The philosophical underpinnings of "The Snow Man" run deep, and align most closely with the ideology of perspectivism, a term coined by 19th century thinker Friedrich Nietzsche. Perspectivism, as outlined in Nietzcshe's notes published in The Will to Power, is the principle that reality is only ever known through an observer's particular point of view. For Nietzsche, this meant that "the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our 'idea' of that thing, our 'objectivity'" (Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Horace B. Samuel, quoted in B. J. Leggett p. 190). Though perspective is always biased in some way, Nietzsche saw the total elimination of this perspective as "intellectual castration." Stevens, in contrast, intently investigates such a possibility in "The Snow Man."
B. J. Leggett has written about Stevens' relationship to Nietzsche. He argues that "The Snow Man" works to expose the paradox and conflict at the heart of perspectivism. Many of the ambivalences and paradoxes elaborated on in other sections of this guide are evidence of this: the snow man, as he nears a completely objective perspective on winter, reveals that to do so is inherently impossible for a human.
On an even subtler textual level, Stevens contradicts the start of his own poem by the end of it. We are told that someone with the mind of winter would "regard the frost and the boughs," etc., and not "think of any misery" in the winter. However, since by the end of the poem all the snow man can perceive is "nothing," "we learn eventually that if a mind of winter were achieved, the snowman would not in fact regard pine trees, junipers, or spruces at all—since these designations are themselves elementary examples of human abstraction and classification. Neither would he behold objects that are crusted, shagged, or glittering—all metaphors imposed on the scene" (Leggett 190). By Stevens' unavoidable literary act of using language to imagine a perspectiveless world, he brings his own perspective to that scene. Even as we may be aware of Nietzschean perspectivism, we cannot choose not to participate in it.
Stevens is no doubt aware of this contradiction, and perhaps what is most impressive is that he does not allow any anxieties over perspectivism's paradoxical nature to muddle his poem. On the surface, it makes the poem harder to read: we know we can never be the ideal readers of the poem, can never understand the snow man's perspective (or lack thereof). However, Leggett argues that this impossibility is Stevens' whole point: "The spare form of the poem evidently invites us to fill in its blank spaces with our own conceptions," because, if we had the "mind of winter," then even the poem itself would be another unreadable "nothing."
Stevens addresses Nietzschean philosophy more, and more explicitly, in several other poems, including "Description without Place" and "The Idea of Order at Key West," and many can be read through a Nietzschean lens, such as the blackbird in "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" that has no intrinsic definition aside from how the viewer sees it. Central to Stevens' poetry is the act of delving into, and comfortably inhabiting, philosophical contradictions: as Leggett notes, "the argument of ["The Snow Man"] may thus be reduced to this form: in order to realize x, surrender the faculties by which x is realized."
