Robert Frost, "Once By The Pacific": The Moorish Genesis [2 ed.]

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Robert Frost, "Once By The Pacific": The Moorish Genesis [2 ed.]

Table of contents :
Contents
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p. 163
p. 164
p. 165
p. 166
p. 167
p. 168
p. 169
p. 170
p. 171
Issue Table of Contents
CLA Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2 (December, 1979) pp. i-iii, 125-245
Front Matter http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329596?origin=JSTOR-pdf CONTRIBUTORS [pp. ii-iii] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329597?origin=JSTOR-pdf ORGANIC FORM IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CONVERT: THE EXAMPLE OF MALCOLM X [pp. 125-146] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329598?origin=JSTOR-pdf REDEFINING THE DEFINITIONS IN AFRO-HISPANIC LITERATURE [pp. 147-159] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329599?origin=JSTOR-pdf ROBERT FROST, "ONCE BY THE PACIFIC": THE MOORISH GENESIS [pp. 160-171] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329600?origin=JSTOR-pdf "AND THE BEAT GOES ON ...": A CONTINUATION OF THE AFRICAN HERITAGE IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE [pp. 172-187] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329601?origin=JSTOR-pdf LANGUAGE IN COMMUNITY: THE EVOCATION OF ORAL CULTURE IN "LES CONTES d'AMADOU KOUMBA" [pp. 188-199] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329602?origin=JSTOR-pdf THE AVENGERS IN "LIGHT IN AUGUST" AND "NATIVE SON" [pp. 200-212] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329603?origin=JSTOR-pdf PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE COMMITMENT IN TWO PLAYS OF W. B. YEATS AND SEAN O'CASEY [pp. 213-219] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329604?origin=JSTOR-pdf FROM CULTURAL AMBIVALENCE TO THE CELEBRATION OF THE AFRICAN HERITAGE IN BRITISH WEST INDIAN LITERATURE [pp. 220-233] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/44329605?origin=JSTOR-pdf BOOK REVIEW

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ROBERT FROST, "ONCE BY THE PACIFIC": THE MOORISH GENESIS Author(s): Robert F. Fleissner Source: CLA Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2 (December, 1979), pp. 160-171 Published by: College Language Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44329600 Accessed: 24-05-2020 19:31 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44329600?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

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ROBERT FROST, "ONCE BY THE PACIFIC THE MOORISH GENESIS

By Robert F. Fleissner " He is splendid. With a place to stand. Some glowing in the common blood.

Some specialness within." - Gwendolyn Brooks *

Many Frost scholars today acknowledge that because of t extremely negative reputation of the poet's life - result

mainly from Lawrance Thompson's biography, which has pu few punches with regard to this puritan New Englander a jealous man beset with egotism and pettiness in his relatio with others, including kin - his poetry deserves more attent than his life. The Frost we remember is the sage of the poet In this essay, therefore, I propose to deal with a memorab

example of his use of Shakespeare, one which is seemin

cretaceous for an indelible reading; however, although he ce ured English teachers, as is well known, because to him th " exaggerate Shakespeare," his own use of the tragedies is

some significance. His transformation of a key line fro Othello, " Put out the light, and then put out the ligh

(V.ii.7) / is worth special reviewing. Ostensibly his famous line of " Once by the Pacific," namely " When God's last P out the Light is spoken," is an allusion to " Let there be ligh in the Book of Genesis. Careful inspection reveals that principal debt is to the tragedy of the noble Moor.2 But t

* " Of Robert Frost," in Selected Poems (New York: Harper and Row, 196S

p. 122.

1 Shakesperean references are from William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, gen. ed. Alfred Harbag (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), unless otherwise indicated. References to Frost are to Complete Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967). 2 See D. S. J. Parsons, " Night of Dark Intent," Papers on Language and Literature, 6 (1970) , 205-10. Parsons recommends a syncretistic reading, a dual reference to Shakespeare and the Bible, whereas I find the allusion basically to Shakespeare.

