There is a marvelous music video for the Lily Allen’s song “LDN”. (See it here: http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/LilyAllen/LDN--44680579). The premise of the video is that nothing is as it seems on the surface. The video shows her looking at a piece of candy, but then removes a screen to reveal it is really a cigarette butt. There is also a scene of a young boy helping a woman with grocery bags but really he steals her wallet. The list continues. However, this sort of world and these images echo when reading Steven’s views on the imagination as interpreter of life. Just as Allen wears rose-colored glasses in the video, so too does the imagination provide humanity with rose-colored glasses.
The imagination, according to Stevens, enables man to keep living. It is “the only clue to reality” (Imagination as value, 137), the only thing that gives the mind power “over the possibilities of things” (136). Though the music video alters this point, it emphasizes the idea of the imagination giving shape to reality.
Exploring the idea of the imagination, Stevens compares his imagination to a candle in his poem “Valley Candle”. As a symbolist poet, every image bears deeper meaning, beyond the superficial word. Writing that his “candle burned alone in an immense valley,” (1) the reader imagines a flickering flame, the only fleck of light in the valley. Stevens’ candle, his imagination, feels surrounded by the natural world of the valley. Indeed, the natural world does not just surround the candle but “beams of the huge night converged upon” (2) the candle, attempting to drown its tender flame. Stevens’ use of the word “night” is the opposite of a candle. Night represents darkness and uncertainty. The candle provides light and clarity.
The coupling of” night” with “candle” is a perfect pairing. The night is the vast unknown, the wide reaching depths of nature and the mind. A candle is what allows a person to make sense of that unknown, to bring light and understanding to a confusing situation. The candle provides “the only clue to reality,” the reality of the dark valley.
In the third line of his poem, Stevens’ writes that there is also wind in this valley. The wind blows into the valley to rescue the candle’s luminance. The “beams” “converged” on the light “until the wind blew” (3), to strength it. Though this strengthening seems counterintuitive (since wind usually extinguishes a candle), in this line the wind drives away the beams of night to allow the flame to breathe oxygen and continue burning. A slight gust will cause a candle’s flame to bounce back, strong and better than before. It provides a renewed burst of light.
The second stanza of the poem reiterates the idea of the night encroaching on the candle, but this time Stevens uses the word “image” to refer to the candle. The word “image” carries with it the association of art. Art, in all of its forms, is powerful. Art is the free expression of the imagination, the entity that allows man to experience, fully, life’s possibilities. Before the “beams of the huge night” (4) overpower the light, the image, the imagination, the second wind swoops in to resuscitate and protect the fragile spark of imagination.
With a little push, the imagination flourishes, stronger than ever. With just a small prod by Stevens, a gentle message is sent to humanity: to nurture the imagination through the creation of art, which will ignite and illuminate the world.
Very cool connection to the Lily Allen music video - I liked it a lot. I think your parallel of the night and candle with the reality and imagination, respectively, makes for a meaningful reading of this poem, as does your interpretation of the role of the wind in sustaining the candle and its light of imagination rather than extinguishing it.
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