SOURCE: Justus, James H. “Warren as Mentor: Pure and Impure Wisdom.” In The Legacy of Robert Penn Warren, edited by David Madden, pp. 3-13. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Justus perceives the character of the stranger in “Blackberry Winter” as a mentor figure.

More than once in Robert Penn Warren's writing occurs the gnomic passage: nothing is ever lost. Whatever else the declarative statement may mean, it connotes promise and threat equally—its authority derives from some prior vision presumed to be cohesive, integral, conclusive. More discovery than precept, the statement yet carries the weight of uttered truth. It is what we might expect from a wisdom figure.

If nothing is ever lost, however, it does not follow that everything will be found. In his long career Robert Penn Warren emerges as one of the century's great seekers, and what he found was...