A usable past?: Poetry and history in Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons.

A usable past?: Poetry and history in Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons. ... the historian is a poet and the poet is a historian; history ispoetry and poetry is history ... --Lewis Simpson, on Warren's Brother to Dragons The trouble is, it is very difficult, to be both a poet and, anhistorian. --Charles Olson, Mayan Letters, October 1953 IN 1807 THOMAS JEFFERSON'S SISTER, LUCY JEFFERSON Lucy Jefferson was the sister of US President Thomas Jefferson. She married Charles Lilburne Lewis. They moved to Kentucky and had a son named Lilburne Lewis, in whom Thomas Jefferson took an interest, but who later involved himself in the murder of a slave and brought the entire LEWIS, LEFTVIRGINIA and crossed the Appalachian Mountains Appalachian Mountains(ăpəlā`chən, –chēən, –lăch`–), mountain system of E North America, extending in a broad belt c.1,600 mi (2,570 km) SW from the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec prov. with her husband Charles,their children, and their slaves. One of their sons, Lilburne, hadpurchased 1500 acres in western Kentucky on the Ohio River Ohio RiverMajor river, eastern central U.S. Formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, it flows northwest out of Pennsylvania, and west and southwest to form the state boundaries of Ohio–West Virginia, Ohio-Kentucky, Indiana-Kentucky, and , around tenmiles east of present-day Paducah, on which he built a large house thathe called "Rocky Hill Rocky Hill,town (1990 pop. 16,554), Hartford co., central Conn., a suburb of Hartford, on the Connecticut River; settled c.1650, inc. 1843. Chemical coatings and synthetic textiles are made there. Rocky Hill was an important river port from 1700 to 1820. ." On the night of December 15, 1811,Lilburne and his younger brother Isham murdered one of Lilburne'sslaves, a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy named George, with an axe.During or after the murder, Lilburne may have dismembered George, whoseoffense was to have broken a pitcher given to Lucy Jefferson Lewis byher brother Thomas. Lilburne's other slaves had been called towitness the murder, and some of them may have been ordered to dismember dis��mem��berv.To amputate a limb or a part of a limb.dis��member��ment n. and burn the body. Around 2:00 a.m., the first tremor of the New Madridearthquake The New Madrid Earthquake, the largest earthquake ever recorded in the contiguous United States, occurred on February 7, 1812. (The largest recorded earthquake in the entire United States was the Alaskan Good Friday Earthquake on March 27, 1964. struck, collapsing the fireplace in the room in whichGeorge's corpse was being burned. Several days later, Lilburne mayhave ordered his slaves to conceal the bones in the rebuilt fireplace.Rumors of the crime began to circulate, and Lilburne and Isham wereindicted for murder. Before the trial, and before Lilburne and Ishamcould execute a mutual suicide pact Noun 1. suicide pact - an agreement by two or more people to commit suicide together at a given place and time; "the two lovers killed themselves in a suicide pact" , Lilburne shot himself, perhapsaccidentally. Isham fled, and according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. some accounts was one of onlytwo Americans killed at the Battle of New Orleans For other uses of the name, see Battle of New Orleans (disambiguation)The Battle of New Orleans took place on January 8, 1815, and was the final major battle of the War of 1812. in 1815. Although Jefferson almost certainly heard of this crime, nowhereamong his papers is there any mention of it, and this refusal to addresshis nephews' action is the germ of Robert Penn Robert Penn (born October 10 1872, died June 8,1912 at Las Animas, Colorado) was a United States Navy sailor and a recipient of America's highest military decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions during the Spanish-American War. Warren'sBrother to Dragons(1953, revised 1979). The poem has generated far morecritical discussion than any of Warren's other poems, and much ofit has been favorable. Randall Jarrell Noun 1. Randall Jarrell - United States poet (1914-1965)Jarrell , for example, calls the originalversion Warren's "best book" (43). Reviewing the revisedversion Revised Versionn.A British and American revision of the King James Version of the Bible, completed in 1885.Revised VersionNoun , Harold Bloom '''Harold Bloom (born July 11, 1930) is an American professor and prominent