Hi Bill,
I am so glad you came back.
Like you, I was initially confused about “The Emperor of Ice Cream” until I read a few explanations of it on the net. And now, I think I understand it, and I do like it. You’re right; Stevens is continually harping on the same themes, those of mortality, denial of the old myths, and of experiencing the world through the senses – the senses, indeed, are Stevens’s gods -- and converting that experience into his own ‘music’ or creed. This is why I call him an aesthete. What I like very much in this one (besides ‘concupiscent curds’, which makes me giggle, and the absence of the bow-tied philosopher) is his stark insistence on the bare finality and nakedness of death. Shine a light on it. 'Let be be finale of seem.' And I'm struck by the contrast between the youth and vitality of S1, and the death in S2. Our life is like ice cream, and for those of us who like ice cream, it can indeed be sweet and delicious. But it melts away, we consume it, it is gone. So, be the emperor of ice cream, for there is no other. There is something almost heroic in Stevens’s obsession with death, his embrace of it, which actually feels more like defiance -- almost like Camus (minus the ethical imperative, which is a huge difference). And like Nietzsche, if you set aside his doctrine of eternal recurrence. I hear very much of Nietzsche in WS.
Last night I was trying to think of a love poem Stevens had written – not love of experience, or love of sensation, but love of a person. I actually googled the subject this morning, since my books are back east, and came up with poems that are mostly restatements of Stevens’s aesthetic ‘religion’, some of which are quite good, like
this and
this. Can you think of a good Stevens love poem, I mean, to a flesh and blood person, that is not an aesthetic recapitulation? If so, I would very much like to read it.
Again, glad to hear your voice on this thread!
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