Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CARLOS AMONG THE CANDLES, by WALLACE STEVENS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CARLOS AMONG THE CANDLES, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: How the solitude of this candle penetrates me
Subject(s): Candles


The stage is indistinguishable when the curtain rises. The room represented is
semi-circular. In the center, at the back, is a large round window, covered by
long curtains. There is a door at the right and one at the left. Farther forward
on the stage there are two long, low, wooden tables, one at the right and one at
the left. The walls and the curtains over the window are of a dark reddishpurple,
with a dim pattern of antique gold.
Carlos is an eccentric pedant of about forty. He is dressed in black. He wears
close-fitting breeches and a close-fitting, tightly-buttoned, short coat with
long tails. His hair is rumpled. He leaps upon the stage through the door at the
right. Nothing is visible through the door. He has a long thin white lighted
taper, which he holds high above his head as he moves, fantastically, over the
stage, examining the room in which he finds himself.
When he has completed examining the room, he tip-toes to the table at the right
and lights a single candle at the edge of the table nearest the front of the
stage. It is a thin black candle, not less than two feet high. All the other
candles are like it. They give very little light.
He speaks in a lively manner, but is over-nice in sounding his words.
As the candle begins to burn, he steps back, regarding it. Nothing else is
visible on the table.
Carlos:
How the solitude of this candle penetrates me! I light a candle in the darkness.
It fills the darkness with solitude, which becomes my own. I become a part of
the solitude of the candle . . . of the darkness flowing over the house and into
it. . . This room . . . and the profound room outside. . . Just to go through a
door, and the change. . . the becoming a part, instantly, of that profounder
room . . . and equally to feel it communicating, with the same persistency, its
own mood, its own influence . . . and there, too, to feel the lesser influences
of the shapes of things, of exhalations, sounds . . . to feel the mood of the
candle vanishing and the mood of the special night coming to take its place. . .
[He sighs. After a pause he pirouettes, and then continues.']
I was always affected by the grand style. And yet I have been thinking neither
of mountains nor of morgues. . . To think of this light and of myself . . . it
is a duty. . . . Is it because it makes me think of myself in other places in
such a light . . . or of other people in other places in such a light? How true
that is: other people in other places in such a light. . . If I looked in at
that window and saw a single candle burning in an empty room. . . but if I saw a
figure. . . If, now, I felt that there was someone outside. . . The vague
influence . . . the influence that clutches. . . But it is not only here and
now. . . It is in the morning . . . the difference between a small window and a
large window . . . a blue window and a green window. . . It is in the afternoon
and in the evening . . . in effects, so drifting, that I know myself to be
incalculable, since the causes of what I am are incalculable. . .
[He springs toward the table, flourishing his taper. At the end farthest from
the front of the stage, he discovers a second candle, which he lights. He goes
back to his former position.]
The solitude dissolves. . . The light of two candles has a meaning different
from the light of one . . . and an effect different from the effect of one. . .
And the proof that that is so, is that I feel the difference. . . The
associations have drifted a little and changed, and I have followed in this
change. . . If I see myself in other places in such a light, it is not as I saw
myself before. If I see other people in other places in such a light, the people
and places are different from the people and places I saw before. The solitude
is gone. It is as if a company of two or three people had just separated, or as
if they were about to gather. These candles are too far apart.
[He flourishes his taper above the table and finds a third candle in the center
of it, which he lights.]
And yet with only two candles it would have been a cold and respectable company;
for the feeling of coldness and respectability persists in the presence of
three, modified a little, as if a kind of stateliness had modified into a kind
of elegance. . . How far away from the isolation of the single candle, as
arrogant of the vacancy around it as three are arrogant of association. . . It
is no longer as if a company had just separated. It is only as if it were about
to gather . . . as if one were soon to forget the room because of the people in
the room . . . people tempered by the lights around them, affected by the lights
around them . . . sensible that one more candle would turn this formative
elegance into formative luxury.
[He lights a fourth candle. He indulges his humor.]
And the suggestion of luxury into the suggestion of magnificence.
[He lights a fifth candle.]
And the beginning of magnificence into the beginning of splendor.
[He lights a sixth candle. He sighs deeply.]
In how short a time have I been solitary, then respectable-in a company so cold
as to be stately, then elegant, then conscious of luxury, even magnificence ;
and now I come, gradually, to the beginning of splendor. Truly, I am a modern.