The Shakespearean emphasis has now been arrived at independently by Brian Barbour, " Frost's * Once by the Pacific,' " Eocplicator, 37 (1979) , 18-19. 160

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Robert Frost, " Once by the Pacific " 161 problem is indeed a complex one and therefore needs renewed study. The occasion for " Once by the Pacific " was, as the title in-

dicates, a recollection of Cliff House Beach, California, but Frost evidently meant the poem to have a special universal quality. Being written between the World Wars but inspired

by feelings preceding both, the lyric is curiously prophetic. Although the prophetic quality initially recalls the Bible again, the poet is on record for trying to relate it to " any circumstance

he chose to view as calamitous." * Since it is not considered de

rigueur to conflate the occasion of a literary work with its causes,4 the association of the poem with Cliff House Beach as well as possibly with other "prophetic" modern poetry like

Matthew Arnold's " Dover Beach " 5 or William Butler Yeats's

" The Second Coming " need not concern us here. Likewise the biblical allusions can be overplayed, as I shall show, for they tend to undercut the Shakespearean. The point is that if, as I

propose, the italic type in Frost's last line indicates quoted material, then the quotation is hardly from the Bible. Although I should not wish to deny apodictically that the italic type had the effect, for Frost, of dramatically emphasizing the deep voice

of God (I have heard him read the poem) , that was not its primary motive. In dramatic terms, the Shakespearean refer-

ence is more to the point, especially when we realize that

Othello is described as a Christian, albeit a tragically motivated one, and that in the scene from which Frost borrowed the crucial line his own speech is replete with biblical allusions. Now it is known that Frost was questioned about his poem's link with Othello. In consulting some four friends of Frost's 8 See Lawrance Thompson, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph , 1915-1938 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) , p. 626. * See Kenneth Muir, " Personal Involvement and Appropriate Form in Milton's Poetry," Études Anglaises , 27 (1974) , 425-85, with reference to Milton's pamphleteering which " though occasioned, was not caused, by a series of accidents " (p. 425).

5 Since Frost admired " Dover Beach " a great deal, alluding, as was his wont, to fellow " Dover Beachcombers," the poem may appear to bear some affinity with

" Once by the Pacific " even though the respective waters are antipodean. On his references to Arnold's poem, see, e.g., Franklin D. Reeve, Robert Frost in Russia (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963) , p. 124; Selected Prose of Robert Frost , ed. Hyde Cox and E. C. Lathem (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p.

50.

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162 Robert F. Fleissner

about this matter, I have arrived at various try to explain which are the more important

with whom I talked was Rabbi Victor E.

friend of the poet's as is evident from thei from Frost's having delivered a homily in

gogue in Cincinnati. Rabbi Reichert gave

Frost for the English Department at Centr and linked " Once by the Pacific " to the Ta specified the kinship more fully in an impo his talk, members of the Department disc possibility that " Once by the Pacific " is i Othello. I broached the topic specifically of theatrically effective repetition of his decis light " might not refer to what would now

Jim " or counter-racism; in other words, in h

vinced that his white wife had betrayed him with the stereotypal idea of " the cruel Moo speare refers, thought of " putting out his Rabbi Reichert was understandably shocked tion (although his wife, who also knew Fro be known that Frost the man, if not the p racist slurs,7 said that she understood it) . Y

cult to believe that Shakespeare himself such a meaning. I have corresponded wit whose essay on Frost and Othello is an imp note on the problem,8 and he has indicated

6 " The Faith of Robert Frost," in Frost : Centennia Press of Miss., 1974), p. 472. Frosťs claim, supported b an " Old Testament Christian " is somewhat offset b doomsday, a New Testament concept.

A particularly authoritative source, Frost's private secr son, in Robert Frost : A Pictorial Chronicle (New York: ston, 1974) , has written: " Robert was capable at time would be called racist, a charge easy to make and almost 125); she noted that his attitudes " mellowed rather tha over the years he found friends among a comprehensiv

and rabbi, black and white, Oriental as well as Euro

definitely favored the Supreme Court's decision on racial

See Reginald L. Cook, Robert Frost: A Living Voice (A

Press, 1974) , p. 95. For an attempt at an objective revie " Frost and Racism: The Evidence," Negro American Lite

118-19.

See n. Ä above.

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Robert Frost, " Once by the Pacific " 163 Shakespearean context allows for such a reading, it seems unnecessary. I would agree, on the whole, although elsewhere in the play there is deliberate paronomasia on the word white (and wight ) : " If she be black and thereto have a wit, / She'll find a white that shall her blackness fit " (Il.i. 132-33) . At any

rate, I cannot take Dr. Reichert's rabbinical position as the

final word. The second Frost friend and scholar with whom I talked

about the last line of " Once by the Pacific " was Dr. Theodore Morrison, a Harvard professor emeritus, whose wife served as the poet's personal secretary. He informed me that Frost was disinclined to accept the view that he was quoting Othello, that

he would ask what the poem had to do with the play. Mrs.

