• Stevens's Letters and the Sense of Place
• Bonnie Costello

"LIFE IS AN AFFAIR of people not of places," Stevens wrote. "But for me life is an affair of places and that is the trouble" (CPP 901). Social and moral trouble, we have understood him to mean, a human shortcoming, and perhaps it was one. But perhaps also, or instead, Stevens meant intellectual trouble, even a problem of the poet's calling—a problem in poetics, shall we say, to be solved by poetry. How does one stand in order to see, or write, life as an affair of places? And what do we mean by an "affair"? Business (in French: affaires), eventuality, phenomenon, adventure, experience? Are there overtones of relationship, of romance, dalliance, flirtation, the "blissful liaison" (CPP 28)?¹

I don't intend to answer this question here in the broad context of Stevens's poetry, only to look at the letters as a site where the author often engages with places. Especially in his traveling days, Stevens attempts to grasp or project a sense of place, often where his contact was brief, a matter of glimpses and first impressions. What, in the letters, creates a sense of place, which is something different from an abstract idea of place? What, in Stevens's letters, is place? Does he represent the intersections of geography and human culture as something distinct, felt, and located? In the letters, certainly, he does.

We might acknowledge at the outset that for Stevens the sense of place is an individual matter. He shows little interest in addressing his correspondent in the role of documentarian, and he is not a representative or authority but an outsider to the places he describes. The sense of place in the letters is personal and selective, not collective; it arises from his experience, forms in relation to individual taste and desire, and lodges in memory. We can see this sense of place in a letter to Samuel French Morse, who in 1943 was in army training in Florida. Morse had expressed to Stevens his irritation about his chores and the conditions there. Stevens replied,

Although Miami Beach is now a bit like the land of Oz, it was once an isolated spot by the sea, where it was as easy to enjoy mere "being" as it was to breathe the air. And what it was once is still to be found all over Florida. So that I hope you won't allow your momentary surroundings to get you down. [End Page 44]

For many years I used to go to Long Key, south of Miami, and then later, after Long Key had been pushed into the Gulf by a hurricane, to Key West.

My particular Florida shrinks from anything like Miami Beach. In any case, unless your mind is made up, you may find that you have picked up an individual Florida of your own which will keep coming back to you long after you are back home. I used to find the place violently affective.

(L 449–50)

Place is not only individual, it can function like a souvenir, "picked up" in location, but brought home to be preserved and relished long after.

That a place is wrapped up in individual desire can be a problem when other individuals, who may live there, are involved. We have Alan Filreis's account of Stevens's correspondence with José Rodríguez Feo and Leonard C. van Geyzel, which Filreis sums up with the title of a chapter: "Description Without a Sense of Place" (151–86). The extrapolation from Stevens's title for the poem "Description Without Place" is significant, and I want to qualify it a bit. Filreis is discussing letters in which the poet is remote from a place and manipulates a correspondent into producing a certain desired, colonial image that suppresses or distorts many facts of the correspondent's reality. We can accept Filreis's argument from the evidence he finds in the correspondence with Rodríguez Feo and van Geyzel: especially as the poet settled down to domestic life in Hartford, Stevens sometimes kept real places and the complex, often cosmopolitan lives of his interlocutors at a...

• 史蒂文斯的来信和地方感
• 邦妮·科斯特洛（Bonnie Costello）

史蒂文斯写道：“生活是人的事，而不是地方的事。” “但是对我而言，生活是一个地方事务，那就是麻烦”（CPP 901）。社会和道德上的麻烦，我们已经理解他的意思，是人类的缺点，也许这就是其中之一。但也许，或者相反，史蒂文斯的意思是知识上的麻烦，甚至是诗人呼唤的问题-我们可以说，诗学中的问题可以通过诗歌解决。一个人如何看待或写成一处地方的生活？我们所说的“婚外情”是什么意思？商业（法文：affaires），偶然性，现象，冒险，经验？关系，浪漫，喜怒无常，调情，“幸福的联络”（CPP 28）有没有泛泛的色彩？^1个

我不想在史蒂文斯诗歌的广泛背景下在此回答这个问题，而只是将这些信件视为作者经常与地方互动的场所。尤其是在出差期间，史蒂文斯（Stevens）试图把握或投射出一种地方感，通常是在他短暂的接触，瞥见和第一印象的地方。字母中的什么创造了一种位置感，这与抽象的位置概念有所不同？什么，在史蒂文斯的信件，是地方吗？他是否将地理和人类文化的交汇点表现得与众不同，感受到并定位？在信件中，他当然是这样做的。

我们可能从一开始就承认，对于史蒂文斯来说，位置感是一个独立的问题。他对跟记者扮演纪录片角色兴趣不大，他不是他的代表或权威，而是他所描述的地方的局外人。信件中的位置感是个人和选择性的，而不是集体的；它源于他的经验，与个人品味和欲望有关的形式以及在记忆中的寄托。我们可以在给塞缪尔·法国·莫尔斯（Samuel French Morse）的一封信中看到这种感觉，他在1943年曾在佛罗里达州接受军队训练。莫尔斯已向史蒂文斯表达了对他的琐事和那里的状况的不满。史蒂文斯回答，

尽管迈阿密海滩现在有点像奥兹（Oz）的土地，但它曾经是海边一个孤立的地方，在那里享受纯粹的“存在”和呼吸空气一样容易。曾经在佛罗里达州仍然存在。希望我不会让您的片刻环境令您沮丧。[完第44页]

多年来，我曾经去过迈阿密南部的Long Key，然后在飓风把Long Key推入海湾之后，又去了Key West。

我特别的佛罗里达州从迈阿密海滩之类的城市缩水。无论如何，除非您下定决心，否则您可能会发现自己已经选择了自己的佛罗里达州，在您回到家乡很久之后，它将继续回到您身边。我曾经发现这个地方充满感情。

（L 449–50）

地点不仅是个人的，而且可以像纪念品一样在地方“捡起来”，但带回家后很长一段时间就可以保存和品尝。

当可能居住在其他地方的其他个人参与进来时，将一个地方包裹在个人的欲望中可能是一个问题。我们有Alan Filreis对Stevens与JoséRodríguezFeo和Leonard C. van Geyzel的往来书信的叙述，Filreis总结了一章的标题：“没有位置感的描述”（151-86）。史蒂文斯（Stevens）的题为《无处之描述》（Description Without Place）的诗作的推论意义重大，我想对此做些限定。菲莱雷斯正在讨论那些诗人，在诗人中，诗人远离某个地方，操纵一个通讯员，以产生某种希望的殖民形象，从而压制或扭曲了通讯员现实的许多事实。我们可以从菲勒雷斯在与罗德里格斯·费（Rodriguez Feo）和凡·盖泽尔（van Geyzel）的信件中找到的证据来接受菲勒雷斯的论点：