At the heart of Stevens, as I have tried to show, is the joy of finding a new aesthetic, an aesthetic which is humble when compared to the grandiose myths of the past. When Stevens called "The Comedian" an "anti- mythological poem" he might have been speaking for all of his poetry, which is anti-mythological in the sense of its being aloof from any of the myths which make claims for man's heroic nature, or the identity of moral perfectibility in the universe and in man. It is indifferent to Platonic perfection, to Verrocchio nobility, to Puritan intimidation. Stevens, of course, has a myth of his own to make, a plain myth of human existence, an anti-mythological myth. Rejecting essence in the sense of ontological priority, he always prefers the human, secular predicament to a grand faith. For him, as for Sartre, the human condition -- the necessity to exist in the world and to act
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