Robert Frost and the Training of Desire

We live in the land of the lyric, but long ago there were tales told in verse full of dialogue and identifiable, if not intense, plots. Unrhymed blank verse droned on and on page after page. In the case of Robert Frost, monosyllables rattle in rows that told of farm and country landscapes in New England. But you wouldn't know it. The anthologies collect the short and sharp lyrics, leaving the longer pieces grassy and wanting wear.

While I'm not consistently moved by Frost's longer narrative poems, I found much to think about while reading "The Bonfire" from his 1916 collection Mountain Interval. The poem describes a father who tells his children "Oh, let's go up the hill and scare ourselves" by setting fire to a pile of collected sticks and brush. Although it's not exactly prudent to do so, the protagonist wishes to throw off restriction.

If read from a psychoanalytic point of view, this scenario suggests access to the unconscious or a release of the repressed. The protagonist says "Let's all but bring to life this old volcano, / If that is what the mountain ever was -- / And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will." This seems like a complete release from restriction, but the poem is really about what it means to scare one's self -- or more appropriately, to scare one's unconscious through the imposition of the superego.

The protagonist shares the story of when he was a child and set fire to nature. Rather than let the fire burn, he was able "to hold it back / By leaning back myself, as if the reins / Were round my neck and I was at the plow." He was saved from utter destruction by the repression of his desire to run away. He was able to put out the fire after imagining, "The woods and town on fire by me, and all / The town turned out to fight for me - that held me." The internalized presence of the social sphere encircled the protagonist, forcing him to do the right thing and tamp down the flame around him.

The protagonist wants to pass this lesson on to his children, the danger of letting one's self be consumed. He argues that the world can bring greater challenges and more substantial scares, specifically war. He says that "War is for everyone, for children too." If one cannot face the danger of fire, which perhaps signifies the terrible energy of one's own unconscious desires, than one cannot develop the ability to steel one's self against the collective terrors of war.

One must face the threat of Self-annihilation to achieve the victory over the "fire" of the unconscious. But this is not just an individual effort: "I mean it shall not do if I can bind it." The danger must be overcome by obeying the society in which one is implicated. The ultimate success, although the poem carefully does not mention it, is the redirection of one's energies from the destruction of the self or the community toward the community's enemies. If the poem is a sort of rite of passage, then the true transformation is from child to warrior.