Saturday, August 11, 2007

Gregarious loner ...

Jay Parini on Robert Frost: Biographer's Confession. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

It is easy to look at "For Once, Then, Something" or "Design" and imagine that Frost scorned religious faith; but even those poems are cannily made to keep the "wrong" people from understanding exactly what he thought and felt about some things (as he suggests in "Directive"). Doubt is an integral part of genuine faith, and Frost explored the theology of doubt with astounding honesty and passion. But his many doubts never added up to a denial of basic things of the spirit, since spirit was a vital part of his dualism, along with matter. As he wrote to Louis Untermeyer early in their friendship, "I discovered that do or say my damdest [sic] I can't be other than orthodox in politics, love, and religion: I can't escape salvation."

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