Morrison had no comment. When I asked Dr. Morrison how

he would explain the italic print, he seemed taken aback that Frost had used it and then suggested that it was just one of the poet's idiosyncrasies. I confess that Dr. Morrison's testimony

was a hard blow; however, I was not put down, and when I later heard Dr. Morrison discuss the matter with Reginald L. Cook during Frost Day in Vermont, I had good reason for my

patience. Mr. Cook contended that Frost was indebted to

Othello in spite of his disclaimer, especially because Frost was well known for having stressed that his readers should not trust

what he has said too much, but instead ought to " check up " on him (a position taken all too well by Lawrence Thompson in his " official," if perhaps not definitive, biography) . The net

result of my colloquium with Messrs. Cook and Morrison was that I understood how Frost simply did not want to feel downgraded by having his poetry related to, and hence compared with, Shakespeare's. That attitude, understandable enough, is, however, irrelevant with regard to the influences upon him. Therefore, I find Cook's view superior to Morrison's. A fourth friend of Frost's whom I have also known and who has written me about the Othello problem is Clifford P. Lyons, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina. His comment was that although the fact that " put out the light " is such a commonplace expression augurs against specific Shakespearean influence, the tone of the poem itself augurs for it or at least suggests an analogous situation. Dr. Lyons's comment is of particular interest in that during one of his sessions " bard-

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164 Robert F. Fleissner

ing around," as he put it, at Chapel Hill, Fr

"put out the light" in reference to being staying at the Lyons residence and shortly " Once by the Pacific." 8 Free association of there is also a hint that Frost thought of t this context because of Lyons's being a Sh over, as a former graduate student of Lyon can vouch for his mandate that short paper

" put out the light " be turned in as a major c

(I recall one specifically on the meaning of that Lyons singled out in class. A paper th

him was subsequently published as a cru

known journal.) 10

Such topical evidence is useful in discussi but the poetry itself should get the main that Frost would " say " the poem, as he pu concern. In a recital of his that has been Frost centenary with commentary by Coo poem, reading the key line twice and claim time he " didn't say that quite right." Wh not emphasize the right words because the

him off. Since italic print is used so much for naturally he would have been thrown off by

had put there for another reason. As I me italic was to indicate a quotation, and since not from the Bible, it derives from Sha Should the astute reader object now by not is capitalized, a good answer is in store: the ized in the Othello line - in the variorum there is some likelihood that Frost knew th either directly or indirectly. After all, Tho Frost once established a warm friendship w

Shakespearean James Cruickshank Smit

scholar when the latter " carried under one arm a volume of

® See Richard J. Calhoun, ed., " Frost in the Carolinas," The South Carolina

Review , 7 (1974), 3-12, 10 " Shakespeare's Measure for Measure , II.iv.136," Explicator, 32 (1974), item

42.

11 Robert Frost : A Living Voice, pp. 115-27 (see especially p. 124).

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Robert Frost, " Once by the Pacific " 165 W. H. Furness' new variorum edition of Shakespeare." 12

Would such a detail have been worth remembering if it were not of some import in their relationship or did not tell something about Frost? Frost's discussion of matters Shakespearean with Clifford Lyons, as recounted in Cook's book, is of similar

interest.13

Let us consider the italic text by itself. There is a good bit of textual precedent for claiming that Frost's italics were meant

to indicate a quotation: for example, T. S. Eliot used such type in The Waste Land (and Frost, much as he liked to tease Eliot,

wrote a New England Waste Land, " Directive ") ; Archibald Macleish used italics that way in J.B. (a play much akin to Frost's masques) ; indeed, Thompson himself used it that way for all the Frost quotations he set of! in his " official " biography. It is reasonable to believe that Frost used italics at

least once the same way. Moreover, he would have surely known of and commended the stylistic maxim that italics ought to be dispensed with as much as possible when stress can be achieved through proper word placement; that is, such type ought to be saved for the right occasions. Scholars who contend that " When God's last Put out the Light is spoken " is a powerful ending to a dark poem are apt to be misled by the italic type if they think only of the primitive association of such type for words requiring stress. There is more to it than that.

