Thursday, March 8, 2012

Stevens' "The Snow Man"

Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man” is one long thought.  There is only one period in the entire poem, so it is one “sentence.”  There are only two semicolons to offer a bit of a pause.  Stevens uses quite a bit of enjambment, but interestingly enough, he uses it from the last line of a stanza to the first line of the next.  I had always thought of stanzas as holding a thought or expressing an image, but his enjambment does not allow for pause after his second and fourth stanzas – and his third stanza only ends with a comma, which is not much of a pause.  Thus, I feel that the final stanza is where most of the meaning is as it is the only one that allows for much reflection while reading.

The first four stanzas are mostly descriptions of images of a cold, desolate winter landscape.  The final stanza introduces a figure “who listens in the snow” (13).  This figure also “beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” (14-15).  The “nothing that is” present refers back to the imagery of the previous stanzas; essentially the wintery landscape does not hold much but frozen trees and a bit of wind, which in the speaker’s mind amounts to “nothing.” It would not be possible to “behold” something that is not present, so the first part of the line makes sense.  However, the listener does not “behold… the nothing that is” there either.  This could just be an emphasis of the idea that nothing is there to behold; the few trees aren’t anything to bother about.  On the other hand, if the listener does not “behold” what is present, then the listener is not capable of perception.  This idea is enhanced by the fact that the listener is “nothing himself” (14).  A figure that is “nothing” would not be capable of perception or “behold[ing]” anything – but would also not be capable of “listen[ing]” in the snow, which contradicts the previous line.  The final images of a man frozen in the snow unable to perceive anything are rather depressing, which makes a fittingly dark ending for the depressing tone of the earlier descriptions of the landscape.

2 comments:

  1. This is a nice interpretation, Jessica. There's also the possibility that the "nothing that is" there is a form of absence that nonetheless makes its presence felt.

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  2. I found your discussion about the use of enjambments to be interesting in that it focuses on the effect it has on stanzas. I have to agree that stanzas usually close off a certain point and to have it continue might be seen as a way to continue the thought in the audience's mind.

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