Jeffers termed his philosophy “inhumanism,” which he explained was “a shifting of emphasis from man to not man the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence. “There is not one memorable person,” Jeffers wrote in Contrast, “there is not one mind to stand with the trees, one life with the mountains.” Jeffers preferred nature to man because he felt that the human race was too introverted, that it failed to recognize the significance of other creatures and things in the universe. Nature not only serves as a backdrop for Jeffers’s verse animals and natural objects are frequently compared to man, with man shown to be the inferior. In the ensuing years his lyrics, written in a rugged, free-verse line derived from Walt Whitman, and his psychologically probing narrative poems, written in traditional blank verse, made him famous. Jeffers’ first volume of verse, Flagons and Apples, appeared in 1912, but it was the 1924 publication of Tamar and Other Poems that brought him attention. It was at the beginning of his time in Carmel that Jeffers turned exclusively to writing poetry. Jeffers and his wife lived in Carmel for the rest of their lives, building the stone “ Tor House” and “Hawk Tower,” both of which figure prominently in his work. They married in 1913, the day after Una’s divorce was finalized, and moved to Carmel, on California’s coast. The two fell in love, though at the time Una was married. In 1906 he met a fellow graduate student, Una Call Kuster. Jeffers studied literature, medicine, and forestry during his years as a student at the University of Southern California and the University of Washington. Jeffers graduated from college at age 18. In 1902, Jeffers enrolled in Western University of Pennsylvania when his family moved to California, he transferred to Presbyterian Occidental College as a junior. The Jeffers family frequently traveled to Europe, and Robinson attended boarding schools in Germany and Switzerland. William Hamilton Jeffers, as a boy Jeffers was thoroughly trained in the Bible and classical languages. The son of Presbyterian minister and Biblical scholar, Dr. Robinson Jeffers was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
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