In Wallace Stevens's masterful and eloquent poem, "Sunday
Morning," the first two stanzas tell the reader about whom and what the poem is
concerned: an older woman has death on her mind, and all the religious questions
associated with it. The conflict in her reflections is between the naturalistic and the
"ancient sacrifice," which is a way of describing the central event of Christianity.
Thus, the central opposition in Wallace's poem is between the natural/pagan and the
supernatural/Christian views. This opposition is resolved by the argument of the
speaker who convinces the woman contains spirituality
itself.
In the first stanza, a woman lounges in her
peignoir on a Sunday morning, enjoying the natural beauty around her, enjoying her
coffee and oranges, the "green freedom of a cockatoo." But her reveries are broken by
this Sunday being Easter Sunday; with this occasion
comes
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Encroachment of that old
catastrophe...
Dominion of the blood and
spulchre.
In the second
stanza, the speaker of the poem questions her rejection of the Christian
occasion:
Why
should she give her bounty to the dead?What is divinity if
it can comeOnly in silent shadows and in
dreams?
The speaker contends
that she can find a connection between the religious and the natural worlds by her
becoming "the book," so to speak:
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Shall she not find in comforts of the
son,...
Things to be cherished like the thought of
heave?
Divinity must live within
herself
In the third stanza,
the speaker expands his religious focus to the Greek god Jove, whose blood "commingling,
virginal/With heaven." Then, the speaker links Jove's mingling with heaven to the birth
of Christ by connecting it to the star that guided the Wise Men to the birthplace of
Jesus. Since both myths are disconnected from humanity, man can find the divine in the
natural world.
The woman's voice returns in the next two
stanzas as she questions the argument of the speaker/poet that earthly pleasures can
provide spiritual fulfillment. While acknowledging that natural beauty "has endured,"
he contends that the eternal beauty of nature is evident in its renewal each spring--"As
April's green endures." The "chimera of the grave," the dark dreams of Christ's
crucifixion, will not last as will the magnificence of the natural
world.
When the woman
complains,
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'But in contentment I still
feel
The need of some imperishable
bliss'
the speaker counters,
"Death is the mother of beauty." He explains this paradox by explaining that the
prospect of death makes people appreciate beauty/love all the more. The next stanza
continues this argument.
In the seventh stanza, the speaker
suggests an alternative to traditional worship, likening the dance of the pagans to
"heavenly worship."
Convinced of the speaker's argument,
the woman hears
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A voice that cries, 'The tomb in
Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits
lingering.
It is the grave of jesus, where he
lay.'
She acknowleges that
the grave of Jesus is not where there are any mystical spirits. So, she turns with the
speaker to the "old chaos of the sun," and the beginnings and ends--"Ambiguous
undulations." The woman is released from the restrictions of the religious world and
embraces the "spontaneous cries" of nature where pigeons make their "ambiguous
undulations."
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