Abstract

This paper hopes to show that, for Wallace Stevens, God and human imagination are closely identified. Moreover, the feeling of rightness, which for so long a time existed with the old religious idea of God, may be accessed once again. His notion of the “supreme fiction” will compare with Descartes’ “idea of the Infinite” as interpreted by Emmanuel Levinas. This epistemological reality, central to our being, can also become contemporary to our lives, in a way that the old religious idea of God can never again be. With access to this “right idea,” we may again find the sort of solace that we once found in old religious beliefs.