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Where Is the West-Running Brook Flowing? Robert Frost in Taoist Perspective

Abstract Some critics have argued that the commonality between Frost’s poetic philosophy and Taoism lies in “a quest for a thorough freedom,” namely, freeing oneself from the bonds of nature, society and the self. While there is validity in such a view, their interpretation seems a bit too reductive in the sense that too much emphasis is given to the tendency, in both Frost’s and Taoist philosophy, to Chu Shi (to renounce the world), while this tendency is subtly balanced by a willingness to Ru Shi (to accept the world). The present paper, therefore, seeks to examine the way in which Robert Frost bears affinities to Taoism in the aspect of Ru Shi as well as that of Chu Shi. “West-Running Brook,” with its central image of the brook which is at once water and road, offers itself as a good point of entry into the similarities between the themes of Frost and such philosophical ideas as proposed by either Lao Tzu or Zhuang Tzu, and makes us realize Frost’s balanced philosophical attitudes toward life