wallace stevens, dante alighieri, and the emperor

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATUREA SCHOLARLY AND CRITICALJOURNALVolume13, Number4 January, 968WALLACE STEVENS, DANTE ALIGHIERI,AND THE EMPEROR

KARL P. WENTERSDORFCritics have frequentlycommentedon the interest shown by WallaceStevens in the problem posed by theexistence of evil, and especially inthe difficulties faced by che poetwho is attempting to deal with theproblem in a world which to a con-siderable degree has lost its contactwith ancient religious beliefs. In arecent discussion of Stevens' "Esthe-

tiquedu Mall," orexample,HenryW.Wells points out that the theme ofthe poem is "the hard core of eviland pain which must be confrontedbecause t cannot in the long run pos-sibly be escaped."He goes on to arguethat in Stevens'view, the secularmod-em world is unfortunatelycompelledto dispense with the once adequateformulas that religion formerly pro-vided for the expressionof humanity'sproblems;Stevensthereforeseeks newimages, and in this poem he usesmetaphorsof good and evil valuablefor their exotic connotations ratherthan for their philosophicaldefinitive-ness - the sun and the golden fruitof Strophe VI are images for well-being, and the sharp-beakedbird isa symbol of "universalmalice, evil,and destruction."1 ut though Stevens

may well have felt that the ancientreligious metaphors are unlikely intheir traditional forms to make anynotable impact on the moder world,he draws upon Christian mythologyin several of his treatments of thetheme of evil; and among the mate-rials of this type are some allusionsto one of the greatest of all reposi-tories of religious metaphor - theCommedia of Dante Alighieri.2"No Possum,No Sop, No Taters"3presents a picture of a frozen field inJanuary; and as in many another ofStevens' austere New England land-scapes, the bitter cold is a symbol ofevil which, in the absence of warmthand goodness (the sun), traps humanbeings and holds them immovable:The field is frozen.The leavesaredry.Bad is finalin this light.In this bleak air the broken stalksHave armswithout hands. They havetrunksWithout legs, or, for that, withoutheads.Theyhaveheads n which a captivecryIs merelythe moving of a tongue.(3-9)

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The personificationof- the b ro k e nstalks evokesfirst of all a grim pictureof humanity - mutilated, sufferingagonies, and unable to gain even therelief of crying out. But the followingverses reveal that the scene is morethan a simple image from nature:It is deep January.The sky is hard.The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.It is in this solitude,a syllable,Out of these gawky ditterings,Intones its single emptiness,The savagest hollow of winter-sound.It is here, in this bad, that we reachThe last purity of the knowledge ofgood. (13-20)

Here the poem echoes the descriptionof a more terrible scene - the lastof the nine circles of hell in theInferno,the frozen waste whereDantefinds the souls of the damned sealedin ice. Some of them have their headsfree and are able to move theirtongues; others are completely frozenin, unable to cry out, and Dante saysof them that "they shone below theice like straws in glass."'One passage in another piece isreminiscent in a similar way ofDante's Purgatorio.In StropheVII ofStevens'"Esthetiquedu Mal,"5 n elegyfor a soldier in wartime,the woundedsoldier- who representsall the sol-diers who have ever fallen, "red inblood" - finds his last rest on amountain:

A mountain in which no ease is everfound,Unless indifference to deeper deathIs ease, stands in the dark, a shadows'hill,And there the soldierof time hasdeathlessrest.Concentric irclesof shadows,motion-less

Of their own part,yet moving on thewind,Form mystical convolutions in the sleepOf time's red soldier deathless on hisbed.The shadowsof his fellows ring himroundIn the high night . . . (VII, 5-14)

Wells feels that the mountain imagesuggests "the vasmess of the uni-verse.""But mo re imperatively itevokes Dante's vision of the mountainof Purgatorywith its series of con-centric circles peopled by shadows,the mountain on which the souls findno ease from suffering until they areable to leave the topmost circle andenter the Garden of Eden. On theslopes of the mountain,the shadesofthe departed move around in circlesappropriate to their sins, expiatingtheir earthly wrongdoings until theyare ready to move into the next highercircle. And as Dante climbs the moun-tain with his guide, the shadows,many of them his fellow countrymen,"ringhim round" o explain their sit-uation and beg his prayers.Another allusion to the Purgatofiomay be found in "Asides on theOboe,"7where Stevensdeals with therole of the poet as a purveyorof ulti-matephilosophicalandreligioustruths."It is time to choose,"he says,betweenthe old religious metaphors, such as

