Thomson, James

James Thomson (1834-1882) was a Victorian-era poet famous for the long poem, The City of Dreadful Night (1874). Thomson suffered from melancholia and depression, contributing to the poem’s extreme bleakness. It describes London from the perspective of a despairing atheist, someone who has lost all faith in religion and in the world. At one point it advocates suicide as an alternative to an unfulfilling life.
==Thomson and Stevens==
Thomson gets a special mention in Stevens’s essay “Effects of Analogy.” Suggesting that a poet’s subject always derives from his temperament, Stevens contrasts the melancholic Thomson with the energy and exuberance of Walt Whitman, a much “stronger” man than Thomson. These poets, however, at least had poetic subjects of their own. Stevens laments “schools” of poets and painters; the founders of those schools have subjects, but the mere fact that others seek to imitate those subjects indicates a paucity of originality or definitive temperament from the imitators. “Great numbers of poets comes and go who have never had a subject at all” (716). Stevens also expresses dislike of mass culture. The “love” songs played on the radio likewise have no real subject; they are words strung together around a basic theme. Romantically, Stevens argues, “Love is not a subject unless the writer of the song is in love” (Collected Poetry and Prose 716).