기쁨과 지혜에서 회의와 번민으로: 로버트 프로스트의 시 세계

Abstract

It has been well-known that the poetry of Robert Frost "begins in delight and ends in wisdom." But it seems that this view is a reduction of the poetic world of Robert Frost. Since his early poems were composed on the basis of the farming experiences of the Northeast, it is true, a number of them harbor the pattern: delight and wisdom. But such poems as "The Most of It," “Directive," "The Oven Bird," "An Old Man's Winter Night," and "Desert Places" are interpreted in different terms. This essay seeks to explore the later poetry of Robert Frost, compared with his early poetry. As many a biographer has recorded, he did not lead a happy life: a number of failures in early recognition of his works, the early death of his wife, suicide of his son, mental breakdown of his daughter. It is quite easy to assume that he spent most of his life with indelible trauma. Indeed, some of his early poems carry this very symptom of traumatic traces. Most of his later poems no longer show what his early poetry conveys. Rather than delight and wisdom, his later poems led to the opposite of his early poetry: scepticism, anguish, futility, and nihilism. As a matter of fact, such a tendency has been shown in a number of other poets as they grew old. Take William Wordsworth and Robert Lowell, for example. It appears to result from the human condition that humans are destined to decay and die. Yet it is quite conspicuous that the later poetry of Frost goes further than any other poets. Particularly, his poem “Directive" provides a number of lessons as to our life's journey.