Robert Frost (1874—1963)

1. Lecture 12: Robert Frost (1874—1963)

2. General Knowledge • Frost is an important poet in the 20th century .He won the Pulitzer Prize four times and read poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. • He spent his early childhood in the Far West and later the family moved to New Hampshire. He went to Harvard but left in the middle because of his tuberculosis. When he was 28, he began to venture on writing.

3. Frost’s poems: “Mending Wall” “The Road Not Taken” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” “The Gift Outright” “Nothing Gold Can Stay” “Fire and Ice” “Apple Picking”

4. 1. His thematic concerns: • (1) Generally Frost is considered a regional poet whose subject matters mainly focus on the landscape and people in New England. These thematic concerns include the terror and tragedy in nature, as well as its beauty, and the 1oneliness and poverty of the isolated human being. But first and foremost Frost is concerned with his love of life and his belief in a serenity that only came from working usefully, which he practiced himself throughout his life.

5. (2) Frost wrote many poems that investigate the basic themes of man's life: the individual's relationships to himself, to his fellow-man, to world, and to his God. Profound meanings are hidden underneath the plain language and simple form. His poetry, by using nature as a storehouse of analogy and symbol, often probes mysteries of darkness and irrationality in the bleak and chaotic landscapes of an indifferent universe when men stand alone, unaided and perplexed.

6. 2. His nature poems: • Robert Frost is mainly known for his poems concerning New England life. He learned from the tradition, especially the familiar conventions of nature poetry and of classical pastoral poetry, and made the colloquial New England speech into a poetic expression. A poem so conceived thus becomes a symbo1 or metaphor, a careful, loving exploration of reality, in Frost's version, "a momentary stay against confusion." Many of his poems are fragrant with natural quality.

7. Images and metaphors in his poems are drawn from the rural world, the simple country 1ife and the pastoral 1andscape. However, profound ideas are delivered under the disguise of the p1ain language and the simple form, for what Frost did is to take symbols from the limited human world and the pastoral landscape to refer to the great world beyond the rustic scene. These thematic concerns include the terror and tragedy in nature, as well as its beauty, and the 1oneliness and poverty of the isolated human being. But first and foremost Frost is concerned with his love of life and his belief in a serenity that only came from working usefully, which he practiced himself throughout his life.

8. 3. Frost's style in language: • By using simple spoken language and conversational rhythms, Frost achieved an effortless grace in his style. He combined traditiona1 verse forms -- the sonnet, rhyming coup1ets, blank verse with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of New England farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax. In verse form he was assorted; he wrote in both the metrical forms and the free verse, and sometimes he wrote in a form that borrows freely from the merits of both, in a form that might be called semi-free or semi-conventional.

9. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening • (1) The theme: This is a deceptively simple poem in which the speaker literally stops his horse in the winter twilight to observe the beauty of the forest scene, and then is moved to continue his journey. Philosophically and symbolically, it stems from the ambiguity of the speaker's choice between safety and the unknown.

10. (2) This poem suggests deep thought about death and about life. The strange attraction of death to man is symbolized by the dark woods silently filled up with the coldness of snow. Frost frequently uses the technique of symbolism in his poetry. Some critics think that the "village" stands for the human world, "woods" for nature, "horse" for the animal world, and "promises" for obligations. The poem represents a moment of relaxation from the burdensome journey of life, an almost aesthetic enjoyment and appreciation of natural beauty which is wholesome and restorative against the chaotic existence of modern man.

11. (3) The last stanza shows a kind of sad, sentimental but also strong and responsible feeling. The attraction of the beauty of the nature makes the speaker stop in the journey. He finally turns away from it, with a certain weariness and yet with quiet determination, to face the needs of life. This stresses the central conflict of the poem between man's enjoyment of nature's beauty and his responsibility in society.

12. This shows a man's despairing courage to seek out the meaning of life. • In the last stanza, the three adjectives "lovely" "dark" "deep" reinforce one another. Not only do they represent beauty and terror of nature symbolized by the dark woods, but they also reveal the speaker's love for nature and human isolation from it. Besides, the word "sleep" here means "die" symbolically.

13. The Road Not Taken • (1) The theme: This poem seems to be about the poet, walking in the woods in autumn, hesitating for a long time and wondering which road he should take since they are both pretty. In reality, this is a meditative poem symbolically written. It concerns the important decisions which one must take in the course of life, when one must give up one desirable thing in order to possess another.

14. Then, whatever the outcome, one must accept the consequences of one's choice for it is not possible to go back and have another chance to choose differently. In the poem, he followed the one which was not frequently travelled by. Symbolically, he chose to follow an unusual, solitary life; perhaps he was speaking of his choice to become a poet rather than some common profession. But he always remembered the road which he might have taken, and which would have given him a different kind of life.

15. (2) Language: This poem is written in classic five-line stanzas, with the rhyme scheme a-b-a-a-b and conversational rhythm. The poet uses "the road " to symbolize life's journey.