SUNDAY MAG A Z E
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, SUNDAY, DCE MBFR ,9 1923
Mr. Frost Rejects Pedantic Cataloguing
Being Partially A Review Of "New Hamnpshire"
NEW HAMPSHIRE, by Rebert Frst.j
Henry Hel, 1923.
Mr. Frost has discovered the sophis-
ticated world. There have been indi-
cations before now that he suspected
the existence of that brittle, quaint
Cockaigne, but he has always lacked
complete desire to pass beyond his
own hard, clear, sharp universe. In
this volume, however, we see him
w'andering with a sly smile among the
cardboard houses and the fantastic
mosques formed (as he alone sur-
mises) of glass. Occasionally he
fetches out from the streets some gilt-
tering manikin, and, holding his. dis-
covery botwixt blunt thumb and fore-
finger, interrogates him with Satyric
(which is not quite the same thing as
satiric) Interest.
And then he returns to his earthly
and almost anticllmatically definite
New Hampshire. In fact, we may be
sure that only the sophisticated world,
but even the whole world outside New
Hampshire, is for him but Cockaigne.
lHe draws his lips back in a serene
smile at thoughlt of the firagle crea-
tures who, trying to be Slavicly tra-
gic, isute to our sleek gentaton
destaes it never had and sorrows it
could not uiderstnd. "flow," he in-.
qui"s
"Ae we to write
Thie Russian uipl In America
As long as life goes on so unter-
vily.
We get what little misery we can
estingly?
Out of not having cause for misery.
It makes the guild of novel-writ-
ers sicki
To be expecting .to be Dustoevkis
On nothing worse than 'teo -such
luck and comfort.- .
But-n io less does he find a bit of cen-
te s t'tveller from Arkansas.
"Who bassted of ,Is sntae as beauti-
ful
lsr-diamonds and apples"
in commercial quantities. And so it
.goes with not-too-malicious laughter
at the Californian ith a climate to
sell; at the New York 'alec, prattling
"About the new school of the pseudo-
phallic"; at Matthew Arnold;- in
fact, at all our little artificial peoiie
who talk, and talk, and
"Know too well for any earthly use
The line where man leaves off and
nature starts."
Is Frost, then, merely repeating
the vague, meapiligless hack-to-na-
ture cry of Wordsworth and Crabbe,
even of Pope? Can professors stick
him in the cubby-hole tagged Nature-
poet and thus leave him to rot? No'
for he is sincere, and, what is more,
clear-sighted. He is unafflicted by the
myopia that tilts earth up into hea-
ven and sticks a hierarchy of angels
in every blasted stump. No delusions
*claim him as to the "place of man in
nature." His last word is the indif-
ference of our world to us. Consider
the concluding poem in this volume.
The house had been burned down, the
farm had been deserted, only the barn
was left. In and out of its broken
windows flew the birds,
"Their murmur more like the sigh
we sigh
From too mud dwellin on 'what
has been.
LISLE ROSE itThis creed, if one should indeed call
it so, has certain definite artistic as
well as philosophical advantages. On
the one hand it prevents that disdain
of nature which comes with super-
sophistication. No less does It pre-
vent didacticism and mysticism. It
has taken our modern poets and still
more our modern critics a long while
to escape from the Platonic theory of
beauty. Formal beauty alone we re-
fuse to recognize. Wordsworth must
dress nature up in cassock and gown,
put in her hands Bishop Butler's An-
alogy of Religion, and then, play the
assiduous stenographer. Swinburne,
in revolt against Wodswcrth, sees
now the Norse now the Greekdilvini-
ties peeping through. And the red-
. blooded hard-fisted he-men beat their
breasts and chant of Nature red in
tooth and claw. Robert Frost smiles
a bit at the whole crowd if he happens
to think of them; mostly he goes
smoothly along, seeing but not stalk-
ing beauty. Thus he alone of almost
all our latter-day poets, can perceive
woods, waters, stones, mountains, as
feem life -1' 9 they are, free from any man-imposed
e 7s s fovn values.
He carries this attitude into the
study of men. Finding noa sarp line
/' E of demarcation between man .and aa-
ture, be tends to adopt what-the p1-
osophic jargon of the present day
would call a behaviorurist c view.
Brad McLaughlia, in "The Star-apIt-
ter,"
IoiEiVt PROST Horrned his aouse d r th ie
isuraoe,
Yet for them the lilac renewed its But though they rejoiced in the nest, An ualse,
leaf. they nept,A -boga teteso. e'Wlswat
. . . .One'had to e versed iucountrye to
For them there was nothing rally things ere is no ptherabout ight and
sad. 'Not to beliwse the' 'hngrelletin" w-rong. Frost is getting away iroln
sdp-oesep that. He has lagdlyleft tdf'tro tis
conceri with tre tratic; tie 'wey
j word has beoie'meanisglessFros
way of retading life is, we .are 'be-
oingmsore and moe etviced, the
U ies proper way. . S akespeaes .great
s'Oes are not alet,'Lesr, Ctlho,
but tlytteline' adTh fe Tenmpst,
Swhtein he is trobedd1 mrefyrit
faffle ifteffnand stress, but leasuts
STUDIES IN SU3TLEtY . what we tem aniate no 'les than
dat we 'ein inaimate blfe,by pI.k-
IMLAC ly aesthetic standards, Whyashoald
we beonme aroused over events: it all
"TRA$1ED" matters so Uittle i the end. Accept-
,TAmi"ance has alwa's beenthe od 4sith
(To Marion Clyde Wier) Frost, hut his acceptance Is new 'll-
It was in Heaven.Fet, suer.
She said, "How permanent!"etersurer.
And he, "How indoinitable!" Y t his growing ataiemass sf sb-
"Oh, to be back where phistica&'n has brcueeght 'With it a
Methods do not nibble my desires change if not in his true attiltide, at
least in his idiom. He is more ob-
rLike oxen In a pond. vosytkn cofto h al
To feel again the satisfaction of tensionvi fold interpretationst of asituation,
And the waterspouts fl nepeain fastain
tpainh" When this newly-acquired anxiety to
miss none of life's impticatons is
He answered, joined to the New Englanders habit-
"My dear, that is powwow. ual indirectness and understatement,
If it were true the poet'a style 1s a bit harsh or at
We should monoplise least fesistait; but I fot one found
The incomparable." the Conceptions well wo wo'kilg
after. Occasionally, let it be admitted,
AShe wept. r this knowledge of the sophisticate's
And her tears fell- attitude has inspired the sophisticate's
Into a harbor. superficialty; once or twice, in re-
action from a scorn of feeling, Frost
descends perilously near sentmental-
"ALTRUISM" lit. In "Nfitiang Gold Can Stay,' he
(For Rdbert Batron) even sounds like a very yung man
imitating Tom Moore or the worst of
Fences never did a thing. Housman. But such failures are so
They were always old. rare that it is the part of none but a
And their hearts were soft as shad. (Continued on Page Five)