The speaker in Wallace StevensÆ ôA High-Toned Old Christian Womanö attempts to convince a true believer that since religious faith and belief and poetry all stem from the human imagination that poetry is as supreme, in fact more supreme, than God. As the speaker maintains, ôPoetry is the supreme fiction, madame,ö (Steven, Line 1). As such, the speaker attempts to convince the woman that poetry is just as supreme as her Supreme Deity, primarily because poetry and religion are equally fictitious and both are products of the human mind that reflect the values of the individual.
In StevenÆs poem, the speaker maintains that religious tales are merely fiction created by human imagination. These myths or fictions to the speaker have not higher validity than any other fictions or stories created by the human imagination and, in fact, reflect the individual values of that imagination. In StevensÆ worldview, the human is the supreme agent of fiction not God. The speaker admits in the first five lines of the poem that the hymns and psalms dedicated to the supreme being of God have been created by the individual conscious mind, ôThe conscience is converted into palms, / Like windy citherns hankering for hymns. / We agree in principle. ThatÆs clearö (Stevens, Lines 4-6).
However, in the next lines the speaker proposes an alternative to the supreme universe and being of God. He proposes in the universe the mind of the human also creates alternative fictions to God that are no less supreme. As the speaker tells the Christian woman, ôBut take / The opposing law and make a peristyle, / And from the peristyle a masque / Beyond the planetsö (Stevens, Lines 6-9). The speaker maintains that if the fictions of religion of the human mind are valid, then, so too, must be the fictions that stem from our baser desires like bawdiness and carnival-like celebrations or parades. As the s
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