I've known and loved this poem for a decade now. But I never noticed this kind of nuances in it. This was by far one of the best posts on your page. Loved it!
There's a neat (but meaningless) association here between John Martin painter of Great Day of his Wrath and George RR Martin whose 'Game of Thrones ' bookpile is collectively the Song of Ice and Fire. But the one that's niggling my brain is 'The Andalusian Merchant' by Thomas Weelks. Icebergs and volcanoes and set as a madrigal with great word painting.
Dante's 9 circles have a variety of nasty conditions, only a small minority involving fire. And the icy Ninth Circle punishes what for Dante was the ultimate sin, treachery. So as you suggest no close correspondence at all. Wonderful wry poem and great final line.
Fire and ice may be two, dare one say, polar opposites? While hate and desire, all too often, collapse into each other. How many books, poems, stories, outline the change from desire to hate or hate to desire, and in some rare ones, back again? Perhaps they are not two different entities, but merely two different displays of the same extreme.
An excellent account of the poem. I hadn't thought of tracing the verbs through, the way you do here.
For me, I'm always a little distracted, when I read "Fire and Ice", by the fact that Frost's name *literally means* ice (and, perhaps, that Apollo, god of poetry, is also god of the sun and light and therefore, in a sense, of fire) It's as if he is saying: for some the end of things is a matter of Apollonian desire, Apollo being famously amorous; but for my frosty self, returning to this question a second time, it is hatred that is my chilly poetic idiom. The world will end, yes, but another thing that ends is: a line of poetry, ending here in its quasi-terza-rima rhyme. And this is a poem that ends well, with those two rhymed dimeter lines.
[The name Dante, incidentally, "means" enduring; it's an abbreviated form of Durante. But this isn't a poem about enduring; it's a poem about ending]
Robert Lowell begins his 1969 poem for Frost with "Robert Frost at midnight," which I always thought cleverish for its Coleridge reference and the best play on Frost's name. (Some of us are more sensitive than others about family names that are meaningful English words.)
I've known and loved this poem for a decade now. But I never noticed this kind of nuances in it. This was by far one of the best posts on your page. Loved it!
There's a neat (but meaningless) association here between John Martin painter of Great Day of his Wrath and George RR Martin whose 'Game of Thrones ' bookpile is collectively the Song of Ice and Fire. But the one that's niggling my brain is 'The Andalusian Merchant' by Thomas Weelks. Icebergs and volcanoes and set as a madrigal with great word painting.
In full:
Thule, the period of cosmography,
Doth vaunt of Hecla, whose sulphureous fire
Doth melt the frozen clime and thaw the sky;
Trinacrian Etna's flames ascend not higher:
These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I,
Whose heart with fear doth freeze,
with love doth fry.
The Andalusian merchant, that returns
Laden with cochineal and china dishes,
Reports in Spain how strangely Fogo burns
Amidst an ocean full of flying fishes:
These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I,
Whose heart with fear doth freeze,
with love doth fry.
Dante's 9 circles have a variety of nasty conditions, only a small minority involving fire. And the icy Ninth Circle punishes what for Dante was the ultimate sin, treachery. So as you suggest no close correspondence at all. Wonderful wry poem and great final line.
Fire and ice may be two, dare one say, polar opposites? While hate and desire, all too often, collapse into each other. How many books, poems, stories, outline the change from desire to hate or hate to desire, and in some rare ones, back again? Perhaps they are not two different entities, but merely two different displays of the same extreme.
Brilliant explication. Thank you so much for this further insight into a poem I have much enjoyed but never closely studied.
"Put most exhaustively . . . " Ouch! Very nicely done, I mean, the whole piece, not just the dig. Thank you.
Phenomenal post!
An excellent account of the poem. I hadn't thought of tracing the verbs through, the way you do here.
For me, I'm always a little distracted, when I read "Fire and Ice", by the fact that Frost's name *literally means* ice (and, perhaps, that Apollo, god of poetry, is also god of the sun and light and therefore, in a sense, of fire) It's as if he is saying: for some the end of things is a matter of Apollonian desire, Apollo being famously amorous; but for my frosty self, returning to this question a second time, it is hatred that is my chilly poetic idiom. The world will end, yes, but another thing that ends is: a line of poetry, ending here in its quasi-terza-rima rhyme. And this is a poem that ends well, with those two rhymed dimeter lines.
[The name Dante, incidentally, "means" enduring; it's an abbreviated form of Durante. But this isn't a poem about enduring; it's a poem about ending]
Robert Lowell begins his 1969 poem for Frost with "Robert Frost at midnight," which I always thought cleverish for its Coleridge reference and the best play on Frost's name. (Some of us are more sensitive than others about family names that are meaningful English words.)
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