Robinson Jeffers Biography Quotes 5 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Robinson Jeffers was born in 1887 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, into a scholarly household shaped by a stern Presbyterian minister and biblical scholar father. From an early age he was steeped in languages and the classics, absorbing Greek and Latin alongside scripture and history. The family spent periods in Europe, and the boy's formal schooling was punctuated by long stretches of private study, especially in philology and literature. He later attended American colleges, studying classics and related fields and spending time at institutions such as Occidental College and the University of Southern California. Restless and searching, he briefly explored other paths, including medical studies, before committing himself to poetry and the life of letters. His younger brother, Hamilton Jeffers, would go on to become a noted astronomer, a reminder of the family's deep attachment to rigorous inquiry and the natural world.

Marriage, Scandal, and Settlement on the Coast
In Los Angeles Jeffers met Una Call, a brilliant and unconventional woman whose insight and intensity shaped his life and work. She was then married to the attorney Edward Kuster, and the love between Jeffers and Una became a public scandal. Una divorced Kuster, and she and Jeffers married in 1913, forging a partnership that lasted until her death decades later. Their union was both romantic and intellectual: Una acted as first reader, editor, and critic, sharpening his manuscripts and guarding his solitude. The couple moved north to the Monterey Peninsula and soon made their home in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where they would raise twin sons, Garth and Donnan, and create a household devoted to austere beauty, hard work, and art.

Tor House, Hawk Tower, and the Making of a Voice
On a knoll close to the Pacific, Jeffers began building Tor House in 1919, hauling granite stones from the shore and setting them by hand. He later added Hawk Tower, a rugged lookout whose narrow stairs, small windows, and fitted rock gave the place the feel of an ancient keep. Una oversaw the domestic sphere and encouraged his labor; the boys, as they grew, joined the hauling and building. The stones became central metaphors: the permanence of granite, the long-wearing patience of the land, and the sea's indifferent power. Tor House was not merely a residence; it was the physical expression of a poetic temperament that demanded closeness to rock, wind, surf, hawk, and cypress.

Breakthrough and Major Works
Jeffers's early work passed with little notice, but the publication of Tamar and Other Poems (1924) and, soon after, Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems (1925) brought him national attention. His long, narrative pieces rooted in the Central California coast startled readers with their mythic scale and unflinching portrayal of passion, violence, and fate. Subsequent volumes, including The Women at Point Sur (1927), Cawdor (1928), Dear Judas and Other Poems (1929), Descent to the Dead (1931), and Thurso's Landing (1932), solidified his reputation. Descent to the Dead reflected travels in Ireland and an intensified engagement with ancient sites and graves, further deepening his sense of human smallness within geological and historical time. Later books such as Be Angry at the Sun (1941) showed his continuing willingness to confront public events through a severe, skeptical lens.

Philosophy and Style
The term Jeffers coined for his outlook was inhumanism, a deliberate decentering of the human in favor of the vast processes of nature and the cosmos. He did not preach cruelty; rather, he insisted that humility before nonhuman reality could purge sentimentality and arrogance. His poems are known for their long, flexible lines; their stony, clear diction; and their dramatic monologues and narratives crowded with cliffs, surf, falcons, and stars. The Carmel coast was not backdrop but protagonist, instructing him in scale and duration. Though wary of literary fashions and cliques, he read deeply in the classics, and his work frequently reimagines Greek tragedy and biblical cadence in a distinctly American landscape.

Controversy, War, and Critical Reception
Jeffers's stark political poems during and after World War II, including pieces that appeared in The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948), drew fierce criticism. He distrusted mass movements and the intoxications of nationalism, and he warned against the technological and military hubris of the age. His publisher appended a disclaimer to The Double Axe, signaling how sharply his views diverged from postwar consensus and how unfashionable his stance had become in certain literary circles. Some critics dismissed him as misanthropic, while others defended his courage and prophetic force. The controversy cost him prestige among tastemakers, yet his readership stayed loyal, and his work continued to circulate widely.

Dramatic Work and Translations
Jeffers also wrote for the stage and produced notable translations and adaptations from the Greek. His version of Medea, closely attentive to classical severity while bearing his unmistakable cadences, reached Broadway in the late 1940s, with Judith Anderson in the title role. The success of that production introduced a new audience to his tragic sense and musical line. Earlier dramatic writings, such as The Tower Beyond Tragedy, had already shown his attraction to ancient forms as vehicles for modern passion and conflict. He returned periodically to translation and adaptation, drawn to the directness and moral complexity of Greek theater.

Life at Carmel and Artistic Community
Although reclusive by temperament, Jeffers was a recognizable figure in Carmel's vibrant arts scene. Photographers and writers visited Tor House, and Ansel Adams, among others, photographed the poet and the stone structures against the restless Pacific. Publishers and editors passed through as well, including those connected with Boni & Liveright, whose early support helped carry his breakthrough books to a national audience. Yet the heart of his circle remained intimate: Una's unsparing editorial eye, the presence of their sons Garth and Donnan, and the austere counsel of the sea and hawks that wheeled above the headland.

Una's Illness and Later Years
Una's long illness and death in 1950 marked the central grief of Jeffers's later life. He continued to write, but the poems often bear a grave tenderness and sharpened awareness of mortality. The stone house on the point, once a place of intense collaboration, became a site of memory. He aged there, reading, walking the cliffs, and watching the same winds and tides that had formed his poems. Friends, readers, and the curious still came, but he preserved his distance, and the work remained primary.

Death and Legacy
Jeffers died in Carmel in 1962. In the years since, his reputation has moved in cycles, but the poetry has endured, picked up by successive generations who find in it a bracing alternative to anthropocentrism and a prophetic ecological conscience. Tor House and Hawk Tower have been preserved, allowing visitors to see how the granite itself shaped the cadences of the poet who built with his hands as he built with his lines. The family name survives in multiple disciplines: in Hamilton Jeffers's astronomical work and in the poems Robinson left behind, which bind myth to cliff, human longing to tidal rock, and personal fate to the impersonal, beautiful inhumanity of the world he loved. Through Una Call Kuster's partnership, his sons' participation in the life of the house, and the engagement of artists and publishers who crossed his path, the work found both rigor and reach. His voice, austere and large-minded, remains one of the most distinctive in American poetry.

Our collection contains 5 quotes who is written by Robinson, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Freedom - Loneliness.