That obsoletefictionof the wide riverinAn empty land; the gods that Boucherskilled, (4-5)

and the new poetic images and be-liefs of the "philosophers'man,"whoalone is capable of presenting livingideas.9 The poet, Stevens continues,produces "immaculate imagery," aphrase which simultaneouslysuggestsmetaphorsuntarnishedby the sterility198


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of old beliefs and, since the wholecontext is concernedwith faith,alludesobliquely to another of the ancientreligious metaphors:the image of theVirgin Mary as the ImmaculateCon-ception.Notable amo n g the immaculateimages are those of the philosophers'man as a "humanglobe" (represent-ing all things and all iypes), as a"mirrorwith a voice" (vocally re-flecting reality), and as a "man ofglass."He is of glass not because heis fragile but becauseHe is the transparencef the plac in

whichHe is, and in his poems we findpeace.10 (18-19)As a transparency, he poet is themedium through which the complexforms of truth to which his insightshavegiven him accessare madevisibleto all of humanity.He discoversthesetruthsthroughspiritualjourneyscom-parableto Dante'simaginaryascent ofth] stairwaysbetween the concentriccircleson the mountainof Purgatory:

Clandestine teps upon imaginedstairsClimb throughthe night, becausehiscuckooscall. (23-24)Just as Dante encounters bird-likespirits atoning for the sins of lust,who cry out to him from within thepurifying fires of the topmost circleand beg for his prayers,"l o the mod-em poet hears the call of (possiblysymbolic) cuckoos. The torturedspiritsin the medievalmetaphorknowthat they will ultimatelyattain peacein Paradise; and Dante himself canhope for peace, throughrevelationofthe full meaning of the ancient reli-gious truths. But, Stevens asks rhe-torically, what can agonized humanbeings hope for today? If they listento the glass man who is climbing

through the night on their behalf,they can "find peace'"n the realisticphilosophy of his poems."Asides on the Oboe" may in factconstituteStevens'reply to the ortho-doxy of T. S. Eliot, as represented nthe latter's"AshWednesday." n PartIII of that poem, Eliot likewise usesthe ancient metaphorof the stairwaywhich leadsupward throughsuffer-ing - to perfection,'2and he alsoproclaims (in Part VI) that "Ourpeace is His wilL"Stevensis as muchconcernedwith faith as Eliot, but notin any orthodox sense:Theprologuesreover.It is question,now,Offinalbelief.So,saythatfinalbeliefMustbe in a fiction.It is time tochoose. (1-3)

It is time to choose between thetraditionalconcepts,exemplified n theImmaculateConception (whose many-faceted image is reflected in variousways in "Ash Wednesday") and theimmaculateconceptions or images ofthe man of glass.

Recognitionof Dante'sinfluenceonStevensin these threepoems may helpthrow new light elsewhere, notablyin what is often regardedas one ofStevens' most obscure pieces - themuch-discussed"E mp e ro r of Ice-Cream."'3Commentatorsare generallyagreed that be h i n d the "essentialgaudiness" to useStevens'ownphrase)of the bizarrepicture of preparationsfor a wake, the poet is seeking toexpress some important insight intolife, death, and suffering; but thereis no agreementas to the nature ofthis insight.Accordingto some critics,the poemsatirizes a crudely hedonistic way of199


