An older man, almost 90, who has come into my restaurant every Sunday for a long, long time recited to me the last stanza of Robert Frost’s famous poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I’ve come to know the man outside of work. We sometimes have lunch together, and he tells me stories of his days serving overseas in World War II, his time working on the railroad, and his career as a history professor. Last night was the first time I’d seen him through the years without his wife which was what set the table for the Frost recital. She took a hard fall last week and broke both wrists. After nine years of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, my friend was forced to place his wife of 69 years in a home.
He dined alone but seemed convivial with his regular gin and tonic and a glass of Sasyr. He sat at what was for him an unusual table away from the window. And he toiled away at the largest entree on the menu which he customarily split with his absent companion who is known to only speak to phrases: “You look good” and “I’m old”, which she repeats several times through the meal. Speaking to my own very human response to such a situation, as I passed him each time through the dining room I looked on him for moments of weakness. How does one handle such a drastic change?
I asked him how he was holding up and he hit me with the Frost poem which, because it was so resolute and recited with steel and a clenched fist, made it that much more moving.
***
How to interpret the poem?
While some of the interpretations I’ve read shy away from it, I mostly see death. Maybe not suicide, but an acceptance of death or of stopping, freezing, and dying. Though there is not a lot of attention paid by interpreters to the horse, Frost indicated that the horse held “the key” to the poem. “My little horse” and his rider “I” suggest a tension between ego, id, and superego as they grapple with the ever-prevalent death drive. Freud introduced these concepts in 1920 and Frost wrote his poem in 1922. The terms and the concept were not canonized at that time but both could have been describing a similar communication between the basic beastial instinct to survive and what ironically is a rational decision to destroy, stop moving, and perhaps cease living. The deep, dark mysterious woods beckon; they are the “what if” question that sometimes enters our minds. In his writing, Freud also used the metaphor of the horse as the id and the rider as the ego, though, there is no evidence that Frost was thinking about this model on those specific terms. Could have been that Frost just used this relationship as a metaphor for humans’ duality, which is similar to Freud and also similar to Jonathan Haidt’s elephant-rider metaphor. A person can want to do something destructive on one level while something else inside tries to talk them down. Noticing the departure from routine, Frost’s little horse, whose instinct is shelter and food, shook its bells to help remind the rider that he is venturing off course. But really there is no other rationalization for the rider to avoid his deep wish than some notion of “promises”. These promises can have been made to a loved one, society in general (the village), to oneself, or even to a future which will be full of promises to be met.
While the Frost poem can be interpreted many different ways, in his version my friend stressed “But I have promises to keep”. Promises to his wife who has not been aware of her surroundings for more than nine years. The sense of duty my friend feels – it is too far beyond me to understand at this point in my life. My friend is also openly atheist, and his only other remaining family live two time zones away. If he fails on his promises, he’s the only one who will notice.
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Certain fundamental obligations are hard-wired into all decent human beings- to care for and protect those closest to us. Compared to this religion is pretty ephemeral.
Death seems to be a common theme with Frost. “Death of a Hired Man”, and “Birches”- “Earth’s the place for love, I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower
but only so an hour
then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden fell to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
There is no rider. The poem mentions “harness bells”, meaning that the narrator is driving a buggy pulled by the horse, rather than riding the horse.
An insightful essay: in the age of Entitlement, the “promises” the man keeps to his ailing wife are a legacy not wasted on the telling.
Life isn’t so bad if you can still enjoy a gin and tonic.
Robert Frost is worth re-reading. I still have his collected poems book from college stashed away somewhere. Time to dig it out.
There was one poem – forgot right now its title – in which a young beta is mewling on his failures in love, and then he sees a huge majestic buck deer leap out of the woods. Can’t recall much about the poem. Was Frost deterministically mocking the beta by taunting him with a natural? was he saying man-up? Or showing him the gateway to game?
Camille Paglia never cared much for Robert Frost. Called him too Protestant. She is a great writer, an important thinker and having met her, wonderful in person — but the northern European spirit is something she does not understand or relate to fully.
PS: much was made during Bill Clinton’s honeymoon year 1993 about how he’s the second coming of John F. Kennedy. I couldn’t help but compare a few years later, to Clinton’s detriment: JFK had Jackie, Bill had Hillary. JFK messed around with Marilyn, Bill with Monica. And on topic here, JFK had Robert Frost speak at his inauguration, Bill had Maya Angelou.
Sixty years from now, the elderly will recall beautiful verse and rhyme, stamped into their young hearts by the determined hammer of repitition, and recite for the new generation the wise teachings of P. Niggy, Eazzee Jizzee, and Doctor Bussacap EdD. Evolving upward, always.
{sic: repetition)
I couldn’t help but compare a few years later, to Clinton’s detriment: JFK had Jackie, Bill had Hillary. JFK messed around with Marilyn, Bill with Monica. And on topic here, JFK had Robert Frost speak at his inauguration, Bill had Maya Angelou.
I remember the eminent literary critic Harold Bloom lambasting that choice of Maya Angelou by Bill Clinton.
Of course Bloom was called a bigot and a Nazi and everything else in the book, but he was able to point out that he was a lifelong leftist and major supporter of the Socialist Party, of course.
I met Harold Bloom once in professional capacity in Boston. Paglia had written extensive praises of him as her mentor and a brilliant mind… I said something nice and innocuous about her to him and he shook his head and didn’t say anything. No idea why.
