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Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher
Robert Frost is by far the most celebrated major American poet of the twentieth century. In part, this is because his poetry seems, on the surface, to be so accessible, even homey. But Frost was not just a powerful writer of popular lyric and narrative verse, argues Peter J. Stanlis in this major contribution to American literary study and philosophy. Rather, his work is deeply rooted in a complex philosophical dualism that opposes both idealistic monism, centered in spirit, and scientific positivism, which posits that the universe can be understood as nothing but matter.
In Robert The Poet as Philosopher, Stanlis shows how Frost’s philosophical dualism of spirit and matter is perceived through metaphors and applied to science, religion, art, education, and society. He further argues that Frost’s dualism provides a critique of the monistic forces that were instrumental in the triumph of twentieth-century totalitarianism. Thoroughly informed by his twenty-three year friendship and correspondence with Frost, Stanlis’s landmark volume is the first attempt to deal with the poet’s philosophy in a systematic manner. It will appeal not only to fans of Frost but to all who understand poetry as a form of revelation for understanding human nature.
In Robert The Poet as Philosopher, Stanlis shows how Frost’s philosophical dualism of spirit and matter is perceived through metaphors and applied to science, religion, art, education, and society. He further argues that Frost’s dualism provides a critique of the monistic forces that were instrumental in the triumph of twentieth-century totalitarianism. Thoroughly informed by his twenty-three year friendship and correspondence with Frost, Stanlis’s landmark volume is the first attempt to deal with the poet’s philosophy in a systematic manner. It will appeal not only to fans of Frost but to all who understand poetry as a form of revelation for understanding human nature.
350 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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February 1, 2023
Among other things, this book argues that Frost was not simply an influential author of admired lyric and narrative verse; rather, his work is profoundly rooted in a multifaceted idealistic dualism that opposes both idealistic monism, in addition to scientific positivism.
A few words in advance –
The simplicity of Frost's verse is misleading. It, at times cloaks the depth of his philosophy.
Frost was always a patient and persistent seeke after truth. Neither in politics nor in poetry was he willing to surrende himself and his conviction as he says in "The Black Cottage"
Why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true
Cling to it long enough, and not doubt
It will turn true again for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in an out of favour.
As I sit here and often times, I wish
I could devote and dedicate for even
I could be a monarch of a desert land
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
But this steady search for truth has not made Frost a grim, gloomy philosopher. His touch is light even when his theme is serious and often he is most casual when he is most serious.
"Mending Wall" for instance, is one of those poems where Frost makes certain significant observations on human life and conduct. He airs two contradictory opinions regarding the erection of a wall between the compounds of two neighbours. One is:
“Something there is that doesn't love a wall
and the other:
“Good fences make good neighbours.”
Notice, dear reader, how these opposing statements imply how man cannot live without walls, boundaries, limits and particularly self-limitations and how he yet represents all bonds and is happy at the downfall of any barrier. Some readers have found far-reaching implications in this poem. They have found that it states one of the greatest problems of our time: whether national walls should be made stronger for our protection, or whether they should be let down, since they cramp our progress toward understanding and eventual brotherhood.
Other readers have read 'Mending Wall' as a representative poem.
In the voices of the two men the younger whimsical, 'new fashioned-speaker and the oldfashioned farmer who replies with his one determined sentence, his inherited maxim-some readers hear the clash of two forces, the spirit of revolt, which challenges tradition and the spirit of restraint, which insists that conventions must be upheld, built up and continually rebuilt, as a matter of principle.
The poem 'Birches', one of the most frequently quoted of Frost's poems, expresses a deep philosophy, "a poetic hunger" for withdrawal which might permit swift and exciting return, with grace and without effort, to a new sense of life:
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb back branches up a snow-white trunk
Towards heaven till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again
That would be good both going and coming back….
The poet emphasises that this retreat is not to be a parmanent one, for he does want very much to be back on this earth for:
Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
This stout sanguinity and relish for this world has something of Browning in it. Yet it is not always a note of affirmation that one gets in the poetry of Robert Frost. 'North of Boston' often eflects the background of social and economic disturbance, and here Frost has painted some of the bleakest pictures of life to be found in his poetry.
The tone of disillusionment and bitter gloom can be found in his poems like, "Home Burial", "The Fear", "The House Keeper", "The Hill Wife" and "An Old Man's Winter Night". One of the most powerful poems of Frost, "Directive", shows Frost's obsessive themes, those of isolation, of extinction, and the final limitations of man.
