[Marxism] Robert Frost

[g.maclennan at qut.edu.au]

Hi Lou

of course he was a s.o.b but there is still the poetry.  No one has captured the dialectics of schizophrenia as well as Frost.   A son of his had it as well as a sister I believe. 

 _A Servant to Servants_ is a truly terrifying poem. The image of the hickory bars of the cage worn smooth by the hands of the young mad man is full of terror.

I'm afraid that with Frost, like Yeats, Pound and Eliot, one has to hold one's nose over the politics but love the poetry.

regards

Gary






---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 16:38:52 -0500
>From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>  
>Subject: [Marxism] Robert Frost  
>To: marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu
>
>(This was posted to LBO-Talk by Carl Remick. It 
>now makes sense why a scumbag like JFK would have 
>him read at his inauguration.)
>
>Portrait of the Artist as Bilious SOB
>
>I've recently been reading Jeffrey Meyers' 1996 
>bio of Robert Frost and have been wondering 
>why.  What a mean cantankerous old fart was 
>twinkly-eyed Bob, America's beloved poet 
>laureatissimo -- a man who valued war as a test 
>of courage and goaded a friend into enlisting and 
>getting blown up in WWI -- yet never served in 
>the military himself -- and a man who detested 
>all forms of public welfare, yet depended heavily 
>on his grandfather for financial support for many 
>years.  Robert Lee Frost ­ born in 1874 and named 
>for the Confederate general, whom his father 
>admired ­ would fit right into today's USA.
>
>Oddly, the Meyers bio is intended as a 
>*sympathetic* portrait of Frost -- a corrective 
>to the monumental three-volume bio by Lawrence 
>Thompson, who knew Frost intimately ... hence 
>detested him.  The flap copy of the Meyers bio 
>reads:  "The Frost that emerges from this 
>biography is neither the hayseed sage that he 
>cultivated in his public persona nor the monster 
>in human form depicted by his previous biographer 
>[Thompson]."  Well, Frost certainly doesn't 
>emerge from these pages as sagacious, but as for 
>being a monster, judge for yourself.  Here's 
>Meyers take on the political views of Robert 
>Frost and his equally engaging wife Elinor:
>
>"... in the 1930s he [Frost] tended to ignore not 
>only the wars in Europe and Asia but also the 
>unemployment, dust-bowl farms, bankruptcies, 
>bread lines and suicides that came with the 
>Depression.  When most American artists and 
>intellectuals were on the Left, he was adamantly 
>opposed to the prevailing ideas about communism, 
>the proletariat, industrial conflicts and social welfare.
>
>"... Though Frost had lived on his grandfather's 
>annuity for twenty-three years, there was a 
>certain consistency in his thought.  He had 
>praised Robinson Crusoe and Henry Thoreau for 
>their self-sufficiency.  He had urged a friend to 
>be individualistic and 'go it alone.  You are 
>stronger that way.'  His personal quarrel with 
>[Amherst College] President Alexander Meiklejohn 
>[in 1919], when he opposed socialism with 
>self-reliance, clearly anticipated his dislike of President Franklin Roosevelt.
>
>"... in 1927, after one of the most notorious 
>trials of the decade, Frost had defended what all 
>liberals considered to be the unjust execution of 
>the Italian Anarchists Sacco and 
>Vanzetti.  Arguing illogically and speciously 
>that they deserved to be killed for merely 
>planning a crime , even if they did not actually 
>commit one, ... [he said:] 'I have no sympathy 
>with them.  They may not have been guilty of the 
>specific crime [murder] with which they were 
>charged; but it was just as well.  They intended 
>to commit some similar crime, carrying firearms 
>to do it.'  By the time Roosevelt began to 
>implement the New Deal in the 1930s, Frost had 
>become a rock-ribbed Vermont Republican, strongly 
>opposed to a minimum wage, labor union 
>legislation, Social Security and medical insurance. ...
>
>"Frost said he wanted not a New Deal, but a New 
>Deck, and referred to the Popular Fron, a 
>coalition of Left-wing parties opposed to 
>Fascism, as the 'Popular Behind.'  He believed 
>that Socialism, which took money from those who 
>worked and gave it to idlers, was theft.  He 
>mocked welfare planners who felt social problems 
>could be cured by legislation, and thought that 
>in a homogenized society the cream would never 
>rise to the top.  A Social Darwinist who believed 
>the strongest should prevail in the struggle for 
>existence, he argued that man's first duty was to 
>protect himself:  'I discovered from [Edward] 
>Bellamy that socialism is everybody looking after 
>Number Two.  My criticism was the same then as 
>now; just as conservative.  It's harder to look 
>after Number Two than Number One, for how do you know what Number Two wants?'
>
>"Instead of restraining Frost's extreme 
>tendencies, as she did with other aspects of his 
>life. [his wife] Elinor actually encouraged his 
>conservative beliefs.  Van Wyck Brooks recorded 
>that Elinor hated Roosevelt for stealing their 
>hard-earned money and handing it out to the 
>unemployed workers of the cities.  [Frost 
>biographer Robert] Newdick stated that the 
>usually mild and unassertive Elinor was rabid on 
>the subject of the New Deal and 'hated FDR.  A 
>passion with her.  She said she would kill him, if she had the strength.'
>
>"... In October 1930 he [Frost] frankly told a 
>younger poet that he was a selfish artist and 
>would not give a cent to see the world made 
>better.  He wanted the world to stay the way it 
>was, like all conservatives, so he could continue to write poetry about it."
>
>
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