Robert Frost:
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Robert Frost: Citations en anglais
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
Variante: A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
Variante: Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Robert Frost
livre
Mountain Interval
Mountain Interval (1920), 5. In the Home Stretch, Line 187-192
General sources
Contexte: “My dear,
It’s who first thought the thought. You’re searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles.
The portion of "The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom." is often misquoted as: Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Contexte: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.
" Fragmentary Blue http://www.ketzle.com/frost/fragblue.htm", st. 1 (1923)
1920s
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep”
Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
General sources
Source: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621
Contexte: The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Preface to A Way Out : A One-act Play (1929)
General sources
Contexte: Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. A least lyric alone may have a hard time, but it can make a beginning, and lyric will be piled on lyric till all are easily heard as sung or spoken by a person in a scene — in character, in a setting. By whom, where and when is the question.
““Men work together,” I told him from the heart,
“Whether they work together or apart.””
The Tuft of Flowers http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/section2.rhtml
General sources
Dedication (1960)
Source: The Oven Bird (1916)
Contexte: There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
“They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.”
Directive (1947)
Contexte: p>As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.</p
“He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.”
Mending Wall (1914)
Contexte: 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 neighbours.”
Home Burial (1915)
Contexte: A man must partly give up being a man
With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement
By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you're a-mind to name.
Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love.
Two that don't love can't live together without them.
But two that do can't live together with them."
She moved the latch a little. "Don't — don't go.
Don't carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it's something human.
Let me into your grief. I'm not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
“Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”
Directive (1947)
Contexte: I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
“Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance.”
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Contexte: Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting … Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.
Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=R8ksAAAAIAAJ&q=%22I+own+any+form+of+humor+shows+fear+and+inferiority+Irony+is+simply+a+kind+of+guardedness+So+is+a+twinkle+It+keeps+the+reader+from+criticism%22+%22Humor+is+the+most+engaging+cowardice%22&pg=PA166#v=onepage to Louis Untermeyer (10 March 1924)
General sources
Contexte: I own any form of humor shows fear and inferiority. Irony is simply a kind of guardedness. So is a twinkle. It keeps the reader from criticism. Whittier, when he shows any style at all is probably a greater person than Longfellow as he is lifted priestlike above consideration of the scornful. Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt, above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever. At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions: to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to this side of the standing argument. Humor is the most engaging cowardice.
