Robinson Jeffers is an important and still-neglected American poet. His ecological and literary vision of the land was prophetic. He died on January 20th, 1962.
Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, originally from Pittsburgh, who settled in Carmel, California. He was born in 1885 and died in 1962. His major works, both lyrics and epic narratives, are known for their lauding of the land. Jeffers was controversial due to his retiring, anti-Modernist nature and his philosophy of Inhumanism.
Jeffers' Life
Robinson Jeffers' father was a Presbyterian minister from whom he may have drawn his apocalyptic obsessions. He studied literature, several languages, including Greek and Latin and forestry as a young man. However, once he came into a respectable inheritance, he determined to devote his life to art. He moved to Carmel, after meeting and marrying the divorcee Una Kuster in 1913. Building Tor House on the edge of the Pacific Ocean from stones he carried up from the beach, Jeffers began to spend his mornings writing poems and his afternoons planting trees.
After their young daughter Maeve died, Una and Jeffers had twin sons, Donnan and Garth. At first he was celebrated, even appearing on the cover of Time with TS Eliot in 1932, but later his reputation suffered. It was affected by his belief in Inhumanism and his refusal to take sides in WW II. Una died in 1950 and Jeffers was devastated. He continued to live and write at Tor House and Hawk Tower (which he built for Una after their trip to Ireland) until his death.
Jeffers' Art
Jeffers' art and his life were organically intertwined. His first book, Flagons and Apples, was published in 1912 but he didn't develop his central style until Tamar in 1924. Highly influenced by Greek literature, especially playwrights like Euripedes, Jeffers' work asserted its beliefs in permanence, the tragedy of hubris, and the vital nature of the planet. His lyrics, collected in such books as Descent to the Dead (1931) and The Beginning and the End (1962) are powerful testimonies to the wild land that surrounded him. His lengthy narratives like The Women at Point Sur (1927), Cawdor (1928) and Thurso's Landing (1932) are tragic evocations of the pride and folly of humanity. He also wrote theatrical adaptations, such as his translation of Medea (1946).
His philosophy of Inhumanism was expressed in his letters and in his talk Themes in my Poems, delivered at the Library of Congress in 1941. The theory involved a balance between eternal nature and destructive humans, now propounded by ecologists. Critics of his day called him a misanthropist and his work fell out of favour after the 40s. Today, with the work of The Robinson Jeffers Society, his poems and prescient world vision are being resurrected and respected once more.
