From Robert Frost to Wallace Stevens through the power of the imagination. Frost thought it fruitless to seize the day during the day. Rather it was through the backward glance tinged inevitably by the power of imagination that the seizure occurs. Wallace Stevens is the poet of the imagination. He wrote “Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.” And “Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities it can be made into.”
Philip Roth also recognized the preeminence of the imagination when he wrote: “Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.”
This is not to say that facts are not out there. Nor is it to say that the being does not exist apart from facts or the mind. However, apart from our ordering and making sense of our experiences, we exist as a – what kind of a metaphor shall we use – a single tone, a single line? To join with our life is to use our mind, and our mind gets experience from imagination. Stevens wrote: “The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them. If this is true, then reason is simply the methodizer of the imagination.” So whether you call it intuition, imagination, flights of fancy, or gut feelings – these are what create your sorrow and your joy. The mind’s reason simply fills in the picture and tells the story. The imagination is the spark: we then feed the fire.
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
By Wallace Steven
Light the first light of evening
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
Philip Roth also recognized the preeminence of the imagination when he wrote: “Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.”
This is not to say that facts are not out there. Nor is it to say that the being does not exist apart from facts or the mind. However, apart from our ordering and making sense of our experiences, we exist as a – what kind of a metaphor shall we use – a single tone, a single line? To join with our life is to use our mind, and our mind gets experience from imagination. Stevens wrote: “The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them. If this is true, then reason is simply the methodizer of the imagination.” So whether you call it intuition, imagination, flights of fancy, or gut feelings – these are what create your sorrow and your joy. The mind’s reason simply fills in the picture and tells the story. The imagination is the spark: we then feed the fire.
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
By Wallace Steven
Light the first light of evening
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
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