Poetry Thoughts 2018: Robinson's "Eros Tyrannos"

A common poem assigned in lit classes when I was in college was My Last Duchess by Robert Browning. In this poem the narrator is a Duke who is giving a tour of his home, points out a portrait of his “last Duchess” (which means she hasn’t been his only Duchess), and the rest of his monologue makes it clear that he not only counts the portrait among his many trophies, but also the woman who holds that position. It’s a rather creepy, sexist, socially critical poem, and despite its morbid subject matter I liked it for addressing a part of life that often gets swept under the carpet.

Eros Turannos by Edwin Arlington Robinson is the first poem since college that has given me the same sort of vibe. When I searched for a translation I found the title means “Love the King” in Greek, though I would interpret it more as tyrant than king, taking the poem’s contents into consideration. In fact, from my one semester of New Testament Greek I took in high school (thanks, Mom!) I would say that it should rather be interpreted as "tyrant love."

She fears him, and will always ask 

   What fated her to choose him; 

She meets in his engaging mask                   

   All reasons to refuse him; 

But what she meets and what she fears 

Are less than are the downward years, 

Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs 

   Of age, were she to lose him. 

Between a blurred sagacity 

   That once had power to sound him, 

And Love, that will not let him be 

   The Judas that she found him, 

Her pride assuages her almost, 

As if it were alone the cost.— 

He sees that he will not be lost, 

   And waits and looks around him. 

A sense of ocean and old trees 

   Envelops and allures him; 

Tradition, touching all he sees 

   Beguiles and reassures him; 

And all her doubts of what he says 

Are dimmed with what she knows of days— 

Till even prejudice delays 

   And fades, and she secures him. 

The falling leaf inaugurates 

   The reign of her confusion; 

The pounding wave reverberates 

   The dirge of her illusion; 

And home, where passion lived and died, 

Becomes a place where she can hide, 

While all the town and harbor side 

   Vibrate with her seclusion. 

We tell you, tapping on our brows, 

   The story as it should be,— 

As if the story of a house 

   Were told, or ever could be; 

We’ll have no kindly veil between 

Her visions and those we have seen,— 

As if we guessed what hers have been, 

   Or what they are or would be. 

Meanwhile we do no harm; for they 

   That with a god have striven, 

Not hearing much of what we say, 

   Take what the god has given; 

Though like waves breaking it may be, 

Or like a changed familiar tree, 

Or like a stairway to the sea 

   Where down the blind are driven.*

From the first three words, “She fears him,” one has the sense we’re looking into the inner world of a woman in a destructive relationship. The villainous man of the poem is well aware of her inner world, and uses this knowledge to further his manipulations (“He sees that he will not be lost”).

There is a third party at work in the poem, aside from the woman and man characters: society as a whole. “Tradition, touching all he sees”—society is on the side of the man, and gives him all the power in their relationship. If all the town and harbor are "vibrating," one wonders how many people know about the woman's plight and gossip about it, without ever lifting a finger or saying a word to assist her.

It’s a relationship that is sadly no less common in our “gender equal” society: a woman linked to a man who mistreats her because she has talked herself into “loving” him, and because she would rather be abused than be alone. Yet as “all the town and harbor side / Vibrate with her seclusion,” we know that she is alone in spite of it all.

As with My Last Duchess, I like this poem a lot in spite of—or perhaps because of—the subject matter. Even though it was written in a much more sexist society than we live in today, personal experience tells me that this poem—displaying a twisted, very imperfect form of love instead of the usual idealist love poetry is known for—is still relevant because it shows its readers the destruction and pain that can be caused by fear and desperation.


* There's a nice reading of this poem on YouTube's Spoken Verse channel, read by Tom O'Bedlam, which I discovered while preparing this post for publication.