Passive Aggressive Vindication As Concerns "The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens

Irreverence is an Old Woman

So often, in life, people get caught up in death. Many people waste years of their lives preparing for death, and funerals are mournful productions, lamenting the natural order of life. At first glance, “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” by Wallace Stevens, seems to be a sad commentary on a lonely woman, ignored while she lived, perfunctorily mourned, and not really honored at all. The fact remains, however, that underneath the crassness of the funeral party, there is a duality and a metaphor: Honor death, but honor life more. A wise one would live in the moment and not let death get in the way of one’s enjoyment of life. In this, “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” is a paean to the hedonism of life, and ice cream would be honoring the woman far more than a thousand mourners could have.

On a first reading of Stevens’ poem, one might think that the dead woman is irreverently ignored at her wake, while the young people around her revel in their own sensuality. The flowers brought to her are wrapped in old newspaper, instead of ensconced in vases. Her covering is given little thought, if any at all, and is just an old sheet she embroidered, too short to even cover her feet. In fact, Wallace gives more detail to the cheap, broken down dresser than to her.

But, upon closer examination, several phrases pop out of the verse. She could have easily embroidered the sheet with doves, symbolic of death and sacrifice, but she chose pigeons instead, symbolic of bounty and sensuality. If this sheet was meant for anything, one could easily imagine it to have been a wedding sheet. Her calloused feet protruding from beneath it would merely be a symbol of life well-lived. She is not complaining. In the very comparison of the broken down dresser to her, she has been symbolically returned to the earth and has become part of her surroundings.

Additionally, the poem is replete with sexual imagery. The omniscient director of events bids the “boys bring flowers,” not in arranged vases, as one would expect at a funeral, but in bundles, as if in sacrifice to the goddess of fertility. If the “wenches dawdle,” seemingly irreverent, in no different stances than they are want to be, it can be more easily supposed that they are the holy prostitutes at the temple of Aphrodite, rather than the virginal mourners lamenting the dead. The strength of the “muscular cigar roller” set to orchestrate the whipping of “concupiscent curds” stands to remind the audience that life does not serve death. Life serves life. The dead woman herself seems to have contributed to this with her bridal sheet. At her wake, there is to be no lamenting the dead. There is just enjoyment to be had, of a sensual treat and each others’ company.

The line at the end of the first stanza, “let be be the finale of seem,” is poignant in that it insists on the audience not taking the illusion of the poem to be the truth of the poem. Let not the dead woman take more than her due, rather, let the “emperor of ice cream” be what he is, the servant to pleasure and vitality. This parallels the poem’s ulterior meaning, where one is admonished not to fix too much importance on death, because life is a feast. The sister line, “let the lamp affix its beam,” in the second stanza, underscores this homily, serving to highlight, literally, the difference between the cold woman and the cold ice cream. One can yet be enjoyed; let that be the focus.

The importance of life prevailing after death is a common theme in poetry, but “The Emperor of Ice Cream” drops that theme quite casually and coolly in the orchestration of a celebratory event. The rollicking lines and decadent phrases as just as sensual and vivacious to the reader as the subject matter. Whether it is truly about death or life, this poem invites the audience, perhaps in spite of him- or herself, to revel in the sensuality of ice cream, for enjoyment, after all, is the main event of life.