[He dances around the room.]
To have changed so often and so much . . . or to have been changed . . . to have
been carried by the lighting of six candles through so many lives and to have
been brought among so many people. . . This grows more wonderful. Six candles
burn like an adventure that has been completed. They are established. They are a
city . . . six common candles . . . seven. . .
[He lights another and another, until he has lighted twelve, saying after them,
in turn :]
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
[Following this, he goes on tip-toe to the center of the stage, where he looks
at the candles. Their brilliance has raised his spirits to the point of gaiety.
He turns from the lighted table to face the dark one at the left. He holds his
taper before him.]
Darkness again . . . as if a night wind had come blowing. . . but too weakly to
fling the cloth of darkness.
[He goes to the window, draws one of the curtains a little and peers out. He
sees nothing.]
I had as lief look into night as look into the dark corner of a room. Darkness
expels me.
[He goes forward, holding his taper high above him, until he comes to the table
at the left. He finds this covered with candles, like the table at the right,
and lights them, with whimsical motions, one by one. When all the candles have
been lighted, he runs to the center of the stage, holding his hands over his
eyes. Then he returns to the window and flings aside the curtains. The light
from the window falls on the tall stalks of flowers outside. The flowers are
like hollyhocks, but they are unnaturally large, of gold and silver. He speaks
excitedly.]
Where now is my solitude and the lonely figure of solitude? Where now are the
two stately ones that left their coldness behind them? They have taken their
bareness with them. Their coldness has followed them. Here there will be silks
and fans . . . the movement of arms . . . rumors of Renoir . . . coiffures . . .
hands . . . scorn of Debussy . . . communications of body to body. . . There
will be servants, as fat as plums, bearing pineapples from the Azores . . .
because of twenty-four candles, burning together, as if their light had
dispelled a phantasm, falling on silks and fans . . . the movement of arms. . .
The pulse of the crowd will beat out the shallow pulses. . . it will fill me.
[A strong gust of wind suddenly blows into the room, extinguishing several of
the candles on the table at the left. He runs to the table at the left and
looks, as if startled, at the extinguished candles. He buries his head in his
arms.]
That, too, was phantasm. . . The night wind came into the room. . . The fans are
invisible upon the floor.
[In a burst of feeling, he blows out all the candles that are still burning on
the table at the left. He crosses the stage and stands before the table at the
right. After a moment he goes slowly to the back of the stage and draws the
curtains over the window. He returns to the table at the right.]
What is there in the extinguishing of light? It is like twelve wild birds flying
in autumn.
[He blows out one of the candles.]
It is like an eleven-limbed oak tree, brass-colored in frost.. . . Regret. . .
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like ten green sparks of a rocket, oscillating in air. . .The
extinguishing of light . . . how closely regret follows it.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like the diverging angles that follow nine leaves drifting in water, and
that compose themselves brilliantly on the polished surface.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like eight pears in a nude tree, flaming in twilight. . .The extinguishing
of light is like that. The season is sorrowful. The air is cold.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like the six Pleiades, and the hidden one, that makes them seven.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like the seven Pleiades, and the hidden one, that makes
them six.
[He blows out another candle.]
The extinguishing of light is like the five purple palmations of cinquefoil
withering. . . It is full of the incipiencies of darkness . . . of desolation
that rises as a feeling rises. . . Imagination wills the five purple palmations
of cinquefoil. But in this light they have the appearance of withering. . . To
feel and, in the midst of feeling, to imagine . . .
[He blows out another candle.]
The extinguishing of light is like the four posts of a cadaver, two at its head
and two at its feet, to-wit: its arms and legs.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like three peregrins, departing.
[He blows out another candle.]
It is like heaven and earth in the eye of the disbeliever.
[He blows out another candle. He dances around the room. He returns to the
single candle that remains burning.]
The extinguishing of light is like that old Hesper, clapped upon by clouds.
[He stands in front of the candle, so as to obscure it.]
The spikes of his light bristle around the edge of the bulk. The spikes bristle
among the clouds and behind them. There is a spot where he was bright in the
sky. . . It remains fixed a little in the mind.
[He opens the door at the right. Outside, the night is as blue as water. He
crosses the stage and opens the door at the left. Once more he flings aside the
curtains. He extinguishes his taper. He looks out. He speaks with elation.]
Oh, ho! Here is matter beyond invention.
[He springs through the window. Curtain.]





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