ABSTRACT
Attaining presence, dying, two equally enchanted expressions. Maurice Blanchot^
Meta phor: The Sea pegoat
If any poem of Stevens represents total satisfaction, it is, as Frank
Kermode has noted, “Credences of Summer”: “The subject is total satisfaction,
but in this it is only conforming with the poem's explicit thesis. “Credences”
might well be described as a midsummer day-dream come true. At least, the
manifest ambition of the poem is the fulfilment of such a dream, which suggests
a claim to truth made on a firm ground of belief. The “credences” of the title,
however, do not forcibly point to an unquestionable given, for the truth at stake
is not necessarily a self-evident or apodictic one. In any question of credences,
there is always the possibility of deception and error. The poem's complexity
stems, in part, from a fundamental ambivalence, which is born from the inherent
difficulty in representing an uncomplicated immediate presence. There is a
conflict here between two revelations: a description in its proper place and, to
borrow the title from one of Stevens' most apocalyptic works, a “description
without place.” This involves the difference between “the indifference of the
eye / Indifferent to what it sees” (CP 475), spoken of in canto XV of “An
Ordinary Evening in New Haven,” and “a sight indifferent to the eye,” “The
difference that we make in what we see” (CP 343-44) of “Description without
Place.” This difference of difference itself entails as well the différance at play
in the supplement, as an irrepressible process of figuration eventually preempts
and eclipses the drive towards final identity, which is the poem's express
subject.
