Anecdote of Men by the Thousand

Interpretation

Stevens recognized that his poems were a visible expression of (an invisible element of) his North American place. This would remain true even if the poet were to succeed in overcoming locality, as Crispin attempts to do in "The Comedian as the Letter C". The opening stanza is a dramatic statement about the soul's being composed of the external world, an idea approached philosophically by American philosophers like Charles Sanders Peirce."A psychologist cuts out a lobe of my brain (nihil animale a me alienum puto) and then, when I find I cannot express myself, he says, 'You see, your faculty of language was localized in that lobe.' No doubt it was, and so, if he had filched my inkstand, I should not have been able to continue my discussion until I had got another. Yea, the very thoughts would not come to me. So my faculty of discussion is equally localized in my inkstand." (Peirce, Collected Papers v. 7, paragraph 366). Compare Theory.

The next lines in the poem are anticipatory assertions, and then two leading questions, and finally a blossoming of the poem's idea in the image of a woman of Lhassa. That interpretation overlooks that the "idea" is expressed as reported speech, however, and fails to identify who "he" is (it is naively assumed to be the poet).

Notes

References

• Peirce, C.S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 7–8, Arthur Burks (ed.). 1958: Harvard University Press.