About Austin Stevens

Robert? Robert Frost (1874-1963) is one of the greatest American poets in the 2th century, and is known as the five giants of American poetry in the 2th century together with Eliot, Pound, Williams and Stevens. Compared with his contemporaries, Frost is not prolific, and he does not directly describe modern American society, but he has won more honors than any contemporary American writer: he has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for four times and won 44 honorary academic titles from many universities including Oxford and Cambridge. On the occasion of his 75th birthday, the US Senate passed a resolution to honor him as a national poet. In 1957, he was praised by Eliot as the most outstanding living poet among British and American poets. In 1961, at the inauguration ceremony of President Kennedy, he was invited to recite his patriotic poem "Total Dedication". Frost was praised as a "sage" by the American public in his later years, and became a poetry consultant in the Library of Congress from 1958 to 1959. After that, he was officially renamed Poet Laureate.

Many of Frost's masterpieces are often set in rural New England, which is far away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Therefore, he is known as a "New England poet" and a "national poet". Frost's personal or specific events extracted from the countryside of New England are representative and universal, and the connotation of the poem goes beyond the narrow space of New England. He is good at using popular and almost colloquial language to reveal profound philosophy. He said: "I firmly believe that colloquialism is the root of any good poem, just as I firmly believe that nationality is the root of all thoughts and arts." His seemingly simple language often sparkles with wisdom. He believes that a poem should "begin with joy and end with wisdom". Frost not only inherited the creative skills of traditional poetry, but also created his own modern style. He built a bridge between traditional poetry and modern poetry.

1. Rough life and hard life laid the "black" tone of his poems.

Critics believe that Frost's poems about winter are more than other seasons, and even when describing the Spring and Autumn Period, he never forgets winter. He often uses images such as winter, snow, ice, frost, storms and dead leaves to express the indifference and cruelty of nature and the smallness, fear, confusion, despair and death of human beings. In fact, this theme of Frost runs through his whole poetry creation, which gives a black tone to his poetry.

Psychoanalytic criticism, represented by Freud, holds that literary activity is a complex but not incomprehensible spiritual phenomenon, and to open the door of this temple, we should try our best to pay attention to and understand unconscious activities in literature. They attach great importance to the collection and analysis of various materials of writers in their research, including biographical materials such as autobiography, personal letters, lecture notes and other manuscripts, especially the records of writers' childhood life.

The poet experienced hardships and pains all his life: when he was a child, his father often drank and gambled and suffered from tuberculosis. At the age of 11, his harsh and irritable father died of tuberculosis. Frost dropped out of kindergarten after attending kindergarten for only one day, and dropped out of school in the second grade because of the recurrence of stomach trouble. At the age of 2, he was in great pain because of his failed proposal, and went to the Desmore swamp at the junction of Virginia and North Carolina alone. During my study at Harvard, I dropped out of school because of chest pain, recurrence of lung disease and my mother's health. In 19, his mother died of cancer. In the same year, his first son died of cholera. The death of the first child cast a shadow over the relationship between the Frosts. In order to ease the tension caused by grief, Frost's grandfather bought a farm for them in Delhi, New Hampshire, where Frost lived a hard and painful life for 1 years. Frost once tried to commit suicide. In 1934, her daughter marjorie died of illness. In 1938, his wife died of heart failure, and the poet collapsed physically and mentally, and even his wife was unable to attend the cremation ceremony. In 194, his son Carol committed suicide. After becoming famous, Frost was employed by many universities and often went out to give speeches and recite poems. He often dragged his tired body home.

This life experience has influenced Frost's poetry creation. Fear of the Storm, the first collection of poems, describes a father's psychological change process from initial reassurance to final worry about his family's safety in the face of the storm, and predicts the themes of his later poetry creation-natural indifference, human loneliness and confusion.

In the poem "Stars", the stars represent the eyes of nature. When the poet looks up at the night sky and seeks sympathy and support, the stars "seem to be concerned about our fate,/fearing that we may stumble accidentally" and immediately become very indifferent and as blind as a bat: "However, there is neither love nor hatred,/The stars are like Minerva statues/those snow-white marble eyes,/As blind as a bat, as blind as a bat. The indifferent nature simply ignores the existence of human beings, and people are isolated and helpless in front of nature, how small and pitiful they are!

