"Blue and White Munich": Images of Germany in Stevensian Regeneration

Abstract

Wallace Stevens's exploration of German cultural elements and figures, including his own heritage, functions as a creative source for his poetry and prose. While his early poetry romanticizes German culture and identity, Stevens grows skeptical in the mid-1930s and 1940s when his references to Germany increasingly inform his questioning of poetry's collective relevance and function. In several poems including "Martial Cadenza," "Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion," and "Imago," images of Germany provide key points of departure to contemplate the regenerative potential of the poetic imagination in transcending the exigencies of the external world unsettled by war and destruction.