Still, some words in the line would require more stress than others, notably " Gods " and " out." Not "last " because of the implication then that God said the phrase previously. Perhaps " Light" because it is capitalized, in spite of my suggestion that he was imitating the Variorum - or perhaps because of it since

the Othello line constitutes one of the dramatist's most tantaliz-

ing cruxes, duly considered at length in the Variorum notes. In any case, the word is capitalized in the play because of what one of our century's most esteemed textual critics of Shakespeare, John Dover Wilson, has designated an " emphasis-capital." In other words, it received its initial capital for the rhe-

torical effect. In a standard work, F. E. Halliday cites the

12 Lawrance Thompson, Robert Frost: The Early Years, 189Ķ-1915 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 604. 1# See Cook» p. 49.

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166 Robert F. Fleissner

crucial line in the play, " Put out the ligh

the light," though without the capital

paronomasia.14 In other words, by " Light in mind light in the ordinary sense and th demona's life. One critic has gone so far a second clause should be pronounced with s

article, thus suggesting that Desdemon synonymous: " then put out the (i.e., th

such a reading seems unduly extravagant, Frost reprimanded Lyons about: " exagger The use of the word " last " in Frost's subtle implication. It could simply mean applicable to God's having said " Let there Yet it might also imply that " Put out t said earlier, not in the Bible, but that it i the final pronouncement. We recall that O before. He not only did that, but he repea ing a variant effect several lines later (" p With so much repetition in mind, Frost e with great depth and resonance. Now it must be pointed out that the Mo

is at the commencement of a scene of the last act which itself

has been glossed as based on the Book of Genesis.15 Hence one major value of the Shakespearean reading of the passage is that it supports the more obvious theistic meaning. As indicated in the subtitle of my essay, Frost's use of Genesis must be qualified

as coming by way of Othello, thus being a " Moorish Genesis."

There is no doubt that he knew the tragedy well enough to

transform a key line from it in this manner: he taught the play

at Amherst in 1917 and even had his students present it,14

thereby allowing for the Moor's rhetorical phraseology to have 14 il Shakespeare Companion , 156Ą-1961 (Baltimore: Penguin Books» 1964), p.

394.

15 See the gloss on the ending of Othello in the new edition by Lawrence J. Ross

(Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1974). A standard approach to the play underscoring Christian themes in it, notably that Othello is an Adam figure and Iago the Edenie Serpent, is to be found in Robert B. Heilman, Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1956) . Sometimes, however, Christian interpretation can go beyond the facts of the text. See n. «6

below.

Robert Frost: Years of Triumph, p. 100.

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Robert Frost , " Once by the Pacific " 167 been impressed upon his memory. As for the Californian setting, too much can be made of it, for the poem's imagery is

scarcely "pacific." Aside from the deep resonances of the

" night of dark intent," its oceanic allusions recall Shakespeare as a great lover of the sea,17 especially in the Moor's famous

" Pontic sea " speech (III.iii.453-59) . Moreover, Frost made

ample reference to Shakespearean tragedy elsewhere; Thompson, for example, tells of Frost's uses of Macbeth, even discussing his " plagiarizing " from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 when he wrote " Into My Own." 18 Cook demonstrates Frost's use of

Hamlet, alluding to the poet's boast that he knew " Shakespeare by heart,"19 pointing to his keen delight in quoting

someone in the style of T. S. Eliot for the purpose of making everyone " wonder where you got that." 20 Eliot, for what it is worth, is well known for his own use of Othello, notably his comparison of the Moor's awareness of the truth with that of Charles Bovary, dubbing it a " Bovarysme." Although the line

from The Waste Land, "OOOO that Shakespeherian rag," is

said to derive from the blues,21 it is possible that there is also an echo of the Moor's repetition of " O! 0! O! " (V.ii.200) with the " rag " connoting his wife's " noserag " or handkerchief in a St. Louis lingo.22 In any event, Frost's use of Othello is by no means limited to that in " Once by the Pacific," though it appears there most 17 Parsons compares the sea imagery in play and poem (pp. 208-9) ; he also observes that Mark Van Doren, in relating the poem's sea imagery to Shakespeare, drew a parallel with another sonnet ( Introduction to Poetry: Commentaries on Thirty Poems [1968], p. 210) . 18 Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph , p. 650.

" Cook, p. 47.

20 Cook, p. 171.

81 See W. E. Yeomans, " T. S. Eliot, Ragtime, and the Blues," The University

Review. 34 (1968) , 267-75. (He argues that the source was music " prompted in the

main by the American Negro.") For the quotation from Eliot, see T. S. Eliot,

The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound , ed. Valerie Eliot (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971) ,

p. 13 (part II, 1.53).

