Such Impermissible Discontentment

“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”-Albert Einstein

Tell, me—why is mankind so enveloped with roaring curiosity? And how is the thirst for an answer quenched? You and I are human beings. We feel emotion, empathize towards one another, run, play, laugh, speak. Aside from mere relentlessness, what is the the purpose of divulging into a matter too perplexing to comprehend? Wallace Stevens sees no opportunity for the simple “Complacencies” of “Coffee and oranges” while concurrently burdened by what he calls an “Encroachment” of “that old catastrophe.”

Sunday Morning, a creed for the devout Atheist, renders the reader to feel debased, misled by rituals she has been beseeched to practice. However, she is reintroduced to a reverent “divinity,” she used to call God, now the “beauty of the earth.” Stevens is the quintessential Romantic-realist, conditioned to know all things tangible, all things personable to Man, a quality he feels absent in the God only present in “silent shadows.” Stevens discerns that we are simply kinesthetic creatures, yearning for a concrete truth. His last resort—truth within Man, “divinity within herself,” a steadfast, secure theology. Though he sees no loyalty in the Creator, he still searches for someone, someone to “walk naked among [us].”

Finally, Stevens comes to the conclusion that if holiness does stem from “April's green,” then what justifies man to inquire about such myths as “Jove” and “his inhuman birth?” Foolishness is what drives us, overriding the “sweet berries,” that “ripen” within the heap of the “wilderness.” We simply are not content. We crave the “haunt of prophecy,”the mysteries, temptations of recovering the cryptic clues and formulas to finally reach the “paradise,” meet the “Spirits lingering,” gain a “heavenly fellowship,” but Earth—this “paradise” is all “we shall know.” Acceptance is the only duty we are commanded to proclaim.

Nevertheless, how is the truth so veiled to you and me when the “echoing hills,” who from time to time, “choir among themselves,” and give notion that they are, indeed, present in man's life, fully ready to “chant in orgy” with us?

Overall, man should not “test the reality,” rather, consider its intrinsic value. Trivializing the heavenliness in all things tangible is the fall of mankind.