1. The Road Not Taken / Mountain Interval(1916) - Robert Frost

1. The Road Not Taken / Mountain Interval(1916) - Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

undergrowth : 덤불, 나무그늘의

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

(Oh, I marked the first for another day!)

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I―

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 

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가지 않은 길  

노란 숲속에 두 길이 갈라져 있었다.

두 길을 다 가보는 한 나그네 될 수 없기에,

나는 유감스레 오래 서서 두 길 중 하나를

가능한 한 멀리까지 내려다보았지만,

덤불숲에 굽어든 곳까지로 그만이었다.  

그다음 다른 쪽 길을 택했다. 못잖게 아름답고,

풀이 우거지고 발자국이 보이지 않기 때문에,

어쩌면 더 매력 있어 보였을 것이다.

하기야 사람들이 지나다닌 것으로 말하면

두 길은 사실 거의 같은 정도의 발자국이 있었다.

더구나 그날 아침에는 두 길 똑같이

아무도 밟지 않은 낙엽에 고이 덮이었다.

아, 나는 첫째 길은 후일을 기약했다!

하지만 길은 길로 이어짐을 알았기에,

나는 다시 돌아오리라고는 생각하지 않았다.

나는 먼 훗날 어딘가에서

한숨 쉬며 이렇게 말하리라,

숲속에 두 길이 갈라져 있었다. 나는―

나는 덜 다닌 길을 택했다.

그랬더니 큰 차이가 있었다.  

-신재실 옮김- 

단상(斷想): 프로스트는 자연에서 사회적 실존에 적합한 언어를 찾는다. 이 시는 표면적으로는 등산길의 선택의 문제를 이야기하는 같다. 하지만 가지 못한 길이 등산길로 그친다면, 가지 못한 그 길이 과연 먼 훗날 한숨 쉬며 아쉬워 할 만큼 중대한 길일까? 숲속의 두 길이라면 오늘 한 길을 가보고, 다음 기회에 나머지 다른 길을 갈 수 있지 않을까?

화자가 못내 아쉬워하는 것은 실상 다 가보지 못한 가을 숲속의 두 길이 아니다. 봄-여름-가을-겨울로 이어지는 인생의 여정을 숨 가쁘게 달려오다 보니, 어느새 성큼 다가온 겨울 앞에 서있는 사람의 회고 아닐까? 선택에서 선택으로 이어지는 인생의 여정은 단순한 등산길과 달리 되돌아가 다시 선택할 수 없는 길이다. 인생은 한 번밖에 갈 수 없는 1회성 길이지만, 숲속의 갈래 길처럼 “갈림길”이 있을 뿐이다.

우리는 모두 햇빛 쏟아지는 아치에 도달하기를 바란다. 하지만 각자가 그리는 아치의 형상은 각자의 소망, 능력, 의지, 노력 등에 따라 서로 다를 것이고, 그곳에 도달하는 길도 서로 다를 것이다. 하나의 정답이 있는 것은 아니다. 길은 길로 이어지기 때문에, 어느 길을 택하던 다른 길을 택한 경우와는 큰 차이를 가져올 것이다.

“덜 다닌 길”은 인생길의 선택에 있어 한 가지 기준일 뿐이다. 일상에서 어떤 변화와 발전을 구하려는 자는 누구나 어떤 가능성을 염두에 두고 길을 선택할 것이다. 결국 아치에 다다르는 길이라면, 어떤 길이 다른 길보다 더 좋거나 나쁜 것은 아닐 것이다. 다만 자기에게 맞는 길을 발견하기란 결코 쉽지 않을 뿐이다. 모두가 비슷비슷하게 좋아 보이기 때문이다.

그러기에 “가능한 멀리 내려다보았다,”라든가 “나는―/ 나는” 이란 구절들이 암시하듯이, 한 발짝도 내다 볼 수 없는 제한된 눈이지만, 그런대로 앞을 내다보며 심사숙고한 끝에 어떤 선택을 할 수 밖에 없는 것이다. 하지만 여전히 가지 않은 길들이 우리 앞에 많이 놓여있다는 것은 하나의 축복이 아니겠는가?

