Robert Frost, commencement speaker
[NOTE: Here’s a slightly-edited version of a post I first published in 2014. I thought it might be good to put it up again, because it still seems appropriate.]
The time was 1956, over 65 years ago. The place was Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and the speaker was the poet Robert Frost. What he had to say to the students there may surprise you. If you want to read the whole speech, go here, but the part that I was most interested in is this portion, which I’ve condensed into short excerpts from the original:
Is our dream, our American dream—that I think Dreiser thought was “An American Tragedy”—is that dream over? Are we on a new dream?
Or is the Constitution something that isn’t performing—a sort of vanishing act, fading as we watch it, and turning into something else? When they call it “a living document,” that means they can have it any way they want it for this generation. That’s the danger…
Let me say what I’d do about it if I were you. I’d go back and read some of the “Federal Papers.” I’d go back and see whose dream it was. Plenty of time, you’ve got it all before you…
…for me the man that comes nearest what I think was the dream, that may be ours still, was Madison. In the “Federal Papers,” go to Madison and see what he thought it was going to be.
What was it going to be? Go along and think about that—using the “think” in the slang: “You’ve got another think coming.” You see? I’ve got another think coming…
I would think that Tom Paine was very little in it…I’ve read a good deal of Tom Paine, and I know a good deal of what he thought. He thought there was something started about the brotherhood of man that was going to set the whole world on fire, sweep the whole world.
So he rushed right off to France about it. And we see what came of it. They had a revolution there. And they had four republics—and not to mention three or four monarchies—since then. Their dream was a very confused dream, if they had a dream.
Another thing that I pick up…about freedom and equality. It occurred to me not so terribly long ago—rather recently—that the more equality I have, the less freedom I have. These two things balance each other.
If one party leans a little more towards the freedom—freedom of enterprise, freedom to assert yourself, freedom to achieve, freedom to win—the other comes in with the tone of mercy and says: “Let’s not let anybody get too far ahead. Let’s have a Sherman Act or something, to keep people from getting too rich.” That’s toward the equality, the fraternity of it.
I didn’t know that for years, didn’t know that the more freedom I had, the less equality I could expect—somebody’d beat me and get ahead of me if we had freedom. (I’m willing to let him get ahead of me, if he can.)…
Can you imagine any poet giving a similar commencement speech today? In fact, I can hardly imagine anyone giving a similar commencement speech today. Frost assumed a certain context for his graduating class listeners—for example, that they knew something about who Dreiser and Tom Paine and Madison might be, and he assumed that what these men said and thought might actually interest and inform them. I don’t think that would be the case now.
I’ll close with one more quote from Frost, who was an educator for many years of his long long life—not just a poet, although he was certainly that, and not just a farmer, although he did that too when a young man. He was a teacher at all levels: grade school, high school, and college. He was a teacher in many places. He was a teacher when he was obscure and when he was very very famous.
Here’s what he had to say about his attraction to teaching, from a lecture he gave in 1961 at the University of Minnesota:
I’m almost as interested in education as I am in poetry…I’ve had so much to do with education that I say I’m like some monkeys that Darwin tells about.
He showed them a bagful of snakes. And they looked at ’em and and shrieked and threw up their arms and fled. But they couldn’t stay away. They kept coming back and and looking in the bag at the snakes and throwing up their arms and shrieking and running away again.
That’s the way I’ve done for education, about the last fifty, sixty years—sixty, sixty-five years. And here I am again.
Frost died a little over a year later, at the age of 88.
I had an in-law who used to drop by our house once per year for a couple days. He and I would talk into the wee hours while sipping bourbon about politics, the founders and the Federalist Papers. I didn’t realize until later that he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Federalist Papers at the U. of Chicago. He’s gone now, and is missed.
The push for equality: The commentary below is from Donald Boudreaux, an econ. prof. from George Mason U. writing to the editor of the Philadelphia Trib. Later incorporated into a compilation book of his. It’s long and maybe a little inelegant, but I like it.
It was the Pittsburg Trib.
Suppose that Jones chooses a career as a poet.
Most people don’t have careers. Some have trades. A plurality just have jobs. Their choices are rather more constrained than others.
Let’s have a Sherman Act or something, to keep people from getting too rich.
The point of anti-trust law is to prevent producers from colluding.
And, yes, it’s impossible to imagine his address today out of the mouth of anyone in any component of the faculty. We’re much more ‘diverse’. Or whatever.
What is the American dream? Like the weather, it varies. My dream would not be the same as someone else’s. But very few dreams are possible without freedom. Freedom to choose where you live, what you will do to earn a living, to own property backed by courts of law, to speak your opinions without fear of retribution, to practice your religion without intolerance, and more. Many Americans who have not traveled abroad don’t realize that these freedoms are limited/absent in many areas of the world. Thus, they don’t appreciate them.
Without freedom you may not be able develop your talents and abilities to become what you are capable of. Equality or egalitarianism may appeal to lay abouts, slackers, poets, artists, and others who avoid hard work or mercantilism, but the modern world sits on the shoulders of those who worked hard, worked smart, and raised us all up from lives of just getting by to a world of possibilities where even the poor have cars and TVs. Only people devoted to the cult of socialism/Marxism think differently. Unfortunately, there seem to be many of that ilk today – AOC and the Squad being prime examples.
Interesting person, his intelligence shines: the insight into the bag of snakes story is original and intriguing. I’m impressed.
I know Frost by name but never read anything by him: any suggestion for a starting point? Thanks
Only people devoted to the cult of socialism/Marxism think differently.
I know of no Marxists in our public life. I know of many people with an interest in harassing and abusing others. They work within the Democratic Party almost exclusively.
Paolo Pagliaro
Neo , on Frost, and my favorite Poem of his,
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/01/28/and-now-for-something-completely-different-snow-and-frost/
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Robert_Frost/robert_frost_stopping_by_woods_on_a_snowy_evening.htm
My favorite Frost poem is “The Woodpile.” Many others are close. I have been to his house and seen his “two holer” sanitary facility.
Paolo Pagliaro:
In my opinion, Frost is the greatest American poet. You may have noticed that on the photo in my header, his collected works is on the top, above the Churchill biography.
I’ve written quite few posts on him. There’s this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. That’s not even an exhaustive list of what I’ve written on Frost. I also recommend this poem as well as this one. And this is an excellent short documentary.
Equality or egalitarianism may appeal to lay abouts, slackers, poets, artists, and others who avoid hard work or mercantilism,
You probably should define your terms before making declaratory statements like this.
I was going to be bold and make a recommendation for Paolo, even though I knew that Neo is better versed (ha!) in Frost’s work than I am. In preparing to do so, I pulled out the Library of America edition of Frost–the very same edition that’s at the top of the page, I suppose–and, going through some of the selections, ran across “Bereft” and thought it very apropos indeed. I’d never read it before.