1 Content Introduction

 
 
 

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Chapter I. Lyrical tropes in the poetry of R. Frost 
1.1 Reflection of the author's life in his poetry 
 
Robert Frost (1874-1963) is considered the number one poet in the United 
States for the entire 20th century (as for the 19th century - Walt Whitman), and this 
indisputable fact of a foreign reader is somewhat puzzling. Especially since 
American poetry of the ending century is rich in stars of the first and second 
magnitude: Ezra Pound , Thomas Stearns Eliot, Hart Crane , E.E. Cummings , 
Wystan Hugh Auden, Edgar L and Masters, the illustrious galaxy of the so-called 
"southern school", and many, many others. And with all this abundance and 
splendor, it is Frost who is reputed to be the only national poet . By the way, 
Joseph Brodsky considered him his favorite poet (albeit, naming other names on 
occasion). But perhaps even more impressive is the tribute paid to Frost by V. V. 
Nabokov, who was extremely jealous of other people's fame, especially poetic one. 
The poem from the novel Pale Flame, written in English, clearly goes back to Frost 
and is permeated with the desire to outdo the famous American, to beat him, so to 
speak, "away" ... True, this plan of Nabokov cannot be considered a success (and 
by and large - and understood by contemporaries ), and V.V. Nabokov himself was 
not a truly great poet either in English poetry or in Russian, but they are not jealous 
of mediocrity, and Nabokov was undoubtedly jealous of Frost . Meanwhile, the 
greatness of Frost's poems is not immediately revealed to the reader: the poet, at 
first glance, is simple, but with a more in-depth reading, on the contrary, it turns 
out to be too complex, not to say dark
1
. 
He was usually seen as a poet of the countryside, of the countryside - a blunt 
wit in the folk spirit, an old gentleman farmer, with a generally positive outlook on 
the world. In short, as American as apple pie. To tell the truth, he contributed 
greatly to this, creating just such an image in numerous public speeches and 
interviews throughout his career. I suppose it was not too difficult for him, because 
1
"Robert Frost". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 18 February 2015. 

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these properties were also inherent in him. He was indeed an American poet in his 
very essence, but we have to find out what this essence consists of and what the 
term "American" means in relation to poetry and, perhaps, in general. 
Frost's personal life was also meager, although dramatic in its own way . A 
few important and almost always tragic events (difficult courtship of a future wife, 
suicide attempt after her first refusal, death of her first child) are played out in 
verse many times. And at the same time, the complete absence of love lyrics in the 
traditional sense of the word is striking - at least in youth. Probably, Frost’s late 
love for his long-term assistant and secretary was also dramatic (of course, after 
the death of his wife after thirty years of marriage; Frost was a man of strict rules): 
having rejected the poet’s courtship, or rather, refusing to part with her husband for 
the sake of the marriage proposed by him, she was friends with the poet and 
worked for him until his death. 
Frost did not participate in the world wars, was neither a drunkard nor a drug 
addict, he lived in solitude, which he perceived as desertion and which, apparently, 
was not burdened at all. Curious psychological _ stroke - Frost never wrote poems 
in fresh wake as a direct emotional response to this or that event, but only after a 
long - sometimes many years - pause, giving the feeling (or feelings) to distill and 
settle. 
Frost published his first book in England, became famous in America; for 
decades, his poems and himself were perceived on both sides of the ocean in 
completely different ways. For the British, he was a late, perhaps the last romantic, 
for the Americans - a realist, faithful to the "truth of life" - from specific features of 
the landscape to recognizable characters. There was some justification for both 
approaches, although both now seem simplistic. 
Frost should be recognized as an existentialist poet (or stoic poet, which, by 
the way, means about the same thing), who found a vaguely atheistic (or 
pantheistic) key to overcoming the horror of being. At the same time, dualism is 
inherent in Frost's work - not only philosophical, but also formal. And it is worth 
dwelling on this formal dualism in an attempt to link it with philosophical dualism. 

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