What does Williams want to see, and how does he do so? In Kora in Hell, he repeatedly returns to the notion of ‘inner perfections,’ which are the object of the reduced perception; we also find that imagination is the mode through which perception takes place. Because the perfections are “hidden,” they need disclosure; and since they are “perfection,” I interpret them as the essence of a thing, as we found in “The Rose” poem, in which the rose “speaks its perfection.” And because the phrase often occurs in proximity to perception in
Kora, the two concepts ought to be considered together.
The passage I excerpt below provides an excellent example of how perception is correlated to imagination and perfection.
Kora In Hell, Prologue:
VIII. No. 3. Those who permit their senses to be despoiled of the things under their noses by stories of all manner of things removed and unattainable are of frail imagination. Idiots, it is true nothing is possessed save by dint of that vigorous
conception of its perfections which is the imagination’s special province but neither is anything possessed which is not extant. A frail imagination, unequal to the tasks before it, is easily led astray.
IV. No. 2. Although it is a quality of the imagination that it seeks to place together those things which have a common relationship, yet the coining of similes is a pastime of very low order, depending as it does upon a nearly vegetable coincidence. Much more keen is that power which discovers in things those inimitable particles of dissimilarity to all other things which are the peculiar perfections of the thing in question.
But this loose linking of one thing with another has effects of a destructive power little to be guessed at: all manner of things are thrown out of key so that it approaches the impossible to arrive an understanding of anything. All is confusion, yet it comes from a hidden desire for the dance, a lust of the imagination, a will to accord two instruments in a duet.
But one does not attempt by the ingenuity of the joiner to blend the tones of the oboe with the violin. On the contrary the perfections of the two instruments are emphasized
by the joiner; no means is neglected to give to each the full color of its perfections. It is only the music of the instruments which is joined and that not by the woodworker but by the composer, by virtue of imagination.
On this level of the imagination all things and ages meet in fellowship. Thus only can they, peculiar and perfect, find their release. This is the beneficent power of the imagination.213
This passage correlates perceiving “things under [one’s nose]” and possessing a strong imagination. Those who are distracted from sensing the immediate thing are of “frail imagination” and are “easily led astray” by “stories of all manner of things removed and unattainable.” The imagination is attuned to the immediate, sensorially perceived world; the “perfections” apparent in this perception of the immediate are “imagination’s special
province.” In the next paragraph, Williams acknowledges a problem: the imagination, which perceives essential, material distinctions, also naturally builds associations and categories. However, the tendency to identify similarities is “a pastime of a very low order” built on mere coincidence. Williams is certainly interested in essences when he speaks of
“perfections,” though he is careful to distinguish between essence conceived in a categorical association and essence discovered in “inimitable particles of dissimilarity.” In these lines, Williams strongly rejects any form of Romantic idealism as the basis for comprehending the other’s essence through philosophical reflection; instead, he adopts an approach of material observation to perceive significant differences between things.
Williams then deconstructs undue reliance on interpretation and philosophy to find essences. Though it may seem productive to form categories and infer essences, Williams argues that this “loose linking… has effects of a destructive power little to be guessed at”: in ordering things according to association, the significant differences, or “peculiar
213Williams, “Kora,” 18-19.
perfections,” are obscured. Without access to the perfections, it is “impossible to arrive at an understanding of anything.” This urge to find commonalities is misdirected, although it stems from an underlying desire for the dance. To illustrate his point, Williams explains that the beauty of a duet or musical composition does not arise from instruments sounding alike, but different from each other. Harmony paradoxically springs from distinctions, and the unity that the listener enjoys is the fruit of imagination overlaying and drawing out harmony through perception. Each instrument possesses distinctive essence, and a good composer will highlight these differences: “The perfections of the two instruments are emphasized by the joiner; no means is neglected to give to each the full color of its perfections.” Williams thus recognizes the relationship between essence and unity. As I argue in my introduction to Williams, I find support in this passage for my claim that the pleasure of unity is arrived at through material perception, and that perception is attuned to peculiar perfections via imagination. Williams concludes this section with the proclamation that “on this level of the imagination all things and ages meet in fellowship. Thus only can they, peculiar and perfect, find their release.” He does not say that all things and ages meet in “unison,” but in
“fellowship.” The concept of fellowship is closely connected to dance, or delight, because it assumes the assembly of distinct parts. In unison, things lose distinction as they gather in one sound, but in fellowship, distinctions are highlighted and become a source of delight.
The following passage further develops our understanding of perception and imagination by drawing a comparison between love and writing. In both contexts, prior associations, received categories, and fixed standards of judgment stifle rather than disclose essences in love and poetry. Williams famously rejoices here that the thrill of first love may
pass, and he likens the maintaining of the same constant thrill to a “sordid religion.” We also find that newness entails a positive destruction.