“우리는 과거의 전례(前例)만을 가지고 인간이 무엇을 할 수 있고 없고를 판단해서는 안 되니, 지금까지 인간이 시도한 것이 너무 적기 때문이다. … 우리는 이것이 유일한 길이라고 말한다. 그러나 하나의 중심을 기점으로 그릴 수 있는 반지름의 수만큼이나 많은 길이 있다.” (소로 지음, 신재실 옮김 『월든』삼협종합: 2012, 113-4쪽) 

-신재실 씀- 

출처 : http://blog.naver.com/PostList.nhn?from=postList&blogId=js9660&categoryNo=31¤tPage=58

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“The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows”—that prophetic line from “Mowing”—is one of the most mysterious and most poignant lines in all poetry. It was the signal to himself that Frost had found resources in the facts of American life and in the sweetness of American language that would enlarge and deepen the poetry written in America thereafter, and therefore eventually deepen Americans’ understanding of themselves. Although Frost had already begun to make his name by the time he returned from old England to New England in February 1915, by the time he got home he already had a considerable part of a third book written, including two poems called “Birches” and “The Road Not Taken.” These two unforgettable poems, along with another called “The Sound of Trees,” were published in The Atlantic Monthly in August 1915, along with a powerful appreciation of Frost’s poetry by the English critic and editor Edward Garnett, the same foresighted eval‎‎uator who had encouraged the early creativity of Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence, and whose wife, Con-stance, had translated Tolstoy and Dostoevsky into English. Garnett knew a classic writer when he read one. Mountain Interval, published promptly in America in 1916, would enlarge on the lyricism of A Boy’s Will. It comprised not only poems like “Birches” and “The Road Not Taken,” but “The Oven Bird,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” and the horrifying “Out, Out—”. Mountain Interval also contained some of Frost’s most poignant upland poems, such as “Snow” and “The Hill Wife”—poems that deal plainly with the oddities and remoteness of country people.

Frost is one of the great poets of loneliness, especially the loneliness of women. In his first three volumes, he cast back in memory to the late years of the ninetenth century, years when New England’s country primacy had been drained away by our westward migration to moreertile soils. Frost had stayed east with his family on a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, and had discovered, by the ways of talking that his New Hampshire neighbors used, something of what had been left behind in loneliness when America moved toward its manifest destiny across the Great Plains. Unfortunately, Mountain Interval did not meet with the acclaim that had welcomed North of Boston. Having exhausted his savings and his nerve, Frost was constrained to go back to his pre-England ways of supporting his family, a combination of teaching at Amherst College and a little farming in summers at Franconia, New Hampshire.

from "Robert Frost : A Life"

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youtu.be/vrBHd41YqTc

"In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles... with politicians and people slinging the word fear aroud, all of us become discouraged... tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life - it goes on. It always has. It always will Don't forget that. Robert Frost (American Poet 1894 - 1963)

youtu.be/tfEGM6ImWtE

youtu.be/CSxjxhrwg5s

youtu.be/Ze-KY_sCXfI

youtu.be/2kFWSmXflBU

youtu.be/ebfcZTl-uys

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“Road Not Taken, The”  (1916)

After being named poet laureate in 1997, Robert 
Pinsky took a year-long poll to determine who was 
America’s favorite poet. With more than 18,000 
votes cast, from participants aged five to 97, Frost 
came out on top. When participants were asked 
which poems they most liked to read, they most 
often cited “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping 
by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

One of Frost’s best-known poems, opening his 
third book, Mountain Interval, “The Road Not 
Taken” was first published in the August 1915 issue 
of the Atlantic Monthly. While Pinsky’s poll demon

strates the poem’s broad appeal, that appeal is at 
least partly due to its being most often read by peo

ple who do not read it closely enough to discover its 
complexities or who quickly dismiss those complexi

ties in favor of the trite paraphrases that come to 
mind when people are asked what the poem might 
be “about.” Many attempt answers such as “taking a 
different road from that of the masses” or “being an 
individual” or “finding one’s own road in life.” And 
while none of these answers would be altogether 
incorrect, they all reduce the subtle complexities of 
the poem to platitudes.

Part of what accounts for the popularity of “The 
Road Not Taken” is that Frost, until the latter half 
of the twentieth century, was viewed as a nature 
poet, in the purest NEW ENGLAND sense. But begin

ning with Randall Jarrell and continuing through 
Lionel Trilling, Roberts W. French, and others, the 
dark side of Frost or the “other” Frost, as Jarrell 
phrased it, has been given much attention. It has 
become clear that to know Frost is to apprehend 
the darkness in his poems as well as the light, and 
this darkness is evident in “The Road Not Taken” 
when it is read closely.

