Bruce Clary's List: E. A. Robinson

• “Poetry is a language,” he said, “that tells us, through a more or less emotional reaction, something that cannot be said.”

• In the sonnet “George Crabbe,” Robinson composed a sort of epitaph for himself: 

   

  Whether or not we read him, we can feel 
   From time to time the vigor of his name 
   Against us like a finger for the shame 
   And emptiness of what our souls reveal 
   In books that are as altars where we kneel 
   To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.
• unreconstructed Freudians will revel in Robinson’s drinking, his bachelorhood, his gloominess, his visits to brothels, even his perennial constipation.

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• This sonnet gives completely and superbly the real and final  justification for Zola. He was a great human event. He was a  moralist in his strange, uncouth fashion. He saw life realisti-  cally, perhaps a little astigmatically, but without illusions. He  helped vastly to make it possible for literature to entertain a  more virile attitude toward the less romantic aspects of life and  to take cognizance of vice, crime, and the plagues of the under-  world as material for sincere and truthful treatment. That  is why many who were first repelled were later attracted by him.

  • The sonnet referred to is "Zola" by E.A. Robinson.

• we know Richard Cory only through the effect of his personality upon those who were familiar with him, and we take both the character and the motive for granted as equally inevitable.

  • Morris, Lloyd. The Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson: An Essay in Appreciation. 1923. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1969.
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• "Richard Cory" is perhaps the best-known example of his respect for the inaccessible recesses of man’s inner being . . .

  • Robinson, W. R. Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poetry of the Act. P of Western Reserve University, 1973.
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• man as failure became for him a part of his cosmic view of the world he lived in.
• the theme follows two patterns: one is the failure who seems to be beyond redemption, who does not, finally, possess the saving grace of character that would find favor in men's eyes, or who does not experience some inner change that would render less severe the general indictment against him. The other is the failure who for reasons of almost infinite variety is redeemed, exonerated, saved, or in whom the reader finds some aspect or some alteration of the inner man that lifts him from the shame of complete ignominy.
• We read ill if we cannot see that Richard Cory is granted an oblique triumph at the end, for he has refused to suppose himself made happy by what "everyone" supposes will make him everyone happy. In short, Richard Cory’s self emerges neurotically perhaps; still it emerges triumphant over the imposed role of "success."
• He sketches in Cory’s gentlemanliness and his wealth, but not his despondency, and he lets the suicide seal the identity of the man forever beyond our knowing or judging. On the other hand, he can characterize the chorus just because they lack individuality, and he invites us to judge their blindness on pain of missing the one sure meaning of the poem:
• They do not serve who only work and wait. Those who count over what they lack and fail to bless the good before their eyes are truly desperate. The blind see only what they can covet or envy. With their mean complaining, they are right enough about their being in darkness, and their dead-gray triviality illuminates by contrast Cory’s absolute commitment to despair.
• Yvor Winters to remark that "In 'Richard Cory' . . . we have a superficially neat portrait of the elegant man of mystery; the poem builds up deliberately to a very cheap surprise ending; but all surprise endings are cheap in poetry, if not, indeed, elsewhere, for poetry is written to be read not once but many times."
• Because the people "went without the meat, and cursed the bread," it might seem that life was both difficult and meaningless to them. But difficulty is not to be equated with meaninglessness; in fact, Robinson is suggesting just the opposite. "Meat" and "bread" carry biblical overtones that remind us that man does not live by bread alone. It is "the light" that gives meaning. In opposition to meat and bread, symbols of physical nourishment and material values, light suggests a spiritual sustenance of greater value. As such it clarifies the intent of the poem, for it reveals the inner strength of the people and the inadequacy of Cory. Belief in the light is the one thing the people had; it is the one thing Cory lacked. Life for him was meaningless because he lacked spiritual values; he lived only on a material level.
• The main problem with the popular interpretation is that it fails suitably to account for the tale being filtered through the mind of a narrator, a single one of the "people on the pavement." The resulting view tends to thrust Richard Cory into the spotlight and de-emphasize the character of the narrator. Perhaps we would do well to remember D. H. Lawrence’s admonition, "Trust the tale, not the teller," and begin to view Richard Cory through the eyes of an unreliable, unaware narrator. Moreover, such a focal point has the distinct advantage of helping to explain why Richard Cory really committed suicide.
• Charles Burkhart remarks that their view of Cory is "a familiar illusion which brightens their drab lives."
• Richard Cory’s suicide can thus be seen in a different light. Instead of suicide because of "inner emptiness" or "an absolute commitment to despair," or because he was "sick," we are presented with a case of regicide; the townspeople with some degree of consciousness have extinguished the light. The irony of the ending, then, is not that the people were endowed with greater values than Cory or that simply they failed to understand his message, or even that the light they sought glowed in their midst all the time. The irony is that through their own mental prejudices and unfounded exaggerations the people, like eagles, claw at Prometheus so that the chains of inhumanity imprison him forever; it matters not that it is Cory who pulls the trigger since the people have pointed a weapon at his temple.
• "Richard Cory" is not a painting of a gentleman, but a portrait of the portraiteer. The poem serves as an indictment of those who study at a distance, of those who fail to get a feel of their subject, and of those who let petty personal emotions deprive themselves of human companionship.
• The irony of these lines, and the poem as a whole, depends on the contrast between the serenity of Cory's appearance and the violence of his death; its melancholy, upon our recognising that Cory - for all his privileges - is as acutely isolated and spiritually starved as anyone else. 'There is more in every person's soul than we think', Robinson observed once, 'Even the happy mortals we term ordinary . . . act their own mental tragedies and live a far deeper and wider life than we are inclined to believe possible in the light of our prejudices'.
• Quiet desperation, the agony that Richard Cory's neighbours failed to notice, is a distinguishing feature of many of Robinson's characters. The despair may come, apparently, from emotional poverty ('Aaron Stark'), the pain of loss and bereavement ('Reuben Bright', 'Luke Havergal'), or the treadmill of life ('The Clerks'): whatever, it is palpably there in an awkward gesture, a stuttered phrase, a violent moment as in 'Richard Cory' or, as in 'The House on the Hill', the sense that behind the stark, simple words lies an unimaginable burden of pain.

