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Mhm Among America's great literary figures. Robinson jeffers is an enigma, even when he was being ranked with T. S. Eliot is our greatest poet and with Eugene O'neill as a writer of tragedy, he had relatively few followers. His volume sold so meagerly that he lived close

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to poverty at a time when his honors included a fellowship in the Academy of American Poets. Then, from the pinnacle of literary acclaim, he met with sudden and savage repudiation because of his criticism of our entry into World War Two. He was accused of being a

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fascist sympathizer, even of treasonous utterances. Except for a small and intensely loyal Robinson jeffers cult of close friends and admirers. His followers dwindled until he suffered almost complete obscurity. Not until 1947, when Jeffers adaptation of media starring Dame Judith Anderson began its successful production on Broadway.

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Did his writings begin to enjoy a gradually renewed interest, Ironically, this interest has grown since his death in 1962 to a proportion exceeding anything he knew while he lived right. His best known poems include tamar, dear Judith, their own stallion, the women of Point, Sir corder,

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Ther sos Landing and Hunger Fields. But in addition to these, many of his other poems deal with the raw truths of human failings and reveal Robinson jeffers personal contempt for sham and conformity. He is finding a rebirth in stature with american readers and an unprecedented response,

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particularly with our younger generations of literary students. Put me in a beautiful place far off from men. Yeah, this is where he lived. Tour house a few feet above the restless specific that marks the coastline of northern California. This then, was the home the self built

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stone wellspring and workshop of the singular poet Robinson Jeffers never out of touch or tune with the symphony of the sea, the counterpoint of the strong winds and the glory and uncompromising strength of nature that was in his soul. And his writings, there was much of

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somberness in Robinson jeffers. It seems to shroud this stone monument he built with his own hands. For tor house where he and his beloved wife una lived so many years seems also a part of the elements. It changes its appearance with nature's changes one moment seeming

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an almost unreal figment of the fog and other times blazing out of the ocean. Rocks below blaze under the torch of the sun glittering incisive. Here is where Robinson jeffers wrote, Give your heart to the hawks. And it is not difficult to fancy that these wild

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and free predators that were such symbols to him, still await the gift. Above the tower he built to them called hawk tower, for it is certain that at times they're cruciform outlines still circle above that tower, as though in expectation. And equally certain it is that

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Robinson jeffers gave of himself to many things animate and inanimate and some of him lingers in stone as it does in these thoughts he wrote about them. Yet stones have stood for 1000 years and pain, thoughts found the honey piece in old poems often the honey

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piece was no peace at all. For Robinson jeffers, there was much of violence and a profound melancholy in this great american poet. He was constantly at war with the self styled progress of his fellow man. The enormous mediocrities and cruelties, blind defacements and creeping ruins that

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to him characterized humanity's ludicrous and frenzied race towards some utopian mirage. Robinson Jeffers was elemental. He was of the elements. Not long ago he lived among the scenes and they became the ghost writers of his brooding and raw philosophies here where nature's rhapsody thunders against the

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rugged and turbulent coast of Carmel and California's big Sur country. The elements play his requiem put me in a beautiful place far off from man, no cemetery, no necropolis. And for God's sake, no columbarium. Nor yet no funeral. Such was the self expressed, bitter epitaph of

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this titan of american letters. Robinson, Jeffers, poet, prophet and giant on the literary stage. Mhm If you knew him well, fewer still were among an inner circle of close friends and confidence. Melba Bennett, author of Robinson Jeffers and the Sea is one. Hawk Tower has been

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the symbol of jeffords. I don't know whether it's because there's a sense of security, Their sense of, of permanency of dignity. And of course his love of the Hawk, its freedom, its soaring beauty. But I can still see him climbing the steps of Hawk Tower. I'll

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always think of him that way. And standing at the top, they're looking again out to sea. Put me in a beautiful place far off from men. So he wrote. And like many things about this strange and moody man, it presents the enigma of Robinson jeffers. For

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he was never far from men in life or in his writing. In truth, they were the essence of his writings. Their weaknesses were his literary strength. Often in writing of the godlessness of mankind. It would appear that he too, was rejecting any belief. Then, in a

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few simple and masterful lines, he would cast the infinity of God across some natural setting on the Carmel coastline to reveal his inner reverence lines such as these. And we know that the enormous invulnerable beauty of things is the face of God to live gladly in

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its presence and die without grief or fear of knowing it survives us. There was something of the universality of mankind in his face, especially in the twilight of his life. As a youth, he had traveled the world extensively and had seen men of many lands. Yet

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his closest companion was loneliness. Not until 193 when he was 16 did he know anything like permanence. His family had moved from pennsylvania to southern California. It was here that he entered occidental college. He began writing tentatively. Then with the encouragement of his classmates, he gained

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self confidence and began contributing to the student magazine. Finally, Robinson submitted his poem, The condor. Two youths companions. It was accepted and has been reprinted many times. Mhm. Mhm. The condor was a clue to his inner worship of nature. It brought Robinson jeffers his first professional

