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Notes
1. The claim made about these volumes in CitationJoan Richardson’s biography of Stevens, that “many of the essays … including ‘Nature’“ have been “heavily marked” (540) seems to be an exaggeration–there are few marks and only occasional marginalia throughout the entire edition, and some of the leaves are uncut. My thanks to Yui Kajita, a fellow independent scholar, for research at the Huntington on this point. See also CitationBates 51.
2. In commentary on a late poem by Stevens, “Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly,” a personage called “Mr. Homburg” is often regarded as a version of Emerson. Stevens says that Mr. Homburg entertains ”annoying ideas,” and that he deems it a trivial task to ”think away the grass, the trees, the clouds” (439; see CitationCook 288). The presentation of Mr. Homburg, in other words, is consistent with the impulse toward skepticism about poetic power, as suggested by Paphian, that I’ve noted in “Invective Against Swans”