Reference Tools:
Word Frequency in “The Rock” & the Index to “Scepticism and Animal Faith”
In the hopes that it might be of use, I print below a word-frequency analysis of The Rock of words that appear three or more times; they are organized from the most frequent to the less frequent. To identify where the word appears in The Rock and where the word is used in Stevens’ other poems, lexicographers might make use of the free “Online Concordance to Wallace Stevens’ Poetry”: http://www.wallacestevens.com/concordance/
As a postscript, I have added the four-page Index (pp. 311–314) of Scepticism and Animal Faith because it, too, is useful as a way of noting the connections between ideas. Santayana’s letters indicate, Martin Coleman has pointed out, that Santayana composed the index to his own book. And the Index itself, I would observe, is a bit more than a conventional index. As Santayana wrote to his editor Otto Kyllmann (24 January 1923), “I have tried to turn [the Index] into a table analytique, which I think the book requires”(The Letters of George Santayana, 3:122).
Word Frequency in “The Rock”
sun — 21
part — 16
more — 15
light — 14
rock — 14
things — 14
thought — 14
own — 13
air — 12
mind — 12
world — 12
beyond — 11
trees — 11
day — 10
leaves — 10
man — 10
night — 10
sense — 10
among — 9
life — 9
thing — 9
two — 9
wind — 9
great — 8
river — 8
summer — 8
change — 7
cure — 7
poem — 7
self — 7
boat — 6
first — 6
form — 6
house — 6
left — 6
look — 6
make — 6
outside — 6
rising — 6
rome — 6
think — 6
way — 6
words — 6
armorer’s — 5
become — 5
bed — 5
candle — 5
chair — 5
chapel — 5
evening — 5
final — 5
glass — 5
grass — 5
green — 5
ground — 5
heaven — 5
human — 5
icon — 5
knowledge — 5
less — 5
longer — 5
men — 5
motion — 5
moving — 5
nature — 5
place — 5
plain — 5
room — 5
sea — 5
shape — 5
silence — 5
sound — 5
speech — 5
st — 5
weight — 5
alive — 4
alone — 4
beneath — 4
body — 4
cold — 4
comes — 4
coming — 4
earth — 4
even — 4
eye — 4
father — 4
figures — 4
fire — 4
friend — 4
grandeur — 4
imagined — 4
kept — 4
lay — 4
made — 4
makes — 4
makings — 4
meaning — 4
meditation — 4
mere — 4
presence — 4
purpose — 4
rises — 4
shadow — 4
shadows — 4
side — 4
single — 4
stood — 4
time — 4
universe — 4
water — 4
whole — 4
winter — 4
actual — 3
asleep — 3
bear — 3
became — 3
becomes — 3
beginning — 3
birds — 3
bloom — 3
blue — 3
both — 3
breath — 3
bright — 3
broke — 3
bud — 3
certain — 3
color — 3
contained — 3
cover — 3
cry — 3
dark — 3
dead — 3
desired — 3
dirty — 3
discovery — 3
edge — 3
element — 3
feel — 3
fixed — 3
forms — 3
fortune — 3
fresh — 3
fruit — 3
half — 3
heart — 3
high — 3
ii — 3
imagination — 3
indigence — 3
kind — 3
larger — 3
lie — 3
lights — 3
lived — 3
lives — 3
looking — 3
love — 3
man’s — 3
moon — 3
moonlight — 3
mountain — 3
need — 3
nuns — 3
object — 3
origin — 3
parent — 3
particular — 3
perhaps — 3
point — 3
pond — 3
possible — 3
power — 3
seemed — 3
seventy — 3
shines — 3
sight — 3
sky — 3
smell — 3
someone — 3
sooth — 3
sorrow — 3
space — 3
spirit’s — 3
strong — 3
suddenly — 3
syllable — 3
symbol — 3
table — 3
threshold — 3
time’s — 3
total — 3
tranquil — 3
ulysses — 3
vocabulary — 3
walks — 3
wanted — 3
warmth — 3
wet — 3
winds — 3
year — 3
years — 3
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