VIII. No. 1. A man of note upon examining the poems of his friend and finding there nothing related to his immediate understanding laughingly remarked: After all, literature is communication while you, my friend, I am afraid, in attempting to do something striking, are in danger of achieving mere preciosity.—But inasmuch as the fields of the mind are vast and little explored, the poet was inclined only to smile and to take note of that hardening infirmity of the imagination which seems to endow its victim with great solidity and rapidity of judgment. But he thought to himself: And yet of what other thing is greatness composed than a power to annihilate half-truths for a thousandth part of accurate understanding. Later life has its perfections as well as that bough-bending time of the mind’s florescence with which I am so discursively taken.
I have discovered that the thrill of first love passes! It even becomes the
backbone of a sordid sort of religion if not assisted in passing. I knew a man who kept a candle burning before a girl’s portrait day and night for a year—then jilted her, pawned her off on a friend. I have been reasonably frank about my erotics with my wife. I have never or seldom said, my dear I love you, when I would rather say: My dear, I wish you were in Tierra del Fuego. I have discovered by scrupulous attention to this detail and by certain allied experiments that we can continue from time to time to elaborate relationships quite equal in quality, if not greatly superior, to that
surrounding our wedding. In fact, the best we have enjoyed of love together has come after the most thorough destruction of harvesting of that which has gone before. Periods of barrenness have intervened, periods comparable to the prison music in
Fidelio or to any of Beethoven’s pianissimo transition passages. It is at these times our formal relations have teetered to the edge of a debacle to be followed, as our imaginations have permitted, by a new growth of passionate attachment dissimilar in every member to that which has gone before.
It is in the continual and violent refreshing of the idea that love and good writing have their security.214 [emphasis mine]
Williams offers another example of a frail imagination, or what he here calls “that hardening infirmity of the imagination which seems to endow its victim with great solidity and rapidity of judgment.” The problem is that the intellectual reads his friend’s poems and fails to perceive what is immediately under his nose. Instead of opening himself to
observation and the workings of imagination, the friend quickly jumps to judgment because
“nothing related to his immediate understanding.” He judges the poem according to pre- existent categories of understanding, discarding whatever does not fit his associative matrix. In this example, Williams opposes perception and understanding. The mind forms
associations and seeks interpretation, whereas the imagination enables perception and seeks essences.
“I have discovered that the thrill of first love passes!” With this surprising
exclamation, Williams correlates imagination and love. Arguing implicitly, Williams points out the conflict between constancy and love. Whereas one man creates a shrine to a former lover, Williams himself resists the temptation to pretend his love for Florence is always the same as the first thrill. He also introduces the element of time to association: similar to the philosophical desire to seek similarities between things, the lover also seeks a love that is constant from moment to moment. There is something diachronic about association, but perfections are synchronic: they take a peculiar form in this moment, but not necessarily in the next. However, Williams argues that “In fact, the best we have enjoyed of love together has come after the most thorough destruction of harvesting of that which has gone before…. It is at these times our formal relations have teetered to the edge of a debacle to be followed, as our imaginations have permitted, by a new growth of passionate attachment dissimilar in every member to that which has gone before.” Destruction, barrenness, and impending devastation create moments of difference, which allow the next moment, the thrill of new love, to shine out in its peculiar perfection. Although there is a sense of forward progression, Williams does not propose a cyclical nature of love and understanding; though there may occur new thrills, they are not a return to the same, first thrill. Instead, there is always a forward-moving “destruction of harvesting of that which has gone before.” The harvest will
rot if not consumed, and the ground will not produce new fruit unless torn up and sown with new seed. Anticipating his later poetry and writings about violence and destruction, he concludes this passage thus: “It is in the continual and violent refreshing of the idea that love and good writing have their security.” When Williams speaks of love, we must understand him also to speak of good writing, and when of writing, of love. Though Williams does not go so far as to categorize writing and love as essentially two instantiations of the same thing, as Plato might do in Phaedrus, he does draw out their shared contours. The similarity is drawn from experience and perception, and the consonance is the product of his post- perception imagination, not of philosophical understanding.