It ends with the invitation:
Here are your waters and your watering place
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion…
The author of this volume shows, how Frost's reflections on the history of philosophy helped him evolve a fairly consistent, modest, and practical world view. Rooted in rich and varied poetic response to the many spheres of life, he discerned patterns of value that helped him map his way through the confusing complexities of human experience.
What then do we learn from this book? The following:
1) Frost has said many times that there is an arresting equivalence between the course of a true poem and of a true love. Each brings as a whim, an alarming exhilaration to which the individual surrenders himself. "No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life."
2) Frost thinks that the present moment serves as an agent which fires experience, lost in the dark of memory and causes that experience to burst into flame. This accident, producing an emotional intensity, might be described as an act which projects the past into the future.
3) This kind of inspiration is in no way related to what Wordsworth had in mind when he referred to "emotion recollected in tranquillity." It is more closely related to the recognition-scene, so long a source of surprise and emotional tension. He is impelled to find release from the crisis, and the resolution of it is the poem.
4) In Frost's estimation, the poet must establish a cautious equilibrium between the personal relationship of the experience and the separation of the experience through statement which gains perspective without loss of intensity. The considerate statement of the association between the present experience and the remembered experience balances the emotion. Equilibrium is truly a large part of artistry. To attain this equilibrium, "You adjust yourself to the motion of the thing itself." It is very difficult to attain: "Keeping the thing in motion is sometimes like walking a rolling barrel." One requires great skill in the matter.
5) The reasonableness of the poet is to remain true to the mood and true to the material at the same time. The projection of the poem arises out of the poet's pleasure in discovering words, images, metaphors, phrases "native to the grain" of the emotion, the thought, the situation. There is a peculiar satisfaction which Frost finds from the ultimate release, resolution, or completion of the poem. Out of the chaotic confusion of daily impressions and thoughts the poet captures a moment with his words and achieves a kind of crystallization which gives to his chaotic raw materials not only shape but weight.
And this metamorphosis creates that sense of stability which Frost refers to when he speaks of "a momentary stay against confusion."
A brilliant read.
A few words in advance –
The simplicity of Frost's verse is misleading. It, at times cloaks the depth of his philosophy.
Frost was always a patient and persistent seeke after truth. Neither in politics nor in poetry was he willing to surrende himself and his conviction as he says in "The Black Cottage"
Why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true
Cling to it long enough, and not doubt
It will turn true again for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in an out of favour.
As I sit here and often times, I wish
I could devote and dedicate for even
I could be a monarch of a desert land
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
But this steady search for truth has not made Frost a grim, gloomy philosopher. His touch is light even when his theme is serious and often he is most casual when he is most serious.
"Mending Wall" for instance, is one of those poems where Frost makes certain significant observations on human life and conduct. He airs two contradictory opinions regarding the erection of a wall between the compounds of two neighbours. One is:
“Something there is that doesn't love a wall
and the other:
“Good fences make good neighbours.”
Notice, dear reader, how these opposing statements imply how man cannot live without walls, boundaries, limits and particularly self-limitations and how he yet represents all bonds and is happy at the downfall of any barrier. Some readers have found far-reaching implications in this poem. They have found that it states one of the greatest problems of our time: whether national walls should be made stronger for our protection, or whether they should be let down, since they cramp our progress toward understanding and eventual brotherhood.
Other readers have read 'Mending Wall' as a representative poem.
In the voices of the two men the younger whimsical, 'new fashioned-speaker and the oldfashioned farmer who replies with his one determined sentence, his inherited maxim-some readers hear the clash of two forces, the spirit of revolt, which challenges tradition and the spirit of restraint, which insists that conventions must be upheld, built up and continually rebuilt, as a matter of principle.
The poem 'Birches', one of the most frequently quoted of Frost's poems, expresses a deep philosophy, "a poetic hunger" for withdrawal which might permit swift and exciting return, with grace and without effort, to a new sense of life:
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb back branches up a snow-white trunk
Towards heaven till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again
That would be good both going and coming back….
The poet emphasises that this retreat is not to be a parmanent one, for he does want very much to be back on this earth for:
Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
This stout sanguinity and relish for this world has something of Browning in it. Yet it is not always a note of affirmation that one gets in the poetry of Robert Frost. 'North of Boston' often eflects the background of social and economic disturbance, and here Frost has painted some of the bleakest pictures of life to be found in his poetry.
