Frost, Robert

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco (California), in the family of the journalist William Prescott Frost Jr. and the Scottish immigrant Isabelle Moody ^[7] . He got his name in honor of Robert Lee , Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Army during the Civil War . His father was a descendant of Nicholas Frost from Tiverton (England), who sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 at Wolfran. Frost was a descendant of Samuel Appleton, one of the first settlers of Ipswich (Massachusetts), and Rev. George Phillips, one of the first settlers of Watertown (Massachusetts) ^[8] .

Frost's father was a teacher and then editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin in San Francisco (who later teamed up with The San Francisco Examiner ) and an unsuccessful candidate for a tax collector in the city. After his father died of tuberculosis (May 5, 1885), leaving the family only eight dollars. The family moved to Lawrence (Massachusetts), where she lived under the patronage of Robert's grandfather, William Frost Sr., who was the overseer of a factory in New England. Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892. ^[9] Frost's mother joined the Swedenborgian Church and baptized him in her, but he left her as an adult.

Frost grew up in the city, although it is known for its connection with rural life. He published his first poem in the journal of his high school. He attended Dartmouth College for two months, where he was admitted to the fraternity of Theta Delta Chi. Frost returned home to teach and work, as well as helping his mother teach in the class of naughty boys, deliver newspapers and work in a coal arc lamp service factory. Frost did not like this work, he felt that his true calling was poetry.

In 1895, he married classmate Elinor White, a year earlier he published the first selection of poems. For some time he worked as a school teacher and a farmer . In the years 1897-99. attended Harvard University . Of the six children, Robert and Elinor, two died in infancy. Numerous losses that he had to face in his youth predetermined the stoic pessimism of the Frost worldview.

In 1900, Frost's mother died of cancer. In 1920, he had to send his younger sister Gini to a psychiatric hospital, where she died nine years later. A mental illness apparently arose in the Frost family, as he and his mother suffered from depression, and his daughter Irma was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 1947. Frost's wife, Elinor, also had bouts of depression ^[10] .

Eleanor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliot (1896-1900, died of cholera); daughter Leslie Frost Ballantyne (1899-1983); Carol's son (1902-1940, committed suicide); daughter Irma (1903-1967); daughter Marjorie (1905-1934, died after childbirth as a result of postpartum fever); and daughter Elinor Bettina (she died three days after her birth in 1907). Only Leslie and Irma survived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout her life, developed breast cancer in 1937, and she died of heart failure in 1938 ^[10] .

The first decade of the 20th century, the Frost family spent in a very constrained financial situation on a farm in New Hampshire . In the USA, his poems did not find a publisher, so on the threshold of his fortieth anniversary, Frost made a difficult decision - to sell the farm and start his literary career again in London , where he left for August 1912. There, with the assistance of Ezra Pound, he managed to publish (in 1913) the first poem collection A Boy's Will , in which the influence of Wordsworth and Robert Browning is felt.

Throughout his career, the rural realities of New England remained the outer canvas of Frost's poems. The poet draws residents of the countryside for everyday activities, which in his interpretation acquire a deep philosophical content ("Mowing"). His favorite lyric hero is a New Hampshire farmer. All these features are fully manifested in the second collection of North of Boston (1914), many of which poems have become textbooks and must be studied in American schools (eg, Mending Wall).

After the outbreak of World War I, Frost returned to New Hampshire, where he acquired a new farm, which, however, did not bring him profit. His fame at home gradually grew, and in 1923 his fourth book, New Hampshire (New Hampshire), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. It includes lengthy story poems "Wives of Paul", "Witches from the Scythe" and more lapidary and graceful meditative lyrics. Orientation to philosophical and refined psychologism is distinguished by "Blue places", "Fire and ice", "All golden shaky." The verses of those years indirectly reflected Frost's study of ancient Greek tragedians, especially Euripides . The US national poet spent the rest of his life living on campuses at various New England universities, often as a visiting lecturer.

In adulthood, Frost often turns to the form of a sonnet ; the motives of hopeless loneliness and alienation (“Acquainted with the Night”) come to the fore. Poems of late Frost are saturated with metaphysical subtext (“Directive”) and direct biblical allusions (“Never Again Would Birds' Song Be The Same”).

“In the mass cultural consciousness, Frost quickly turned into a kind wise grandfather, almost a singer of farm labor” ^[11] . He was marked with many distinctions, and in 1961 the poet was invited to read his poem, “Gift Forever” ( English The Gift Outright, 1942 ) at the inauguration ceremony of President John F. Kennedy .

The poet’s last poetry collection, “In the Clearing,” appeared in 1962. In the same year, Frost visited the USSR , where he met with Anna Akhmatova , and she read him her new poem, The Last Rose, with an epigraph from I. Brodsky . ^[12]

A feature of Frost's poetic manner is that episodes of daily human activity invariably receive from him a multilayered philosophical and metaphysical interpretation ("After Apple-Picking", "Birches"). Continuing the Browning tradition of a dramatic monologue, Frost introduces poetic dialogues filled with conversational intonations and subtle psychologism (“The Black Cottage”, “Home Burial” - the subject of Brodsky's essay).

The main part of the poet’s heritage plays with the theme of man’s relationship with eternal nature, which appears to Frost as fundamentally incomprehensible and alien to man, and often poses an immanent threat (“ Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening ” - the most textbook poem of American poetry of the 20th century). The results of human activity are lost in the infinity and meaninglessness of the world (“The Wood-Pile”, “The Most of It”).

Among the admirers of his talent are Vladimir Nabokov , Jorge Luis Borges , Joseph Brodsky . The latter, in his Nobel lecture, called Frost one of the five poets who most influenced his work.

• Of nine books. - M .: Publishing house of foreign countries. literature, 1963
• Poems. - M .: Rainbow, 1986
• Selected Lyrics / Transl. M. Zenkevich and A. Ya. Sergeev . - M .: Young Guard, 1968. - 48 p., 100,000 copies.
• Unselected road / Comp., Foreword. and note. V. L. Toporova ; per. from English N. M. Gol , M. A. Zenkevich , V. L. Toporov and others. - SPb. : LLC “Crystal Publishing House”, 2000. - 416 p. - (Library of world literature. Small series). - 10,000 copies. - ISBN 5-8191-0094-8 .
• Another way: Poems. / Compilation, translation, foreword by G. Kruzhkov . - M .: ARGO-RISK; Progress, 1999. - In English. lang with parallel rus. text.

• Ma I. S. A critical reading of the philosophical poems of Robert Frost // Transactions of the Far Eastern State Technical University. 2007. No. 147. S. 198-200.
• Pritchard, William H. Frost's Life and Career (Neopr.) (Http) (2000). Date of treatment March 18, 2001.
• Taylor, Welford Dunaway. Robert Frost and JJ Lankes: Riders on Pegasus. - Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Library, 1996.
• Burlington Free Press , January 8, 2008. Article: Vandalized Frost house drew a crowd.
• Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays . 10/1995 Library of America. Robert Frost. Edited by Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson. Trade ISBN 1-883011-06-X . Robert Frost Biographical Information