3. My November Guest / A Boy's Will(1913) - Robert Frost

3. My November Guest

He is in love with being misunderstood.

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist. 

worsted : 1.  [불가산] 소모사(梳毛絲). 2. 우스티드, 소모직물.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

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십일월 손님

여기 나와 함께 있을 때면, 나의 슬픔은

가을비 내리는 이 어두운 날들이

더할 수 없이 아름답다고 생각한다.

그녀는 앙상하게 시들은 나무를 사랑한다.

그리고 비에 젖은 목장 길을 걷는다. 

그녀가 좋아하니 나도 덩달아 그 길을 걷는다.

그녀는 말하고 나는 쫑긋 귀를 세운다.

그녀는 새들이 사라져버린 것이 기쁘고,

그녀의 회색빛 맨머리에 안개가 매달려

이제는 은빛인 것이 기쁘다. 

황량한, 버려진 나무들,

시들은 땅, 무거운 하늘,

그녀가 진실로 본 아름다움들이다.

그녀는 내가 이것들을 보는 눈이 없다고 생각하고,

이유가 무엇이냐며 나를 괴롭힌다. 

눈이 내리기 전의

앙상한 십일월의 날들을

사랑하게 된 것은 어제가 아니었지만,

그렇게 말해 보았자 무익할 것이니,

그녀가 칭송하는 게 더 좋은 날들이기 때문이다.  

-신재실 옮김- 

단상(斷想): “슬픔”은 황량한 가을의 자화상인가? 지나간 봄의 파릇한 잎과 아름다운 꽃, 여름의 짙은 녹음과 영글어 가던 열매들이 아직은 부부의 가슴에 어른거리지 않는가? 그렇지만 부득부득 다가오는 겨울 앞에서 황량한 11월인들 사랑하지 않을 수 있겠는가? 아직 겨울은 아니지 않은가? 십일월의 나무, 땅, 그리고 하늘은 봄과 여름에 이어 이제는 가을도 떠나야 하는 엄연한 사실을 들이민다.​이런 늦가을 풍경은 마음을 짓누르지만, 기나긴 세월을 달리고 달려서 이제는 겨울의 문턱에 선 고달픈 주자(走者)의 모습이이기에, 그녀는 오히려 아름답다고 생각한다. 이런 아내의 태도에 남편은 내심 기뻐한다. 그가 먼저 토로하지는 않았지만, 그 역시 이미 터득한 생명의 순리가 아닌가?  -신재실 씀-

출처 : http://blog.naver.com/PostList.nhn?from=postList&blogId=js9660&categoryNo=31¤tPage=66

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This poem, “My November Guest”,  is taken from A Boy’s Will, the first published volume of Frost’s poetry (1913). This is among the best of Robert Frost’s poems where he speaks of the Fall in rural New Hampshire.

The poet at some point of time must have experienced extreme pain and sorrow in the month of November. There is an air of familiarity created by the poet and he and his guest have walked and talked along the ‘sodden pasture lane’.   Sorrow is personified as a woman – a friend, companion, and she is considered a regular visitor and ‘a guest’ in the poem.  He is very comfortable in her company and doesn’t wish to be separated from her – ‘She talks and I am fain to list’.  She is dressed for the weather – that time of year in New England before the first snows of winter – wearing ‘simple worsted grey’.

As the poem commences, Sorrow is personified as a woman and someone whom the poet dearly loves.  In the very first line, “My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,” marks the peak of the poet’s togetherness with sorrow.

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;

Walking with the poet, she (Sorrow) speaks of the beautiful Autumn days, finds ecstasy in the withered trees, and the autumnal browns! Fall is a season marked with desolate earth, deserted trees, the sodden pasture lane and the departure of the birds. The poet’s Sorrow finds beauty in the Autumn days. She reprimands the poet for not being able to experience the joy in Autumn and asks for an explanation. The phrase “Simple worsted grey is silver now with clinging mist” reflects the mood of the poem, the coexistence of joy and sorrow.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise

In the first three stanzas the poet is forced to listen to his ‘guest’ extol the virtues of Autumn, ‘the dark days of autumn rain’ and she seems convinced that he has ‘no eye for’ the beauty that surrounds him at this time of year.  Those of us familiar with the poetry of Frost know this to be false and we know that he does appreciate these beauties.  However, the constant repetition of ‘She’ creates a sense of easy familiarity with his guest, ‘She walks’, ‘She talks’, ‘She thinks, ‘She’s glad’ and, therefore,  out of respect or deference, he doesn’t make any effort to correct his companion, for ‘they are better for her praise’.  In actual fact, it was not just yesterday that he discovered this fact, he has known it for many a long day:

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

The poem is lucid, characterized by a tone which is musical – is written in iambic tetrameter. The poem expresses the poet’s love for November days in an extremely original way. The poet seems to happily embrace the November Guest (Sorrow) and seems to enjoy her company.  The pictorial imagery in the poem is easy, vivid, simple, and rich.

The intriguing question here is, of course, who, if anyone, is being referred to when he speaks of ‘My Sorrow’?   Maybe ‘Sorrow’ represents someone close to him, his wife perhaps, who despite her closeness to him fails to recognise that he too finds November beautiful.  In a famous letter written by Frost in 1939 to his daughter, Lesley, he refers to a letter written by his wife Elinor to their children:

“My, my, what sorrow runs through all she wrote to you children.  No wonder something of it overcasts my poetry if read aright.  No matter how humorous I am, I am sad.  I am a jester about sorrow.  She coloured my thinking from the first just as at the last she troubled my politics.  It was no loss but a gain of course.  She was not as original as me in thought but she dominated my art with the power of her character and nature” (Latham : 397-8).

