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| The Robert Frost Stone House museum |
When we traveled through Vermont this fall, I was eager to
see the stone house where Robert Frost—one of my favorite poets--lived in the
1920s. The house is now a small museum, with family pictures and enlargements
of selections from Frost’s books and letters covering the walls. Though not as spectacular as
some writers’ homes, the museum is a feast for any Frost enthusiast.
One piece of correspondence especially fascinated me. It was
Frost’s caustic letter to his editor regarding “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening,” that poem beloved by thousands of us. The editor had added commas to
Frost’s original line, “The woods are lovely dark and deep,” resulting in the familiar “lovely, dark, and
deep” we have all seen in the published poem. Frost was obviously infuriated by
the change. As a rather comma-happy editor myself, I could imagine myself
automatically adding commas in the same places, and felt some sympathy for the
editor. But Frost was right, of course—both the rhythm of the poem and the connotation
of the line were changed by the added commas.
Coincidentally, the issue of Harper’s that came out while I visited
Frost’s home contained a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, “Lovely, Dark, and
Deep.” (It did not mention the commas.) Though clearly fiction, it was a slightly
veiled sharp attack on Frost’s character. Using various sources, Oates quoted
Frost’s children and associates about how he had mistreated those around
him. It is impossible to tell how much
of Oates’s material is true, and how much is fictional. Whether Frost is as
awful as he seems in this short story (which may well be true, from what I have
read in other places) or not cannot be known with certainty. Because I find
much meaning in his poetry, I hope he was a finer person than Oates pictured
him.
This lack of clarity troubles
me, not just in regard to this story, but about combining fiction and history
in general. What might be libelous in a nonfiction article is not in a short
story, where the author is protected from accountability.
