SOURCE: “Redemption for the Man of Iron,” in The Personalist, Vol. X411, No. 1, January, 1962, pp. 46-56.

In the following essay, Crowder examines Robinson's concept of redemption as revealed in Talifer.

… Artistic experience is, deep down, a religious experience, because the world art lives in cannot be made habitable save by religion alone.¹

Malcolm Boyd says that “all media of communication are theological.”² Not only in such deliberate vehicles as The Cocktail Party and The Confidential Clerk but in such plays as Separate Tables and A Streetcar Named Desire religious truth can reach the sensitive spectator. The converse, however, is also true: for the person who is not sensitive to religion, a plot even intentionally concerned with the kerygma can be nothing conceivably more than mere entertainment.

The thesis presents itself in the other arts as well as in drama. A case in point is Edwin Arlington Robinson's book-length...