South Central Review

Abstract:

With the decline of religious orthodoxy in the post-Enlightenment West, the question of theodicy in a world apparently ruled by indifferent material forces became a critical cultural issue, and with it the ancient question of how divinity was to be regarded, if at all, in a world of suffering and evil. The American Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) took up this question most rigorously of any poet of his generation, concluding that the universe as value—as an extension of divine being as such—was to be acknowledged and worshipped without expectation of concern or hope of personal salvation, and the goal of creation was enriched consciousness, the experience of all capacity, all possibility, in successive cycles of creation. To achieve acceptance of this, humanity first passed the test of misotheism, God-rejection, dramatically through tragedy, philosophically through intercourse with the world, before finding its place in the cosmic experience.