Negation
Hi! The creator too is blind, Struggling toward his harmonious whole, Rejecting intermediate parts, Horrors and falsities and wrongs; Incapable master of all force, Too vague idealist, overwhelmed By an afflatus that persists. For this, then, we endure brief lives, The evanescent symmetries From that meticulous potter's thumb.
Negation - context Summary
Published in Harmonium, 1923
Published in Wallace Stevens's first book Harmonium (1923), the poem sketches a skeptical, compressed vision of creation. The creator is "blind," an overwhelmed idealist who seeks a harmonious whole by rejecting particulars. Human lives are depicted as brief responses to that force, producing ephemeral shapes—"evanescent symmetries"—from a careful but impersonal maker. The poem links creative striving with transience and the limits of mastery.
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