• Stevens's Late Letters as Addresses to Posterity
• Charles Altieri

MRS. YEATS ONCE gently complained about finding ways of getting along with a husband who knew he was in the history books. I want to ask how to read the letters of Wallace Stevens when he must have known he would be in the history books and his letters would be available to posterity, say from 1948 on, when invitations to speak and awards started to pile up. After all, for Stevens's generation letters were their basic mode of social media. Can we use what we know now about social media to treat Stevens's letter writing then? Perhaps we can, if we recall how entering history involves another form of being visible to a potentially huge, diverse, and discerning audience. So it makes sense to worry about how the self performs and what we might attribute to this. But when we view letter writing as a mode of self-display for an audience beyond those we know personally, we may have to accept different parameters of assessment than we apply to our usual measures of communication, which are largely based on an opposition between sincerity and insincerity. Perhaps, when the audience enlarges, our primary concern has to be for the degree of deliberation embedded in the communicative action. On this basis, I will argue that Stevens's sense of a possible listening subject who is not the addressee is best seen and judged in terms of how he stages his materials so that this larger audience is invited to participate in his ways of being concerned. The additional element is one of strategy, not of self-delusion nor of insincerity.

What concrete changes are involved because of these invitations to participate? I will elaborate three modifications of our roles as audience that differ from our expectations involving person-to-person direct communication. First, there will be greater attention to what we might call performative identity-formation indirectly aimed at later audiences who will be encouraged to overhear what is said. Even casual remarks may become signs to readers of what they are meant to incorporate into their image of the "real" poet. So the poet will always have to pay attention to the image she or he is creating. Here I am most interested in how Stevens tries to forge a sense that philosophical concerns are not mere academic interests but are central to his work and to his life. These worries about philosophical stakes enact concrete links between the theory of poetry and the effort to make that theory coincide with the need for theory even in [End Page 57] practical life, because they emphasize how thinking in poetry might affect one's sense of value in experience.

Second, I will speculate on the possibility that a little confession or display of indiscretion goes a long way toward what we might call the effect of humanizing the writer. That confessional strategy is rare with Stevens, but is sometimes in evidence. I will briefly take up the case of a potentially embarrassing, unexplained apology to Marianne Moore about an indiscretion. Why is this in Holly Stevens's selection of her father's letters at all? Why did the author or editor not destroy this letter as introducing the deeply private into the public? Here I will link the matter of indiscretion to Stevens's manifest desire to open himself up to his regular female correspondents, especially if we take into consideration how often he refers to the dullness of life in Hartford as being both a problem for the active imagination and a vehicle for recognizing how habit can become its own source of imaginative values. And, finally, I will take my cue from Ezra Pound's producing a canto of letters not from Malatesta but to him in order to suggest that the multiple personalities of this man are sharply captured in the range of ways he is addressed. With Stevens I am interested not so much in how he is addressed as in how he stages an awareness that he is addressing and honoring distinctive traits in the person to whom he is writing. On what...