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recognition. He graduated from Occidental College. Then in 195, he enrolled in the graduate school at the University of Southern California to take his master's degree in letters. This was a faithful decision for it brought Robinson jeffers to his first meeting with a brilliant and beautiful fellow

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student Una Custer. They fell in love for Robinson. This may have seen one of many encounters with life's barriers for una. When he met her was married Almost eight years would pass before a divorce was arranged. Robin and Una were then married. In 1913, friends had

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described the beauties of the northern California coastal area of caramel to Robinson and Una. They explored the region for their future home. They fell in love with its wild, rugged beauty. And in his forward to selected poetry, Robinson, jeffers wrote of it for the first time

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in my life, I could see people living amid unspoiled scenery, unencumbered by the mass of poetically irrelevant details and complexities that make a civilization. Yeah, he and una found a place in sight and sound of the sea. And with the little money they had Robinson hired

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a stone mason to build a home from the rough sea washed granite rocks. Then he hired himself to the stonemason as an assistant. Yeah. Here was expression for his love of stone. The strength of it that emerged in his poems. Mm hmm. From it. Also emerged

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the monument that still stands changing its moods as he changed his and his nature changed hers. Robinson and Una Jeffers raised two sons, Donnan and guarantee the poets strong feelings for them was expressed in a number of his writings because of them tour house remains unspoiled

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and still dominates its setting on the ocean hemline of picturesque Carmel California. And it was here that Don and jeffers spoke of this man called a titan of letters. His father. It would be quite natural for my brother Gareth and I do have memories but my

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father, especially when we're here at Toros, we were very close to him and he to us. But there are times when it's possible when you see him even more dramatically through the eyes of others. Certainly this is the case with the magnificent publication, Not Man apart.

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That was compiled by the Sierra club in san Francisco in this volume of matchless still photography and excerpts from my father's poems. I found remarkable glimpse of Robinson jeffers written in the preface by Loren Eiseley. Yeah. Mhm. At one point he comments, No one Reading Jeffords

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can escape the impress of the untamed Pacific environment on which he brooded. He was. Its most powerful embodiment, jeffers, peculiarly distinctive style developed by degrees from the un promising conventional porosity of his youth has the role of surf and the jagged nous of rocks about it.

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Something utterly wild had crept into his mind and marked his features the sea beaten coast, the fierce freedom of its hunting hawks possessed and spoke through him. The pacific at his doorstep became for jeffords, an enormous blue eyeball staring into outer space, staring perhaps into that

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hawk stream future which now is almost an obsession with humanity. Men feel in growing numbers, the drawing net of dependency against which something wild in their nature still struggles as desperately as trapped fish in a same. They ride in imagination with the astronauts. Yearning for the

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last crag, as Robinson Jeffers expressed it on the ocean of the far stars. He expressed also the absolute futility of it all in the lines of his poem. No escape. Mhm. I feel the steep time build like a wave towering to break. So here's one word

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portrait of my father Robinson jeffers. There are many, many others by people who knew him so many. In fact and often so definitive. I discovered my best views of him in the multidimensional purchase of him in the minds and memories of others like those others also.

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I've known the excitement and fascination in searching out the scenes and places close to Carmel and in the big city that he had reference to. Either directly or as backdrops to what he wrote before his death, Jeffers himself identified many of these scenes with his lines.

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In one view of tour house, the flesh of the houses see orphaned stone, the imagination of the houses in those little clay kits of swallows hung in the eaves. And if this ghostly Cyprus, he penned this epitaph. Do you remember at all the beauty and strangeness

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of this place? Old cypresses, the sailor wind works into deep sea knots, 1000 years age, red and granite. That was the world's cradle. Mm hmm. Many times, jeffries gazed at this Seascape until it became apparent to his lines. Each november, great waves awake and are drawn

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like smoking mountains bright from the west. It is this being able to see Robinson jeffers so differently through the eyes of those who knew him. That adds to the fascination of the man. Yet no matter how different he may appear in those views, they all agree

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in placing him in the elemental scenes along the caramel coastline, scenes of which he would write. There is wind in the tree, at the gray ocean's music on the rock. Theodore Lilienthal was another of the few who were very close to Robinson jeffers. He privately published

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a number of limited short editions of jeffers works from him. We gained still another view of the somber poet. He was a cynic and yet he was tender. I can remember so many meetings with him and my wife and nova Bennett, where you felt a tenderness

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that completely overcame any of his feelings about the degradation of man and that civilization was going to pot. And I always have felt that he still believed in the renaissance of goodness and Godliness. I think that una he gave him all the things that he needed

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to at least balance. His terrific cynicism and his feeling about the world. His poetry, of course, expresses that. But when you knew him as Melba and my wife and I knew him, we all felt that underlying it was this great feeling for humanity that he perhaps

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tried to put under this cloak of a very cynical outlook when he was expressing beauty against the counterpoint of man's ugliness too. Man. These were the source materials for the mind and creative genius of Robinson jeffers. And these are some of the lines he would dedicate

