Sunday Mornings

I thought the Wallace Stevens poems were very interesting. His comments on death and beauty were thought provoking. In paragraph V of ‘Sunday Morning’ he comments that ‘Death is the mother of beauty’ and in section VI questions ‘Is there no change of death in paradise? Does the ripe fruit never fall?’ I think that there are two meanings to ‘death is the mother of beauty.’ The first meaning is that following death there is rebirth. There is rebirth of nature every spring following the ‘death’ of the plants, flowers, and leaves in late fall. The new plants that grow in the spring are aesthetically beautiful. I think that he also means that death makes us appreciate what is around us. When we have a life threatening experience our one of our first responses is to start bargaining for our life. We are naturally somewhat afraid of death and therefore want to stay alive. When we feel like our life is going to be taken away from us we value what we have and our want for life is increased. After we survive the threatening experience, at least for a little while, we take in everything around us and appreciate it for what it is. The grass that was once seen as ‘just grass’ suddenly becomes a fabulous green field that smells and appears to be fantastic as is blows in the wind. In that way we find beauty through the threat of death upon our own lives. In response to Stevens’ question ‘Is there no change of death in paradise? Does the ripe fruit never fall?’ I would say if there is no death there could be aesthetic beauty of the ‘ripe fruit that never falls’ but the praise and obsession over the beauty of the fruit will never be reached. It’s hard to notice static things that are unchanging but just because something’s beauty isn’t noticed, it doesn’t mean that it’s beauty does not exist.