1) “An Old Man Asleep”
“Preface” (to “Scepticism and Animal Faith”)
In the Preface to Scepticism and Animal Faith, Santayana makes some general remarks about his system and says the aim of his book is “[to] distinguish the edge of truth from the might of imagination” (x). His wish, he explains, “is to clear my mind of cant” (vi).
Stevens’ “An Old Man Asleep,” the first poem in The Rock, likewise pictures the removing of mental obstructions:
The two worlds are asleep, are sleeping, now.
A dumb sense possesses them in a kind of solemnity.The self and the earth — your thoughts, your feelings,
Your beliefs and disbeliefs, your whole peculiar plot;The redness of your reddish chestnut trees,
The river motion, the drowsy motion of the river R.
Going farther in the description of his system, Santayana makes four italicized remarks. The first of these is that “my system is not mine, nor new” but based on universal truths and the common sense views of laymen everywhere (v). In his poem, Stevens make a similar exclusion of the personal by using “your” five times to describe what has been put to rest.
Santayana’s second italicized remark is that his is “no system of the universe” (vi). So, Stevens says to the old man that what also sleeps are “your beliefs and disbeliefs, your whole peculiar plot.”
The third italicized remark that the philosopher makes about his system is that it is “not metaphysical” because Santayana objects to metaphysicians “materializing ideal entities . . . and dissolving natural things into terms of discourse” (vii). Stevens make the same exclusion when he tells the old man that what has also been put to bed is “the redness of your reddish chestnut trees” because “redness,” used in this fashion, is an ideal entity that has been materialized while the chestnut trees have been dissolved into terms of discourse.
The final remark that Santayana makes about his system is that it is “no phase of any current movement.” Using an arboreal metaphor (that Stevens borrows with his chestnut trees), the philosopher observes that all philosophies “give glimpses of the same wood” (ix). Truth is universal, he says, though some thinkers mistakenly offer what is only local (viii).
The way Stevens takes up this last exclusion amounts to a play on Santayana’s word “movement.” What is also asleep, the poet says, is “the river motion, the drowsy motion of the River R.” What also sleeps, in other words, are localized versions of the truth when drowsy old men see rivers as drowsy too.
In his Preface, Santayana spells out what his system is not and Stevens, in the first poem of The Rock, likewise puts to rest what is personal, systemic, metaphysical, and local. Stevens’ Old Man may happily slumber with his beliefs and disbeliefs, along with the redness of his trees and his drowsy river, but Santayana insists — in a comment that seems to have provoked Stevens’ somnolent imagery — these notions “must be discounted in our waking life, when we come to business” (viii).
