Abstract
This essay argues that while intending to explain how Robinson Jeffers, a “minor Wordsworthian,” became a unique American poet, scholar William Everson actually invented a biographical mythology grounded in speculations about, among other things, problematic Freudian readings and infidelities, for which no outside evidence exists. Readings of “Mal Paso Bridge” and “Fauna” challenge Everson’s conjectures about Jeffers’ supposed infidelities as the biographical center of these poems. The Everson’s conjectures remain of concern since later scholars, including James Karman and Robert Zaller, have allowed Everson’s invented biographical mythology to stand, despite the fact that contemporary evidence such as Edith Greenan’s memoir Of Una Jeffers offers no support for it. Turning to an analysis of “The Alpine Christ” and “The Coast-Range Christ,” the essay seeks to illustrate that Jeffers used Freudian elements as a literary device rather than as confession and that whatever the flaws exhibited by these early works, the latter poem is a repudiation of the former, as it decisively turns to focus on the Sur coast, which Jeffers knew well. The essay concludes by noting that biography and criticism can converge, but that Jeffers’ works should be looked at for what they are, depictions of timeless inhabitants of his chosen setting, “farmers, herders, husbands and sons, mothers and wives, with timeless lives and motivations.” The real mystery worth illuminating, concludes the essay, is how he knew them well enough to describe them in such detail.
Recommended Citation
McAllister, Mick
(2014)
"Intruding on Jeffers: Some Notes on Biographical Mythography,"
Jeffers Studies: Vol. 18, Article 4.
Available at:
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/js/vol18/iss1/4