ABSTRACT
Wallace Stevens is too fine and strange a poet to be put to the work of serving simply as one of the great critics of High Romantic poetry. In Esthtique du Mal, Stevens falls short of straightforward indictment as he investigates the nature of an esthtique', an aesthetic or a poetics, of evil and pain. Stevens's wording is itself the more compelling for lacking specificity; the definite article implies that the dark italics are always with us and there is a suggestion that these dark italics presumably composed by or bearing witness to mal refuse to conform to any ethical rules associated with the roman typeface of the normal. Stevens's repeated use of one' seeks to usher the sublime ego of the post-Romantic poet to the poem's margins, and to prepare the way for the embrace of uncommonly common experience signalled by we' in the final line.
