ABSTRACT
If "Richard Cory" and "Reuben Bright" are short stories in verse, a moment of action and response, the first four stanzas of "Eros Turannos" are like a novel in their attention to the history, context, and process of the relationship. Had Robinson ended with the fourth stanza, the poem would still be a compelling psychological portrait of emotional isolation, but "Eros Turannos" continues for two more stanzas beyond the four that present the story. Here, too, it alters the pattern of Robinson's earliest great poems. In this case, the speaker is not another character in the poem (as in "Richard Cory"), nor does it seem to be quite the poet. Rather, the narrator is a kind of collective voice that seems to synthesize the community's guesses about the couple. This "we" "tells" the story "as it should be.... As if we guessed what hers [her visions] have been / Or what they are or would be." The inner life that the "we" imagines from the outer life it observes ("all the town and harbor side / Vibrate with her [the wife's] seclusion") is largely hypothetical, and it stands in the poem not only as an interpretation of the marriage but also as a reflection of the need of those around the couple to imagine a way behind "the kindly veil between / Her visions and those we have seen."