22 1 owe this suggestion to my former colleague Thomas Bartunck, who said it was not original with him either. Cf. William Harmon, " T. S. Eliot's Raids on the

Inarticulate," PMLA , 91 (1976) , 450-59, who writes: " literary classics can be diminished to the hollow 'OOOO' of the ' Shakespeherian Rag.' A similar process erodes 'Good night' to ' Goonight ' " (p. 453) - an allusion to Ophelia's mad-talk in Hamlet. The link with Othello has been considered by A. D. in

" More Notes on ' The Waste Land,' " Notes and Queries , 183 (1951) , 538-39.

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168 Robert F. Fleîsmer

strikingly. It is also evident in " Paul's W that are apropos are the following: " But

girl and put her light out. / She went out l

was all." Now even though the poem is

Paul Bunyan tall tales, other literary sou cently a debt has been seen to Hawthorn Image." 23 The influence of Shakespeare's cut: the idea of a young woman's being

and then being extinguished recalls th other lines in the poem substantiate thi legendary, Othello-like air, and it is spe stopped [stooped?] to murder " (recalli rected execution of his wife) ; his colleag had an interracial marriage, implied by t

some half-breed squaw at the end, he (" darkly, like her shadow ") yet also in

wife, who is related to light (" All the light herself ") . Finally, when the light associa

she exists no more. In an analogous m

metaphorically identified with "light" b

when he tragically puts her out, she dies. A

theme of trumped-up charges of adultery in the poem: " ' That's so, how is my wi getting into mischief.' " Although I must admit that I am not th gest that the image of putting out the li

is related to the last line of "Once by

Othello connection has gone unnoticed. I Frost drew upon the tragedy not only f and from his teaching at Amherst, but f poetry of Emily Dickinson, who was hers tragedy of the noble Moor- even to the e herself Desdemona.25 The influence is cle ,8 See Edward Stone, " Other ' Desert Places Frost

Centennial Essays , pp. 280-82.

*l It is also cited by Floyd C. Watkins in "Going

Frost's Religious Poetry," South Atlantic Quarterly , 7 ,5 E.g., see Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Di

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974), II, 655, 674, 702 self-identification and related it to herself: " No

(VÜ.125) .

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Robert Frost , " Once by the Pacific 99 169 poems. For example, in " The Malay took the pearl/' Rebecca Patterson finds a direct echo of the tragedy, notably of the crux " (Like the base Indian) threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe." 26 Dickinson there used the term " Negro." Likewise "All forgot for recollecting" echoes the story of Desdemona's romantic elopement: as Patterson informs us, " Emily

wrote that she had given up everything for the sake of a

stranger." 27 Most striking of all, " Good night! Which put the candle out? " is an echo, as Patterson shows, of " Othello's ' Put

out the light, and then put out the light.' " Should such a

parallel seem far-fetched, we need only detect the note of the green-eyed monster jealousy from the play in the second line: " A jealous zephyr - not a doubt." Elsewhere 28 1 am suggesting that Dickinson's " I never saw a moor " alludes likewise to the

noble Moor (along with English moors) - a meaning based on the manuscript where the line reads " I never saw a Moor." 29 Emily Dickinson " cited the play Othello more frequently than any other, her copy of the play being well marked, presumably by herself." 30 Thus it is a matter of no small interest that Frost's copy of her poetry was also well-marked.31 With his own proclivities toward Shakespeare, he would have been well aware of her use of the key lines of Othello. Her use of capital letters was idiosyncratic enough to bear affinity with Frost's likewise curious use of such capitals, for example in 28 The Riddle of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1951) , pp. 260-61. The proper reading is indeed Indian , not Judean, for if anyone is a " base Judean " or Judas figure, it is Iago, not Othello. On the textual issue, see my article " Othello as the Indigent Indian: Old World, New World, or Third World? " Shakespeare Jahrbuch (East) , 114 (1978) , 92-100. 27 Patterson, loc. cit.

28 See my article " Dickinson's ł Moor/ " Dickinson Studies , No. 34 (Second half,

1978), pp. 7-12. 29 See The Poems of Emily Dickinson , ed. Thomas H. Johnson, S Vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1955) . 80 Marion McConnell Wölk, " The Literary Background of Emily Dickinson as Seen Through Allusions and Comments in Her Letters and Poems," Westminster College Honors ' Thesis (1956) , p. 29 - with reference to Patterson, loc. cit. I am indebted to The Jones Library in Amherst for allowing me to make use of the Dickinson and Frost rooms and their collections for this article.

