Carnivalesque Imagery in Stevens’ “THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM”

IF 0.2 3区文学 0 LITERATURE

EXPLICATOR Pub Date : 2021-07-03 DOI:10.1080/00144940.2021.1965521

Weina Fan

{"title":"Carnivalesque Imagery in Stevens’ “THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM”","authors":"Weina Fan","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1965521","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In a letter to William Rose Benet in 1933, Wallace Stevens explained the reason why he considered “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” his personal favorite in Harmonium (1923) because the poem “wears a deliberately commonplace costume, and yet seems to me to contain something of the essential gaudiness of poetry” (Letters 263). Stevens’ explanation concerns both the realistic touch and esthetic accomplishment of the poem. Noticeably, the word “gaudy” refers to a celebratory festival or feast. Coincidentally, this poem is teeming with carnivalesque imagery that seeks to cultivate, in Bakhtin’s words, “a deeper understanding of reality” (208), and, not surprisingly, Stevens also noted that “the consciousness of reality” was crucial to the understanding of this poem (Letters 500). A keen sense of reality features strikingly in Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory and Stevens’ perception of the poem, which enables a carnivalesque reading of the poem to be an interesting way of exploring Stevens’ ideas concerning the reality of being. In the first stanza, the poet presents a typical party scene that can be considered a modern carnival. Stevens had “penchants for indulgence in food, drink, and cigars” (Bloom 16), and naturally the things he enjoyed enormously in life were consciously chosen as significant party imagery as follows:","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":"79 1","pages":"145 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"EXPLICATOR","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1965521","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

In a letter to William Rose Benet in 1933, Wallace Stevens explained the reason why he considered “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” his personal favorite in Harmonium (1923) because the poem “wears a deliberately commonplace costume, and yet seems to me to contain something of the essential gaudiness of poetry” (Letters 263). Stevens’ explanation concerns both the realistic touch and esthetic accomplishment of the poem. Noticeably, the word “gaudy” refers to a celebratory festival or feast. Coincidentally, this poem is teeming with carnivalesque imagery that seeks to cultivate, in Bakhtin’s words, “a deeper understanding of reality” (208), and, not surprisingly, Stevens also noted that “the consciousness of reality” was crucial to the understanding of this poem (Letters 500). A keen sense of reality features strikingly in Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory and Stevens’ perception of the poem, which enables a carnivalesque reading of the poem to be an interesting way of exploring Stevens’ ideas concerning the reality of being. In the first stanza, the poet presents a typical party scene that can be considered a modern carnival. Stevens had “penchants for indulgence in food, drink, and cigars” (Bloom 16), and naturally the things he enjoyed enormously in life were consciously chosen as significant party imagery as follows:

查看原文本刊更多论文

史蒂文斯《冰淇淋皇帝》中的狂欢意象

在1933年写给威廉·罗斯·贝尼特的信中，华莱士·史蒂文斯解释了为什么他认为《冰淇淋皇帝》是他在《和谐》(Harmonium, 1923)中最喜欢的一首诗，因为这首诗“故意穿了一件普通的衣服，但在我看来，它似乎包含了诗歌中必不可少的一些俗丽”(《书信263》)。史蒂文斯的解释涉及到这首诗的现实触感和美学成就。值得注意的是，“俗丽”这个词指的是庆祝节日或宴会。巧合的是，这首诗充满了狂欢式的意象，用巴赫金的话说，这是为了培养“对现实的更深层次的理解”(208)，而且，毫不奇怪，史蒂文斯也指出，“对现实的意识”对理解这首诗至关重要(Letters 500)。巴赫金的狂欢式理论和史蒂文斯对这首诗的理解中有着强烈的现实感，这使得狂欢式的诗歌阅读成为探索史蒂文斯关于存在的现实思想的一种有趣的方式。在第一节中，诗人呈现了一个典型的聚会场景，可以被认为是现代狂欢节。史蒂文斯“酷爱食物、饮料和雪茄”(布鲁姆16)，自然，他在生活中非常喜欢的东西被有意识地选为重要的派对意象，如下所示:

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

EXPLICATOR LITERATURE-

CiteScore

0.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Concentrating on works that are frequently anthologized and studied in college classrooms, The Explicator, with its yearly index of titles, is a must for college and university libraries and teachers of literature. Text-based criticism thrives in The Explicator. One of few in its class, the journal publishes concise notes on passages of prose and poetry. Each issue contains between 25 and 30 notes on works of literature, ranging from ancient Greek and Roman times to our own, from throughout the world. Students rely on The Explicator for insight into works they are studying.