• 史蒂文斯的晚期信件作为后代的致辞
• 查尔斯·阿尔铁里（Charles Altieri）

太太。YEATS ONCE温和地抱怨要找到与丈夫相处的方法，而丈夫知道他在历史书中。我想问一下当华莱士·史蒂文斯（Wallace Stevens）必须知道自己将进入历史书并且他的信可以供后代使用时（例如从1948年起），当演讲和颁奖邀请开始堆积时，他该如何阅读。毕竟，对于史蒂文斯（Stevens）来说，世代相传是他们社交媒体的基本方式。那么，我们可以利用我们现在对社交媒体的了解来对待史蒂文斯的信吗？如果我们回想起进入历史是如何涉及另一种可能被庞大，多样化和独具慧眼的观众看到的形式，也许我们可以。因此，担心自我表现如何以及我们可能归因于此是有道理的。但是，当我们将信件写作视为一种超越自我认识的受众自我展示的方式时，我们可能不得不接受与通常的交流方式不同的评估参数，这主要是基于诚意之间的对立和不诚实。也许，当听众扩大时，我们的主要关注点必须是沟通行为中所包含的审议程度。在此基础上，我将争辩说，史蒂文斯对不是收件人的可能听课主题的感觉最好从他如何安排材料的角度来观察和判断，以便邀请更多的听众参与他的关心方式。附加要素是策略之一，不是自欺欺人，也不是自欺欺人。我们可能需要接受与通常的交流方式不同的评估参数，因为交流方式通常是基于诚意与诚意之间的对立。也许，当听众扩大时，我们的主要关注点必须是沟通行为中所包含的审议程度。在此基础上，我将争辩说，史蒂文斯对不是收件人的可能听课主题的感觉最好从他如何安排材料的角度来观察和判断，以便邀请更多的听众参与他的关心方式。附加要素是策略之一，不是自欺欺人，也不是自欺欺人。我们可能需要接受与通常的交流方式不同的评估参数，因为交流方式通常是基于诚意与诚意之间的对立。也许，当听众扩大时，我们的主要关注点必须是沟通行为中所包含的审议程度。在此基础上，我将争辩说，史蒂文斯对不是收件人的可能听课主题的感觉最好从他如何安排材料的角度来观察和判断，以便邀请更多的听众参与他的关心方式。附加要素是策略之一，不是自欺欺人，也不是自欺欺人。我们主要关心的是沟通行为中所考虑的程度。在此基础上，我将争辩说，史蒂文斯对不是收件人的可能听课主题的感觉最好从他如何安排材料的角度来观察和判断，以便邀请更多的听众参与他的关心方式。附加要素是策略之一，不是自欺欺人，也不是自欺欺人。我们主要关心的是沟通行为中所考虑的程度。在此基础上，我将争辩说，史蒂文斯对不是收件人的可能听课主题的感觉最好从他如何安排材料的角度来观察和判断，以便邀请更多的听众参与他的关心方式。附加要素是策略之一，不是自欺欺人，也不是自欺欺人。

这些邀请参加了哪些具体的变化？我将详细阐述我们作为听众的角色的三种修改，这与我们对人与人直接沟通的期望不同。首先，我们将更加关注我们所谓的表演性身份形成，这种形式间接地针对后来的听众，这些听众将被鼓励去偷听别人所说的话。甚至是随便的言论也可能会向读者表明他们将其纳入“真实”诗人形象的意图。因此，诗人将始终必须关注他或他所创造的形象。在这里，我最感兴趣的是史蒂文斯（Stevens）如何努力树立这样一种观念，即哲学关注的不仅仅是学术兴趣，而是对其工作和生活至关重要的。[末页57]是实际生活，因为他们强调诗歌中的思维可能会如何影响一个人的体验价值感。

其次，我将推测一种可能性，即一点点的认罪或轻率的表现会大大有助于我们所谓的使作家人性化的效果。这种Steven悔的策略在史蒂文斯（Stevens）身上很少见，但有时可以证明。我将简要地讨论一下玛丽安娜·摩尔关于不道德行为的可能令人尴尬，无法解释的道歉的情况。为什么在霍莉·史蒂文斯（Holly Stevens）选择父亲的信件时完全如此？为什么作者或编辑在将深奥的私人身份介绍给公众时不破坏这封信？在这里，我将轻描淡写的问题与史蒂文斯明显的向自己的常规女记者敞开胸怀的渴望联系起来，特别是如果我们考虑到他经常提到哈特福德的生活呆板既是主动想象力的问题，又是认识到习惯如何成为其想象力价值来源的工具。最后，我将从埃兹拉·庞德（Ezra Pound）的创作中汲取灵感，从马拉泰斯塔（Malatesta）那里来，但要向他提出，以暗示该人的多种人格在对待他的方式上被鲜明地抓住了。在史蒂文斯的工作中，我对他的讲话方式不感兴趣，而对他如何发扬自己正在解决并尊重他所写的人的独特特征的兴趣不大。什么...