A poem "Mending the Wall" in "North of Boston" shows the loneliness and alienation of people in modern society, and the estrangement, suspicion and even hostility between people. Frost's modern consciousness is fully explained in this poem, and the conflict between traditional ideas and modern ideas is also vividly demonstrated. That advocate mending the wall represents tradition, while that advocate tearing down the wall represents modern people's ideas.

Another poem, After Picking Apples, describes that overwork makes the poet tired and sleepy. Greiner believes that in After Picking Apples, the poet has basically finished his life's work, and there may be two or three apples on a branch. What he will face in the future is that he doesn't know what is waiting for him. This uncertainty of future life is the real reason for his troubles, so this poem contains the meaning of "death". The poem "The essence of winter sleep permeates the night sky" echoes the problems of "end" and "rebirth". The weight of life and heavy physical labor exhausted him and made him breathless: "My arched instep is not only painful, but also bearing the top pressure of the ladder rung." /I feel the ladder shaking with the bent branches. /I will continue to hear the sound coming from the cellar/piles of apples rolling in/rumbling. /Because I have picked too many apples, I am very tired of the harvest I had expected. " After Picking Apples, he often thinks of death: "Anyone can see what will disturb my sleep,/no matter what kind of sleep it is. /If the groundhog hasn't left yet,/Hear me describe this sleeping process,/It can tell whether it is like its hibernation or just like some people's sleep. "

Low-lying Mountains is Frost's third collection of poems. One of them, Birch Tree, reveals the poet's boredom with life by depicting natural scenery. Like a traveler lost in the forest, he ran into a wall everywhere, his face was covered with spider silk, his face was burned, and one eye was still crying because of injury. The poet's mental and physical pain is unbearable. He wants to climb a birch tree to find a way out, a road to heaven, and leave the world for a while: "I like to leave by climbing a birch tree,/climbing a black branch along the snow-white trunk to heaven."

Second, the social background is the external cause of his "black" poems

Due to the side effects of the highly developed western industrial civilization, the great trauma and disaster brought by the world war, the collapse of traditional values and spiritual pillars caused by the death of God, the universe has no center, life has lost its meaning, people have lost their homes, and the western society is desolate, chaotic, twisted, deformed, lonely and desperate. This feeling is fully expressed by Frost's description of the natural landscape, and other American writers have also revealed it in their works. "Loneliness, alienation and separation of life have become commonplace for many poets and novelists in this century, their works and their lives." If Eliot created a London wasteland in his The Waste Land, Hemingway created a Parisian wasteland, Fitzgerald created a new york wasteland, and Faulkner created a southern American wasteland. London, Paris and new york represent the whole western society, which was in a desolate state after World War I.. Many modern British and American poets, such as Cummings, Pound, Williams, Joyce, Hart? Crane and others have shown this feeling.

The Old Man's Winter Night is regarded by Frost as "the best poem" in his third poetry collection. The poem describes an old man who is lonely, old, memory-deprived and sickly. He has no relatives to miss, and the night outside makes him feel only threats and fears. He faced only despair and death. Frost hinted at the corresponding relationship between the old man and his house, highlighting the poet's loneliness and despair. "Snow on the roof" symbolizes the old man's white hair, and "icicles on the wall" symbolizes the old man's tears. The poet uses images such as "frost", "frost", "night", "a quiet lamp", "snow", "empty house", "icicles", "heavy attraction", "sleeping", "old man" and "winter night" to show that the old man in the poem has completed the whole journey of life, emphasizing the sadness of the old man.

Several poems in Frost's fifth collection of poems, Xiao Hexi Liu, such as Spring Pond, Once Near the Pacific Ocean, Quietly Leaving, and Familiar with the Night, all show the indifference of nature, the loneliness, fear and insignificance of human beings.

