The Emperor of Ice-Cream
THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a great modern American poet. He was a poet and a philosopher. Today, he is considered one of the greatest modernist poets of the twentieth century. The subject of his poetry is poetry itself. Stevens’ poetry is exceptionally original. It is complex, symbolic, colourful and always linguistically experimental. The influence of philosophers like Plato and Aristotle can be seen in his poetry.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream is the favourite poem of Stevens. He used the strange title because his daughter liked ice-cream very much. According to him, life is like ice-cream; sweet but has a death. The occasion here is a funeral of a poor woman. The poem has two stanzas. Stanza 1 is a picture of luxury and life while stanza 2 of poverty and death. The first is moving and pleasing. The second is a snap of youth and pleasure, of cigars, boys and girls and flowers. The second is a record of the poor dead woman’s poverty. The first stanza gives abundance, the second records only want and lack of everything.
There is a big, muscular man in the first stanza who rolls his cigars himself and smokes them. The rich man dominates the house leading it to the sensual pleasures of eating, drinking, smoking and sexual desire. The adjective ‘concupiscent’ refers to sexual gratification. The image of manly cigars and kitchen cups indicates male-female possibilities. Young girls parade in attractive dresses, while their suitors bring flowers for them. For these men and women, the present moment matters, not the past like the newspapers of last month. Then the poet says that the appearance of the picture indicates its reality. What we see is real but whatever we see has an end. At the end of the stanza, the poet declares that the ice-cream is a symbol of life that is dying. It has its beauty because it is going to die.
The second stanza makes us aware of actual death. A poor woman’s end indicates her own death. The death is
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a great modern American poet. He was a poet and a philosopher. Today, he is considered one of the greatest modernist poets of the twentieth century. The subject of his poetry is poetry itself. Stevens’ poetry is exceptionally original. It is complex, symbolic, colourful and always linguistically experimental. The influence of philosophers like Plato and Aristotle can be seen in his poetry.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream is the favourite poem of Stevens. He used the strange title because his daughter liked ice-cream very much. According to him, life is like ice-cream; sweet but has a death. The occasion here is a funeral of a poor woman. The poem has two stanzas. Stanza 1 is a picture of luxury and life while stanza 2 of poverty and death. The first is moving and pleasing. The second is a snap of youth and pleasure, of cigars, boys and girls and flowers. The second is a record of the poor dead woman’s poverty. The first stanza gives abundance, the second records only want and lack of everything.
There is a big, muscular man in the first stanza who rolls his cigars himself and smokes them. The rich man dominates the house leading it to the sensual pleasures of eating, drinking, smoking and sexual desire. The adjective ‘concupiscent’ refers to sexual gratification. The image of manly cigars and kitchen cups indicates male-female possibilities. Young girls parade in attractive dresses, while their suitors bring flowers for them. For these men and women, the present moment matters, not the past like the newspapers of last month. Then the poet says that the appearance of the picture indicates its reality. What we see is real but whatever we see has an end. At the end of the stanza, the poet declares that the ice-cream is a symbol of life that is dying. It has its beauty because it is going to die.
The second stanza makes us aware of actual death. A poor woman’s end indicates her own death. The death is