There is some biographical support for a cursory 
reading of the poem. Frost wrote a portion of the 
poem while in Gloucestershire, ENGLAND. Law

rance Thompson writes that Frost had said to his 
friend Edward Thomas after “one of their best 
flower-gathering walks” that “No matter which 
road you take, you’ll always sigh, and wish you’d 
taken another” (88). When Frost completed the 
poem, he sent a copy to Thomas as a letter, without 
comment. Thomas called the poem “staggering” in 
his response, explaining that “the word ‘staggering’ 
. . . did no more than express (or conceal) the fact 
that the simple words and unemphatic rhythms 

were not such as [he] was accustomed to expect 
great things, things [he] like[d], from.” Thomas 
said it “staggered [him] to think that perhaps [he] 
had always missed what made poetry poetry if it 
was here. [He] wanted to think it was here” (Spen

cer, 62).

The poem begins, “Two roads diverged in a yel

low wood.” The speaker is out for an autumn walk 
and is confronted with two paths. He cannot take 
both, so he looks down one as far as he can to 
where it “ben[ds] in the undergrowth,” hoping to 
determine which road might be better to take. He 
decides on “the other,” which is described as just as 
“fair” and as “grassy and wanting wear.” The 
speaker imagines the other road might have the 
“better claim” on him, as it has not been often 
traveled.

The first contradiction of this seemingly simple 
poem occurs in the latter half of stanza two, when 
the speaker reveals that “Though as for that the 
passing there / Had worn them really about the 
same.” The roads, then, are not worn differently, as 
the speaker first suggests; rather, they have both 
been traveled (or not), and the grass of both has 
either been beaten down or untouched. Just how 
“worn” they are is unclear. In fact, stanza three 
reveals that “both that morning equally lay / In 
leaves no step had trodden black.” At this point, 
the first image of a grassy path is juxtaposed with a 
path of fresh leaves that has not yet been blackened 
by steps. That each path earlier that day “equally 
lay” suggests that the paths themselves have always 
been “equal,” with neither more worn than the 
other. That morning neither path had been trav

eled, making the chronology of the poem somehow 
miss a step. If they were both untouched that morn

ing, then there is a hint that at least one is no lon

ger untouched. Frost will confirm‎ this at the end of 
the poem.

The traveler decides that he will keep one road 
for another day, but “knowing how way leads on to 
way” is aware that one decision leads to another 
and another and that he will never be faced with 
this same decision again. Because of this awareness, 
he doubts that he will “ever come back.” He imag

ines that some day he will tell this story with a 
“sigh,” whether of regret or satisfaction is unclear. 
The choice of “sigh” establishes the uncertainty of 
interpretations. Will he be disappointed that he 
could not take both roads, disappointed in the road 
he took, or altogether satisfied?

Although the traveler took the road “less trav

eled by,” it remains unclear at the end of the poem 
which one that was. He claims it “has made all the 
difference,” but it is clear that either road would 
have made all the difference. In the end the differ

ence appears to have nothing to do with which 
road is chosen, as each would have had an impact 
on the traveler’s life. Also, the question of equality 
has little to do with the roads themselves. The 
speaker knows he will sigh, perhaps because he 
cannot make all decisions or do all things, and that 
there are limitations to his choices, but he will not 
know what sort of sigh he will emit until he reaches 
the end of this road, his road.

The poem is not just about individuality, as one 
might suppose; instead it is about an individual’s 
choices and experiences. While the road is often 
read as the focus of the poem, it is the speaker’s per

spective that is at its center. The complexities lie in 
how he views the roads. At first one seems grassy 
and lacking wear, but then the speaker catches 
 himself and says that in actuality they were worn 
essentially the same. He could not see past the 
undergrowth of one, “Though as for that the pass

ing there / Had worn them really about the same.” 
Whether fresh or trodden, the roads are now equal. 
Either they are equally configured or it is not they 
that are equal but the possibility that they hold for 
travel that is equal. After all, any value placed on 
one road over the other has only to do with the 
speaker’s recollection and interpretation.

The road is valuable because the traveler took 
it; it has no value in and of itself. And yet the title 
is about a road that was not taken. It could be 
about the road that, prior to his taking it, had not 
been taken. But if the sigh at the end of the poem is 
one of regret, or simply weariness, then perhaps the 
title is about the road the speaker did not choose, 
rather than about the one he took. The question 
remains whether it is a sigh over the road that had 
not been taken before he took it or over the road 
he did not take. This, like all else in the poem, is 
intentionally ambiguous.

The poem is celebrated at least partly because it 
can be easily reduced to an adage, but it is among 
Frost’s best, most riveting, and most complex. It is 
an epic work in its ambiguity and seeming simplic

ity. The roads do not intertwine, but the language 
does until the reader is lost in that autumn yellow 
wood, wondering if neither road was traveled or if 
both were. The “I” of “I took the one less traveled 
by” makes all the difference, as the repetition of the 
first person throughout emphasizes.

The poem moves from a story about a walk in 
autumn to a story about the traveler himself. Soon 
it is not about the season or the road. Frost once 
denied being a nature poet, saying that he must not 
be one since he had written only two poems with

out a human being in them, and this is a particu

larly important point to keep in mind in the reading 
of this poem.

The human condition is that we can travel only 
one road at a time. What makes all the difference 
in the end, we are left to ponder. And what differ

ence it makes (to us, to nature, to the universe), we 
are also left to wonder. Frost purposefully leaves 
many of the questions raised by the poem unan

swered. Perhaps the sigh most of all indicates that 
it is not about taking both roads or about which 
road was taken but about having to choose only 
one. We will always sigh that we cannot take both 
roads, but the fact that we make the choice to do 
something at all is of ultimate importance. The rep

etition of “Two roads diverged” is the reminder of 
the opportunity to decide and to make a choice. As 
Mark Richardson writes, “Our paths unfold them

selves to us as we go. We realize our destination 
only when we arrive at it, though all along we were 
driven toward it by purposes we may rightly claim, 
in retrospect, as our own” (182).

A final consideration is the choice of the word 
“road.” Certainly a road might be defined as a 
course or a path, but it is also most often thought of 
as a public thoroughfare. That Frost selected “road” 
over “path” seems to complicate even further the 
reading of the poem. One imagines a road well 
traveled, and a path seldom traveled. Perhaps this 
is further support for reading the roads as having 
been equally worn to all but the speaker. It is “ages 
and ages hence,” and we can never know what 
made all the difference.

FURTHER READING
Faggen, Robert. Robert Frost and the Challenge of Dar

win. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 
1997, 269–273.
Finger, Larry. “Frost’s Reading of ‘The Road Not 
Taken,’ ” Robert Frost Review (Fall 1997): 73–76.
Fleissner, R. F. “Whose ‘Road Less Traveled By’? 
Frost’s Intent Once Again,” Robert Frost Review
(Fall 1999): 22–26.
Fowler, James. “Frost: The Poem Mistaken,” Publica

tions of the Arkansas Philological Association 23, no. 
1 (Spring 1997): 41–47.
French, Roberts W. “Robert Frost and the Darkness of 
Nature.” In Critical Essays on Robert Frost, edited 
by Philip L. Gerber, 155–162. Boston: G. K. Hall, 
1982.
George, William. “Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken,’ ” 
Explicator 49, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 230–232.
Hornedo, Florentino H. “All the Difference: Frost’s 
‘The Road Not Taken,’ ” Unitas: A Quarterly for the 
Arts and Sciences 75, no. 3 (September 2002): 
490–495.
Jarrell, Randall. “The ‘Other’ Frost.” In Poetry and the 
Age, 28. New York: Vintage, 1955.
Ketterer, David. “The Letter ‘Y’ in The Road Not 
Taken,’ ” Robert Frost Review (Fall 1997): 77–78.
Micelli, Pauline. “Frost Misread: The Road Not 
Taken,” Occident 103, no. 1 (1990): 275–278.
Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The 
Poet and His Poetics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Illi

nois Press, 1997, 181–183.
Savoie, John. “A Poet’s Quarrel: Jamesian Pragmatism 
and Frost’s ‘Road not Taken,’ ” New England Quar

terly 77, no. 1 (March 2004): 5–24.
Spencer, Matthew. Elected Friends: Robert Frost and 
Edward Thomas to One Another. New York: Hand

sel, 2003.
Timmerman, John H. Robert Frost: The Ethics of Ambi

guity. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 
2002, 69–73.
Thompson, Lawrance. Robert Frost: The Years of Tri

umph, 1915–1938. New York: Holt, Rinehart and 
Winston, 1970.

Trilling, Lionel. “A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cul

tural Episode,” Partisan Review 26 (1959): 
445–452.