81 According to John Frost of the New York University Libraries, this book, though donated to the Robert Frost Library at NYU by his daughter Lesley, is now inaccessible. See also Jack L. Capps, Emily Dickinson's Reading 1836-1886 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 24, 62. Capps finds numerous references to Othello (pp. 184-85) .

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170 Robert F. Fleissner

" Too Anxious for Rivers " where the lin to Question What Doesn't Concern Us." light problem itself, let us compare these

idea: whereas she wrote "put the Cand capital) , and the Shakespeare Varioru

Light " (presumably also based on a manu it appears thus in the First Folio) , Fro

Light." The use of capitals is intriguin

Anxious for Rivers," with its own idiosyn echoes the phrase once more as follows: " Let us compare Frost's sparing use of ita What strikes us is that two of the relativ where he used such print likewise invoke Broken Drought " there is

He did as Shakespeare says, you may rec Good oracles will do when they are out.

(I would hesitate to go so far as to clai word derived from Shakespeare's own pu sonnets.) In " From Plane to Plane " we r "A Santa Claus was needed. And there is one."

" So I have heard and do in part believe it,"

Dick said to old Pike, innocent of Shakespeare.

Here the line quoted from Hamlet (I.i.165) is found elsewhere in Frost; in his own whimsical manner, he liked to stress " in part," thus echoing the skepticism of the play possibly derived from Montaigne. With such parallels in mind, can we truly believe that the poet himself was " innocent of Shakespeare " when he wrote of

" God's last Put out the Light "? Hardly. One last poem of

his is worthy of pause in this regard; it also has been said to be quoting Shakespearean tragedy, and it likewise cites the preposition out in a key way. I refer, of course, to " ' Out, Out - ,' " usually taken as echoing " Out, out, brief candle " in Macbeth's most famous soliloquy. Now it has been argued that this quotation is not from Shakespeare, but simply a quoted remark about staying out of the way of a buzz saw.82 Such a 88 Wade Van Dore, " The Subtlety of Robert Frost," in Frost : Centennial Essays , p. 539.

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Robert Frost, " Once by the Pacific " 171 view can be partly supported in that the dash in the quotation

is not in Macbeth's speech. Yet, no matter. The reference is

still to Macbeth in a transformed manner, the obvious dissimilarities in setting notwithstanding. For both poets were meditating on death. " ' Out, Out - ' " ends with reference to " Little

- less - nothing! - and that ended it," an allusion to the tail end of the Scot's speech: " Signifying nothing." The victim in the poem is also a poor player on the stage of life. The poem entails a tragedy of its own, one relating to a lack of common sense rather than ambition, but there is no reason why Mac-

beth's ambition cannot be traced likewise to a misunderstand-

ing of what was then termed the sensus communis. Both Shakespeare and Frost end up with dark effects - even as the darkness of the Moor tragically lends itself to the darkness of his fate. With his own Scotch background on his mother's side, Frost had a particular liking for Macbeth and cited it elsewhere more explicitly (as in A Masque of Reason) , but he was also capti-

vated by the noble Moor, and dismissal of his allusions to

Othello would be at least as reductive as denying his references to Macbeth. In sum, it would not be an exaggeration, in terms of the evidence, to say that the genesis of " Once by the Pacific " is initially Shakespearean in its last line, only secondarily biblical. As Parsons usefully points out, " The words ' Put out the Light ' do not strictly provide the negative of ' Let there be

light ' in Genesis." 33 What they do incorporate from the first book in the Bible is transformed, by way of the Shakespearean source, into the Genesis of the Moor, one pointing even more firmly toward a Last Judgment, when, as revelation tells us, all men will be adjudicated on an equal footing. Central State University WUberforce t Ohio

88 Parsons, p. 208.

84 Since completing this paper, I came across additional evidence that the keylast line of the poem contains a Shakespearean quotation although no quotation marks are used. Charles T. Morrissey, in his article on Frost, " The Poet and the Pedants," on the back page of The Chronicle of Higher Education (26 February

1979) , refers to " Frost's habit of quoting others without using quotation marks." Also since the completion of this paper I have discovered a probable way whereby Frost determined to make use of the Othello line. He followed the lead most likely not merely of Emily Dickinson but of Sidney Lanier. See my note forthcoming in Papers on Language and Literature on this subject.

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