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The Narrative Unity of A Boy's Will
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Abstract
Although Frost's first volume is consistently taken to be a random collection of lyrics, this does not square with the poet's remarks about it. In both private and public writings, Frost indicated that the lyrics were selected and arranged into a narrative sequence tracing the development of a youth through what he at one point summarized as a “Phase of Post-adolescence.” The lyrics follow the youth from initial, immature withdrawal from society, to final, mature acceptance of himself both as an individual and as a budding poet. But this narrative intent is recognizable only when the first edition of A Boy's Will is examined, because Frost made significant changes in later versions. For a variety of reasons, the first edition does not esthetically satisfy as a narrative cycle. Nevertheless, showing in detail how Frost sought to impose a narrative frame on the lyrics is significant in two ways. It makes it possible to suggest, in the course of the discussion, readings of individual poems which differ from those which the poet himself, sometimes tacitly, sometimes overtly, later endorsed. In the larger context, it provides insight into the position of the thirty-eight-year-old poet at the beginning of his public career; A Boy's Will emerges at once as Frost's retrospective look at what he had been, and a harbinger of what he would become.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1972
References
1 The Pastoral Art of Robert Frost (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1960), p. 134, n. 7. His reference is to Gorham B. Munson's Robert Frost: A Study in Sensibility and Good Sense (New York: Doran, 1927).
2 The Selected Letters of Robert Frost, ed. Lawrance Thompson (New York: Holt, 1964), p. 66. Thompson points out that this letter accompanied a “coverless book.” This copy is not now existent. Since the volume was not officially published until early April 1913, Thompson suggests it may have been a “dummy paste-up of galleys or page proofs of A Boy's Will.” This letter thus represents the poet's comment on the work before it had received any public response.
3 Selected Letters, p. 158. The apparent discrepancy over the length of time the cycle is to record is not significant because of the way in which Frost ordered the poems ; on this see p. 457.
4 Frost to the editor of The Youth's Companion in an unpublished letter quoted by Lawrance Thompson in Robert Frost: The Early Years (New York: Holt, 1966), p. xxi. Thompson dates the letter as either late in 1912 or early in 1913.
5 This Is My Best, ed. Whit Burnett (Cleveland, Ohio: World, 1942), pp. 277–78.
6 Robert Frost Speaks (New York: Twayne, 1964), p. 64.
7 Further comment is needed on this last point. Although “The Pasture” was written while Frost was in England, it was not included in A Boy's Will (as Phillip Gerber twice indicates in his book, Robert Frost, New York: Twayne, 1966, pp. 91, 161). Rather, it first appeared as an epigraph to the first edition of North of Boston. Subsequently Frost usually included it as the epigraph to various collections of his poems—the position it holds in the 1949 edition of The Complete Poems, where it immediately precedes A Boy's Will. However, in the Rinehart paperback edition of The Selected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Holt, 1963), Frost included it, without comment, not as the epigraph to the entire volume, but as the first poem in A Boy's Will.
8 A Boy's Will (London: David Nutt, 1913), pp. vii-ix. Quotes throughout this study are from this volume ; however, I have followed the usual practice in studies of Frost and have not indicated page references. There are numerous editions of Frost's poetry and all are well indexed.
9 Quoted in The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (New York: Modern Library, 1932), pp. 700–03.
10 Parenthood is indicated in the text of “Storm Fear.”
11 While the identity of the “they” is not made clear in the poem, Frost explained to Ezra Pound that it was particularly pointed toward his grandfather—a fact Pound included (to Frost's displeasure) when he wrote the initial American review of A Boy's Will (Poetry, 2, 1913, 72–74). For a full account see Early Years, pp. 410–12.
12 Where it is impossible to infer anything about a season, I have left a blank. Italics indicate that inference was used —i.e., from the text of the poem it is only possible to assume what season it is not.
The only exception to the seasonal sequence concerns “Spoils of the Dead.” Here, however, the break is not a sharp one, since the poem has nothing to do with the youth, except for the last stanzas where an “I” speaks. Rather, it is an account of the activities of “Two fairies . . . / On a still summer day.”
13 This discussion is indebted to James Cox, “Robert Frost and the Edge of the Clearing,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 25 (1959), 73–88.
14 Woods are also involved in the other two poems which follow “The Tuft of Flowers” in Part ii. “Spoils of the Dead” takes place within the woods and in “Pan with Us,” Pan has come from the woods. I stress “The Demiurge's Laugh” because it is the only one of the three where the youth is the primary subject.
15 Selected Letters, pp. 71–72. Generally speaking, Frost used flowers as a complex symbol involving fruition in both the artistic and sexual senses. Much of my discussion centers on the former. Thompson develops the latter in his treatment of an unpublished poem entitled “Flower Guidance” contained in a notebook Frost kept while in England (Early Years, pp. 584–85, n. 11). He also treats it in his discussion of “The Subverted Flower” (Early Years, p. 512, n. 2). Thompson notes that although this poem was not published until A Witness Tree in 1942, it was nevertheless written in its original form prior to the publication of A Boy's Will.
Probably Frost's most concentrated use of the flower as a symbol of personal and artistic fruition is found in “The Self Seeker,” a poem also written while he was in England and included in North of Boston.
16 The association between dreaming and creativity established in A Boy's Will recurs later on in Frost's career; “After Apple-Picking” and “Star in a Stone Boat” are two important examples.
17 It should be stressed that the last two lines of the poem are separate declarative sentences. Thus the judgment cannot be read as if “whispered” by the scythe.
18 Both “The Tuft of Flowers” and “Mowing” follow the same pattern as “A Dream Pang.” In each case the youth is alone and as he “dreams” he is able to imagine himself in the place of another, thus intuiting the other's thoughts. This in turn allows him to understand them as he had not before. Imaginative activity, then, is the means by which he develops as an individual and as a poet as well.
19 Selected Letters, p. 83.
20 Early Years, p. 594, n. 5. Frost brought “The Death of the Hired Man” and “The Housekeeper” with him. He also brought a lyric version of “The Black Cottage” which he then radically revised into dramatic form. Thompson reprints the original on pp. 592–93, n. 2.
21 Early Years, pp. 594–98, n. 7.