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• the contribution of form to effect is more obvious; and some analysis of these will throw light on the compositions that are more subtly contrived. In Miniver Cbeevy, for instance, the short last line with its feminine ending provides precisely the anticlimax that is appropriate to the ironic contrast between Miniver's gilded dream and the tarnished actuality:

    

   

  Miniver loved the Medici,
        Albeit he had never seen one;
    He would have sinned incessantly
        Could he have been one.

   

  Miniver cursed the commonplace
        And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
    He missed the mediaeval grace
        Of iron clothing.
• "hold up some fragment of humanity for a moment’s contemplation"

  • Robinson's own words for his poems about small town characters.
• one must ask why Miniver Cheevy (not Edwin Arlington Robinson) prefers an earlier, more "romantic" era than his own, what it is that he loses, if anything, by being out of phase with his time, and, finally, if his anachronistic attachment is virtuous or vicious.

• Even though the general idea of "Miniver Cheevy" is clear, the reader who does not know what is meant by the expression "on the town" misses half of the humor and irony of the poem. To be "on the town" means to be supported by the town, a charity case. Miniver, in other words, is the town ne'er-do-well, the town loafer. The poem is built on the ironic contrast between the unheroic Miniver as be is and his dreams of adventure, romance, and art associated with heroic figures of the Trojan War in ancient Greece, King Arthur's knights in the Middle Ages, and the dazzling brilliance and corruption of the Medici in the Renaissance. What a great figure he might have been, Miniver reasons, had he been born at the right time. That he has not succeeded is not his fault; he uses the classic excuse: the world is wrong! But that in all likelihood he would not have achieved much at any time is made clear by the way Robinson handles his material. The sequence of verbs is used with telling effect: assailed, wept, loved, sighed, dreamed, rested ("from his labors!"), mourned, cursed, scorned. Mainly, what Miniver did was think. Added irony and humor come from Miniver's attempts to apply his "intellect" to his situation:

    

   

  Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
        And thought about it.

   

    

  Ordinarily two "thoughts" would have been sufficient to make a point; three "thoughts" would have emphasized the idea of real, intense thinking; but the addition of the fourth "thought" changes the tone of the stanza entirely, making it absurd. What all this thinking amounted to is indicated by the continuation of the sequence to its conclusion in the final stanza, where "thinking" is paralleled by "drinking" ("kept on thinking . . . "kept on drinking").
• The name Miniver with its suggestion of the Middle Ages, patchwork royalty, and minuteness, coupled with the diminutive Cheevy, sums up his minimal achievement.
• Miniver Cheevy was drawn to the past as he dreamed of Thebes and Camelot. He disliked the present, cursing the commonplace. But the crux of his difficulty was that he "scorned the gold he sought/ But sore annoyed was he without it." This was a succinct rendering of the dynamic which motivated much of Robinson's commentary on mankind's search for happiness.