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life, with the emperor of the refrainline,The only emperor is the emperor.ofic-cream,

appearingas a personificationof thatlife. D u ri ng the nineteen-twenties,when the poem was written,ice-creamwas still something of a luxury andtherefore quite suitable as a symbolfor the sensual enjoyment of life.'4Another and larger group of criticsbelieves that the piece is concernedprimarilywith death.Stevens is mock-ing modern funeral customs and sug-gesting that the right way to conducta funeral is in a sordidly proletarianstyle; he reduces life's magnificenceto nothing by his concentrationon thegrim realities of the corpse and thetawdrypreparationsfor a wake, andthe emperorhe refers to is death per-sonified. On the first view, ice-creamis a symbol for epicureanism;on thesecond, it is an image both of thecoldness of death and of the tran-sience of hedonistic values.A third group seeks to reconcilethese contrasted views. Richard El-mann argues, for instance, that ice-creamsymbolizesboth death and life:"the emperor is more than his ice-cream empire; he is the force thatinspires and makes it one . .. theforce of being, understood as includ-ing life, death, and the imaginationiwhich plays in this poem so gustilyupon both. The emperor creates ice-cream,expresseshimselfthroughdeathand life, conceives of them as a unity,and is immanent in both of them."'5And William York Tindall assertsthat the special effects of the poemderive from the union of opposites(the grotesque and the quotidian,seeming and being, compassion andfun), and that "the image of ice-

cream concentrates these meanings.At once cold and agreeable,ordinaryand festive, it is a symbol of life anddeath. . .. Emperor and ice-cream,though not opposites, have the effectof opposites."'1It seems obvious that the identityor significanceof the emperor must.be clarifiedbefore there can be a con-vincing interpretation of the piece.Certainly, as John J. Enck recenclyput it, the poem "transcends reportabout poverty and death," and he sumsup the problemby asking: "How ...does one i n t e rp r e t the Emperor,whether he himself or his realm (orboth) owe their existence to a con-fection?"t' Some earlier critics haveinterpretedthe poem as a satire on"the ruler of a people whose valuesare ill-defined."They argue that "it isan oblique but trenchant expose ofan emperorwhose dicta are devoid ofwisdom, an emperor whose authorityderives from the fact that his subjectslack definite goals and consequentlyhave fallen into futility. Their godsare lost or dead,and they have placedtheir faith in a monarch whose throneis transientand negligible,as stableasice-cream." This ruler, or some officialrepresentative, s promulgatingorderswhich exhibit disrespect if not con-tempt for the people; the philosophyhe prescribes is unenlightened, and"to maintain his supremacyhe mustkeep them in the dark so that theydo not even catch a glimpse of an-other ruler who might conceivablydisplacehim."'8Such a literal interpretationof theemperorfails to carryconviction: it isdifficult to envision an emperorwho"cites the shabbinessof the dresserasevidence of the woman's unworthi-ness," whose "motives for selectingthis particular heet are disrespectful,"

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and who "orders hat the feet remainexposed as more fitting tokens of thepresent ignoble stareof the corpse."19Surelyemperorsdo not ordinarilycon-cer themselves with orders for theburial of their subjects, particularlypoor people like the dead woman ofthe poem. Moreover, the speaker ofthe poem's imperatives s not the em-perorbut the glass man - the philo-sophical poet-commentator.II

An important clue to the signifi-cance of Stevens'emperoris providedby an allusionin the poem to Dante'sInferno, and to the same episodewhich provided Stevens with a meta-phor for "No Possum, No Sop, NoTaters."As Dante enters Judecca,thelowest roundof the ninth circle,wherethe sinners are encased in ice (CantoXXXIV), he looks ahead; and there,in the middle of the frozen lake, hesees Satan, his wings beating vainlyandstirringup the bitterlycold windswhich sweep the pit of hell. Thegigantic figure of the arch-enemyofman,whose armsalone are largerthanthe Titans, is held fast in the ice:The Emperor f the dolorous ealmfrom hemid-breasttood orthoutof the ice. (XXXIV,28-29)

Beneath the frozen lake, which is atthe very center of the earth, Satan'sshaggy legs extend upwardtowardthemountain of purgatory.Dante and hisguide clamberdown Satan's high andup into the other hemisphere;for asVirgil remarks, here is no other wayby which to rise from the evil of hell(XXXIV, 83-84).The vocabularyof "The Emperor"suggests that in writing the poen,Stevens was drawingon his memoriesof Dante's picture of the powerfully

