The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm Poem

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm is a poem written by Wallace Steven. Wallace Steven is one of America's most respected poets. Besides, he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality. Because of the extreme technical and thematic complexity of his study, Steven was sometimes considered a willfully difficult poet. But he also acknowledged as an eminent abstractionist and a provocative thinker, and that reputation has continued since his death. According to the English.illinois.edu, “Steven had been actually well known as an extraordinary poet who likes to write or create his in the form of extended meditative sequences, quasi-philosophical in their ruminative wanderings, but marked always by a vivid sense of the absurd and a darting, whirling inventiveness that took delight in peculiar anecdotal examples.” He prefers to choose the simple and well-known of words in his poem. However, using his creativity, he constructed those simple words into very deep meaning poems depicted some image, sense, feeling, and situation which is sometimes quite mystical and mysterious that can posses into the reader’s feeling when he/she read the poems felt just what Steven expected.

In this poem, as usual, Steven creates the title of this poem using familiar words such as house, world, quiet, and calm. Yet, when it has been constructed into the title of his poem, it may have very deep meaning in the particular sense that we can feel even when we read the title at the first time. when the reader reads the title of this poem “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm” we can directly feel attracted towards the sense of quietness and calmness delivered by it. We can sense using our logical that when the house was quiet, there was no noise at all that we can hear. It perhaps can happen if the house was really empty or if it was night so that the surrounding environment that creates the sense of its quietness. Then, it was added with the words “the world was calm”. When the world can be that calm? That question may lead to reveal the literal meaning of this poem’s title. In the very busy country, just like in the capital city of a certain place, we may find it hard to find the time when the world should show its calmness. However, when it is not a very busy country, we may find that the night time is the appropriate time when we can say that the world was calm since every person started to go to their own rest place after a long day of work. Therefore, if we combine the title “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm” and relate it to the literal analysis portrayed by its words, we can find out that this poem may talk about something which may happen in the night time when there is no loud noise are made out. 

After inferring what is meant by the title literally and read the whole poem, the reader may find out that the literal inference of the poem’s title which conveys the night time is appropriate with content of the poem. We can see it in the line 2 that the setting of this poem was taken in the night time just like the literal inference of the poem’s title. Besides, after reading the whole poem from line to line, we can say that the poem itself talks about the magic moment (summer night) when a reader, with a book in his hands, is fused in an existential unity with the book, the world, and life itself. This unity is a whole of parts combined with the universal quiet that the poem evokes.

Therefore, we can say that the theme of this poem is peacefulness. The peacefulness itself was derived from the sense and situation of the reading activity that the reader in the poem do and the time setting (summer night) that accompany and support that reading activity. This poem shows the deep feeling of the experience of reading late into the night like what is stated in the last line “Is the reader leaning late and reading there”. It is not just a report of reading activity said by the speaker of the poem, but more about a dramatic realization in the form of a meditative word of poem’s line. Since the theme of the poem is about the peacefulness and the calm situation in which the reader in the poem read the book, the time setting of this poem become very important. Just like what have been discussed in the previous paragraphs that the time setting used in this poem is the existence of summer night. The choice of this summer night time seems really appropriate with the feeling or then sense delivered  in the poem. According to Martin, “summer would be the most poetic season, with winter coming in second, and autumn and spring tied for last. Summer is the quietest, most becalmed – and thus the likeliest to prompt in poet and the reader the hushed arrested introspective examination that generates the lyric.” If the summer  has portrayed the image of quietness and calmness among the other seasons, then summer night will be much calmer. Besides, the poem takes place at night in order to establish a scene of loneliness. No one else seems to be stirring nearby. The world sleeps, and the reader is alone with his book.

