Semiramide

Semiramide is a title Stevens uses in "Certain Phenomena of Sound" for a persona many scholars and critics call "the idealist I" (Ragg 142). It refers to the Semiramis, the legendary Assyrian queen attributed with building Babylon and the hanging gardens. She inspired the character Semiramide in Rossini's opera of the same name (Cook 273). Semiramide, representing "textual nature" contrasts another Rossini operatic figure, Eulalia, who represents "the thing itself" (Ragg 142).
Fun fact: Semiramis is also the woman of the Statue of Liberty and the woman featured on the Columbia Pictures logo.
==Sources and Further Reading==
Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction, by Edward Ragg, on Google Books
A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens, by Eleanor Cook, on Google Books