built emperorof hell, imprisoned inice, with his legs protrudinginto theotherhemisphere.Suchphrasesas "themuscularone" (referring to the deadwoman's over?), the "horny eet pro-trude,""cold . . . and dumb" (bothwith reference to the corpse), andabove all "the emperorof ice-cream"are recognizableas disunified echoesof notable detailsin Dance'svision ofthe embodiment of eviL The poemmakes no attempt,of course, to con-jure up a modernimage of Satan;yetindirectly,through the echoes of thatmedieval picture, Stevens implies theexistence of evil powers not grandlyterrifyingbut grotesquely inister.Thefragmentationand transformationofthe original image are a measure ofthe metamorphosisundergone by thetraditionalconcept of Satan and hisrole.Stevens' preoccupationwith theo-logical ideas in the modern world, ormore particularlywith the idea ofGod as createdby man,20permits thedeductionthathe thinksof Satan, too,as a creation of the human mind.Certainlythe evils of the world arelargely of man's making, the resultof humancruelty, olly,or indifferenceto suffering.And even if the popularimage of the cloven-hoofedDevil haslong ago passed into what Wellswould call the "phantasmalimbo"offorgottenreligiousmetaphor, he man-createdevils of which he was at thevery leasta personification till exist.21This theme occupies an importantplace in a much later poem, thealready-cited "Esthetique du Mat"There 6tevens explicitly regrets theloss of the age-old metaphor:Thedeathof Satanwasa tragedyFor the imagination.A capitalNegationdestroyedim. .(VII, 1-3)

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He feels. that there was somethinganti-climacticaboutthe mannerof thenegation: it was "eccentric,"It had nothing of the Julian thunder-cloud:The assassinflash and rumble.He was denied. (VII, 8-9)

The negationof Satanby a materialis-tic philosophy,rejectingmoralrespon-sibility and even questioningthe veryexistence of evil, destroyedthe clear-cut and terrifyingfigure of traditionbut left an unsatisfying vacancy:. . . How cold the vacancyWhen the phantomsaregone and theshakenrealistFirstsees reality.The mortalnoHas its emptiness and tragic expira-tions. (VIII, 14-17)

Since Stevens believes, with Dante,Jonson, and Milton, that the poet isa leader of society, whose duty is toseek out and proclaim the truth effec-tively, he feels that the twentieth-century poet must help to devise newmetaphors that will proceed beyond"the mortal no" and fill the vacancyby re-expressing the ancient truths.The creation of the new mythos isalready under way:

The tragedy,however,mayhavebegun,Again, in the imagination'snew be-ginning,In the yes of the realist pokenbecausehe mustSayyes,spokenbecauseundereverynoLay a passionfor yes that had neverbeen broken. (VIII, 18-22)

And this passion leads Stevens toaffirm, among other things, the exis-tence of evil and to depict it inimages that are not merely impressivebut also couched in the language ofthe modern world."The Emperor of Ice-Cream," with

its pictureof a squalidwake,containsa series of such images, reflecting theworld-scene. The individual imagesare fragmentary, and there is no directreference to evil; but the implicationsnot merely of a rather crude sensualitybut also of poverty, cruelty, suffering,and indifference (muscular, whip, con-cupiscent, wenches dawdle, flowers inlast month's newspapers, lacking glassknobs, feet protrude, cold, dumb) are,in their totality,unmistakable.And inthe curt plea "Let be be the finale ofseem," the narrator is surely urgingthat the truth about these aspects ofhuman existence ("be") should beadmitted and should replace hypocrisy("seem").22The emperor whose image is evokedby the grim manifestations of therealm over which he rules is not "life"or "death," as such, but the embodi-ment of all those unpleasant charac-teristics of the materialistic worldwhich lead to the death of humanvalues. He is evil personified, andpersonified vaguely, not as a fallenangel of awe-inspiring qualities andproportions but as a caricature of theolder concepts of the infernal god-head. He is an emperor not of ice(the acme of evil, at the heart of thetraditional hell) but of ice-cream(latter-day materialism); and his imageis created by implication rather thanby concrete description. He is theessence of all that is sordid, the sumtotal of the indifference, hypocrisy,greed, lust, and sadismfound even incivilized society. The superficially dis-,cordant details fuse into a metaphorof evil that is nearer to the truth thanthe frightful but grandiose images ofDante and Milton.

It is not Stevens' purpose to mini-mize the pervasive existence of evilor to detract from its horror. The202


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wallace stevens, dante alighieri, and the emperor

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