Douceurs, Tristesses 123In The Auroras of Autumn, Stevens more suitably fixes his shape-
changing eye, not on the land, but on the huge cloudy symbols of the night’s
starred face. In this wholly individual poem there is nevertheless scarcely a
line not reminiscent of earlier volumes. Stevens’ density of internal reference
to earlier leitmotivs is greater here than in any other poem, so much so that
almost nothing is unfamiliar in the images except the superb aurora borealis
which dominates the whole. Stevens may have had Wordsworth’s northern
lights in mind, that manifestation which is “Here, nowhere, there, and
everywhere at once” (Prelude V, 533). Wherever he found the symbol,
whether in literature or in nature,^5 it corresponds perfectly to the bravura of
his imagination, even more so than the slower transformations of “Sea-
Surface Full of Clouds.” And certainly these changing auroras match his
solemn fantasia better than the effort, so marked in Credences of Summer,to
hold the imagination still. Stevens’ restless modulations need an equally
restless symbol, and the lights (with their lord, the flashing serpent) are, like
his poetry, “always enlarging the change.”
For all its lingering glances at other poems, The Auroras of Autumn
remains essentially the partner to its antithesis, Credences of Summer.Like the
earlier poem, it begins, so unusually for Stevens in the long poems, by
placing its speaker in the lyric present, declaring by that emphasis on the
here and now a firm attempt to center the mind on the present, not to drift
elegiacally back or press wishfully forward. But whereas Summer represented
repose, immobility, static piled haymows and monolithic mountains, Autumn
is compounded of Stevens’ most congenial subjects—flux, rapidity,
flickerings, and winds. For all the difference in state between the two
seasons, it is characteristic of Stevens at this period to place himself in the
same relation to each, as the poet attempting total absorption in the scene,
refusing to distance himself from it until the poem is well advanced. The
ostentation of the first canto of The Auroras of Autumnlies in its insistence on
the formula “This is,” repeated with different predicates, recalling the similar
demonstrative beginning of Credences of Summer.And although Stevens
begins at once his parable of father, mother, children, and scholar, the
speaker’s voice interpolates again and again references to “this” throne, “this”
thing, “these” heavens, “these” lights, “this” imminence, and so on. The
“thisness” of The Auroras of Autumn,in other words, is never allowed to lapse
entirely, and in this way it is a poem more consistent than Credences of
Summer. The narrator remains discreetly present in these recurrent
demonstrative phrases.
The boreal serpent in his nest at the zenith, marking the north pole
raised to the tip of the heavens, is clearly another variation on the old man