On the farcical end of that milieu, Naomi Wolf (she is the farcical character here) wrote somewhat recently about how Bloom many years ago made a sexual pass at her when she was his grad student, and how she was sooo traumatized by that.
@ PA – yeah, but in those days it probably wasn’t considered incorrect for a college instructor to have outside relations with his own students !! Being in Academia in the 60′s-70′s must have had its perks.
Men make passes at young, attractive women all the time. I can understand wanting to tell people for attention, but you should try to fight it off. If she had been cool and kept her mouth shut, she probably could have still counted Harold Bloom as a friend.
It still is pretty common for professors to have affairs with students.
Poignant stuff Chuck.
As far as interpretation goes, I’m more of a cigar is just a cigar guy myself. The man stops to have a quiet moment staring into the woods, and maybe stare into the abyss a bit, then re-cinches the straps of life’s burdens and continues on his journey.
Chuck, by chance (synchronicity?) Larry Auster just wrote on his blog, quoting a friend: “It was good when poets were closer to nature, then they had something to write about other than themselves.”
Fantastic post.
“I asked him how he was holding up and he hit me with the Frost poem which, because it was so resolute and recited with steel and a clenched fist, made it that much more moving.”
I think I can relate to your friend, though not specific with his circumstances, but life in general.
The poem strikes me as an allegory of life, not only its span but the battle between our animal nature and our civilising forces; those things that make us human. And distinguish one set of humans from another, “humanity” not being equally expressed amongst the races.
The time is the winter solstice “darkest evening of the year”. Symbolically “year” is a life span, the author at his “darkest” point. Some sort of crisis. He is “Between the woods and frozen lake”, woods being fullness of youth, frozen lake is death.
He ponders oncoming death, which is not harsh but a release, something in which he can lose himself, at last.
But, the horse’s bells call him back, which reminded me of Christmas bells, like that on Santa’s sleigh. The horse is vitality, animal nature, which also corresponds with life force. His human nature is tempered with instinctive urgings to continue. These instincts correspond with “duty”.
The repeated last line is to reinforce his dedication and commitment to see his duties through.
***************
““My little horse” and his rider “I” suggest a tension between ego, id, and superego as they grapple with the ever-prevalent death drive. Freud introduced these concepts in 1920 and Frost wrote his poem in 1922. “
With respect, I think you are projecting here. From the little that I have read of Frost he has never struck me as a Jewish psychoanalyst, especially of the fraudulent variety. He was introduced to me as a “fireside poet”, i.e. humble American frontiersman type, between the past of hardy stock and the future of big cities. His poems such as Mending Wall are always constructed simply, with no artifice, expressed honestly, yet always carrying a silently profound rumination of deeper still lakes that dwell within.
Things such as ego, id and superego would be far to technical, something a grifter would use to bedazzle the simple (not simplistic) honest, and decent, native American folk.
Still, a thoroughly excellent post. Thanks.
PA: you met Paglia in person? I wish you could have punched her in the face for me.
Ah, the missed opportunities of life.
Pat -why?
Just wanted to add that I found this an excellent, classical Chuck post.
PA: For some reason that eludes me now, I did an elective of Women’s (Wymins) Studies at University. There, I learned first hand the contemptible arrogant ignorance of the greatest minds of feminism first hand. A mediocre at best bunch of so called intellects, which had an inverse relationship with their vanity and surge for power. Paglia was one their centrepieces.
I also learned that Wymins, though they refuse to shave their legs, love to fuck and be dominated. A despicable bunch in entirety.
I’ve forwarded the argument that the still-nascent alt-Right — itself a resurrection of the Old Right — is a synthesis of Camille Paglia and Pat Buchanan.
Paglia articulated the anti-feminist sexual realism that had since been refined and popularized by Roissy and others. Her book “Sexual Personae” destroyed feminism as an intellectual discipline anyone takes seriously.
There are many things about Paglia that are wrong or ignorant. Examples are her championing of strong independent women and homosexuality, her silly celebration of black and Hispanic machismo, her shallow paeans to multiculturalism, her hate of the French, her time-deafness on Nordic/Celtic aesthetics, and so on. And my favorite is the sense I get is that in het mind right wing politics are limited to neocon patriotardism.
But those faults are inconsequential in the big scheme of things. And even through her leftie beliefs there runs a livewire of realism.
Paglia is our friend and founder.
Wow.
Ah, since you’re a waiter, Chuck, you should read “A Clean, Well Lighted Place.” Relevant to your story here.
A wonderful essay and meditation. I enjoyed it very much. My favorite Frost poem is below
A Passing Glimpse
Robert Frost
I often see flowers from a passing car
That are gone before I can tell what they are.
I want to get out of the train and go back
To see what they were beside the track.
I name all the flowers I am sure they weren’t;
Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt–
Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth–
Not lupine living on sand and drouth.
Was something brushed across my mind
That no one on earth will ever find?
Heaven gives it glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.
Glad you all liked it. Thanks for the props.
“My friend is also openly atheist, and his only other remaining family live two time zones away. If he fails on his promises, he’s the only one who will notice.”
That makes it all the harder on him to break them, especially voluntarily. He will know fully the depth of his failure to keep those promises. For some of us that kind of knowledge can a terrible burden. In the small dark hours of the night he will wrestle with that failure over and over.
Just read this, GLP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefon_%28film%29
No wonder you deleted my comments.