The Full Comedian: A Final Loose Analogy

Abstract

In addition to a healthy theory, what does not fail in Darwin’s writing is the sense of overall tone and a few larger cameo pieces. Several longer passages of his verse have already been quoted and discussed in earlier chapters. These have been little anecdotes or stories that have some self-contained unity. I will deal with two more in this final chapter — longer passages and more unified. Strangely enough, Desmond King-Hele who has edited the only collection of Darwin’s writings in this century apparently does not think that there are sustained passages of unified writing in the poems, and so he only anthologizes little snippets of verse.¹ The longer passages ought to be seen, I think, for what they are — memorable sections in admittedly weakly unified poems.

Jovial Crispin, in calamitous crape?

... For realists, what is is what should be.

Wallace Stevens, “The Comedian as the Letter C”