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• "The Mill" is more than a sad little tale of double suicide brought on by the encroachment of the modern world and by personal loss. The true subject is the enormous power of the creative imagination, which seizes the miller's wife in its fearful grasp, and many a reader along with her. The only thing we know for certain is the miller's words, and everything else depends upon them. Even the woman herself is called only the miller's wife, with no name or identity separate from his. As we know him by his words, we know her by her thoughts, and only by her thoughts, as we never catch the smallest glimpse of her. Robinson's subtle use of form seduces the reader into following the miller's wife into a depth of imaginative fear that has no grounding except the miller's one sad statement. She may get up, go to the tavern, and find him bemoaning his fate with Miniver Cheevy, having a good gossip about the strange end of Richard Cory. Or she may not. But there is little internal evidence that she has already found him hanging from a beam or has cast herself into the weir.

• The main theme or point of "Mr. Flood's Party" is a consideration of the effects upon human experience of the passage of time. And to the elaboration of this theme virtually all of the major figures of speech or symbols in the poem are functionally and organically related, either directly or indirectly.
• in giving the name Eben Flood to his protagonist, Robinson created a sort of symbolic pun, which may be read either ebb and flood or ebbing flood. The former reading, ebb and flood, suggests a pattern of coming and going which proves to be basically related to the poem’s theme and is therefore the preferable reading; also, the latter reading, ebbing flood, has the additional disadvantage of an inherent self-contradiction since ebb and flood are opposite concepts. However, no matter which reading of the pun one prefers, there can be little doubt that in choosing such a name as Eben Food Robinson had in mind the common association between tide and time and perhaps even the familiar adage, "Time and tide wait for no man." Thus in naming his protagonist as he did, Robinson related his character both to the centrally significant pattern in the poem of coming and going; and to the poem's theme of the passage of time, which themselves are interrelated, of course.
• Another symbolism carefully initiated in stanza one is that based upon the contrast between Mr. Flood's solitary house high on the hill and the community or town below. The main effect of the passage of time in the case of Mr. Flood, as in the case of many people, has been loneliness; time has taken away those with whom he had any meaningful associations. Symbolically, Robinson has identified this aloneness with the "forsaken" mountain top and the experience of human contact or communion with the populated valley below. However, the dramatic action of the poem takes place neither at the mountain top nor in the valley, but, as Robinson carefully points out in line two, between the two extremes. In keeping with this symbolic in-betweenness of location of the dramatic action, the experience of Mr., Flood's party is somewhere in-between the two extremes of absolute aloneness and communion with other humans, for after imbibing from his jug he has at least another Mr. Flood to be with.
• The poet who had said that the "bird is on the wing"—in about the same figurative sense that Eben and Robinson meant that line—was Edward Fitzgerald in his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which also directly concerns itself with the effects upon man of time's passing. The lines from the Rubaiyat alluded to read as follows: "Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring/Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:/ The Bird of Time has but a little way/ To flutter and the Bird is on the Wing." The reaction to the transience of temporal things expressed in these lines and repeatedly suggested elsewhere in the Rubaiyat is the philosophy of carpe diem, enjoy the day, make the most of this moment for the next moment may take all away. Mr. Flood in his party is grasping what few small pleasures he can from fleeting life; almost with the reader's approval, because of the sympathy evoked for his situation by Robinson's portrayal, he is adopting the philosophy of carpe diem. As in the other cases already examined, then, the symbol and metaphor inherent in the allusion to the Rubaiyat functionally implement Robinson's statement of theme.
• the poem is not predominantly about death but rather about what Mr. Flood has left of life, which is very little. This heightened moment of communion with himself, artificially stimulated though it may be, is about as rich an experience as is now possible to Eben Flood.

• The theme is the transience of life; the central symbol is the jug. Both the theme and the symbolic import of the jug are announced in the line "The bird is on the wing, the poet says," though only the theme, implicit in the image, is immediately apparent. Its relationship to the jug goes back to its source in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám:

    

   

  Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
    Your winter-garment of Repentance fling:
        The Bird of Time has but a little way
    To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing.

   

    

   

  Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
    Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
        The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
    The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
• By the time that Roland blew his horn the last time, all his friends were dead; like Mr. Flood he reminisced about the past, and his eves were dim. Moreover, be had fought valiantly and endured to the end, and these attributes of courage and endurance are transferred to Mr. Flood. (The expression "enduring to the end" has a double reference behind it--it calls to mind the words of Jesus when he sent forth his disciples, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved," a statement that Browning said was the theme of his "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." The Roland allusion is even more subtle. The comparison is not to Roland blowing his horn in broad daylight and surrounded by the newly dead, but to the ghost of Roland, and the horn he is winding is a "silent horn." Roland, the last to die, is seeking his phantom friends. So is Mr. Flood. Lighted by the harvest moon glinting on the "valiant armor" of Roland-Flood, this is a world of the past, dim and mute. Fusion of figure and scene is complete. "Amid the silver loneliness / Of night" Mr. Flood creates his own illusory world with his jug.

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