A D R I A N  S T O K E S

PREFACE  ends

While Stokes always reified art in which a "carved" otherness is uppermost and insisted on arts self-sufficiency and separateness, he gave an increasing estimation to its "incantatory" aspect and power of envelopment. Psycho-analysis - particularly in its Kleinian interpretation - allowed him, especially in his post World War II writings, to bring the positions of envelopment and exposure into balance. Colin St. John Wilson ¹⁹ has explained how, in architecture, Stokes valued the stasis of the threshold in which it is possible, in simultaneity, to enjoy the experiences of envelopment and exposure. These experiences, validated in psycho-analysis, are also confirmed by research into the evolutionary aspect of environmental aesthetics. Stokes writes:

A loggia of fine proportion may enchant us, particularly when built aloft, when light strikes up from the floor to reveal over every inch the recesses of coffered ceiling or of vault. The quality of sanctum, of privacy, joins the thunderous day. A loggia eases the bitterness of birth: it secures the interior to the exterior: affirms that in adopting a wider existence, we activate the pristine peace. ²⁰

Stokes only turned to poetry in 1968. For Peter Robinson (1981) these poems "are at once a reiteration and a summation of his life, both as a writer and a man." He construes this summation as "a final essay at his lifelong task - making sense of both inner and outer worlds, a sense that appears inherent; a drawing out and disclosing of the significance of what already exists." ²¹