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to them look how beautiful or all the things he does. His signature is the beauty of things. I entered the life of the Brown Forest and the great life of the ancient peaks. The patience of Stone, I felt the changes in the veins in the throat

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of the mountain. Bitter were his triumphs of chronicling mankind's capacity for cruelty and ugliness through the depression following World War One and the overture to World War Two. He must often have pondered the scheme of things on his solitary walks among the beauties of point lobos

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below caramel. It is certain he explored the enigmas of life and his fellow men with kindred souls who came from afar to talk with him. Mm hmm. Edna ST Vincent millay George sterling and those who captured his image and marble or bronze donald jeffers. His son

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has commented on the heights of a claim his father reached and on the forces that contributed to his decline in favor with the american public. From 1925 to 1935, my father was being ranked with T. S. Eliot as our greatest poet and whether Eugene O'neill as

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our greatest writer of tragedy, He had reached the zenith and american esteem just prior to the outbreak of World War Two. Now he became bitterly critical of America's involvement in that tragedy. And because of the attacks on this country's drift towards full scale participation, the public

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caught up in the wave of hysterical patriotism began to reject and to repudiate him for his warnings and predictions. They failed to recognize the faithfulness of some of his writings of those times writings express themselves in these lines. We shall have to perceive that these insanity

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czar normal. We shall have to perceive that battle is like a burning flower or like a huge music and the dive bombers screaming orgasm as beautiful as other passions. He wrote a savage jibe at inhumanity in be angry at the sun the world called it nihilistic

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and destructive. Now began his repudiation By 1948 with his publication of the double acts and other poems, a vitriolic censure of America's participation in the war. His popular and critical reputation had reached its native one reviewer wrote he has spun too many myths out of himself,

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but there were many among the faithful who stood by him. One of these was the great actress Dame Judith Anderson, a very dear friend of Robinson jeffers. He had long admired her superlative artistry. She had once appeared with a caramel theater group in a production of

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his Tower beyond tragedy. Any story concerning him would be incomplete without a comment from dame Judith Anderson, I first met Robinson Jeffers in the mid 1930s and I was immediately impressed by the calm nobility of the man. In contrast with the surging vitality of his beloved

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wife Una. I've read many of his poems, but I was particularly possessed by our beyond tragedy and I wanted very much to do it. The opportunity came some years later when I was in Monterrey playing for the soldiers. There's a little theater there, the forest theater

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and open air theater and we played it there, the natural elements added greatly to the production, the the surge of the sea and the stars and the mists and also we used for warm too great braziers on the stage, which was very effective. Then some years

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later jed Harris asked me if I would play a new adaptation of Medea. Well, I've all I had always wanted to play medea, but I had in mind to beyond tragedy. So I thought I could persuade him to do beyond tragedy instead of medea. But no,

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he was adamant. So I said well if you must have madea there's only one man to write it. And that is Robinson jeffers. So he said, well call him up and ask him. So I called Robin and I said Robin, I'm going to ask you a

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question, I want you to say no to it. I said, will you make a new adaptation of media? Without hesitation. He said yes. And so medea came to be born. Working with him. To the small degree that I did was a great joy and a great

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delight. He was so marvelous and so simple. If I wanted another beat in a line or another sentence he would give it to me saying always, you know better than I do. That was his modesty, his great modesty. Robin didn't want to come to the opening

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night. He's very shy, but we persuaded him and I do not think he regretted it. And I must tell you about the opening night when the applause was magnificent. And I indicated to audience where Robin was sitting and I blew kisses to him in his box

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and he stood up and he blew kisses back to me when Yunus said, don't be a fool Robin, that applause is not for Judah this for you. Well he did acknowledge it to a very small degree. And then he sat down. The lone exception to the

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eclipse of Robinson jeffers was this production of media starring dame Judith Anderson. It opened on Broadway in October of 1947, ran continuously for 214 performances. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Throughout the years, Robinson jeffers great love of his wife Una had sustained him against all disappointments

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and meager rewards. In 1950, he suffered his most crushing blow when Una died. Now this man whose life had been etched in shadow, new. Finally the infinity of great depth. Mm hmm. In a poignant letter written to Melba Bennett. Soon after you anna's death, Robin wrote,

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I have been more or less stunned since september very unhappy and useless. This loss will come into proportion. After a while we were married for 37 years and loved each other longer than that. Robinson Jeffers died on January 20, 1962. No Robinson jeffers has been praised

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and acclaimed by great critics and pecked at by lesser ones. But the man and his work were one incorruptible and splendid pride and ferocity or virtues as well as love. And then what I call to mind the dark mountains along the south. The rock heads in

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the cloud and the roaring cliffs. The redwoods, cracking under the weight of wind. These things wash clean the mind, we can even face our lives to bear them or change them. Mm hmm. Therefore, I melted the house and the tower and the courtyard with stone and

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have planted the naked foreland with future forest. Yeah. Mhm, mm hmm.