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The Identity of E. A. Robinson's Amaranth W. R. Thompson Fort Hays State University Few critics have remarked kindly on the long narrative poems that represent the bulk of Edwin Arlington Robinson's work from 1917, the year in which he published Merlin, to 1935, the year that witnessed both the poet's death and the publication of his last poem, King Jasper. Amaranth (1934)1 fared no better than the rest at the hands of the critics. It pained some and puzzled others. Nevertheless it it an important work because it is Robinson's last attempt to account for the problem of failure, a subject to which the poet had returned again and again throughout his writing career. Written in the tradition of dream-vision poetry, the poem represents a breaking away from patterns that had won him wide acclaim and Pulitzer prizes in 1922 (Collected Poems), 1925 (The Man Who Died Twice), and 1928 (Tristram). Failing to attract the favorable notice of Robinson's contemporary critics, Amaranth has not subsequently been able to elicit the critical attention it richly deserves — the result, apparently, of the difficult initial problem confronting any commentator of the poem, namely the identity of Amaranth himself. That there is a seemingly cryptic quality invested in Amaranth is undeniable. Too many varying interpretations of the character exist for the case to be otherwise. As Estelle Kaplan has noted,2 earlier critics tended to link him with time. For Robert Hillyer he was "the genius of Time itself."3 Eda Lou Walton, on the other hand, refers to the eyes of Amaranth as "Time's judgment on men's work."4 His voice, she remarks, is "inner truth, the flower that never fades."5 Subsequent critics, although they have viewed Amaranth apart from time, have been unable to agree on a common interpretation. Emery Neff, for example, asserts that "Amaranth . . . is Robinson's symbol for reality."6 Yvor Winters just as adamantly 1.Citations from Edwin Arlington Robinson's Amaranth in my text are to Collected Poems (New York: The MacMiIIan Company, 1937), pp. 1311-1393. 2.Estelle Kaplan, Philosophy in the Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), p. 82. 3.Robert Hillyer, "Amaranth," New England Quarterly, 8 (1935), pp. 113-114. 4.Eda Lou Walton, "A Compelling Theme," The Nation, 139 (1934). p. 458. 5.Walton, p. 458. 6.Emery Neff, Edwin Arlington Robinson (New York: William Sloane Associates , Inc., 1948), p. 245. 260ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW observes that "it is apparent that Amaranth represents Truth."7 To Robert P. Tristram Coffin, both the enigmatic Amaranth and Fargo, who finds himself in a lost world for the second time, symbolize the "courage to face disaster."8 Perhaps closer to perceiving Robinson's intent than are the preceding critics is Estelle Kaplan who remarks that Amaranth "is light as distinguished from the power whence it derives. His influence on others as a light that gives them power to resign themselves either to life or to death, depending on individual merit, is as presented by Robinson a method of dealing with maladjustment."9 Had Kaplan equated light with reason, she would have been close to unriddling the puzzle that Amaranth presents to the reader. Although Amaranth cannot be regarded as a personification of reason, he is the means by which men may "know the peace of reason" (p. 1392). He is, in short, an agent — a semidivine figure charged with making men mindful of their potentiality for engaging in rational thought and behavior. A clue to Robinson's intent may be found in the characterization of Ipswich, the inventor, who serves as foil to Amaranth. Ipswich, it will be recalled, is but one of the poem's many characters , each of whom represents professional failure of a particular kind. No two characters opt for the wrong career for precisely the same reason; and of no one of them, with the exception of Ipswich, can it be said that his choice results from sheer perversity. But all, nonetheless, are condemned to spend their lives in the limbo of the wrong world. The poem opens with Fargo, the protagonist, now forty-five years old...

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