Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences.Graduate Studies International Applicants.Six years later, after Jeffers had studied forestry at the University of Washington, they were married and moved to Carmel Point. There he met Una, an attractive and gifted student who was married to a Los Angeles lawyer. Jeffers graduated at 18 from Occidental College, went to the University of Zurich, then returned to Los Angeles to study medicine for a while at the University of Southern California. For Southern Californians, it is of special interest to learn about Jeffers’ time as a student in the Los Angeles area, when he and his family lived on what was then a farm in Manhattan Beach. Jeffers was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and his poems were recorded for the Library of Congress. Sculptor Jo Davidson came to create a bust of the poet. Vincent Millay, Carl Sandburg, Lincoln Steffens, Dylan Thomas and Edgar Lee Masters. The tower is a symbol of his love for Una, her private retreat.Īs “Californians,” “Tamar” and other books of poems were published in New York, friends in the literary and artistic world visited here. Jeffers built the four-level, 40-foot tower in four years, doing the work himself and hauling the stones up from the water’s edge with a pulley system. The year after Tor House was finished, Jeffers began to build Hawk Tower, the visual landmark of this legendary coastal property. They had no central heating and no electricity until 1949. Jeffers wrote a poem about the guest room as the place where he and Una would each die in peace after their lives of happiness together.
There are two attic bedrooms, a small living room, tiny kitchen, bathroom and guest room. The original house is so small that a tour group of more than six would overload it. The granite stones were drawn by horses from the cove below. He apprenticed himself to the building contractor to hold down costs and to learn stone masonry.Ĭonstruction began in 1918. “Tor” is derived from a Celtic word for a craggy knoll, which Jeffers described here as a point of land meeting the sea like the “prow and plunging cutwater” of a ship. They built a small stone house modeled after an old Tudor barn Una had seen in England. They lived for a few years in a rented cabin, then pulled together funds from a modest family inheritance to supplement a virtually nonexistent income from poetry. The fees are a contribution to foundation funds.Īfter their marriage in 1913, Robinson and Una Jeffers had planned to lived in England, but World War I turned them toward the Carmel coast. Each tour is limited to six people and the cost is $5 for adults, $3.50 for college students and $1.50 for high school and younger students. Tours of Tor House are conducted every Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. He also could ask us to “look at the Lobos Rocks off the shore with foam flying at their flanks” and remember that “beauty is the sole business of poetry.” They show that Jeffers wrote of the drama of the human experience with an uncompromising eloquence and was one of the most controversial poets of this century. The volunteers share with visitors lines from Jeffers’ poems.
0 kommentar(er)
