World Literary Awards

← Back to Home

Wallace Stevens

ウォレス・スティーヴンス

Wallace Stevens

Profile

Gender
Male
Born
1879-10-02 （Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S.）
Died
1955-08-02 （Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.） age 75
Nationality
United States
Languages
English
Religion
Lutheran (reported late-life conversion to Catholicism is disputed)
Residence History
Reading, Pennsylvania (birthplace) → Boston (Harvard years and early connections) → New York City (early career and law practice) → Hartford, Connecticut (long-term residence and workplace)

Career

Occupations
Poet, Lawyer, Insurance executive
Active Years
1914-1955
Affiliations
Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company (The Hartford)
Memberships
American Academy of Arts and Letters (member)
Influenced By
George Santayana, Friedrich Nietzsche (philosophical influence), Paul Klee (painter), Paul Cézanne (painter)
Influenced
John Ashbery (poet), Charles Wright (poet), David Hockney (artist, inspired by Stevens)

Education

Harvard University (special student, non-degree)
Period: 1897–1900（特別学生）
Country: United States
Three-year special student; active with The Harvard Advocate.
New York Law School
Law
Degree: LLB
Period: 1900–1903
Year of Graduation: 1903
Country: United States
Earned law degree (LLB).

Awards

Bollingen Prize for Poetry
1949
Organization: Yale University / Bollingen Prize committee
Result: 受賞
National Book Award for Poetry
1951
Work: The Auroras of Autumn
Category: 詩
Organization: National Book Foundation
Result: 受賞
National Book Award for Poetry
1955
Work: Collected Poems
Category: 詩
Organization: National Book Foundation
Result: 受賞
Robert Frost Medal (Frost Medal)
1951
Organization: Poetry Society of America
Result: 受賞
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1955
Work: Collected Poems
Category: 詩
Organization: Pulitzer Prize committee
Result: 受賞

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

Harmonium

1923 Poetry (collection)

Stevens's first major poetry collection containing many early signature poems that mix symbolic, imaginative imagery with philosophical reflections.

imagination vs. realitynatural imagerylanguage and order

The Idea of Order at Key West

1934 Poem

A poem set in Key West that meditates on how imagination orders reality; one of Stevens's signature longer poems.

imaginationorderart and reality

The Auroras of Autumn

1950 Poetry (collection)

An important late collection with many philosophical and meditative long poems exploring imagination and reality.

age and endingrole of imaginationnature and light

Collected Poems

1954 Poetry (collected)

Collection of Stevens's major poems; won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955.

imagination and realityreligious and philosophical inquiry

Bibliography

  • Harmonium (1923; revised 1930)
  • Ideas of Order (1936)
  • Owl's Clover (1936)
  • The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937)
  • Parts of a World (1942)
  • Transport to Summer (1947)
  • The Auroras of Autumn (1950)
  • The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (1951)
  • Collected Poems (1954)
  • Opus Posthumous (1957, posthumous)

Adaptations

  • David Hockney's 'The Blue Guitar' etchings (1977) — inspired by Stevens's poem 'The Man with the Blue Guitar'

Translations of Works

  • Several poems have been translated into Japanese (various translators)

Style & Themes

Literary Style
Modernist poetic stylePhilosophical, meditative, and often abstractRefined musicality and attention to form
Recurring Motifs
tension between imagination and realitysea and light imagerymaker's rage / drive to orderself-reflexivity about art

Health

  • Stomach cancer
    1955（晩年）
    Diagnosed and operated on in 1955; condition deteriorated and he died in August 1955.
  • Obesity / corpulent figure
    生涯
    Maintained a large, corpulent figure; doctors sometimes placed him on medical diets.

Legacy

Wallace Stevens is regarded as one of the major American modernist poets of the 20th century. His philosophical examinations of imagination and reality and refined poetic technique have secured broad critical and scholarly attention and an enduring influence after his death.

Museums

  • Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (holds Wallace Stevens collections) New Haven, Connecticut (Yale University)

Academic Societies

  • American Academy of Arts and Letters (member)
  • The Wallace Stevens Society

Archives

  • Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
  • Wallace Stevens Society archives

In Popular Culture

  • David Hockney's etchings 'The Blue Guitar' were inspired by Stevens's poem 'The Man with the Blue Guitar'.
  • Honored on a U.S. postage stamp in 2012.

Quotes

  • The poem must resist the intelligence — Almost successfully.
    Source: Wallace Stevens (poem)

Trivia

  • His wife Elsie may have been a model for sculptor Adolph Weinman; her profile has been linked to US coin designs.
  • Anecdote of a physical altercation with Ernest Hemingway in Key West, in which Stevens reportedly injured his hand.
  • He led a double life as an insurance executive by day and a poet in his spare time.
  • Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955 for Collected Poems. A reported deathbed conversion to Catholicism shortly before his death is disputed.