Academy of Fine Ideas

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The Academy of Fine Ideas appears as the intended audience for the statements found in Steven's poem "Extracts From Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas." The poem enacts an argument for a new philosophy that takes as its basis the realization that the everyday experience of the real is discursively bound; neither the "rain" rose nor the paper rose can be said to be real by virtue of their apprehension in language, leading the poet to proclaim that "The false and true are one." To get beyond the "artificial world" that the mind creates we would either have to live outside the intelligence (through which the sun creates "monsters" and is unlivable) or create through art a language that reconciles humankind to reality (the implication being a kind of fiction (supreme?) that could be (debatably) agreed upon). The "Academy" then are the institutions of thought that have proceeded this idea (The formal ancient academy or the university system, for example), which may have to be persuaded to this project to aid in its realization. Stevens' is figuratively addressing the history of organized thought with his elucidation of a new idea.