At the end of 'The Comedian as the Letter C,' Crispin the protagonist accepts his fate as realist after a voyage of romantic perceptions which had been dissolved by the sea and frightened by the thunderstorms of Yucatan. This acceptance might be unavo...
At the end of 'The Comedian as the Letter C,' Crispin the protagonist accepts his fate as realist after a voyage of romantic perceptions which had been dissolved by the sea and frightened by the thunderstorms of Yucatan. This acceptance might be unavoidable since he was not allowed to rely on the romantic and mythological imagination of the past. But Crispin's surrender to reality does not necessarily mean failure of his imagination. Although Crispin comes to terms with a life "without the slightest adventures," he never quite vanquishes his imagination. The point is that the imagination should be of different king and help "the stiffest realist" to lay hold of the potential in the real. This cannot be said to be an ultimate union of reality and the imagination, but it is no doubt sure that Crispin's quest for reality was not intended to disapprove the imagination itself. Crispin's problem was to find a new imagination for a realist. This poem is about how an everyday man lives an imaginative life, accepting his fate as yeoman and grub.