These passages in the prologue to Kora In Hell establish a framework for
understanding the rest of the text, and they provide a foundation for understanding the rest of Williams’ poetry. We learn how Williams conceives of essences; the other is knowable, and such knowledge comes by perception from the imagination, not from interpretation of the mind. Also, the other is capable of withholding disclosure; in later poems like “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” this dynamic reappears, and we find that, while epiphanic disclosure cannot be forced or demanded, it can be petitioned. The purpose of the poem is that one subject (Williams) is petitioning another subject (Flossie) to disclose inner perfections through imagination in order to experience epiphanic dance; this is ultimately a persuasive poem. In this sense, disclosure and epiphany are a cooperative and co-responsive
relationship. We also find that these epiphanies bring delight and are desirable events, but this is not the ecstasy of divine (or profane) illumination, nor of the sublime found in Romantic idealism. Instead, the exceptional experience of epiphany occurs when ordinary things and people experience collective disclosure. The person experiencing epiphany
descends fully into the immediate, material space, and does not depart from it or seek escape through intellectual or religious transcendence. In place of the sublime, Williams has
“dance,” which I discuss in the following section. Williams’ totality comes not from an overarching, abstracted One, but from the significant differences between things:
“perfections.” Perception of these depends on a mode of openness and non-association, and even humility before the immediate thing. This perception allows the imagination to activate and to appreciate shared qualities between similar things. But it also means that epiphanies activate relationships between different things, a relationship that allows the perfection of each thing to shine through. Any harmonizing that arises should then lead to a heightened awareness of the distinctive differences, or perfections, between things. Just as musical harmony features the distinctive qualities of different notes and instruments, the harmony of commonalities should do the same. And Williams is open to two kinds of epiphany: one in which commonalities come into resonance, and one in which differences harmoniously play with each other. While Williams finds the language of harmony and commonality a helpful analogy, he remains skeptical of only commonalities, for that would create the potential for predictive and interpretive associations. Thus, even in disclosed commonalities, the harmony is the result of imagination and freedom from association and prior knowledge. And finally, Williams notes that destruction and barrenness create temporary disruptions in relational monotony; though often hurtful and destructive, Williams believes that these ruptures create new opportunities for peculiarities to re-emerge. As these peculiar and perfect aspects of personality and relationship come to the fore, there is also new opportunity for “dance.”
Throughout the text of Kora in Hell, the words “perfect” and “perfections” appear in approximately twenty passages. The picture that emerges shows a sharp distinction between the noun “perfection” and the adjective “perfect.” When Williams describes a quality that is sought out or prized according to convention or tradition, he usually uses the word as an adjective or attributive: “flat Hellenic perfection of style,”215 “perfection of that line,”216 “perfection of a tiger lily or a china doorknob,”217 “perfect rest” and “perfect beauty,”218 “vision of perfect beauty,”219 a room swept clean and “all perfect.”220 Each of these passages is a version of perfection that Williams rejects because when perfection is a quality, it is essentially a different thing than the thing it qualifies, whereas Williams’ concept of perfection denotes the essence of a thing itself. When “perfect” is merely a qualifier, it automatically creates two classes of perfect and less-than-perfect. And when this happens, individuals may dismiss real and good things possessing full essences, but which fall short of the abstracted ideal of “perfect.” Furthermore, the concept of perfect as an abstract quality entails pre-judgment in almost all of these examples in Kora. Before the perceiver even sees a thing, he or she adheres to a pre-existing standard of “perfection.” For Williams, perfection is a thing that is fully itself.
215Williams, Kora, 13. 216Ibid, 25. 217Ibid., 27. 218Ibid., 32. 219Ibid., 54. 220Ibid., 71.
Because perfection is a thing in itself, or is, rather, the thing itself, Williams almost always uses the nominal form of the word to denote a thing’s essence. In keeping with his resistance to tradition and convention, Williams’ perfections are unpredictable and cannot be forced, and the nature of perfections change with time. He writes that, “Each age has its perfections but the praise differs”221; “to each age as to each person its perfections”222; and “the perfections revealed by a Rembrandt are equal whether it be a question of a laughing Saskia or an old woman cleaning her nails.”223 Williams rejects the “‘faithless’ formula” that yields a perfect work of art,224 and he describes an attitude of diachronic receptivity. All things as they appear, free from associative interpretation, are fit to engage with the imagination. Just as the perfections change from age to age, the pathway to disclosure of perfections is also always different. Williams facetiously praises
those who have the wit and courage, and the conventionality, to go direct toward their vision of perfection in an objective world where the sign-posts are clearly marked, viz., to London. But confine them in hell for their paretic assumption that there is no alternative but their own groove.225
With this oblique criticism of T. S. Eliot, Williams asserts his skepticism toward formulae, tradition, “sign-posts,” and the confines of one artist’s “groove.” The artist thus runs the risk of getting lost in his own groove while a whole world of things full of inner perfections awaits disclosure. 221Ibid., 17. 222Ibid., 52. 223Ibid., 41. 224Ibid., 25.
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As I note above, Williams draws an explicit connection between love and “good writing,” so what he says of one we can apply to the other. In this section, I highlight the passages that deal with love and perfection, and how the act of disclosure becomes agentive when more than one person is involved. Since perfections are hidden and therefore intimate, it is a natural trajectory for the concept to take on erotic aspects in certain contexts. Three passages in particular deal with love and perfections:
X.2
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A woman of marked discernment finding herself among strange companions wishes for the hands of one of them and inasmuch as she feels herself refreshed by the sight of these perfections she offers in return those perfections of her own which appear to her to be most appropriate to the occasion.226