权益分类	功能权益	普通用户	{{item.name}}会员
{{category.name}}	{{benefitItem.name}}

Robert Frost: The Life of a Friendship. A critical and biographical study of the poet Robert Frost that focusses on his friendship with Edward Thomas.

罗伯特·弗罗斯特：友谊的一生。

基本信息

批准号：
AH/I002103/1
负责人：
Ralph PITE
金额：
$ 10.6万
依托单位：
University of Bristol
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2011
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2011 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FI002103%2F1
关键词：
Robert Frost Life Friendship.critical

项目摘要

Wordsworth and Coleridge, Pound and Eliot, Byron and Shelley: it's difficult to hear one of the names without thinking of the other Frost and Thomas, though, are not automatically linked in the same way, and the friendship between them has gone comparatively unnoticed. Yet Edward Thomas, an English travel-writer, critic and poet, probably had as great an impact on Robert Frost as Coleridge had on Wordsworth or Shelley on Byron. Frost, for one, believed so. He rarely admitted indebtedness but he told Louis Mertins '[Thomas] did much for me, and I can never repay his memory.' (Mertins, 1965, 135). This new biography of Frost highlights his friendship with Thomas, treating that relationship as a key to Frost's artistic and personal development. It seeks to identify what it was precisely that Thomas 'did' for Frost, how he was important to him, and why, both during the four years when they knew each other and thereafter, in the four decades of Frost's life following Thomas's untimely death. The study will reveal how fully Frost remained under Thomas's spell - influenced by him and by their friendship for the duration of his long life; both haunted and sustained by his lost friend through a glittering career and into old age. Approaching Frost through his friendship with Thomas offers fresh insights into several areas of his life and thought: it helps us understand Frost's development as a writer in the crucial 1913-17 period and thereafter; it sheds light on the writing itself - its changing styles and hidden concerns - and on the motives underlying Frost's determination to succeed. The history and afterlife of their friendship also makes clearer Frost's elusive internal world. Thirdly, the study reveals the progressive qualities of Frost, as a writer and thinker - a side of his character which he obscured in later life, for personal and professional reasons. Frost and Thomas were united in their dislike of English snobbishness and the oppressive social hierarchy it reflected. Neither of them, though, could be identified as a revolutionary or even as straightforwardly left-wing. The subtlety of their feelings about politics continues into their views on culture and ethics, their similar understanding of personal relations and a shared sense of humour. Moreover, they comparable views about education and had a common interest in going 'back to the land'. Rather than being merely convenient or half-hearted, Frost's wish to live on a New England farm is part of his period's desire to go 'back to the land' (following Thoreau's example or Tolstoy's). He and Thomas both accepted, with reservations, simple life ideals - the belief that society and its individual members could be renewed through living in the country and pursuing what is now called, sustainability. Their reservations were also similar. Neither was unambiguously a simple lifer (like their contemporary Edward Carpenter, for example) because both knew that they could not disconnect themselves from the urban world. Instead, both Frost and Thomas sought to combine literary success (enough to provide for their growing families, if no more) with the pursuit of an ideal: an unconventional and at times inconvenient way of life. Frost's friendship with Thomas helped develop in him, therefore, one of his greatest strengths as a poet: his insightfulness about idealism - its value and its drawbacks. For Frost as for Thomas, the only way to pursue your ideals is to seek this realisation of them in and through the recalcitrant materials of the world. To remain true to what you believe while continually allowing the world to challenge your beliefs is the principle, equally applicable to writing and living, to politics and literature, that lay at the heart of their friendship. It finds, moreover, an exact equivalent in Frost's style.

华兹华斯和柯勒律治，庞德和艾略特，拜伦和雪莱：很难在听到其中一个名字的时候不想起另一个名字，而弗罗斯特和托马斯却不会自动以同样的方式联系在一起，而且他们之间的友谊相对来说也被忽视了。然而，英国游记作家、评论家和诗人爱德华·托马斯对罗伯特·弗罗斯特的影响可能就像柯勒律治对华兹华斯或雪莱对拜伦的影响一样大。弗罗斯特就是这么认为的。他很少承认自己受过恩惠，但他告诉路易斯·默廷斯“[托马斯]为我做了很多事情，我永远无法报答他的记忆。” （梅尔廷斯，1965 年，135）。弗罗斯特的这本新传记强调了他与托马斯的友谊，并将这种关系视为弗罗斯特艺术和个人发展的关键。它试图找出托马斯为弗罗斯特“做了”什么，他对弗罗斯特有多重要，以及为什么，无论是在他们认识的四年里，还是在托马斯英年早逝后弗罗斯特生命的四十年里。这项研究将揭示弗罗斯特是如何完全被托马斯的魔力所影响——在他漫长的一生中受到他和他们的友谊的影响；他在他失去的朋友的陪伴下度过了辉煌的职业生涯并一直到晚年。通过弗罗斯特与托马斯的友谊来了解弗罗斯特，可以让我们对他的生活和思想的几个领域产生新的见解：它有助于我们了解弗罗斯特在关键的 1913-17 时期及其后作为作家的发展；它揭示了写作本身——它不断变化的风格和隐藏的担忧——以及弗罗斯特决心成功的动机。他们友谊的历史和来世也让弗罗斯特难以捉摸的内心世界更加清晰。第三，这项研究揭示了弗罗斯特作为作家和思想家的进步品质——他性格中的这一面，由于个人和职业原因，在后来的生活中被他掩盖了。弗罗斯特和托马斯一致反对英国人的势利及其所反映的压迫性的社会等级制度。然而，他们两人都不能被视为革命者，甚至不能被视为纯粹的左翼分子。他们对政治的微妙感受延续到了他们对文化和道德的看法、对人际关系的相似理解和共同的幽默感中。此外，他们对教育的看法也很相似，对“回归土地”有着共同的兴趣。弗罗斯特希望住在新英格兰农场，这不仅仅是为了方便或三心二意，而是他那个时代“回到土地”愿望的一部分（效仿梭罗或托尔斯泰的例子）。他和托马斯都带着保留地接受了简单的生活理想——相信社会及其个体成员可以通过生活在乡村并追求现在所谓的可持续性而得到更新。他们的保留意见也相似。毫无疑问，两人都不是一个简单的生活者（例如，像他们同时代的爱德华·卡彭特），因为两人都知道自己无法与城市世界脱节。相反，弗罗斯特和托马斯都试图将文学上的成功（足以养活他们不断壮大的家庭，甚至更多）与对理想的追求结合起来：一种非传统的、有时不方便的生活方式。因此，弗罗斯特与托马斯的友谊帮助他发展了作为诗人的最大优势之一：他对唯心主义及其价值和缺点的洞察力。对于弗罗斯特和托马斯来说，追求理想的唯一方法就是在世界的顽固物质中并通过这些物质寻求实现它们。忠于自己的信念，同时不断地让世界挑战你的信念，这是他们友谊的核心原则，同样适用于写作和生活、政治和文学。此外，它还发现了与弗罗斯特风格完全相同的风格。