Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1959-10-25
The American Grain
And Robert Frost

Last meek Amherst College
dedicated a poetry room In its
library to Robert Frost. The
main speech todS made By Roy
p. Bdsler, director OF the Refer
erence Department OF the L.
brGry OF Congress, and a man
tDho has worked intimately Nth
Mr.. Frost during the ldtter's
term as Poetry CohSultdnt at
the library. Mr.. BdSler'S re-
marks on Mr.. Frost as a poet
led him to discussion OF tDhat
1t means to be an American.
This portion OF his speech is
0iUen here:
1t is his humanism which marks
Robert Frost, both as a man and
as. a poet, with the American grain
that marked Emerson, Whitman,
Lincoln and many lesser citizens
Of our country in their lesser
degree, who have given the world
to know what an American is.
Usually soN protestant that no
accepted professionalism will suffice,
and so individual that no individ-
ualiSm can qualify, he is a human
ist who believes that he has made
a real choice, whatever the de-
terminists may have to say and
however much of an environ
mentaliSt he will admit to being,
and who refuses to give up his
intuitive responsibility in the bust
ness Of "as it."
TDo roads diuerged in a mood,
and l.
I took the one less travelled by,
And that made all the difference.
The meaning of these lines and
the poem to which they furnish
the conclusion can be taken
merely to suggest Robert Frost's
choice of becoming a poet rather
than a farmer or a teacher or
whatever, but they may hold for
an American a larger meaning
that is comprehended only with
difficulty, and could scarcely have
been written, in certain parts of
the world today.
In the matter of conformity,
Americans have been castigated
so repeatedly, and frequently
justly. by our own critics that
the idea Of "a foolish consistency"
has become a hobgoblin of almost
the opposite intent to that con-
veyed by Emerson's famous phrase.
The consistency of organized radi-
calism is a norm from which the
freewheeling radical DIVORCES at
as much risk as the truly rugged
individual conservative runs when
he DIVORCES from organized con-
servatism, and liberal" has be-
come a dirty word to name them
both.
Note on Conformity
Yet, in my own experience, I
have never known a Protestant
of any branch and seldom a Ro-
man Catholic who admitted to
being satisfied with the dogmas
or the discipline of his church, or
who conformed to what he could
not intellectually accept, and in
the practice of politics or social
mores, all of my acquaintance
have proved to be mavericks in
many a roundup. Whether radical,
liberal, or conservative, they
struggle harder perhaps to main
tain their freedom of choice than
their forebears did a century ago.
for the reason that the age in
which we live makes freedom of
choice more precarious and costly
every day.
OF encouragement in this Strug-
gle, Robert Frost offers more than
any other American poet in the
goth century. He has fortified and
maintained with imagination the
Emersonian position, against all
the forces that Emerson saw gath
ering a century ago, plus some new
ones perhaps that Emerson could
not foreSee, to reduce the individ-
ual to norm and to keep him in
his place as thinking man rather
than "a man thinking" useful but
not responsible for his own use.
If one has been aware of this
theme without recognizing it as
the warp upon which much of
Robert Frost's poetry is woven, a
rereading will awaken the aware
ness perhaps to surprise at how
many points in his poems the
theme of individual responsibility
is touched upon briefly or at
length, implicitly and explicitly.
This is the American grain that
marks the wood, it, seems to me,
-.