"Spring Pond" describes that snow melts into water, and water seeps into the roots, which makes the trees lush in summer, showing the mysterious power of nature. Poets set off the humbleness and insignificance of human beings with the tenacious vitality of nature. In Once in the Pacific Ocean, the poet reveals that nature will bring disaster and pain to mankind, and naturally becomes the embodiment of darkness, violence and evil. The poet wrote: "It seems that the night with malice is coming./It is not only a night but also an era. /Someone had better think that the flood is coming. /There will be a greater disaster here than the tsunami,/before God says to put out the light. " "Familiar with the Night" describes the people in the poem walking in the rain in the dark, wandering in the empty and sad city lanes, passing by the watchman with their heads down and unwilling to give any explanation, stopping to listen to the crying and the chime from another street, and finally going to the wilderness outside the city. The sleepless man in the poem is like peas and carrots. He walks alone silently, ignoring and talking to others. The lonely and lonely mood in the poem makes readers unforgettable for a long time.

3. Doubt and vacillation about religious belief is the internal cause of the formation of his "black" poems

There are mountains beyond the mountains, published in 1936, is Frost's sixth collection of poems. His collection of poems includes his best and most influential "black poems", such as Wilderness, Tread Man, Looking not far and not deep, and Will.

The poem "The Wilderness" first describes the desolate snow scene in the field: "The heavy snow came with the night, so quickly,/pressed against a field I was staring at when I passed by,/the field was almost covered with snow,/only a few weeds and wheat stubbles stuck out of the snow." The poet also used loneliness, loneliness, heavy snow, night arrival and fear in many places to describe the desolate fields covered with snow, in order to set off the lonely and sad inner world, showing the lonely, melancholy and painful mood of the poet after he experienced many hardships in the world and suffered a heavy blow from the death of his beloved daughter marjorie. The poet also told us that the spiritual desolation is more terrible than the external desolation, and the empty soul is the real desolation: "People want to scare me not to use the vast space-/the space between planets without human habitation. /I can scare myself with my own wilderness./This wilderness is close to my home. "

Will depicts a frightening picture: a white spider is catching a moth on a white clover. White symbolizes nothingness and death in poetry. At the same time, there are many images related to death in the poem, such as "death", "withering", "dying wings", "stiff moth in white satin" and "night", which make readers feel that death is approaching step by step. "Looking not far and not deep" describes that what human beings see when looking for truth is nothing, and human efforts are always futile: "They can't look far. /They can't see very deeply. /But have there ever been any obstacles/blocked their eyes? "

Frost's boredom with life is clearly shown in Birch Tree and After Picking Apples. Besides the above reasons, the poet's complaint and boredom with life, his inner loneliness and sadness are also inseparable from his vacillation of religious beliefs. Frost's two poetic dramas, The Mask of Reason and The Mask of Kindness, and other poems reflect his doubts about Christianity and the vacillation of religious belief. Frost believes that the universe is lonely and terrible. As he said, "The universe is cold, and God, if it exists, is weak." He fully expressed this view in the poem "Treading Man". Treader expresses his weariness of cold nature through the tone of people in the poem. Because the Woods are terrible and full of malice to human beings: "They have been triumphant above my head all summer,/but now they are drifting away from me to their resting place." /I felt that they were whispering threats to me all summer,/Now they seem to want to drag me to death. " Although the poet tries to overcome his fears, summon up the courage to live and "prepare to step on the snow in the coming year", it is doubtful whether his efforts can be successful, because he is "tired of autumn colors" and hates the Woods.

The above analysis shows that the formation of Frost's "black" poetry is closely related to his bumpy life experience. In addition, the social changes at that time, the trauma of war and the collapse of traditional values led to the collapse of his spiritual pillar-his belief in Christianity was shaken and doubted. Therefore, his poems showed "black" emotions such as boredom, fear and despair. But it should be pointed out that Frost is not an out-and-out pessimist. He just bluntly showed the darkness and ugliness in human life. Critic Lionel? Trilling pointed out that the fear displayed in Frost's poems appeared with the birth of new things, which is the symbol of modern poetry. In some of his poems, he also showed his love for life and his attachment to human beings. As he revealed in The Test of Survival, although life is short, it is full of warmth and worth pursuing. His love for life made him hate the power to destroy mankind-fire and ice, the symbol of hatred and desire. Fire and Ice describes the ice and fire that may lead to the destruction of mankind. The poet expresses his worries about the future world in his poem, which also fully expresses the poet's love for life and his attachment to human beings. The poet tells us in "The Birch Tree" that real life is ugly, but we have to face it eventually, and a short rest and the pursuit of a better life are indispensable. It is in this paradox that human beings exist and society develops.