Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks

Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks  In the moonlight  I met Berserk,  In the moonlight  On the bushy plain.  Oh, sharp he was  As the sleepless!  And, "Why are you red  In this milky blue?"  I said.  "Why sun-colored,  As if awake  In the midst of sleep?"  "You that wander,"  So he said,  "On the bushy plain,  Forget so soon.  But I set my traps  In the midst of dreams."  I knew from this  That the blue ground  Was full of blocks  And blocking steel.  I knew the dread  Of the bushy plain,  And the beauty  Of the moonlight  Falling there,  Falling  As sleep falls  In the innocent air.

"Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's debut collection of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was 1 of the few Harmonium poems originally published in that volume. 

Commentary

The poem marks Stevens's realization that the life of the imagination is more complex and fraught with peril than he had once supposed.

Robert Buttel is impressed by an "eerie collocation of colors" which contributes to the "disturbing effect of the invasion of the world of moonlight and dream by Berserk, who personifies the violence of day."

Vendler understands the poem as Stevens meeting his own potential madness. The prince of peacocks, the poet, meets Berserk, who will not be evaded even in dreams. She thinks that the initial promise of the poem, the brutal encounter between the prince and Berserk, is dissipated in the final stanza, "an unrewarding ending".

It may be that Vendler understands the dread in the penultimate stanza to take as its object only the bushy plain. The scope of the dread is narrow. But if the scope is broad, encompassing the final stanza, then the prince knows the dread of the beauty of the moonlight. The eeriness that Buttel mentioned continues to the end of the poem. There isn't a retreat from brutality to incantation, as Vendler sees it, but rather the brutality of the blocks and blocking steel extends into the final stanza.

Compare "The Public Square" for the shared architectural motif.

See also

Poems by Wallace Stevens

• Anecdote of Canna
• Anecdote of the Jar
• Anecdote of Men by the Thousands
• Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks
• Banal Sojourn
• The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws
• Colloquy with a Polish Aunt
• The Cuban Doctor
• The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician
• The Emperor of Ice Cream
• Fabliau of Florida
• Gubbinal
• A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
• Homunculus et la Belle Etoile
• Of the Surface of Things
• Peter Quince at the Clavier
• The Place of the Solitaires
• Ploughing on Sunday
• The Snow Man
• Stars at Tallapoosa
• Sunday Morning
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
• The Weeping Burgher

References

• Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press.
• Vendler, Helen. Words Chosen Out Of Desire. 1984: University of Tennessee Press.