Brother to Dragons by Robert Penn Warren
"Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices" by Robert Penn Warren is a unique and innovative poem published in 1953 that explores a real-life murder committed by Lilburne Lewis, a nephew of Thomas Jefferson. This work is notable for its distinct structure, blending elements of narrative and dramatic dialogue, as it features characters from the past—primarily discussing the murder of a teenage slave by Lilburne Lewis in a gruesome act of violence. The poem delves into themes of morality, human nature, and the legacy of historical figures, with Thomas Jefferson serving as a central character who grapples with the implications of evil and guilt in relation to both the murder and his own life choices.
Warren's approach allows the deceased characters, including Lilburne, his family members, and the poet himself, to engage in a discourse that transcends time and place. The psychological underpinning of the poem suggests that the murder may represent a ritualized attempt to cleanse Lilburne of his own inner turmoil. Additionally, the narrative culminates in a dramatic climax involving a suicide pact between Lilburne and his brother, further exploring the themes of duality and the human condition. Through this complex interplay of voices and perspectives, Warren invites readers to reflect on the darker sides of humanity and the burdens of historical memory.
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Brother to Dragons by Robert Penn Warren
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1953
Type of work: Poem
The Work
After a ten-year period of writing prose, during which he found poems impossible to finish, Warren emerged as a poet of peculiar power and originality with the publication in 1953 of Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices, a book-length poem unlike any in American literature. The subject was a shocking real-life murder perpetrated by Lilburne Lewis, a nephew of Thomas Jefferson (primary author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States).
Warren invented a unique mode of presentation for this work. It is neither narrative poem nor play but a discussion by characters long dead (except for one, the poet himself, designated as RPW), who try to understand the grisly event that occurred in the meat house when Lilburne Lewis hacked a teenage slave to pieces with an ax for breaking a pitcher belonging to Lilburne’s late mother, Lucy Jefferson Lewis. The other slaves witnessed this performance. As Warren explains in a brief preface: “We may take them to appear and disappear as their urgencies of argument swell and subside. The place of this meeting is, we may say, ’no place,’ and the time is ’any time.’” Besides the victim, the main characters include Lilburne, the killer; Isham Lewis, who watched his older brother commit the murder; their mother, Lucy; her brother, Thomas Jefferson; Letitia, Lilburne’s wife; Aunt Cat, Lilburne’s Negro mammy; Meriwether Lewis, Lilburne’s cousin, who went West on the Lewis and Clark expedition; and RPW.
The central character, if the poem can be said to have one, is not the hapless victim, who has only one brief speech in the first edition (three in the 1979 revision). It is not even Lilburne, the moral monster, but Thomas Jefferson, inheritor of the eighteenth century optimism about the perfectibility of humankind. The poem examines the hideous event and ponders why it occurred, but it is Jefferson who develops and changes in the poem. There is no evidence that the historical Thomas Jefferson ever discussed or even acknowledged the murder, a fact which suggested to Warren that he could not face the thought of such barbarity in one of his own blood.
Actually, the stance of Jefferson in the poem is initially quite grim and cynical. He has already recognized that he had been overly optimistic in his view of human nature. The moral project of the poem is not to convince Jefferson of the reality of evil, which he affirms from the first, but to convince him that he himself shares that burden of human evil. This humbling of Jefferson is achieved primarily by burdening him with some guilt for the fate of Meriwether Lewis, who had once been his secretary; this part of the poem is not completely convincing. The real Meriwether Lewis committed suicide when he was governor of the Louisiana Territory, but the reader does not know, from the poem itself, what happened or why Jefferson should share any guilt in the matter. Jefferson ultimately achieves some kind of universalized feeling for his fellows that includes even the despised Lilburne.
The discussion and the narrative action of the first hundred pages are gripping, both mentally and emotionally. At the psychological level, Warren suggests that the act of murder was a ritualized attempt to purge Lilburne’s own evil. The slave is Lilburne’s shadow-self, the scapegoat whose elimination will bring order in a chaotic world or in Lilburne’s chaotic psyche. The butcher block, on which the boy lies curled in the fetal position with eyes tightly closed, suggests an altar to some savage god.
The death of Lilburne repeats the psychological ritual, with Lilburne playing victim, the dark shadow of his brother Isham. Lilburne forces Isham into a suicide pact, whereby they will shoot each other at the count of ten over their mother’s grave. He counts to ten very slowly, knowing full well that Isham will panic and shoot first, then try to escape. During this melodramatic scene, there is a great earthquake. This event may seem like a piece of gothic fiction, but, in fact, there was such an earthquake at about that time—one of the biggest ever recorded in that area.
Jefferson observes in the poem that slain monsters and dragons are innocent. All heroes, whether Hercules, David with his sling, or Jack of the beanstalk, are playing “the old charade” in which man dreams that he can destroy the objectified bad and then feel good: “While in the deep/ Hovel of the heart the Thing lies/ That will never unkennel himself to the contemptible steel.”
Bibliography
Blotner, Joseph. Robert Penn Warren: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1997.
Bohner, Charles. Robert Penn Warren. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Burt, John. Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988.
Clark, William Bedford, ed. Critical Essays on Robert Penn Warren. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981.
Grimshaw, James A. Understanding Robert Penn Warren. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Justus, James H. The Achievement of Robert Penn Warren. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
Madden, David, ed. The Legacy of Robert Penn Warren. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.
Ruppersburg, Hugh. Robert Penn Warren and the American Imagination. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.
Szczesiul, Anthony. Racial Politics and Robert Penn Warren’s Poetry. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.
Watkins, Floyd C., John T. Hiers, and Mary Louise Weaks, eds. Talking with Robert Penn Warren. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.