Somnambulisma

Somnambulisma is the title of one of the poems in Stevens' book Transport to Summer.  
==What is Somnambulisma?==
According to the Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens, Somnambulisma is a Latinate form of the word somnambulism, aka sleepwalking. Sleepwalking, of course, is "an abnormal condition of sleep in which motor acts are performed ("Somnambulism", Mirriam-Webster). 
==What does Somnambulisma Mean to Stevens?==
In his letters, Stevens associates somnambulism with a sense of unreality: i.e. a sense of disconnection from the world (Letters of Wallace Stevens 464 ). Helen Vendler points out, in an interview with the Harvard Gazette, that this sense of disconnection is, in fact, the primary theme of "Somnambulisma." The theme is centered on the figure of the ocean which is depicted as resembling "a 'thin bird' whose attempts to live--to fly, nest, etc.--are endlessly recursive and thus futile, meaningless. The existential crisis inscribed in the description of the ocean/bird is then answered by the figure of a scholar who observes and records--and more importantly, feels-- "the fine fins, the gawky beaks, the personalia" of the seaside scene. As Vendler argues, it is only through the scholar's observations of the scene, his registering of its particulars, that the behaviors of the ocean/bird achieve any meaningful significance. This, of course, is Stevens', and the Romantics', basic understanding of the function of art: it helps us to live by engaging with, and thus validating, the subjective experience of life. Thus art wakes us up from our otherwise somnambulistic state of being, i.e. a state of disengagement in which life feels empty and unreal.