literary and cultural critic. Bloom defended 19th-century Romantic poets at a time when their reputations stood at a low ebb, has constructed controversial theories of poetic influence, and admits to being uneasy with Warren's"ideological ferocity" and unpersuaded by the poem's"implicit theology and overt morality," but nonetheless callsWarren "our most impressive living poet" (145-47). In his Foreword, Warren traces the poem's inception to"bits of folk tale, garbled accounts heard in my boyhood"(xii) that related the brutal murder of a slave by Lilburne and IshamLewis. In the 1940s Warren traveled to Smithland, Kentucky Smithland is a city in Livingston County, Kentucky, at the confluence of the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers. The population was 401 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Livingston CountyGR6. , to read thecourthouse records of the case, and his work at the Library of Congressafforded him access to newspaper files and Abolitionist tracts thatmentioned the case. In the poem he recounts two visits to the site ofthe ruins of Lilburne's house. What intrigued him about the story,he says, was the irony that "The philosopher of our liberties andthe architect of our country and the prophet of human perfectibility hadthis in the family blood" ("Way" 212). In form the poem is close to drama; subtitled "A Tale in Verseand Voices," all of its lines are spoken by particular characters,one of whom is called "R.P.W., the writer of this poem," whoengages in a dialogue located outside of history (in "noplace," at "any time," Warren writes) with the charactersinvolved in the crime, all of whom exist in a kind of extra-historicallimbo. Considerable attention has been focused on the historical accuracy,or inaccuracy, of the poem. Warren admits in his Foreword to having"altered certain details," such as omitting any mention ofLilburne's first wife and their children, substitutingLilburne's mother's grave as the site of Lilburne'sdeath, instead of his first wife's grave, "for thematicreasons," and inventing the character of the slave Aunt Cat(xi-xii). Typical of those critics who catalogue the poem'shistorical errors, C. Hugh Holman not only cites those that Warrenadmits to in the foreword but also points out that (1) Letitia(Lilburne's wife) did not leave Lilburne on the night of the murderbut remained at the house until after Isham's indictment asaccessory to murder; (2) George was murdered and dismembered not in themeathouse on a butcherblock, but in the kitchen cabin on the floor; (3)Lilburne did not trick Isham into shooting him, but killed himself,probably accidentally. "Indeed," he writes, "one isforced to the conclusion that the suggestions of deranged de��range?tr.v. de��ranged, de��rang��ing, de��rang��es1. To disturb the order or arrangement of.2. To upset the normal condition or functioning of.3. To disturb mentally; make insane. motives forLilburne--the Oedipal oed��i��palor Oed��i��paladj.Of or characteristic of the Oedipus complex. struggle, Letitia's sexual frigidity, thesuggestions of class hatred between her family and the Lewises, andLilburne's dominance of Isham--all have little or no support inhistorical fact" (195). Richard Law is more equivocal about thehistorical accuracy of the account, stating that Warren "discovers(or invents) in the background of the slaying all the elements of apsychological case study: an unhappy, loveless marriage in which themother seeks companionship in her son, the Oedipal rivalry in her twosons, the nursemaid who competes with the mother for the son'slove, and the son's wife who is unwittingly a surrogate for hismother" ("Violence" 199). The extent to which Warrenengages in invention, as opposed to discovery, is more than an academicquestion; it is central to the reader's response to the argument onAmerican history that the poem makes. Boynton Merrill, the author of what Warren calls "aconscientious and scholarly account of the general subject" (xii),Jefferson's Nephews. A Frontier Tragedy (1976), writes: In regard to the historicity of Brother to Dragons, Warren states in the preface: "I am trying to write a poem and not a history, and therefore have no compunction about tampering with the facts." Warren succeeded admirably, both in his poem and in tampering with the facts. However, it might be ventured that facts usually do stand in the way of poetic expression and artistic triumph, such as Warren has achieved. (426-27) For his part, Warren claims that Merrill's book,"fascinating and reliable as it is, does not change the