The tone of disillusionment and bitter gloom can be found in his poems like, "Home Burial", "The Fear", "The House Keeper", "The Hill Wife" and "An Old Man's Winter Night". One of the most powerful poems of Frost, "Directive", shows Frost's obsessive themes, those of isolation, of extinction, and the final limitations of man.
It ends with the invitation:
Here are your waters and your watering place
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion…
The author of this volume shows, how Frost's reflections on the history of philosophy helped him evolve a fairly consistent, modest, and practical world view. Rooted in rich and varied poetic response to the many spheres of life, he discerned patterns of value that helped him map his way through the confusing complexities of human experience.
What then do we learn from this book? The following:
1) Frost has said many times that there is an arresting equivalence between the course of a true poem and of a true love. Each brings as a whim, an alarming exhilaration to which the individual surrenders himself. "No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life."
2) Frost thinks that the present moment serves as an agent which fires experience, lost in the dark of memory and causes that experience to burst into flame. This accident, producing an emotional intensity, might be described as an act which projects the past into the future.
3) This kind of inspiration is in no way related to what Wordsworth had in mind when he referred to "emotion recollected in tranquillity." It is more closely related to the recognition-scene, so long a source of surprise and emotional tension. He is impelled to find release from the crisis, and the resolution of it is the poem.
4) In Frost's estimation, the poet must establish a cautious equilibrium between the personal relationship of the experience and the separation of the experience through statement which gains perspective without loss of intensity. The considerate statement of the association between the present experience and the remembered experience balances the emotion. Equilibrium is truly a large part of artistry. To attain this equilibrium, "You adjust yourself to the motion of the thing itself." It is very difficult to attain: "Keeping the thing in motion is sometimes like walking a rolling barrel." One requires great skill in the matter.
5) The reasonableness of the poet is to remain true to the mood and true to the material at the same time. The projection of the poem arises out of the poet's pleasure in discovering words, images, metaphors, phrases "native to the grain" of the emotion, the thought, the situation. There is a peculiar satisfaction which Frost finds from the ultimate release, resolution, or completion of the poem. Out of the chaotic confusion of daily impressions and thoughts the poet captures a moment with his words and achieves a kind of crystallization which gives to his chaotic raw materials not only shape but weight.
And this metamorphosis creates that sense of stability which Frost refers to when he speaks of "a momentary stay against confusion."
A brilliant read.
April 15, 2023
Peter Stanlis’s “Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher” is an important book that serves as a rejoinder not to misread Frost as a simple, pastoral bard. Although Stanlis has a habit of conveying a few too many personal digressions, and engages in redundancies, he manages to illuminate Frost’s poetry and thought with clarity and elegance.
Stanlis spent the better part of his life pondering the argument that would eventually become the central thread of this book; namely, that the key to understanding Frost’s poetry is to view it in the context of the poet’s complex, philosophical dualism.
According to Stanlis, Frost insisted that although a complete understanding of the relationship between spirit and matter is impossible, philosophical monism, both the materialist and the idealist varieties, are belied by the complexity of human perception and experience. Thus, Stanlis suggests, Frost sought to mediate between these ontological domains through the power of metaphor. For Frost metaphor was not simply a means of saying “one thing in terms of another,” but a way of being. Though regularly perceived as simply a rustic, Frost was, in fact, a perspicacious observer of man and nature, and a sophisticated and nuanced thinker.
The author notes that Frost frequently remarked ‘he was never more serious than when he was joking,’ Stanlis’s book reminds us that to take Frost’s seemingly facile verse too lightly, is to do so at our peril.
Stanlis spent the better part of his life pondering the argument that would eventually become the central thread of this book; namely, that the key to understanding Frost’s poetry is to view it in the context of the poet’s complex, philosophical dualism.
According to Stanlis, Frost insisted that although a complete understanding of the relationship between spirit and matter is impossible, philosophical monism, both the materialist and the idealist varieties, are belied by the complexity of human perception and experience. Thus, Stanlis suggests, Frost sought to mediate between these ontological domains through the power of metaphor. For Frost metaphor was not simply a means of saying “one thing in terms of another,” but a way of being. Though regularly perceived as simply a rustic, Frost was, in fact, a perspicacious observer of man and nature, and a sophisticated and nuanced thinker.
The author notes that Frost frequently remarked ‘he was never more serious than when he was joking,’ Stanlis’s book reminds us that to take Frost’s seemingly facile verse too lightly, is to do so at our peril.
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November 21, 2009None
January 22, 2015
a little dry but over all fairly informative
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews