6. The Ax-Helve / New Hampshire(1923) - Robert Frost

6. The Ax-Helve

I've known ere now an interfering branch

Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me.

But that was in the woods, to hold my hand

From striking at another alder's roots,

And that was, as I say, an alder branch.

This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day

Behind me on the snow in my own yard

Where I was working at the chopping block,

And cutting nothing not cut down already.

He caught my ax expertly on the rise,

When all my strength put forth was in his favor,

Held it a moment where it was, to calm me,

Then took it from me―and I let him take it.

I didn't know him well enough to know

What it was all about. There might be something

He had in mind to say to a bad neighbor

He might prefer to say to him disarmed.

But all he had to tell me in French-English

Was what he thought of―not me, but my ax,

Me only as I took my ax to heart.

It was the bad ax-helve someone had sold me―

"Made on machine," he said, plowing the grain

With a thick thumbnail to show how it ran

Across the handle's long-drawn serpentine,

Like the two strokes across a dollar sign.

"You give her one good crack, she's snap raght off.

Den where's your hax-ead flying t'rough de hair?"

Admitted; and yet, what was that to him?

"Come on my house and I put you one in

What's las' awhile―good hick'ry what's grow crooked,

De second growt' I cut myself―tough, tough!"

Something to sell? That wasn't how it sounded.

"Den when you say you come? It's cost you nothing.

Tonaght?"

               As well tonight as any night.

Beyond an over-warmth of kitchen stove

My welcome differed from no other welcome.

Baptiste knew best why I was where I was.

So long as he would leave enough unsaid,

I shouldn't mind his being overjoyed

(if overjoyed he was) at having got me

Where I must judge if what he knew about an ax

That not everybody else knew was to count

For nothing in the measure of a neighbor.

Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees,

A Frenchman couldn't get his human rating!

Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chair

That had as many motions as the world:

One back and forward, in and out of shadow,

That got her nowhere; one more gradual,

Sideways, that would have run her on the stove

In time, had she not realized her danger

And caught herself up bodily, chair and all,

And set herself back where she started from.

"She ain't spick too much Henglish―dat's too bad."

I was afraid, in brightening first on me,

Then on Baptiste, as if she understood

What passed between us, she was only feigning.

Baptiste was anxious for her; but no more

Than for himself, so placed he couldn't hope

To keep his bargain of the morning with me

In time to keep me from suspecting him

Of really never having meant to keep it.

Needlessly soon he had his ax-helves out,

A quiverful to choose from, since he wished me

To have the best he had, or had to spare―

Not for me to ask which, when what he took

Had beauties he had to point me out at length

To insure their not being wasted on me.

He liked to have it slender as a whipstock,

Free from the least knot, equal to the strain

Of bending like a sword across the knee.

He showed me that the lines of a good helve

Were native to the grain before the knife

Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves

Put on it from without. And there its strength lay

For the hard work. He chafed its long white body

From end to end with his rough hand shut round it.

He tried it at the eyehole in the ax-head.

"Hahn, hahn," he mused, "don't need much taking down."

Baptiste knew how to make a short job long

For love of it, and yet not waste time either.

Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge?

Baptiste on his defense about the children

He kept from school, or did his best to keep―

Whatever school and children and our doubts

Of laid-on education had to do

With the curves of his ax-helves and his having

Used these unscrupulously to bring me

To see for once the inside of his house.

Was I desired in friendship, partly as someone

To leave it to, whether the right to hold

Such doubts of education should depend

Upon the education of those who held them?

But now he brushed the shavings from his knee

And stood the ax there on its horse's hoof,

Erect, but not without its waves, as when

The snake stood up for evil in the Garden―

Top-heavy with a heaviness his short,

Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn down

And in a little―a French touch in that.

Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased:

"See how she's cock her head!"

-----

도끼자루

오리나무 가지가 내가 치켜든 도끼를

내 뒤에서 붙잡고 방해한 적이 있었다.

그러나 그것은 숲속이었고, 또 다른 오리나무의

뿌리를 내려치지 못하게 나의 손을 잡았던 것이며,

내 말대로, 그것은 오리나무 가지였다.

이번엔 사람으로, 뱁티스트였다. 그는 어느 날

눈을 밟고 내 집 마당에 들어서서 살며시 내 뒤에 섰다.

나는 마당의 도마에서 일을 하고 있었으니,

다름 아닌 이미 절단된 통나무를 쪼개었다.

내가 쏟은 모든 힘이 그에게 유리할 때,

그는 치켜든 내 도끼를 능숙하게 붙잡고,

잠시 그대로 있다가, 나를 진정시킨 다음,

나에게서 그것을 빼앗았고―나는 뺏겼다.

나는 그와 잘 아는 사이가 아니어서 도대체

무슨 영문인지 알지 못했다. 나쁜 이웃에게

무엇인가 내심(內心) 할 말이 있어서

무장을 해제 시키고 말을 하려는가 싶었다.

나는 그저 도끼만 열중하고 있었는데,

그가 프랑스식 영어로 말한 것은―

내가 아닌, 내 도끼에 대한 그의 생각이었다.

누가 나에게 판 도끼자루가 형편없다는 거였다―

그는 "기계로 만든 거군요,"라고 말하고,

자루를 굵은 엄지손톱으로 쓰다듬으며,

뱀처럼 길쭉한 자루에 달러 기호($)에 관통하는

두 개의 획(畫)처럼 그어진 나뭇결을 보여주었다.

"한 번 딱 세게 치면, 금방 자루가 부러져요.

그럼 도끼 대가리가 공중을 날아가겠죠?"

맞는 말이다. 하지만 그게 그에게 어쨌다는 건가?

"내 집에 오시죠. 그럼 오래 견딜 놈으로

하나 드리죠―구부정하게 자란 좋은 히코리,

내가 2차림에서 자른 건데―단단하지요, 단단해요!"

자루를 판다는 말인가? 그렇게 들리지는 않았다.

"그럼 언제 오겠어요. 공짜입니다.

오늘 밤에 올래요?"

           밤이라면 오늘 밤도 좋다.

부엌 난로가 매우 따뜻한 것 말고는

나에 대한 환영은 다른 환영과 다르지 않았다.

뱁티스트는 내가 왜 왔는지 잘 알고 있었다.

그가 말을 너무 많이 하지 않기만 하면,

그가 나를 맞이할 때 (그가 매우 기뻤다면)

매우 기뻐했어도 나는 싫지 않았을 거다.

그 말고는 다른 모든 사람이 알지는 못하는

도끼에 대한 그의 지식이 이웃을 평가할 때

쓸모 있는지 없는지 내가 판단할 상황이었다.

프랑스인이 표착(漂着)하여 양키들과 함께 살면서,

인간 대접을 받을 수 없다면 괴로울 거다!

뱁티스트 부인이 들어와 세상만큼이나 많이

움직이는 흔들의자에 앉아서 앞뒤로 움직이니,

그림자가 나타났다가 사리지곤 하였다.

그녀는 아무 곳도 당도하지 못했다. 한 번 더

옆으로 기울면 곧 난로에 부딪쳤겠지만,

그때마다 그녀는 위험을 간파하고

동작을 중지하고 의자와 함께 일어서서

출발했던 곳으로 다시 돌아가 앉았다.

"집 사람은 영어가 서툴러요―너무 안타까워요."

우리 사이에 오가는 말을 이해하는 듯이,

그녀는 처음엔 나, 다음엔 뱁티스트에게

눈을 반짝이었고, 나는 그녀가 이해하는 척

표정관리를 하고 있다고 생각했다.

뱁티스트는 아내가 불안했지만, 그보다는

그 자신이 더 불안했으니, 나와의 아침 협정을

제때 지키지 못하면 협정을 지킬 뜻이 사실상

없었다고 내가 그를 의심할 처지였던 것이다.

그는 불필요할 정도로 빨리 도끼자루를 한통 가득

내밀더니 고르라면서, 소장했거나, 쓰지 않고 두었던

자루 중에서 제일 좋은 것을 내가 갖기를 소망했다―

내가 그중 어느 것을 청할 겨를도 없이, 그는 자루를

하나 골라잡고 그 아름다움을 내게 자세히 지적하면서

그 미(美)가 내게 헛되지 않을 것이라고 장담했다.

그는 그 자루가 채찍처럼 유연한 것이고,

옹이가 전혀 없어서, 무릎에 대고 휜 칼처럼

굽은 자리의 압력을 너끈히 감당한다고 했다.

그는 좋은 자루의 선은 칼로 표현하기 전의

본래의 결을 살려야 하고, 그 곡선들이 외부에서 강제한

가짜 곡선이어서는 안 된다는 것을 나에게 보여줬다.

힘든 일을 감당할 힘이 바로 거기에 있었다.

그는 자루의 길고 흰 몸뚱이를 거친 손으로

감싸 쥐고 자루 끝에서 끝까지 쓰다듬었다.

그는 도끼 대가리의 눈구멍에 자루를 대봤다.

“으음, 으음, 많이 깎을 필요가 없군,”그는 중얼거렸다.

뱁티스트는 짧은 일을 즐기면서 오래 하는 법을

알고 있었지만, 또한 시간을 낭비하지도 않았다.

우리는 지식에 관해서 이야기한 셈 아닌가?

뱁티스트는 그가 학교에 보내지 않거나, 안 보내려

최선을 다했던 자녀들에 대해 변호하였다.

학교와 어린이와 기성(旣成) 교육에 대한 우리의 회의가

그의 도끼자루 곡선들과 그가 이것들을 한사코 이용하여

나를 끌어들인 다음 그의 집안을 한번 구경시킨 것과

무슨 상관성이 있던지 간에 우리는 교육 이야기를 했다.

교육에 대해 그런 회의를 가질 권리는 교육에

회의를 가진 사람들의 교육에 좌우되는지 어떤지,

부분적으로는 이 문제의 시험 대상으로,

그가 나와 사귀고자 한 것이 아닐까?

그러나 이제 그는 무릎에서 깎아낸 부스러기를 털고,

말발굽 같은 대가리를 바탕으로 도끼를 곧추세웠다.

꼿꼿하다, 그러나 고개를 까딱거리는 모습이,

뱀이 동산에서 악을 위해 일어섰을 때 같았다―

대가리가 묵직하지만 짧고 두툼한 그의 손은

그 무게를 가볍게 다루었다. 시퍼렇게 날이 선 턱을

아래로 그리고 약간 안쪽으로 당긴 모습이―프랑스풍(風)이다.

뱁티스트는 물러서서 그 모양을 흘겨보고, 흐뭇해했다.

“대가리를 곧추세운 저 모습 보게!”

-신재실 옮김-

단상(斷想): 예술은 자연 사랑이 출발점이다. 삶을 예술적으로 사는 사람은 일에 있어서도 서두르지 않고 일의 멋과 장식을 즐기며, 자연의 선(線)을 사랑한다. 프로스트의 나무꾼도 좋은 도끼자루를 만들기 위해 자연의 선―나뭇결―을 사랑한다. 그는 아름답고 좋은 도끼 자루를 만들기 위해 우선 2차림(second growth)에서 단단하게(tough) 자란 히코리 나무, 꾸부정하면서도 옹이 없고, 탄력 있는 나무를 직접 자른다. 꾸부정한 나무의 곡선과 결을 살리기 위해서다.

프로스트의 농부가 말하는 좋은 자루는 나뭇결을 살린 유연한 것이다. 좋은 도끼 자루와 나쁜 도끼 자루는 가짜 곡선의 강제 여부에서 결정된다. 자루의 길이와 나무의 결이 어긋나게 자루를 깎는 것은 자연의 선을 무시하는 것이다. 기계로 만든 상품은 이를 무시한다. 힘든 일을 감당할 도끼 자루의 힘은 바로 나무의 결을 살리는데 있다. 예술은 자연과 인간의 협력에서 나온다.

자연의 선은 강제되는 것이 아니다. 좋은 도끼 자루는 나무가 본래 가지고 있는 결을 살린 것이다. 좋은 도끼 자루가 될 나무의 결과 선을 볼 수 있는 것은 예리한 나무꾼의 눈인 것처럼, 좋은 시적 비유와 표현으로 전환 될 수 있는 자연의 사물과 사건들을 볼 수 있는 것은 표면을 꿰뚫고 내면의 미와 의미를 볼 수 있는 시적 상상력의 눈이다.

예술은 자연에 인공을 가해서 어떤 형을 창조하는 것이다. 자연의 사물과 사건들 자체만으로는 충분하지 않기 때문에 사람의 손질이 필요하다. 그러나 나무의 결을 무시하고 기계로 강제한 도끼 자루가 나쁜 자루인 것처럼, 자연의 선과 소리를 살리지 않고 준비된 형용사를 동원하여 시를 덧칠한 것은 좋은 시가 될 수 없다. 나뭇결을 그대로 살리는 것이 튼튼하고 아름다운 도끼자루를 만드는 최선의 길인 것처럼, 자연의 사물과 사실들에 내재하고 있는 아름다움과 의미의 선과 결을 그대로 살리는 것, 사실들이 당신에게 행하는 대로의 호흡에 맞추는 것이 좋은 시를 쓰는 최선의 방법이 될 것이다.

기계로 만든 가짜 곡선의 도끼 자루는 진짜 곡선의 자루와 똑같이 매력적인 뱀의 외형을 갖출 수 있지만, 한번 금만 가면 당장 부러지는 나쁜 자루이다. 자연의 선을 왜곡시키거나 덧칠한 시는 좋은 시의 외형을 갖추더라도 곧 생명을 잃고 말 것이다. 예술은 자연과의 협력이다. 그러나 협력은 짧은 시간에 이루어지지 않는다. 기계는 짧은 시간에 많은 자루를 생산한다. 자연과의 예술적 협력은 경제성을 초월한다. 예술가 또는 시인은 짧은 일도 오래 하는 법을 알고 일을 즐기는 장인(匠人)이다. 자루를 깎아 도끼 대가리에 맞추는 일까지 짧은 일을 즐기며 오래하는 법을 연출한 뱁티스트는 완성된 자신의 작품을 곧추 세워놓고 감상한다. 멋지고 당당하게 곧추선 뱀 모양이 마냥 흐뭇하다.

-신재실 씀-

-------

youtu.be/GvXGHcGsacA

youtu.be/rxh-DuKpYeE

--------

ROBERT FROST
 SPEAKING ON CAMPUS

Contents

 Introduction
 Getting up things to say for yourself
 Where poetry comes in
 Handling figures of speech
 “Anxiety for the Liberal Arts”
 A book side to everything
 Not freedom from, but freedom of
 Of rapid reading and what we call “completion”
 No surprise to me, no surprise to anybody else
 Pieces of knitting to go on with
 Everything in the world comes in pairs
 My kind of fooling
 About “the great misgiving”
 Wondering how convictions are had
 Something you live by till you live by something else
 Some gamble—something of uncertainty
 The future of the world
 Hang around for the refinement of sentiment
 What I think I’m doing when I write a poem
 Of the “elect” and the “elected”
 Fall in love at sight
 Thinking about generalizations
 “In on the Ground Floor”
 A certain restlessness
 About thinking and of perishing to shine
 A gentler interest in the fine things
 Let’s say bravely…that poetry counts
 I’ll tell you a little about my walks
 Editor’s Note

 References

“Anxiety for the Liberal Arts”

Here Mr. Frost’s opening reference is to the title he had beforehand provided for his Great Issues Course lecture at Dartmouth on May 18, 1953. Midway of this excerpt he alludes whimsically, in an aside, to the college’s Amos Tuck School of Business Administration.

IOUGHT NOTto have given out such a subject. I thought everybody was anxious about the liberal arts but me. I was going to make fun of everybody, but it seems nobody is anxious about ’em. I don’t share this anxiety at all. I believe I must have got the idea from the president of some other college.

But there is something to be said about what may be coming to the liberal arts. I call ’em “the liberal arts,” not just “the arts.”

I can speak to you as just about to become alumni and owners of this college. You’re not owners of it now. You may think you are, but you’ll really be owners when you’re alumni, won’t you? You’ll be electing trustees and regents and all that sort of thing, here and elsewhere maybe in the world.

And you’ll have something to say the rest of your lives—maybe editorially on a paper or maybe reportorially, as slanting the news on some newspaper. But you’ll be having something to say about the shape colleges are going to take.

Sometimes I wonder if the best colleges aren’t going to be the private ones that own themselves, that don’t belong to the government and can say what they want to be without consulting anybody in Washington. But I’m not sure of that. I’m notsure that in a great state university, the little liberal-arts college in the middle of it may not have a cozy place where it can do almost what it pleases, too—stay with the liberal arts and not get businesslike or too scientific or too anything but liberal arts.

Well, anyway, if I don’t worry about the liberal arts, I can at least tell you what they are, can’t I? And to do that, let me first tell you what you might expect me to know more about. Let me first tell you what poetry is.

The first thing that poetry is is both prose and verse. So I won’t get into trouble there, let me say that at once. In the old days, in the old classical days, you’ll find Cicero, though he wrote no verse at all, spoken of as a Roman poet. And I always in speaking of poetry, always mean prose and verse. Well, that’s the first thing.

Let me tell you two or three things poetry is. Another thing is, I like to think, this. I’ve been where I had to talk about what was the nearest of kin to poetry in a college, what department was nearest of kin. Was it the English Department? No, I dismissed that. Was it the Philosophy Department? Was it this department? And then I came all the way down, and I decided that the nearest of kin was the athletic.

For what reason? Because poetry I regard as a kind of prowess, prowess in performance. It’s performance. It isn’t criticism. It isn’t appreciation. It’s performance. (I think the poetesses and the actresses and all the creative people in the world, they marry athletes. I’m always hearing that. Anyway, they ought to!)

I’m not going to linger too long on these details. I’m going to get to the main thing—by and by.

Now, another thing poetry is is to be put this way. I heard a lady speaking, a critic speaking, not so terribly long ago, and I heard her say, in a foreign accent, that the world is old, language is worn out, and there can be no more poetry.

And after she’d said that, I went up to her and I said—(I got up something to say to her.) I said, “I thought poetry was therenewalof language.” (A month or two after, I saw her writing an article to that effect, and she didn’t give me credit at all!) It’s therenewalof words. Good writing is the renewal of language.

And I might just say a word. It’s the way words come in fresh, so that you say of them sometimes: “Well, I never saw that used just that way before. But, on second thought, it’s very nice.” That’s what it is to write. That’s what it is to make poetry, in prose or verse.

Then, another thing poetry is—(And I’m getting up higher with it all the time.) it is the dawning—its got to have in it, anyway—it’s the dawning on you of an idea; the freshness caught of an idea dawning on you.

Now, you must have had that experience. There’s no more delight in the world than to be saying something, in a joke or an idea, just as it’s coming on you; to be with the right people and have it that way.

Poetry has that freshness forever, of having caught the feeling that goes with an idea just as it comes over you.

You know it more familiarly in a joke or in a prank. A prank is like that. What’s the fun of a prank if it’s a studied prank? The mischief that comes over you is at its most delightful just as it comes over you, while you’re up to it.

Now, that belongs to poetry. That’s another thing. And if you never knew what that was, you don’t know what I’m talking about—if you never tasted that experience. And, between you and me, it’s all I hang around poetry for, to have that happen to me—that I’m just right when I’m right where I can catch what’s coming over me, in verse. (Me with verse, not prose; I’m more interested in it that way.)

But I have the same feeling with people, of an evening when four or five things have come over me like mischief, as we talked,you know—all that pleasure, that freshness; the freshness of dawn.

And then the greatest thing of all, I suppose, is that poetry, in prose and verse, is always the free field of metaphor, for those that are good at making it and for those that are good at taking it.

When I say, “I’d like to ‘put it across’ tonight,” I’d be sorry if all you boys weren’t in on that metaphor: “put it across.” I’d be sorry if most girls weren’t. I hope they get taken to baseball games, too, some.

When I say, “I wouldn’t mind, you know, with some people, ‘putting one over on him.”’ You see, that’s different, isn’t it? “Putting it across” and the other’s “put one over on him,” so he got a strike called.

Now, we live—outside and inside of school—we live in the metaphor, the symbol. […]

I’m going to say a little poetry to you tonight, ring in a few of my poems. But let me try one, a strange one to you—ask you to strain a little. Sometimes you have to strain about these things.

Suppose I said to you that a great nation isn’t a progression from another great nation that went before it. There’s no progress to be seen in that. The great nation has a beginning and a middle and an end. And then there’s another great nation has a beginning and a middle and an end. It’s more like the phoenix than anything else.

This isn’t a class and I can’t ask you to raise your hands, but I bet a lot of you aren’t in on that. And I don’t know that you ought to be.

Many a figure, many a metaphor, many a symbol you have to take the context—there has to be some context with—and you can do it. And I’m against its having to need any footnotes. I don’t see any fun to that.

The fun is the free field of metaphor that I’m some good inand you’re some good in. And you don’t have to be let in on it. You don’t have to be taken off and be “brainwashed” about it. (There’s another figure, you see—fresh one, very fresh. It’s not one of my making.)

I’ve written a book of six hundred pages, and it’s all full of metaphors ofmymaking, but I take it you follow—that most people can follow—without any footnotes.

But, now, the phoenix is a bird that doesn’t lay an egg. That’s one thing about it. It begins, lives to a peak, and dies in a fire—in a blaze of fire. And out of the fire rises the next bird, the next phoenix. And there’s only one in the world at a time—just the same as there’s only one great nation in the world at a time. That’s what I’m saying.

The birth of a nation is like that. It rises, you know, big from something else, but not derived in the way of birth—rises out of the ashes.

Now, maybe you’d be amused to struggle with a poem about the phoenix, to show what it is. Let’s see if I can remember that; not mine:

By feathers green, across Casbeen…

Can you do that “Casbeen”? You see, it’s a word a little different from the one you know that by, isn’t it? But it’s an older form of it. Just the same as if I said “Hi.mal’.a.yas” to you, you’d know I meant the “Him.a.lay’.as.” It’s just as easy as that.—

• By feathers green, across Casbeen
  The travellers tracked the Phoenix flown,
• By gems he strew’d in waste and wood,
  And jewell’d plumes at random thrown:
• Till wandering far, by the moon and star,
  They stand beside the fruitful pyre,
• Where bursting bright with sanguine light
  The impulsive bird forgets his sire.

You see, it all lies to that:

• Where bursting bright with sanguine light
  The impulsive bird forgets his sire.

It’s a way of speaking. You know, poetry’s always a way of speaking. And can you take it?—

• Those ashes shine like ruby wine,
  Like bag of Tyrian murex spilt,
• The claws, the jowl of the flying fowl
  Are with the glorious anguish gilt.

It’s an anguishing affair, you see.—

• …with the glorious anguish gilt.
• So rare the sight…

Not many have seen it; I never have.—

So rare the sight, so rich the light, Those pilgrim men, on profit bent…

From the Tuck School!—

• Those pilgrim men, on profit bent,
• Drop hands and eyes and merchandise,
  And are with gazing most content.15

You see, I didn’t help you any with that. You did it yourself! Now, I’ll try another one with you.

Suppose I say a poem of mine and tell you how people have made a figure out of it, and then tell you what I make out of it.I can do that, too. Others do it to my poems. I do it to other people’s poems. And I do it to my own—when I have to.

This one goes like this. It’s called “Mending Wall.” This ought to be part of your education. I don’t want it to be so much a part of your education that it’s been staled to you. You see, I always dread that. (Always drawing parallels, you are. Poor Longfellow perished, almost, of being used too much in school. Spare me!)

Well, here’s the poem. […]

[Mr. Frost said his poem “Mending Wall.”]

You may have heard, some of you, that that’s been turned into a poem about nationalism and internationalism. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” is the international, you see. They could say that if they want to. And “Good fences make good neighbors” is nationalist. And then I have to defend myself and go ’em one better about it.

You don’t know what I’ll do with it. I say: “Those two are one man talking both ways, man the wall-builder and wall-upsetter, the boundary-maker and the boundary-breaker. You see, it’s two men, but they’re one.” (I got this up afterward, after the fact.)

Then, I say this, that “That’s just what man is, outside himself and inside himself.” While I’m talking to you here, my cell walls are breaking down and making at the same time. That’s what I exist by, cell walls going down and cell walls coming up and forming again, reforming. That’s life. And so I say that life is cellular, both within and without. (Even the communists have cells!)

Well, I say that all to illustrate that part of the thing. Kipling has a poem that goes:

• In the days of old Rameses,
• That story had pareses,
• Are you on—are you on—are you on?16

We’re always saying—in every poem we say, every remark we make—we’re saying in a pathetic, pleading way “are you on” do you get it? We don’t cry about it. But that’s what we’re doing.

Take Mr. Einstein, the great scientist. (You see, you think this all just belongs to poetry.) Years ago somebody said for Einstein—(I don’t believe he said it himself.)—there were only twelve people in the world could understand what he was talking about. And since then he’s written several books. He’s come out of his mathematics into just the liberal arts, the poetry of language, to try to tell us what he does mean.

And on his birthday, he gave us two interesting figures of speech, metaphors. He said he wasn’t sure, after all, that he’d got away on the right assumption, in all his thinking. He wasn’t sure—he didn’t know for sure—whether the universe was made of “jelly” or of “sand.” Now, that goes way back to Greek philosophers, those two metaphors: jelly or sand.

Then, he said another one. He said, “Here I’m asked to describe the universe—— (Nobody asked him but himself. But, as a matter of fact, he said that.) “Here I’m asked to describe the universe, and all I’ve got to make it out of is a couple of bones—or as if I’d just been given a couple of bones to describe a megatherium.” Poor man!

But the eagerness, the eagerness we have to understand each other is always coming out in metaphor, symbol—nowhere else. As I like to say once in a while, “I make bold to say” that there’s no such thing as thought—you’ve never had a thought—unless you’ve made a metaphor, an analogy, an allegory. You’ve never had a thought. You’ve had opinions. But what I call “thought” begins with connecting things in metaphor.

I use the word all down the line: “metaphor,” “simile,” “analogy,” “allegory,” “parable.” […]

Now, I’ve said up to this point what poetry is. The best thingof all, it’s this free field of metaphorical action, play, where you disport yourself—for that is thought and that alone is thought; almost alone, almost alone that is thought.

Then, the last thing to say is that poetry—(And this is intended to offend you. I hope it offends a few.)—poetryisthe liberal arts. It’s the whole business, poetry in prose and verse.

Let me say one more thing that poetry is. Poetry is that that evaporates from both prose and verse when it’s translated. All this translated stuff around is short of being poetry. It’s lost its poetry in being translated.

You can see what I mean by the liberal arts. In showing you a little about that, suppose I say what is poetry in history. Is it the hundred best books? Ninety of ’em are in translation, so they’re out. There they go; bang! What other, then? […]

Well, we’ve got in our own language English historians and American historians that I hold up at that place. They’re not textbooks enough; they’re not used as textbooks enough. Think of the names. There’s Gibbon; there’s Macaulay; there’s Froude. Come over here, there’s Parkman; there’s Prescott.

You know, there’s enough for a course in history, right there, without going to these darned translations. You’ve got Gibbon forever. I never have Gibbon far away from me.

That’s what I mean. That’s the liberal arts in history.

Little more to say? Let me show you in somebody else’s poetry a couple of things before I leave it. I said that phoenix one to you. I used that phoenix as a symbol of nations rising from nations, leaping from the destruction of nations. That’s my idea of the way nations come; one in the world at a time, practically.

Then, suppose I just let you look at a couple of things. What do you make of this? There’s a poem by a friend of mine that’s called “The Hollow Man.” Get that? (Another figure like that we have. I wonder if he doesn’t mean “stuffed shirt”? You see, that’sanother figure. But the hollow man’s all right; another kind of figure.) He has these lines in it. He has the hollow men dancing around a “prickly pear.” (pär—I must pronounce it right. I’m not from St. Louis!) They’re saying:

• Here we go round the prickly pear
• The prickly pear the prickly pear….

You see, like that. And you get that—desert; “prickly pear”? You see just what he must mean by all that. That’s as easy as rolling off a log.

(You can often get these figures wrong. I used to think “rolling off a log” meant lying on a log and rolling off of it yourself. But it means rolling it off at the skidway. I see that now; matured, I have.)

You want to be left to yourself about ’em and get a chance to think ’em out. You don’t want somebody to tell you. “Don’t tell me,” I always think, you know, when somebody tries to tell me everything. “Don’t tell me; let me alone; mind your own business.”

Here’s one I didn’t puzzle over. I was wrong with it for years. It’s this one. Keats wanted to have it said of him that his name was “writ in water.”17And, you see, what I had, I had a vision of his name being writ on a pond, written on a pond or on a river or on the ocean or something.

He didn’t mean that. He meant with a pen dipped in water. (The same as you’d say—if I was Hitler or somebody—my name was “writ in blood.”) My name was writ in ink; my name was writ in water. He means his pen dipped in water. (It’d been nice if his name had been dipped in lemon juice, wouldn’t it? Because that would come out later!)

You see, all this fooling is—this is the whole business. I’m throwing ’em around with you.

Then, T. S. Eliot winds up that poem about “Here we go round the prickly pear / The prickly pear…,” he winds it up with this:

• This is the way the world ends…

Haven’t you heard it? With his fine voice, he does it beautifully. It’s one of the best things to listen to.—

• This is the way the world ends…

He has to say that three times.—

• This is the way the world ends
• Not with a bang but a whimper.

Two figures there. He prefers the second one, he says. He can be completely wrong about that, you know. I haven’t seen it end yet. And I don’t think it’s ending with a bang. And I’m sure it isn’t ending with a whimper. There are a few people whimpering. They’re another “lost generation,” I suppose. You’ve always got some generation getting lost.

Well, now look, somebody else says that “There is no past, there is no future, all is the present.”18Now, you can say that like a philistine—(If you know what that figure is. It’s another figure.)—you can say that like a coarse, common fool. There’s only the present and my bread and butter.

No. The liberal arts are for the purpose of giving you a very extensive present; I agree to the present. The question with you when you’re old—you know, and counting your score—the question is, “What has been the extent of my present; how wide and how long, backward and forward?”

You can’t stretch it very far forward. We do our best to stretch it forward, with our dreams and our “ideals,” as we call ’em. But the stretch back is a very important thing. […]

So, the liberal arts are poetry, in my double sense of the word. And that means a very extensive thing. I bring in Einstein. I bring in Egypt. I bring in all I can for breadth and length, in my education. But it all centers in: “Words alone are a certain good”19—some poet says. That’s the liberal arts.

When you get into a graduate school there’s something else. There are specialities coming and all that. That’s just what I leave out. But this is the length and breadth, the extent of your present. You don’t want a stupid, nose-in-the-ground present.

Einstein says the universe is limited and that it’s curved. And then I like to say, for the fun of it: “I know why he thinks the universe is curved. Because all reasoning is in a circle. And all reasoning is in a circle because of the shape of the brain pan.”

That’s my interference with these things. But I’m playing this just the same as he is and the same as you are. I can do it and I can take it. That’s the thing. […]

The whole poetry of poetry is like this. This cultivation is to get people so—a family, we’ll say; when they’re grown up and have a family and everybody’s living together—so when one hints, the others don’t miss the hint. And when one doesn’t hint, nobody takes a hint.

See, get it right. And when nobody’s got a double meaning, to know that nobody has a double meaning. But when a double meaning—where there’s an intimation of something else—to get it.

See, that’s what the liberal arts are. And that’s living every day, all the time. It isn’t just in school. It’s been going on with you for years.

I could string out a lot of baseball ones or football ones and all sorts of business ones. It’s very important to be—allimportant—to be good at metaphor and intimations and hints and all these things—double entendres, you know.

----------

Frost gives us a memorable dialogue of pastoral tension about the relationship of labor, contemplation, beauty, and equality, as well as one of his most memorable characters, Baptiste, in “The Ax-Helve.” Critics often take the poem as an ars poetica because of comments Frost made in an interview and in prose about the pleasure he takes in the crooked straightness of things. In an interview in 1916, a year before publication of the poem, Frost discussed as a metaphor for true art the beauty and power of the way Canadian woodchoppers made their ax-handles, following the native grain of the wood: 

Yo u know the Canadian woodchoppers whittle their ax-handles, following the curve of the grain, and they’re strong and beautiful. Art should follow lines in nature, like the grain of an ax-handle. False art puts curves on things that haven’t any curves.    (I, 19) 

The poem itself presents a much more complex portrait of the woodchopper Baptiste and the implications of functional art well-made according to nature. We need to consider the narrator’s attitude toward Baptiste and the relationship between him and Baptiste, who is French Canadian. The poem explores as much about human anxieties, about equality, race, and prowess, as it does about aesthetics. The narrator has been caught with a faulty machine ax but he feels both anxious about and superior to Baptiste, who seems motivated to “get his human rating” by showing what he knows about “ax-helves”: 

Baptiste knew best why I was where I was. 
So long as he would leave enough unsaid, 
I shouldn’t mind his being overjoyed 
(If overjoyed he was) at having got me 
WhereImustjudge if what he knew about an ax 
That not everybody else knew was to count 
For nothing in the measure of a neighbor. 
Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees, 
AFrenchman couldn’t get his human rating!

The narrator’s accounting of Baptiste’s motives seems at the least condescend- ing, if not worse, and reveals some of his contempt for his French Canadian neighbor. But he knows, or thinks he knows, that his neighbor wants him to be recognized and treated as an equal. He, therefore, agrees to be shown how Baptiste makes his home-made ax-helves. The narrator appears aware that he knew very little about axes and was caught off-guard by a man of great prowess, and feels threatened by Baptiste’s abilities. 
Baptiste provides, and the narrator allows, his display of home-made ax- helves, which are most certainly displays of natural prowess and figures of ability that can neither be taught nor, perhaps, learned: 

He showed me that the lines of a good helve 
Were native to the grain before the knife 
Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves 

Putonitfromwithout. And there its strength lay 
For the hard work. He chafed its long white body 
From end to end with its rough hand shut round it. 
He tried it at the eye-hole in the ax-head. 
“Hahn, hahn,” he mused, “don’t need much taking down.” 
Baptiste know how to make a short job long 
Forloveofit, and yet not waste time either. 

In crafting ax-helves, Baptiste displays sensuous, if not sensual pleasure, blend- ing love and need, work and play, craft and power. And like a strong helve, Baptiste displays qualities “native to the grain” with “no false curves.” 

Indeed, the dialogue that ensues between the narrator and Baptiste, but is only reported to us indirectly, has very much to do with “what is native to the grain” among human beings and what truly counts for intelligence and knowledge. For the underlying dramatic tension of the poem is really about human equality and education: 

Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge? 
Baptiste on his defense about the children 
He kept from school, or did his best to keep – 
Whatever school and children and our doubts 
Of laid-on education had to do 
With the curves of his ax-helves and his having 
Used these unscrupulously to bring me 
To see for once the inside of his house. 

Ax-helves are the tools, if not the weapons and the metaphors, for the drama of human equality. In the early part of the twentieth century, there was enormous controversy about the influx of French Canadians into New England and their refusal to assimilate into American schools and speak English. French Canadi- ans had protested violently in Canada about being forced to speak English in schools. Questions were developing about the isolation and independence of French Canadian immigrant communities in New England at the turn of the twentieth century. An article in The New York Times in 1901 stated “A constant increase of its French Canadian population is becoming a matter of vital interest in New England. It is yet uncertain whether it should be regarded as a menace or promise of good for the future.” The author added, “This tendency [of the French Canadians] to confine themselves to the society of their own country- men very much retards the Americanization of the French. Neither business, convenience, nor pleasure urges the emigrant to the difficult task of learning the English language and he is usually content to leave that to his children.”13 Surely Baptiste and the narrator recognize that the questions here are deeper than the contemporary political controversy. The question of “false curves” on ax-helves becomes a figure for “laid-on” education in schools. What, if any- thing, can be taught in schools? Are we, in fact, defined by our innate abilities and nature? And by whose authority and to what knowledge must we submit to become part of a culture? 

The poem concludes with a dramatic focus on a “present” moment, as Baptiste finishes an ax-helve. The difference in the way the two men regard the image says much about how they regard each other and themselves. The narrator imposes upon the helve an almost allegorical vision of Old Testament evil. Perhaps, more insidiously, he regards the tool, or weapon, as analogous to the man who made it. Baptiste, whose very name suggests both a martyr who was beheaded and a French Canadian figure of courage – a “batiste” – sees the helve as feminine and seductive:

Butnow he brushed the shavings from his knee 

And stood the ax there on its horse’s hoof, 
Erect, but not without its waves, as when 
The snake stood up for evil in the Garden,– 
Top-heavy with a heaviness his short, 
Thick hand made light of, steel-blue chin drawn down 

Andinalittle–aFrenchtouchinthat. 
Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased: 
“See how she’s cock her head!”

Baptiste’s love of the well-made helve or his anxiousness to earn his human rating has produced an erotic creation that somehow brings men mysteriously together. It becomes the focal point at which we become human, “stand up,” become “erect,” use tools, potentially as weapons as well as ways of creating order and, as Frost would say, “braving alien entanglements.” 

Baptiste takes pleasure in his workmanship. Utility and beauty, work and play unite in his craft. Yet within the drama of the poem, the helves take on different possibilities of meaning: a tool that could at any moment become a weapon, ametaphor about education, a figure of native intelligence, an instrument by which to lure and to communicate. Frost’s dialogue and dramatic narra- tives demand serious questioning of the idea of pursuit of beauty for its own sake.

from "The Cambridge Introduction to Robert Frost - Robert Faggen"

-----------------------

• On Teaching Poetry | 5 July 1954 - Robert Frost at Bread Loaf(1936~1955) - Robert Frost

Discussing the importance of pure poetry, Frost says that "a poem will bear only so much of teaching."

http://middmedia.middlebury.edu/media/Frost-MIDD-web_data-middlebury-edu/mp3/RobertFrost70554intro.mp3

Reginald Cook: The following is a recording of a talk and reading given by Robert Frost on July 5, 1954, at the Bread Loaf School of English. He is introduced by Director Cook of the School.

Robert Frost: …it's nice, and, and, twenty-nine for the other. I didn't realize they'd been so close together. Twenty-nine, you say?

RC: Twenty-nine, the last count is [unclear].

RF: Thirty-five, six years, yes.

Well, I ought to say something tonight about both poetry and education, it seems to me, under these circumstances. And I haven't done that regularly. Uh, have I a loudspeaker here? Am I, or is it just this that I'm talking to?

??: Just that.

RF: So I have to be careful of the crowd, yeah. Right. And, uh, I haven't usually talked about either poetry or education. I've talked about everything under the sun. I can remember some of the subjects and they were far from poetry and far from education.

But I've been accused lately of having said something in print, very subversive [laughter]. That's a funny word, isn't it, has other connotations than I mean. But I told a story of my relation, through sixty years, to a particular poem of Emerson's, and, the fellow teacher of mine said the other day, "I see through you." Uh, and I s—he said, "I suppose others have. They don't like to tell you, but I'm going to tell you. That's a very subversive piece of writing. It undermines education," teaching of poetry, and, uh, he said, "I won't, I won't tell anybody else on you," see, and I said to him, "Well, I been telling people on me for the last forty years, so you needn't think you're telling anything special." I've been trying to tell on myself, and I haven't been able to phrase it, I suppose. He seemed surprised to find it in that article, he did, he thought he'd done quite a thing to see it himself, for himself. And, uh, he said, "I see what, uh, I, I, I guess you mean that you don't want your poetry taught in schools. Is that right?" I said, "By the wrong people, yes." [Laughter]

Uh, now it seems to me it's a chance for a little demarcation about these things. Suppose I'm thinking of, of the top of poetry, not my own, but the top of poetry, the, the Oxford Book of Verse, the, the, um, the Palgrave, and begin right there. And suppose I s—I been long puzzled, and you've been puzzled about what to do with that in school.

You're, you're most of you teachers. What would you do with the Palgrave. It was published without a single note, if I'm not mistaken. I have a very early edition of it. And, uh, what is there to say about poetry like that? Me, myself, I read Shakespeare out of my hip pocket when I was working in the mills. I never touched him in reading until then, never really read him through, see. And, some people tried to scare me. They said there are some of the words in that, afterward, some of the words in that that look as if they meant the same as they do now, but they didn't then. There are about fifty of those, and you ought to go to college four years to earn, get those, you [laughter]. And, uh, it's very dan—very terrible threat.

Let's go back. In the, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, all education, all college education, and some high school education, was pre-pulpit, and pre-parliament, see. All of it was. Everybody was thinking of being either a preacher or a men—or a member of Congress. And they spouted a great deal. It was, and all, much of it, uh, i—something of that spirit still lingers in it, there's something of that. The, uh, the, the spouting has almost disappeared. I wish there were a little of it left, spouting of, uh, uh, uh, reciting, anyway, reciting poetry by heart, things like that, Shakespeare by heart. We have pre-, the word "pre-" with us everywhere now. Pre-, uh, s—medical, pre-science, pre-scientific, and pre-law, I suppose you could say some of it is. But anyway, I think that nearly all poetry that's handled in the high school and colleges today, is pre-graduate school. That's the deadly thing I wanted to say.

Now that's not the least thing subversive, that's not the least thing against the graduate school. It's just that it is, it's pre-graduate school training, not education, see. The college and the high school are, should be k—kept as free as possible from all that. It's hard that it should be so, because nearly all the teachers are out of the graduate school, have doctor's degrees. It's very hard for them to forget the methods that, the methods, the, of, of, the graduate school, the scholarly methods.

But, and most of the students that you have in the high school and college are not going to be scholars, and why should you handle them as if they were going to be scholars? Only s—maybe, but say only so that they shall respect scholars, and remember to respect them when they get down into Wall Street, and send plenty of money up to support them [laughter]. Maybe that's the justification. But something's gone wrong. The graduate school has backed up into the high school, and even—I mean into the college, and even into the high school. There's nothing to be said against, against handling Shakespeare in the scholarly fashion, but the way, the, that's all pre-graduate school, when it's handled that way.

I remember years ago, the head of the educational system in New Hampshire, uh, told me that he came into a, a class in the high school, visiting, in Concord, I think it was, or in Manchester, and he found that, the children reading a, a play of Shakespeare's, translating it word by word into other and worse English, to prove that they understood it [laughter]. And, everything being, gone into in little details, and he said to the teacher, uh, he was, I ought to tell you the kind of man he was. He was a great teaching, educational bully, he ran the whole state of New Hampshire. He once took out his watch and said to me, "I can tell you at this moment what every teacher in New Hampshire is saying." [Laughter] And he s—he said, uh, "That's because they don't, I have to supply what they shall say because they don't know what to say themselves."

And he said, uh, "So I went and found them going on this way, in this school, and, uh, I said to the teacher, 'Now that isn't the way to read a play, you know, this is a play, something you might go to in the evening. And it'd take two or three hours to see it acted.'" And, whe—he said, "When I sit up, uh, uh, of, of a night at home when I'm not too busy I might read a, a play by Marlowe or Webster, or, or Shakespeare, one that I hadn't read before, and I'd read it the whole evening." Said, "I'd read it. It's very readable. It's strangely readable." And, uh, then, he said, "Of course, if you've been swept through it that way once"; said, "you, in school, you might come back to it someday for parts that, uh, you'd like to dwell on, some of the, that had charmed you specially, you know, and, uh, [unclear] this a little difficulties, you know, uh, s—a play'll bear so much, only so much, a little poem will bear only so much of teaching, you know. There's a little bit of things to look into, and, you might do that, you know, you know, anachronisms and such things:"

And, uh, he said, next year he was back there, he said, and looked in on her again. And she said, "Now I'll, uh, I'm going to open up a play, uh, for you," she said, "today." So she turned to the children, said, "We'll read ju—we're gonna, we're gonna read Julius Caesar for rapid reading." [Laughter] And she said that, you know, in just the accent of kant, you know, the, I, I heard that said once. I was crossing the campus. I heard two teachers talking, summer school, and one said to the other, "That's a rapid reading book." Something was a rapid reading book, I guess it was Walden or something like that [laughter]. And, and, uh, then he said—she says, "First we'll read it for rapid reading, and then we'll read it for beauty [laughter], and then we'll tend to things like anachronisms." [Laughter] And he says, "What can you do with anyone like that," you know. That's what's [unclear].

Well, all I say is that, I'd like to come up here some time, another year, maybe, and give five, four or five lectures, talks, to cla—to a class, on what to do, how to treat poems in a high school. I won't bother with a college, that can take care of itself. And, uh, but in the high school. And it doesn't matter who the poet is, uh, taking, taking Chaucer, uh. There's a little, uh, that's, that's what you might call a, a somewhat foreign language. A slightly foreign language, that can be got over very quickly. You know, you, the p—that part of it is study, of course. You're gonna get over that. But the w—i—th—and then the, the acc—uh, the way the words are pronounced, few weeks, and you're in there, just the same as Shakespeare. It's very light reading, some of it. Suitable for rapid reading [laughter].

And, then, but now look. I never ask anybody to write anything down, but I'm gonna, I start the lecture by asking everybody write down one sentence for me, just one sentence. Start four or fi—and I'd make my four or five lectures out of the different words in this sentence, see. And they're these: "Our object," speaking for the poets, "Our object is to entertain you by making play—" it's symbol and metaphor, see, [unclear] "by making play with things we trust you already know." That's the whole b—sentence. "Our object is to entertain you by making play," and that's the height of it, that's the apex, "by making play," never mind the parentheses,"by making play with things we trust you already know."

Now in one of the lectures I'll modify that last just for the fun or it, you know, that you, put it, you, almost know, see, almost entirely know. There's a little something there always. You'll missing w—uh, when you write a poem or read a poem, as I, as I, uh, am tonight, uh, uh, there are parts of it that one person here and another person is missing. Uh, I, I've been often asked in the years, "How do you make children like poetry?" The answer is, you don't. See, you don't do it in that sweeping way. There'll be a lot of them that'll stay, uh, stay indifferent to poetry. I'm, I'm not there to, to whoop it up for, for poetry, uh, uh, uh. I, I said, said my friend was goin—m—uh, uh, [unclear] covered alliance, when he, he's going back, giving up, he's [unclear] to teach Shakespeare again. I said, "What you going to do, going back to exaggerating Shakespeare?" [Laughter]

But that's all, that's what I'm going to do, and it's largely to sort of cleanse the high school of the graduate school approach. Now the great, great, uh, greatest scholarship, see, greatest scholarship, I venerate it, and. I've had good many adventures in education. I remember once hearing Nichols. He, uh, p—he was president of Dartmouth a short time. He was the Nobel Prize man on, on the wake of light, uh, and, uh, very distinguished scholar who was a, not a very successful president. But I remember his saying to a lot of teachers that he wished, he wished, speaking as a scientist, he said, "I wish they'd let science alone in the high school. It's just prophylactic teaching." He says they take the wonder all out of it so there's nothing to astonish them, uh, uh, he might have gone on to say it's almost as bad as the comic strips, you know, it takes all the wonder out of, out of everything. And, uh, he said, "What would I have 'em do in the high school?" [Unclear] he seemed a very, think it as he went. He said, "I'd have 'em, well, there's Latin, they might have four years of Latin. And then there's Greek, they might have four years of Greek. And then," he said, he thought hard, and he says, "and a little mathematics." He said, "And I wish they'd let other things alone." Said, "French and German, uh, you know, equivalent, you can, uh, for your Latin and Greek." But he said, he just wish, wished they'd let all that stuff alone, come up to the other.

That's an extreme way of putting that. But I'd like to see, fo—for the sake of the, of the top level of poetry, can you think of anything to say of, uh, to the, of the res—wh—what research is there for, for the, the lyrics. Uh, for instance, there's a lyric begins, the—in, in the, both those books, ther—they have most of the poems in common, those two I speak of, one that begins, uh,

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays [her] icy hand on kings.
Shadow and crown must tumble down
And in the [earth,] earth be equal made
With a poor crooked scythe and spade

Now at the head of that poem, in, in one of the books, it says, "Death the Leveller." And me, myself, you see, I can say that it occurred to me after years of thinking what a beautiful title, I wondered if that was on the poem in Shirley's play where it occurs, you see. And, those things have an interest, you know, to me. I love the scholarship [unclear]. It's, but it's not very, not, not of the first importance for the pure, purity of what they call poesie pure, you know, pure poetry.

That's what I'm speaking for. The plays are like that, they all got a first quality of entertainment, making play with things we can trust you largely to know. And, if I have to say too much to prepare you for the poem, say anything to prepare you for the poem before you read it, it's too bad. If I have to say anything to you while the poem's going on, it's worse, and if I have to say anything after it, well, you, I hope you'll have gone home [laughter]. The, uh, I, I have, I'm gonna read you a poem, for instance, tonight that's got a little of French Canadian dialect in it at which I'm not very good. I never read it before for that reason. I read it once years ago at, uh, at a Phi Beta Kappa place, and, years and years ago. And I've always let it alone [unclear]. But now what's that to say, you know, you, I'm sorry I can't say the French very well. It's ju—it's English-French, American-French. So [unclear] I begin with that.

I can say things like this. I can say that my years of experience reading poems show me, uh, have convinced me that I can entertain people more when I have a person in my poem. Eh. That's odd. But I, I read two poems on the occasion I speak of years ago, and, uh, one of them was sort of not, had no person in it at all, and the other had these French people in it, and, uh, somebody afterward said to me, the editor of the Atlantic said, "We don't like that first one you read, but give us that second one with the Frenchman in it." [Unclear] That's, that is, some—and I've been more and more aware of that, that when I go back to the people, to characters that I can, uh, that I'm more [unclear].

Now let's try this one. Give me a second. [Unclear] Where is it? It's called "The Ax-Helve." "The Ax-Helve." I oughta brought with me tonight a, a paragraph in an eighteenth-century book I just read, uh, with all, uh, ho—a paragraph with ten words in it about what expenses a man is at to harvest a crop of rice, he, in India. And, uh, there are all sorts of expenses. There are ten expenses, all with the strangest names, and I ought to con—I ought to have read 'em to you. I didn't know a si—what a single one of them meant, and you wouldn't know, and there wouldn't be anybody here that would know, I don't care how much—how many graduate schools he's [laughter]. But I wouldn't do that to anybody, you know, naturally, 'cept to high hat them. "The Ax-Helve."

I've known ere now an interfering branch
Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me.
But that was in the woods, to hold my hand
From striking at another alder's roots,
And this was, as I say, an alder branch.
This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day
Behind me on the snow in my own yard
Where I was working [at the,] at the chopping block,
[A—]And cutting nothing not cut down already.
He caught my ax expertly on the rise,
When all my strength put forth was in his favor,
Held it a moment where it was, [uh,] to calm me,
Then took it from me—and I let him take it.
I didn't know him well enough to know
What it was all about. There might be something
He had in mind to say to a bad neighbor
He might prefer to say to him disarmed.
But all he had to tell me in French-English
Was what he thought of—not me, but my ax,
Me only as I took my ax to heart.
It was the [bac—]bad ax-helve someone had sold me—
"Made on machine," he said, plowing the grain
With a thick thumbnail to show how it ran
Across the handle's long-drawn serpentine,
Like the two strokes across a dollar sign.
"You give her one good crack, she's snap right off.
[Uh,] Den where's your [ax—]hax-ead flying t'rough de hair?"

All I do is get the "h's" in [laughter].

Admitted; and yet, what was that to him?
Come on my house and I put you one in
[Uh,] What's las' awhile—good hick'ry what's grow crooked,
De second growt' [, uh,] I cut myself—tough, tough!"
[Uh,] Something to sell? That wasn't how it sounded.
"Den when you say you come? [It—]It's cost you nothing.
Tonight?"
[Uh,] As well tonight as any night.
Beyond an over-warmth of kitchen stove
My welcome differed from no other welcome.
[Bap—]Baptiste knew best why I was where I was.
So long as he would leave enough unsaid,
I shouldn't mind his being overjoyed
(If overjoyed he was) at having got me
[Where I,] Where I must judge if [he was, uh,] if what he knew about an ax [, uh,]
That not everybody else knew was to count
For [s—]nothing in the measure of a neighbor.
Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees,
A Frenchman couldn't get his human rating!

Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chair
That had as many motions as the world:
One back and forward, in and out of shadow,
That got her nowhere; one more gradual,
Sideways, that would have run her on the stove
In time, had she not realized her danger
And caught herself [up,] up bodily, chair and all,
And set herself back where she started from.
"She ain't spick [much, uh, sh—sh—]She ain't spick too much Henglish—dat's too bad."
[Uh,] I was afraid, in brightening first on me,
Then on Baptiste, as if she understood
What passed between us, she was only feigning.
Baptiste was anxious for her; but no more
Than for himself, so placed he couldn't hope
[To k—]To keep his bargain of the morning with me
In time to keep me from suspecting him
Of really never having meant to keep it.

Needlessly soon he had his [ax-helve out, uh,]ax-helves out,
A quiverful to choose from, since he wished me
To have the best he had, or had to spare—
Not for me to ask which, when what he took
Had beauties he had to point me out at length
To insure their not being wasted on me.

See, that's something, isn't it, uh, something about what I've been talking about, whether [unclear] what the, where the teacher comes in [unclear] that I might, got to be careful about.

To insure their not being wasted on me.
He liked to have it slender as a whipstock,
Free from the least knot, equal to the strain
Of bending like a sword across the knee.
He showed me that the lines of a good helve
Were native to the grain before the knife
[Exp—]Expressed them, and its curves were no false curves
Put on [i—uh, put on] it from without. And there its strength lay
For the hard work. He chafed its long white body
From end to end with his rough hand shut round it.
[Uh,] He tried it at the eyehole in the ax-head.
"Hahn, hahn," he mused, "don't need much taking down."
[Uh,] Baptiste knew how to make a short job long
For love of it, and yet not waste time either.

Do you know, what we talked about was knowledge?
Baptiste on his defense about the children
He kept from school, or did his best to keep—
[Uh,] Whatever school and children and our doubts
Of laid-on education had to do
With the [c—the] curves of his ax-helve [ ] and his having
Used these unscrupulously to [b—]bring me
[To s—]To see for once the inside of his house.
Was I desired in friendship, partly as someone
To leave it to, whether the right to hold
Such doubts of education should depend
Upon the education of those [that had] them?

[Uh,] But now he brushed the shavings from his knee
And stood the ax[-helve] there on its horse's hoof,
Erect, but not without its waves, as when
The snake stood up for evil in the Garden—
Top-heavy with a heaviness [, uh,] his short,
Thick hand made light of, [uh,] steel-blue chin drawn [ ]
[ ] in a little—a French touch in that.
Baptiste drew back and squinted at it, pleased:
[Uh, "See how she cock,] See how she's cock her head!"

Cock 'er 'ead [unclear]. That's all. It's a long time I didn't give it.

Now I'm going to say something to you that, mmm, read some of the others. But now I could, see I could go into a lot about that, and some of you don't perhaps know about an ax, some of you don't know the word "helve." And, uh, but, leave it for you to find out in some other poem. I always look at it that way, too, that the, that, uh, uh, I come on a word like "Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocal reeds!" And, uh, and then I come on the word "Mincius" in history. And I come on the word "Mincius" in Napoleon's campaigns. And by the time I've come on it two or three times, I've pretty near know what it, that it's a stream. I don't need very much more than that about it.

All right. Suppose I say some of the short ones. This light seems to hurt my eyes. [Unclear] That's right. I need the light but it's too bright for me. Uh, I wonder if I can't see without that light. I'm gonna read you more, a recent poem, with, with somebody in it [unclear]. Uh, this one is called "One More Brevity."

[Reads "One More Brevity"]

That's my Christmas one, the last one. Then, uh, some of the old ones.

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;

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!
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 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.

And then, um, you hear the thrushes around here nights now, evenings, I suppose you've noticed the thrushes. The—this is one is about a thrush.

[Reads "Come In"]

And then, uh, let's see, uh, uh, he th—this is c—never mind the name of them, sometimes it doesn't matter 'specially, does it.

[Reads "The Most of It"]

Want to hear that one twice to see if you, see, now, you just look in that. I know one word in that that most people, you know, don't know, one word. Is that any harm in it? Shouldn't have used it, maybe. No, I don't go by that. I use what I have, but I, [unclear] on a percentage basis [laughter]. [Unclear] He, you see, this is a more psychological one, this is a person one.

[Rereads "The Most of It"]

Do, do I have any desire to emphasize it any more than that, you know, yo—you, you'd have the adva—I'd rather you'd see it while I'm wri—reading it, I think, but I, and I have a little desire to force it, impress it a little by reading it twice. But if I lingered over details in it, to make you like it, I'd be ashamed of myself. Uh, you might, you might wonder why I wrote it, you know, what are the, what are the parts [unclear], what's the fascination of writin' it. Certain words, I won—but it wouldn't be for me to tell you what they are. Certain words, that's what a poem is, certain words. Then, uh, some of you haven't heard it before so I'll read, say old ones, too. Very old ones. The, uh,

When I see birches bend to left and right—

Some of you smile that I do this again [laughs], keep, uh, I'm expected to do this one. Did it in Boston, do it everywhere. [Unclear] this, this little note on it before I begin, see, the kind I forbid. I never go down the shoreline to New York without watching the birches to see if they live up to what I say of them in the poem [laughter].

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded [with ice,] with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the [re—]breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterward[ ], trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter of fact about the ice storm,
I should prefer to have [had] some boy bend them
As he went out [or] in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to [go] away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Do you know, uh, uh, as I went by a certain word in that, you know, I ha—uh, having talked the way I have before I began, uh, uh, uh, I came on the word "crazed," see, "cracked and crazes their enamel." Crazed, see, see, see, see. ;It's too bad if you don't get it [laughter]. And, and then you wouldn't know, you know, unless I told you, a—but I would rather write, unless I wrote an after piece to say that the line that probably means the most to me now is just the line, "[I] It's when I'm weary of considerations." Eh. See that's when you get older. I didn't, it didn't mean so much to me when I wrote it as it means now. That's just a personal thing, you see. And I don't know, you know [unclear]. You know, I—I've made some of the worst psychological mistakes in the world, see, so don't listen to anything I say [laughter]. That's true, I just thin—thinking of one, thinking of a terrible one I made. Psycholo—educational one, too, almost fatal to many people, see. Maybe tonight, too.

All right, uh, it's uh, [unclear] suppo—you know there's another thing about little noticings [unclear] what you call scholarly noticings. Uh, you like to come along into that, uh, and in the graduate school, do some of it for yourself, not have everything pointed out to you. It says, uh, it says in Keats, for instance, it says

[Whoe—]Sometimes whoever [walks] abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

See, and Keats, I n—happen to think when I was reading that one day [unclear] my own, see, somebody didn't tell me this. There ought to be a hyphen in there. If you say "winnowing wind" it means it's winnowing her hair. But if you say "winnowing-wind,""it means it's the regular wind that winnows the grain. You see, the hyphen makes all the difference in the world [unclear]. I'm tellin' ya [laughter]. Little things you notice like that. And the same thing happens in, in, uh, same kind of a hyphen as in one of my things here that never got printed in it. Ought to be in it. Uh, uh,

Something there is—

I'll show it to you afterward.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
[So] even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
We keep the wall between us as we [work]
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors: Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Uh, you kn—you know the word in there, uh, that you, uh, uh, I—I don't know how to say it so you be sure to get it. It says, uh, "bringing a stone grasped firmly in the hand, and I can, I see him there," how does that go, "like an olds—like and old-stone savage armed," not an old stone savage, I don't mean that. I mean Paleolithic [laughter]. And, uh, and I want it to be "old-stone" as one word, or else hyphenated, see, so that it's very important, scholarship is [laughter]. You got to notice.

I'm gonna ha—the most noticing man that ever lived, maybe, was, was Thoreau, wasn't he. He noticed some things wrong, they like to point out. But he was a very noticing man. That's why we, we're celebrating, the, pretty soon, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Walden, that great, great book, uh, that sacred book, and, to all Thoreausians. And, there, there'll be a word in the dictionary I'm gonna say in the celebration. There'll be that word'll get, is getting in, getting into use, Thoreausian, you know, be in the dictionary, 'long with some other words. I don't think it's in yet. Transcending Transcendentalism [laughter].

This, uh, all right, I don't know, I'm doing too much of me [unclear], uh. Let's see. Take all this matter of any, of anyone's symbols. What did, what'd I hear someone say today, an interesting thing. Symbolic thing. Now, now, uh, uh, everything symbolic has to be true on both planes, see, or else it's no good. And the question was, how true was it on [unclear] it. Uh, I, I have to thank young lady for that, uh. They, uh, two p—two y—young people were walking hand in hand in a thunderstorm. And just, just after they let go their hands and separated a little, the lightning struck the ground right between them, which goes to show that we're bette—safer apart than we are together [laughter]. See, see, it's a nice symbol. Anyway, it's a nice symbol whether it happened or not, you'd say. But it ought to happen, see, and we began to, I bega—I kind of doubt that, but it might be. But it's such a nice symbol, it's too bad it isn't true [laughter]. 'Cause it goes with my doctrine. I'm always talking that, and so it [unclear] too, you know. It's very Thoreausian, that's a very Thoreausian tale. I'm gonna keep it, whenever I want it. The, uh, I go around saying, that, uh, that, uh, the separateness of the parts is at least as important as the connection. But I'm going to say after this it's more important [laughter]. More important. [Unclear] you see if you don't keep, if you don't, if you all keep getting together, you know, it'll end in stateism [laughter], that dreadful word. That's what they mean.

These pools—

Let's save this one. Somebody want to name anything that I ought to say? Do you want to—

??: [Unclear]

RF: Hmm?

??: "Acquainted with the Night." "Acquainted with the Night." "I have been one acquainted with the night..."

RF: Yes. I, I think I know that one [unclear] find it.

[Starts to reads "Acquainted with the Night"]

Huh, something's gone wrong. See, find it for me. Find it for me while I'm saying something else. I ought to know that [unclear]. "I have passed by..." yeah, I can—

??: "Desert Places."

[Reads "Desert Places"]

Y—you know, uh, y—what is there left for the person that listens to a poem if it's if it's nothing, you know, what is it to him if he, it's just his agility, to show his agility in handling of things. It's things he knows, played with, and his agility in keeping up with the little game, that's all there is to it. There's anything that I have to explain about understanding it, it's t—that's absolutely fatal.

[Reads "Aquainted with the Night"]

There's a pun in that one that I meant for a friend of mine, 'specially, it wouldn't be your affair at all [laughter].

But I'll tell you what it was, uh, his name was, uh, his name was George Russell, A.E. And he was always saying, "The time is not right." See. Every little while he'd say to me, "The time is not right." 'Twasn't, it was all right, it got, he g—he helped get Ireland its independence, and, uh. But he was always a rather sad person about even that. He's fallen into neglect after it. "The time is not right." And so I, so I just put that in for his benefit. He saw it. [Unclear]

All right, and then, shall I say one or two of the more ironical ones, he. The, the one about the, science, that I like to say in these days. The, uh, uh

[Reads "Why Wait for Science?"]

The, one of the interesting things about science to me, always, uh, is that it seems to be seeking first things, that's in the larger, in its largest aspect. Seeking first things. And, with all its seeking, through all the ages of first things, it's never got anywhere near 'em, has it? They didn't say that loud [unclear]. Never got in—within millions of miles of first things. Just as far as ever. The interesting thing today, the latest, uh, the l—uh, the nearest they've got today is to say that we can't tell now, substance from form, where we've got. You can't tell this thing that seems to be coming, [unclear] coming in on you, pushing you back, pushing you back, is substance or form. Or is it form-substance or substance-form. But that's not, that's anybody knows that's nothing. They haven't got anywhere yet. But I, s—don't mean that that isn't great fun, pushing back that way. Then, uh, I think I'll read one more, say one more.

[Reads "Spring Pools"]

The, uh, and then, perhaps, the old one, I see it here, uh, "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," and then I'm gonna say one more of the other. This w—this one is, uh, uh, this one'd be a companion-piece to the, to the one about the thrush, but in a different tune.

[Reads "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening"]

That one is one that's been, that I've been more bothered with than anybody ever was with any poem, in just the push—pressing it for more than it should be pressed for. It means, means enough without its being pressed. And they, that's all right, you know, I don't say that somebody shouldn't press it, but I don't want to be there [laughter]. [Unclear] I, somebody said I used a very bad figure about it, a friend of mine. I said, I'm, uh, the human body should of course be subject for all sorts of investigation, operation. Operating table and everywhere, you know. And that's all right. I'm not interested in it in that way. She said very bad figure [laughter]. Has some things [unclear] for me.

And then, uh, see I got another one in my pocket here. [Unclear] Turn that on again, I may. This is small print; I'll have to stand the light. [Voices in background] Punch it. Never mind. ;[Unclear] This one is called, this is another Christmas one, "The Cabin in the Clearing." This is in blank verse and two voices speaking. First voice says,

[Reads "The Cabin in the Clearing"]

Doc Cook wants me to say one called "Once by the Pacific." I see all this that I've forbidden, uh, I allow for myself [laughter]. This, uh, I always, "Once by the Pacific," now what am I doing by the Pacific? Well I, I s—I was there once [laughter] [unclear] when I was very young. "Once by the Pacific." [Unclear]

[Reads "Once by the Pacific"]

And then the other one he asked for was, this is one, uh, that somebody said, critically, [unclear] I might tell you that [unclear] carry this [unclear] that he wonders about my believing. "A Soldier."

[Reads "A Soldier"]

And now shall I say the "Departmental" one for a final one [unclear]?

??: "Choose Something Like a Star."

RF: "Choose Something Like a Star." That's an old one. This, uh, footnote on this one, that, uh, that comes first is that this is the one that makes them say, say I must have been reading Horace. And, this has in it, too, I might call your attention to this, allowing myself to do what nob—I allow nobody else to do, uh, it says, uh, "Some mystery becomes the proud." That line was wrung out of me, see, just wrung out of me, you wouldn't know that, wrung out of me by years of not understanding what other people are talking about. See, I have to say "Some mystery becomes the proud." See, that's my forgiveness, uh.

[Reads "Choose Something Like a Star"]

It's just that last part that they mean I stole from Horace. [applause]

From Robert Frost at Bread Loaf(1936~1955) - Robert Frost