neither where the wind comes from nor where the wind is going, but we understand by faith that the wind is there, and that the wind is a force to be reckoned and reckoned with. What has caused this wind that caresses the palm tree at the end of a mind, at the end of space, at the end of all humanistic absolutes? "Wind" , rendered “πνεῦμα” in the Greek, can also  mean “breath” or “Spirit.” Perhaps this wind then is the Ghost in the Machine, or the Holy Spirit of infinite and holy renown recorded in the New Testament, the eternal witness and presence of God in a world which has discarded Him in vain for the hollow reliance of deceptive senses and disappointed sanity.

 The branches of the palm tree do not seem to move. It is the wind that moves. What else does the wind touch? “Fire-fangled feathers”, an abrupt train of alliteration,  arrests the attention of the reader. “Gold” has now become “fire”, an element of pure, purity, and purifying ornamentation. “Fangled” and “dangle” remind us of the playful “angle” in the midst and mindset of this vision. “Fangled” implies a vain show, a gaudy presentation, yet one touched by fire, an element of grave and serious import. “Dangle” also signifies the first movement of a patient recovering his strength to move, or the loose hanging of plants and pots, or the games that a child plays with his cat. Or an offer of engagement to a world looking for something better, something that man needs and wants, but cannot explain in words or feelings.



Palm Tree at the End of the Mind