LITERATURA USA 9.05.2011
WYKŁAD
Frost is capable of ringing changes on this theme of nature as enticement.
“Come in”
He comes to the `edge of the woods', it is dusk, it is dark there, there is a treat of the woods contained there
The poem terms the woods `dark', and the `song' is allied to darkness as well, as if all poetry had its source in darkness
Dying light is shown to be the bird's message, the song of the bird. This equation is suggestive: Light produces song, and song produces light.
Nature is `pillared', as if it were a cathedral; yet it is also a temptation for losing oneself. Darkness here is like the deathlike darkness.
The speaker rejects the dark woods because he is `out for stars'. How do we assess this? Is he looking for safety, retreat, a divine plan?
The laconic closing remark about not being asked is Frost's signature. Humans are outsiders, whatever natural reveries they have. This admission that we are not `of' the woods gives closure to the piece.
“But, no, I was out for stars” the sights of the poet are not, in this poem, going to be on the woods and darkness, but beyond and above the stars themselves.
Frost can present encounters with the dark woods in ways that are still stranger, sometimes bordering on horror.
“The Draft Horse”
These dark woods match anything that Hawthorne could produce in the way of horror.
The encounter with violence seems to be in keeping with the design and directives (two Frost's concepts) of higher authority. We have no privileged spot in the world, no particular wisdom.
Frost definitely has a black side - apocalyptic, drawn to cataclysm, focusing on the theme of human abandonment and alienation.
“Bereft”
virulence of nature,
nature's personal attack on the human subject,
“I was in the house alone...I was in my life alone... I have no one left but God” - systematic loss of support, an increasing sense of being bereft.
“Acquainted with the Night”
portrait of abandonment and alienation
humans have no `home' whatsoever
“I have been acquainted with the Night. I've walked out in rain and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light”.
He hears a cry, but `not to call me back or say goodbye'.
Sees a clock:
“One luminary clock against the sky proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right” - out of phase, out of sync, out of time, no correlation between motions, your life and official, public schema.
Frost is aware that the most devastated and desolate sites are on the inside.
“Deserted places”
the mobility, the acceleration, of the piece is initially striking; there is no stability
the woods seem to have taken over entirely
Frost depiction of emptiness as whiteness
his closing tone is splendid, like a child with his back against the wall: “They cannot scare me”
true devastation and emptiness are on the inside; here is the view of the human soul that is supremely inhospitable
there is also a strange kind of pride, as if the human condition could match the horrors of nature any day of the year
Frost tries to go past this “nothingness” on the inside of people and set human sights heroically, resolutely on the natural scene.
“The Wood Pile”
The speaker has no direction, no plan.
The story is of the human lost in the hostile woods.
Evocation of the bird's vanity, its error in thinking that the natural world is self-related. We think the world responds to our picture, our safety, our human condition; whereas, in fact, is indifferent.
The woodpile - is the finite, unsymbolic world; it's the world of things.
The woodpile signals an abandoned human project, the woodpile has been cut several years back and still exists here, it was cut to burn in a fireplace.
Nature seems to have taken over, to have proven the futility of human doing.
The speaker muses about motivation. Why would one abandon this woodpile and go on to “fresh tasks”? Is it a reference to poetry?
The brilliant and enigmatic final notation causes us to reconsider our notion of utility.
Is this a triumph of human achievement after all? Does all human labour have unforessen real consequences?
“Birches”
The boy's game with the birches, symbolizes rites of passage.
Ascending `toward' heaven, moving toward flight and release, an ideal education for the poet.
Fine attempt to possess both heaven and earth, to rise and fall.
The poem is about love, about process of being :good both going and coming back”.
“The Most of It”
We are alone and unsponsored.
The only noise we hear is echo.
At the end of the poem - a great vision - not just the “counter-love” sought by the speaker.
Is this the appearance of God? Is there something grand and noble about being in the world without human form?
“Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same”
Male speaker trying to evoke a vision of love and beauty.
Human song composed of love and laughter enters nature and becomes bird song.
Going back to Eve and Adam, retelling the story of family, of the enduring love.
The mythic “garden” becomes the familiar “woods”.
Song changes the world, human love and human poetry become part of phenomenal reality, endure over time, and are appreciated by poets, readers and lovers.
Robert Frost and the Fruits of the Earth
Frost writes about:
Man's interaction with the earth, human being the eternal cycle of life.
Living in the country (rural community experience): chopping wood, building houses, doing gardens (when Adam was expulsed from the Garden of Eden work was born - labour, sweat, pain). Frost celebrates work:
human labour: the process which appears to be over when the product or the task is completed; open-ended and future - bound in ways that no one can plan or anticipate
diverse kinds of labour: tilling the soil, picking apples, making love, writing poems - makes us understand the unsuspected reach and grandeur of such activities
Frost is interweaving agriculture, love, and poetry in his poems about working the soil.
“Mowing”
facts are precious, labour as a voice, labour as future - bound,
human implements become “lingual”, have a strange speech of their own, which the poem seeks to interpret,
reconceives our notion of “dream” - suggests that it has elements in common with facts and work - the fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows, dreams have to do with our contact with elements, facts of life are the highest things we can know,
the poem never loses sight of the particulars involved in mowing,
there is no separation; things can exist in a love relationship to us, and that relationship I labour; moreover labour knows, is a form of knowing; knowledge is something vigorous; work/life becomes poetry here,
ends with a reference to “long scythe”, a classic symbol of death and time, yet it whispers “life” here, “left the hay to make” - ongoing growth and development, continuous “production” beyond our finite efforts
It is not easy to measure what we have accomplished, production cycle continues (grass, cutting, hay...) alternation and change and result. The view of labour has a sense of futurity. We don't know the final consequences. The same true about poetry - poet dies, poetry lives. What looks over is not over, what looks fixed is not fixed.
“Putting in the Seed”
planting crops, making love, and creating poetry
man - wife connection; merging of death and life (planting petals along with seeds, insists on their togetherness)
the poem becomes incandescent
closes with slow motion, account of the miracle of creation (making love and poetry)
“the sturdy seedling with arched body comes shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs” - human lovemaking, human production, the seed is clearly personified
a warm poem with slow, dignified motion
“After Apple Picking”
strange, offers us a surreal, hallucinatory evocation of the human condition, going back to the Fall,
the description of “two-headed ladder” sticking through the trees; the ladder - a conduit of the other realms, a set of parallel points and tracks,
speaker's fatigue and drowsiness, which sets the stage for dreaming and slipping,
“essence” applies to apples and to the underlying core of meaning; this labour will be followed by a sleep that is like hibernation.
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