Wallace Stevens and Pre-Socratic Philosophy: Metaphysics and the Play of Violence

by Tompsett; Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780415507585
• ISBN10: 0415507588
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-06-19
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book studies Wallace Stevens and pre-Socratic poetic philosophy, showing how concepts that animate Stevens' poetry parallel concepts found in the works of Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Xenophanes. Tompsett traces the transition of pre-Socratic ideas into poetry and philosophy of the post-Kantian period, assessing the impact that the mythologies associated with pre-Socratism have had on structures of metaphysical thought that are still found in poetry and philosophy today. This transition is treated as becoming increasingly important as poetic and philosophic forms have progressively taken on the existential burden of our post-theological age. Tompsett argues that Stevens' poetry 'plays' its audience into an ontological ground in an effort to show that his 'reduction of metaphysics' is not dry philosophical imposition, but is enacted by our encounter with the poems themselves. Through an analysis of the language and form of Stevens' poems, Tompsett uncovers the mythology his poetry shares with certain pre-Socratics and with Greek tragedy. This shows how such mythic rhythms are apparent within the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Heidegger and Gadamer, and how these rhythms release a poetic understanding of the violence of a 'reduction of metaphysics.'