Next, if we see the shift of the poem, we will find out that the poem was divided by two-line stanzas. It may due to the need of creating the “calm” sense in every end of the lines. This may be because Stevens repeats the word “calm” six times throughout the whole of a sixteen-line poem, but in that repetition he is weaving together a calming rhythm. However, let’s just take for the example in the poem line 1-4. We can see that the sentence in the second line is separated by the stanza and it continued on the next line. If we want to try to combine them into one sentence in one line, it may become too long compared to the other lines of the poem. That is why Steven chooses to separate them into two-line stanzas. Moreover, this dividing stanza may also emphasize the loneliness of the reader in the poem. It is stated in the poem that the reader in the poem read the book in the summer night when the house was quiet and the world was calm. It means that there was no noise at that time that can also mean that the reader was reading that book late at night when nobody else accompany him. He was alone there, only accompanied by his book and nothing else. There are only two elements told in that poem, which are the reader in the poem and the book being read by the reader in the poem that can be reflected by the construction of two-line stanzas of the poem. The breaks between the stanza also seemed to make the reader of the poem lulled by the rhythm created in the poem and the sense of quietness that we can get when we read the poem.

Moreover, when we analyze the poem, in the line 1-4, the statements of the house was quiet and the world was calm is the time setting of the poem. In this quiet, peaceful, and calm night, the reader became the book. He merged with the book that he read. It shows us that the reader of the book like the book so much until he can sink on what he read and fused with it. Then, the summer night, which is also the additional time setting of the poem was like the conscious being of the book. This can mean that summer night is just like the witness that the reader of the book really enjoys his reading activity. In addition, in this line, Steven is using longer lines and open-vowel words (house, world, calm) to stress the sense of the drawn out. The combining of these words produces a lulling effect, which Steven uses to fulfil the expectation he sets up in the title.

In the line 5, we can say that the reader of the book had been familiar with the words or the text in the book so that the reader of the book just read the texts in that book aloud as if there was no book and as if he was not reading it (The words were spoken as if there was no book). Yet, it is exceptional if the reader getting closer to the book in which the reader of the book really want to merge with the book just like the scholar who was studying his book to get the perfection thought or idea in the summer night (line 6-9). At this time, the house is not quiet by its own situation, but it seems that the reader’s experience exerted its influence to make the house quiet. Just like when we too enjoy in reading the book, our surroundings may be feeling like quiet as we sunk and merged into the text of the book that we read (line 10). When we look at the line 11-12, we can conclude that the quietness itself is the part of the meaning and part of the mind in which it supports the reading activity done by the reader to get the perfect idea or understanding of the text within the book itself. On the other hand, in the very last stanzas of the poem (line 13-16), Steven may want to emphasize again the calm situation build in that poem in which the reader was leaning late and reading books in the summer night. These final four lines may also give us a clue to the whole meaning in which the repetition of the word “calm,” the linking of “truth” and “meaning” to the summer, the night, and the reader, show us that the unspoken, unwritten undercurrent of all of this that threatens to disturb the reader’s calm is his own awareness of his surroundings, his consciousness, and his artifice in contriving this perfect setting for the reading of some work which he wants to read since sometimes, if our surroundings was too quiet and calm we cannot enjoy the reading.

Based on the explanations above, I can conclude this poem uses the third point of view of the poem in which the speaker of the poem is someone who isn’t involved in the activity told in the poem, but knows everything about what happened in the poem. However, the subjects which is being the main attention of the speaker in this poem is the reader who reads the book in the summer night in the poem. Just like what is stated before, this subject (the reader) of the poem and the situation involved in the poem makes the perfect combination of the quietness and calmness that firstly introduced by the title of the poem.

In addition, when we talk about the tone of the poem we can say that the poem uses reverential poem in which the reader are invited to feel the peacefulness admiration while reading the poem. This poem weaves together a calming rhythm evoking the perfect stillness of the summer night, the house, and the world as if existence itself conspires to set the appropriate backdrop to this blessed moment of reading. When we try to feel the pronunciations of the words in the few last stanzas, we can figure out that it also emphasizes the restful end of the reading activity in the poem.

In conclusion, The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm poem is the artistic expression of the reading activity in which the reader enjoy reading the book alone in his house in the late summer night when there is no noise that can disturb him, but his own consciousness. Besides, in ‘The house was quiet and the world was calm’ the act of engaging with a work of art seems to make the environment conspire to show a sense of perfect contemplation and the poem ends with an image evoking the loneliness of the reader with his book.

References:

Anonymous. Wallace Stevens: Biography and Recollections by Acquaintances, (Online), (http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/bio.htm), accessed at May, 7th 2014

Martin. Summer Night, (Online), (http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=36358), accessed at May 7th 2014