1 - Irony: Teiresias's Gaze

Summary

I have written to keep the over curious out of the secret places of my mind both in my verse and in my letters to such as you. A subject has to be held clear outside of me with struts and as it were set up for an object. A subject must be an object.

Robert Frost, Letters 385

I must go on; I can't go on; I must go on; I must say words as long as there are words, I must say them until they find me, until they say me – heavy burden, heavy sin; I must go on; maybe it's been done already; maybe they've already said me; maybe they've already borne me to the threshold of my story, right to the door opening onto my story; I'd be surprised if it opened.

Samuel Beckett, Molloy

By the strictest rules of masculinity, Frost may not write poetry. By the strictest rules of justice, he may not exploit the merciful ambiguities of poetic language to subvert judgment and suspend retributive action. But driven to write poetry, “drop[ping] into poetry” every time he takes pen in hand, he mobilizes the devices of unstable irony to absolve himself from seeming to mean it (Letters 140). He sometimes creates the illusion of a lyric voice, as in “The Silken Tent,” while at one level suggesting that he is more intrigued with the (archaic) conventions of that lyric voice than with its revelatory powers.