If we are to assume – and this is dangerous ground – that the speaker is Frost himself then we can sieve through biographical details for clues as to the identity of this Sorrow.  Any such survey, however, will show that Frost’s personal life was plagued by grief and sorrow and loss.  By the time this poem was published in 1913 Frost had buried two of his children: his son Elliot died of cholera in 1900 aged four and his daughter Elinor Bettina died just three days after her birth in 1907.  His mother who had cancer had also passed away – coincidentally in November 1910!  Maybe it is one of these losses that caused Frost such sorrow?

However, Frost’s life, even after the publication of A Boy’s Will in 1913, continued to be plagued with sorrow and heartache. In 1920, he had to commit his younger sister Jeanie to a mental hospital, where she died nine years later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost’s family, as both he and his mother suffered from depression, and his daughter Irma was committed to a mental hospital in 1947. Frost’s wife, Elinor, also experienced bouts of depression.   She also suffered from heart problems throughout her life.  She developed breast cancer in 1937 and eventually died of heart failure in 1938.  His son Carol, born in 1902, committed suicide in 1940.

In my view, it is highly unlikely that any of these tragic biographical events formed the basis for this poem – although the loss of his mother in November 1900 may indeed have been a catalyst.  While this literary detective work may have some foundation, I am more inclined to believe that the ‘Sorrow’ in question here may be simply a melancholic mood that comes over the poet during the long month of November, a sense of resignation that Winter is at last upon him.  He tells us that Sorrow’s visit is only a temporary visitation and that it is hugely influenced by the bleakness of nature and the greyness of the weather.  However, the poet owns this blue mood that comes over him during November.  He says it’s ‘My Sorrow’ and it has come to visit annually during November. Indeed, November and Thanksgiving are synonymous and Frost sees the bright side here:  Sorrow teaches him how to appreciate Nature at this time of the year and he is a willing student.

The poem is living proof of that old saying, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and that at this time of year these ‘dark days’ hold their own beauty: ‘the withered tree’, ‘the sodden pasture’, ‘the clinging mist’ evoke a powerful and distinctive feeling or emotional memory in the poet.  Even his ‘Guest’ chides him that he cannot see that even in November every cloud has a silver lining!

Frost’s world, the world we perceive in his poetry, is largely a rural world, a world of nature and trees, and soil, and pasture.  His poetry, like that of Kavanagh, Heaney, and others, recreates a local and familiar landscape in which Frost, as a poet and as a person, is in communion.  We sense that he knows nature’s spaces.  We believe that his is a voice of integrity that invites us into fields and pastures and along the brooks of New England.  And we occasionally feel that along the way, we may even discover something of Frost himself.

Works Cited

Latham, Edward, ed., Robert Frost: A Biography, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981.

Wikipedia page on Robert Frost

"My November Guest”,  is taken from A Boy’s Will, the first published volume of Frost’s poetry (1913).  Here it is read by the poet himself.

FURTHER READING:

For a more detailed analysis of Robert Frost’s poetry see here

For commentary on ‘Spring Pool’ by Robert Frost check here

For commentary on ‘A Tuft of Flowers’ by Robert Frost check here

Check out some reflections on Robert Frost’s ‘The Road not Taken’ here

출처 : https://vinhanley.com/2018/11/25/my-november-guest-by-robert-frost/

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“My November Guest” (1913)

Mark Richardson explains that in this lyric

we hear Frost’s own distinctive voice blending 
with the voice of the Tennysonian-Swinburnian 
[Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) and Alger

non Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)] strain he 
was even then setting himself against; here, the 
‘pillar’ revolves pretty much unbroken, as Frost 
carries something down from the cloud of all 
those other poets while drawing up something 
of his life lived outside of books. (109)

Appearing with the gloss “He is in love with being 
misunderstood,” in Frost’s first collection, A Boy’s 
Will, this third poem of the collection owes much to 
Frost’s predecessors, as Richardson notes. It is con

cerned with themes that are found elsewhere in 
Frost, however. John H. Timmerman, for example, 
calls the poem a companion to “Ghost House” in 
both form and content, since both are written in 
iambic tetrameter and five-line stanzas and address 
feelings of separation and loneliness (25).

The speaker’s feminine “November guest” is his 
sorrow. Some critics have taken this sorrow to be a 
lover, but there seems apt room for speculation 
about a reading of this as a courtship poem. Sorrow 
here is arguably a personification of a mood and an 
emblem. As nature moves from autumn into win

ter, the trees become barren, the singing birds fly 
south, and the sky is overcome with gray. Sorrow 
finds beauty in November, but the speaker initially 
focuses on the negative aspects of autumn. The 
poem seems also to be a complex interior mono

logue wherein the speaker does not want to admit 
that there is beauty in the barren landscape, as he 
would do so in vain. He loves it despite the deso

late imagery, but he refrains from focusing on the 
positive aspects in order to hear sorrow sing its 
praises. There is a part of him that cannot help but 
recognize his own sorrow and mourning at the pass

ing seasons; this is the Sorrow with which he finds 
himself in conflict.

The poem was first published in the November 
1912 issue of the Forum.

FURTHER READING
Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The 
Poet and His Poetics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Illi

nois Press, 1997, 106–108.
Timmerman, John H. Robert Frost: The Ethics of Ambi

guity. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 
2002, 23–26.

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