Books: Old Master

MATTHIAS AT THE DOOR—Edwin Arlington Robinson—Macmillan ($1.75).

When a poet has become a veteran you know what to expect of him. Caustic critics will say he is getting old, has begun to imitate himself. Doting devotees exclaim simply: “Master!” Run-of-the-mill readers will merely note that he has been doing it for years, knows how to do it. Whether you are a critic, a devotee or just a reader of Edwin Arlington Robinson you should be able to find some solid comfort for your attitude in Matthias at the Door.

A long blank verse narrative (or rather, psychological drama), Matthias at the Door is a typical Robinson poem. Matthias is an oaklike man, successful, preeminent, proud. The world envies and respects him; his few friends are fond of him, though they see his pride is vanity.

Natalie, his wife, is perfectly satisfactory. As the story opens Matthias meets his friend Garth, an embittered failure; they talk a little too frankly, and Garth goes down into the woods and kills himself. His death is a shock to Matthias, to his friend Timberlake, to Natalie; Garth’s memory haunts them. Moved by a common impulse, Natalie and Timberlake meet at the place where Garth died — a great rock that looks like an Egyptian tomb, with a hole in it that looks like a door. They confess they love each other, and Matthias sees them. When Matthias accuses her, Natalie is honest with him, tells him she has always loved Timberlake. They try to patch things up; Timberlake goes away. One day after a quarrel Natalie is missing. Matthias finds her body down in the woods, where Garth died. Months later, when Timberlake, sick and prematurely old appears again, Matthias is glad to see him, hopes he will stay for good. But one day Timberlake. too, wanders down into the woods, is brought back dying. Left utterly alone, his faith and hope all gone, Matthias sits and broods on suicide. At the last minute the voice of Garth, telling him he is not yet ready, dissuades him.

Never a writer of spectacular verse, Poet Robinson’s natural inclinations toward subtle statement, his growing preoccupation with the psychological niceties of tragic states of mind have quieted his writing more & more. In Matthias at the Door you will be struck gasping by no mighty lines; but if you read closely you may note many a pithy phrase. Some of them:

For reasons old as history, and as good As reasons mostly are when they are found.

There’s not a man who breathes and believes nothing.

The Author. Edwin Arlington Robinson, 61, foremost if not greatest U. S. Poet (he has thrice won the Pulitzer Prize), is, almost alone among his colleagues, an almost mysterious figure. His hatred of publicity has never drawn him into the limelight. A Maine boy, a Harvardman, he winters in Boston and Manhattan, summers at artistic MacDowell Colony, Peterboro, N. H., does much of his writing there. Poverty once drove him to take a job as dump cart inspector on a subway construction. When Theodore Roosevelt was President he read and liked Robinson’s poetry, offered him a consulship in Mexico which Robinson refused. Tall, thin, baldish, spectacled, with a mustache partly concealing his hypersensitive mouth, Poet Robinson never talks about his own poetry, never criticizes other people’s, “wouldn’t read in public for a million dollars.” He loves to read detective stories, does not know whether he is a great poet or not but says he has never consciously injured anyone. Other books: The Man Against the Sky, Merlin, Roman Bartholow, The Man Who Died Twice, Tristram, Calender’s House, The Glory of the Nightingales (TIME, Sept. 22, 1930).

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