Kalpana Kalpana (Editor)

Infanta Marina

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Infanta Marina” is a poem in Wallace Stevens' Harmonium about a seaside princess. Helen Vendler (in Words Chosen Out of Desire) presents the poem as a "double scherzo" on her in the possessive sense and on of in its partitive and possessive sense.

The litany of of’s shows syntactically what the poem states semantically, Vendler proposes: the interpenetration of mind and nature, the denial of "significant difference" among the objects of the various of-clauses. This semantics may be read as a naturalistic denial of metaphysical dualism between mind and matter, a natural twin to the reading of "Invective Against Swans" as mocking the dualistic soul and its dubious journey to a realm that transcends nature.

The princess of the sea in this poem may be compared to "donna" who is "sequestered over the sea" in "O Florida, Venereal Soil", and to "Fabliau of Florida", which in parallel fashion explores dissolution of boundaries in nature.

Infanta marina by wallace stevens


References

Infanta Marina Wikipedia