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UNIT 33 WALLACE STEVENS William Carlos Williams UNIT 33 WALLACE STEVENS William Carlos Williams Structure 33.0 Objectives 33.1 Introduction 33.2 Wallace Stevens 33.2.1 Style 33.3 The Snow Man 33.3.1 Introduction 33.3.2 Text 33.3.3 Analysis 33.3.4 Comprehension Questions 33.4 The Emperor of Ice-Cream 33.4.1 Text 33.4.2 Discussion 33.4.3 Comprehension Questions 33.5 Let Us Sum Up 33.6 Answers to Self-check Exercises 33.0 OBJECTIVES After reading this unit you will be able to: • Write about Wallace Stevens’ life, work and style. • Discuss Steven’s ‘Snow Man’ and ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’ in detail. 33.1 INTRODUCTION In this unit we briefly introduce you to Wallace Stevens’ life and work and discuss two select poems: ‘The Snow Man’ and ‘Emperor of Ice-Cream’. We suggest that you through the unit section by section as exercises that will aid your comprehension of the poem are part of the reading. In ‘The Snow Man’, we show how Stevens, although a modernist, is greatly influenced by the Romantics and hence shows Romantic tendencies in the treatment of his subject matter. Unlike other modernist poets, say the Imagists, Stevens deals with his subject through abstraction. In ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’ we see how the speaker urges one not to treat death with all the bleakness associated with it, but instead accept its inevitability with cheer. We also see how Stevens treats the female subject in this poem and understand how Stevens’ gendered reading opens up crucial questions about the representation of female subjects in his poetry. We hope you enjoy the unit. 33.2 WALLACE STEVENS Wallace Stevens is one of the most prominent figures of Modernist poetry in America. Most readers find Stevens difficult to understand Wallace Stevens was 35 The American Poets-II born and in Reading, Pennsylvania. He completed his high school from Reading and then entered Harvard from where he studied French and German, read philosophy and wrote several poems. He went on to edit Harvard Advocate, a magazine in which T. S. Eliot later published his early poems. Stevens also met several important figures in Modern American poetry including Witter Bynner and George Santayana. In fact, Santayana’s combined interest in poetry and philosophy resembled Stevens’ own preoccupation with poetry and philosophy. Taking after his lawyer father, he even completed a law degree and worked with several law firms. In 1916, he joined the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. He was employed there for the rest of his career. Stevens began publishing his poems in Poetry and other magazines. But it was not until 1923 that he completed his volume of poetry Harmonium. It is in this collection that many of his famous lyrics are found. 33.2.1 Style Modernist poetry, especially of the Imagist kind of Williams and Pound tries to present reality through images, as they are. But Wallace Stevens’ form of modernit poetry instead changed representation to things of the imagination that palyed a chord with reality. Although a modernist, Stevens exhibits aspects of Post-Romantic lyricism in most of his poetry. This is because his most common cited influences apart from the Romantics have been the transcendentalist tradition of Emerson and Walt Whitman, and the French symbolist tradition of Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Valery. Thus, his style is largely eclectic and lacks an agenda for poetry as that of the Imagists. In fact one clearly can notice how Stevens presents his lyricism with a modernist innovation. It is this feature of his poetry that enables one to distinguish his style from many other modernists of his time like Pound, Eliot, Williams among others. Most of his poems explore the relationship between the self and the external world and the mind as attempting to order and shape the world. Christopher Beach remarks: “A central philosophical theme which runs in various permutations throughout Steven’s poetry is that of the tension, opposition or interplay between reality and the imagination”. Stevens’ poetry is also a significant move away from the Imagist tradition. This is because Stevens’ poetry does not articulate the objectivity and lack of sentimentality of the Imagists but one that invokes rather abstract modes of poetry and thought. His belief was that the theory of poetry is the theory of life. This makes the art of writing poetry in itself into a very grand enterprise. It is because Stevens believed that everything arund us is a construct and that reality itself is a fiction of the mind that most of his poetry is an articulation of philosophical abstractions that the mind engages in, making his poetry often too difficult to comprehend in one reading. Now, take a look at the following questions based on Stevens’ style. Self-check Exercise I 1) What are some of the ways in which Stevens may be distinguished from other Modernists of his time? ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... 36 Let us now look at “The Snow Man” to understand its style. Wallace Stevens 33.3 THE SNOW MAN 33.3.1 Introduction ‘The Snow Man’ is one of the many poems of Wallace Stevens’ which looks at the season of winter. The common notions of winter are that it is cold, bleak, lifeless and gloomy. The speaker of Snow Man urges one to transform into a snowman himself to be able to see the beauty of the wintry surroundings. Let us now turn to a reading of the poem. We suggest that you read the poem aloud to be able to sense the tone and mood of the speaker. 33.3.2 Text One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Self-check Exercise 2 1) Pick out the visual and auditory images from the poem. ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... 2) Identify words in the poem that give an idea of nothingness. ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... 37 The American Poets-II 3) If you were to visualize this poem, how would you characterise the settings, the people and things around the speaker? ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... 33.3.3 Analysis The speaker here dramatizes how the mind works in ordering and understanding reality. Before we can delve into the poem, let us ask ourselves: Who or what is a snowman?A snowman is an inanimate figure often made in snow. (Notice that this word is a compound, unhyphenated word as opposed to the word in the title of the poem). However, the snow man referred to in Stevens’ poem refers to a person with a ‘mind of winter’. At the outset, one might notice a detachment in the voice of the speaker. But, on closer reading, intensity in feeling the reality around is visible. Observe how the whole poem is one single sentence that articulates a seemingly simplistic idea: “One must have a mind of winter” to behold “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is”. The syntax of the poem is symptomatic of the various logical and philosophical turns that human mind takes to comprehend reality. In this one sentence, a movement from the sensory experience of sight to that of sound to ultimately ‘behold’ a ‘nothingness’ is significant. “The Snow Man” is a record of a man who comprehends winter by feeling the bareness and the absence of flowers and leaves that is winter. All the branches of the trees around only manifest themselves
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