Most days, I don’t read the poem that comes in The Writer’s Almanac email. Simple reason: It feels like a commitment to engage with the poem, to take it seriously, to hear what it has to say. There may be other reasons I’m pushing down, but that’s the main feeling. But I read the poem for yesterday, December 1. It’s “The Well Dressed Man With a Beard,” by Wallace Stevens:
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one,
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket’s horn, no more
Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech
Of the self that must sustain itself on speech,
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,
Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,
Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,
The aureole above the humming house…
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
For all I know, this is a poem with which every American lit major grapples. But that one phrase — “douce campagna” — throws me. Even though I feel like I’ve got the drift of the thing, that phrase cames at an important point. What does it mean? This is where I could use one of those humongous college anthologies on ultrathin paper with the footnotes telling you the meaning of all the words longer than a syllable. But being mostly monolingual, I have to guess. “Campagna” is Italian for country or countryside, I think; douce is close to dolce, which is sweet. So: “Sweet country of that thing”? OK, I’ll make do with that. But if anyone wants to help me out here, or point to some explication of “The Well Dressed Man With a Beard,” your correspondent would be much obliged.
“The Well Dressed Man with a Beard” is one of my favorites, for multiple reasons–most of which I can’t easily put into words. The last line, for instance, is something I have scrawled at the top of many a notebook or reminded myself in times of academic and psychological tribulation.
I can direct you to one person’s interpretation that can help shed light on this poem. It’s Justin Quinn’s essay “Nature & Ideology in Wallace Stevens,” particularly the section starting with the paragraph that begins “In Stevens, too,” about 1/3 of the way down. Here’s the link: http://colloquium.upol.cz/coll00/quinn.htm
Ryan Hall
Ryan, thanks so much for the note. I’ll read the
analysis you point to.
I get a sense of both urgency and hope from the poem,
but I too have a hard time putting into words why I
like it so much.
I read an article in the “Hartford Courant” today by Laurence Cohen titled “Enemies of Wallace Stevens, Unite”. This prompted me to re-read a favorite, “The Well Dressed Man With a Beard”. As I,too, wasn’t sure of “douce campagna” I googled it and came up with ro/leBooks/lls/AncaPeiu-Stevens/ll.htm and it is indeed “sweet country”.
Carl: Thanks! You just made me go back and re-read that poem. Beautiful, and perfect for our times, when so many of our hopes for the future rest on something “no greater than a cricket’s horn.”
I know this is an old thread, but it was the first that came up as I was searching for any other uses of this phrase, so perhaps others will find this useful, also: “Campagna” is indeed Italian, but “Douce” is French. Together, the phrase means “soft land”–which, to me, even more than “sweet land”, conveys the sense of a mind at ease, satisfied by the (ultimately impossible) knowledge of something that remains, in the end, objectively true.
I know this is an old thread, but it was the first that came up as I was searching for any other uses of this phrase, so perhaps others will find this useful, also: “Campagna” is indeed Italian, but “Douce” is French. Together, the phrase means “soft land”–which, to me, even more than “sweet land”, conveys the sense of a mind at ease, satisfied by the (ultimately impossible) knowledge of something that remains, in the end, objectively true.
Carl: This is poem with religious imagery and metaphor. Lets consider Compagna as the actual ancient territory around Rome a sacred city to Christian Catholics.
A territory that has been the subject of some great Italian landscape painting. A landscape distinguished by a considerable number of ancient Greek and Roman ruins. The use of sweet or soft compania has more than one connotation. This is supported by the aureole,the humming and one thing that is firm. There is a contradiction a struggle going on between belief and unbelief that is central to this poem. In addition, Stevens was said to have converted to Catholisim at the very end of his life.
Linda, thanks so much for your insights into this poem, which is one of my favorites.
We had to analyze this poem for homework in school over the weekend. My friend and I came up with this:
The poem is about an idea that lasts forever. It can never be killed. As other ideas die, this one does not. A person takes this idea, this message, to heart, but even though he has good intentions, things don’t turn out so well. He changed. The last few lines about the humming house are about his previous self looking at what he has turned into. The last line is about how he cannot rest in peace.
That’s our thoughts on the poem. Yes, we’re only in high school, but the poem can be interpreted in to many different ways. This is what made the most sense to us. What do you guys think?
Grace, I like your interpretation. All I can say about it is that for me everything flows from the very first line, “After the final no there comes a yes.” That no–which could be death, defeat, despair, loss–is not final so long as there’s an assertion, even a tiny one, of hope, of insistence at the blackest moment that there’s light somewhere.
Lots of opinions about this, anyway. Which is why I love poetry.
I suppose I don’t expect to fully grasp every line in any complex poem by Stevens. I enjoy the mysterious qualities of his work, his love for the sound of words and cannot forget what might be described as his credo, which I remember perhaps imprecisely–‘Everything is changed upon the blue guitar’.
I find the first three lines and last three lines exquisite but much of the middle section….less so. [ Yes, what heresy!] He wrote the kind of poetry he wanted to read but could not find.
I feel as if the poem is an obscure description of the hope. The hope of tomorrow, that it will always bring a new day so long as we are steadfast to our beliefs, even if we haven’t succeded a million times over, hope will always be the final yes. Even though all your current efforts may not have been successful—not even the least bit fruitful—Hope and the steadfast beliefs will always give you that final yes. I love the analogy of despair and darkness as “sliding over the western cataract.” I used to live in a high rise condo on Bayshore in Tampa, FL and one of my favorite things was to sit on the balcony and watch the sunrise… But if you tried to watch the night disappear into the West it was very difficult because your eyes are already adapted to the sunrise.