Acquainted With The Night

A human life has always been one of the main subjects of heated discussions, movies, stories, poems, and so on. The phenomenon of life is so interesting and enigmatic because it reminds of a complex, sometimes insoluble, puzzle that consists of many events, emotions, people that take part in it. Robert Frost, a great American poet, lived a long life that consisted of rather sad moments, unfortunately. His life was full of grief and loss, which, of course, reflected in his literary works. This essay discusses two of many Frost's poems, "Acquainted with the night" and "Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening", that express stress and gloom Frost's unfortunate life was filled with. Conducted research of the poet's world helps to find out, under
“Acquainted with the night” belongs to West-Running Brook, Frost's fifth book of poems, along with other dark lyrics that describe Frost’s pain, unbearable anguish, and “the personal disasters of his most tragic decade” (Greiner). In this poem, the main character appears before the reader as a deeply depressed, lonely person, which is shown in the poem through a series of expressive images and symbols. The line "I have been one acquainted with the night" is repeated in the poem twice, which draws the reader's close attention to its meaning (Frost). The main character has gone for long trips around the city for quite a while, which the author defines by using Present Perfect tense. As one reads through the poem, it becomes clear, why the night time has become such a comfortable environment for the main character. As one of the scholars notes, “This poem of “deprivation” is one of a number of Frost’s “close to terrifying poems about wandering off, losing the self, or belonging nowhere,” as Richard Poirier says of the “plight” of the poem’s speaker” (Burnshaw 41). The fact, that the main character tries to avoid the society, is one of the signs of his deep depression: “I have passed by the watchman on his beat and dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain” (Frost). Knowing about all the peripeteias of Frost’s unhappy life, it becomes clear that
Poems always reflect their author’s internal world, and these two poems are no exception. Robert Frost had to go through the untimely deaths of his parents, son, and two daughters by the time the poems were created. The poet starts seeing himself as a person who is doomed for such an unhappy life, which is seen in these poems as the author uses themes of night, loneliness, and isolation. Having such a terrible life experience, the poet is losing his hope for the better future. And indeed, after 6 years of the date of composing “Acquainted with the night”, he looses his child, Marjorie, in 1934 (Pritchard 213). The tragedies seem to never end: “The two further deaths he lived through over the next six years … could not similarly be dealt with as instances of nature operating without collusion from the human survivor. The guilty conscience provoked in a parent by an off-spring’s suicide is wholly imaginable; but the guilty agony provoked in Frost by his wife’s death is deeper and harder to fathom” (Pitchard 213). There can be no doubt that such tragic life circumstances not only influence the mood of Frost’s “Acquainted with the night” and “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening”, but also foreshadow Frost’s later poems’ dark