basicthematic or dramatic outline of my tale" (xii). Moreover, Warrensuggests that history, and our response to it, must involve more thansimply knowledge of specific facts. Near the end of the poem he notesthat we know the names, ages, sex, and prices of the slaves who werepresent at the murder: "We know that much, but what is knowledge /Without the intrinsic mediation of the heart?" (130). Like many of Warren's critics, Merrill stresses thedistinction between history and poetry, while Warren blurs thedistinction. In the revised edition of the poem, he inserts theadjective "non-essential" before the noun "facts" inthe passage Merrill cites, suggesting that his tamperings areinsignificant. In the case of the Lewis crime, however, both theessential and non-essential "facts" are difficult toestablish. After providing a detailed narrative account of the murder,Merrill admits, This account of George's murder may well be inaccurate. Noneof the available sources are, at the same time, both detailed and ofunquestionable reliability. The four major sources of information aboutthe murder contradict each other on so many points that a true andfactual description of George's death will probably never beachieved. This reconstruction of the crime is a combination of whatappear to be the most plausible parts of the four written statements.("Murder" 285) Merrill's description of the historical record exposes thenaivete na��ive��t��or na��?ve��t�� ?n.1. The state or quality of being inexperienced or unsophisticated, especially in being artless, credulous, or uncritical.2. An artless, credulous, or uncritical statement or act. behind Irvin Ehrenpreis's claim that "a plainhistorical account [would be]... more absorbing than Warren'sself-indulgent, highly reflexive work" (101). Such a "plainaccount" simply cannot be written, so Warren takes advantage ofwhat he calls "the ambiguous opacities of history" (14) tofill in the blanks in the historical record by imagining, inAristotle's terms, "what might have happened." In thePoetics Aristotle writes that the poet differs from the historianbecause he works with universal as opposed to particular truths; the"universal" from which Warren deduces the action of his poemis human nature. For Warren, the Warren, TheHaredale’s house, “mouldering to ruin.” [Br. Lit.: Barnaby Rudge]See : Decadence historical event germinates in"the blind nutriment nutriment/nu��tri��ment/ (noo��tri-mint) nutrient (2). nu��tri��mentn.1. A source of nourishment; food.2. An agent that promotes growth or development. of Lilburne's heart" and the humanheart contains "the rich detritus detritus/de��tri��tus/ (de-tri��tus) particulate matter produced by or remaining after the wearing away or disintegration of a substance or tissue. de��tri��tusn. pl. of all History" (77). Many of Warren's critics have been sensitive to the charge ofhistorical inaccuracy, and in defending Warren against that charge theirgeneral strategy has been to insist that the poem is not about historyat all. C. Hugh Holman, for example, argues that "the change of thevictim's name [in the revised edition] from the historical Georgeto John is a quiet but emphatic declaration to Clio, in the guise ofBoynton Merrill, of 'non serviam'" (196). This might bepersuasive if Warren had not, after the publication of Merrill'sbook, corrected the spellings of "Letitia" and"Lilburne," and altered Charles Lewis's title from thehistorically questionable "Dr." to the more firmly established"Colonel"; these are hardly the revisions we might expect froma writer who refuses to serve Clio. Holman goes on to argue that thepoem "takes people and events from history and uses them to a mostunhistorical un��his��tor��i��cal?adj.Taking little or no account of history. , very mythic purpose, to state a universal truth about thenature of man and his world and not a local or temporal truth about acrime in Kentucky in 1811" (198, 199). Warren's use ofhistory, claims Holman, is parallel to Shakespeare's in Hamlet andJulius Caesar Julius Caesar:see Caesar, Julius. : to revert to the language of Aristotle, both Warren andShakespeare are concerned with universal rather than particular truths,and therefore any historical inaccuracies in the poem areinconsequential. But Holman neglects to mention that Shakespeare, inJulius Caesar, advanced no argument about why Roman history unfolded asit did, whereas in Brother to Dragons Warren does make such an argumentabout American history. Richard G. Law makes a point similar to Holman's in twoseparate essays, arguing first that the poem is "as much an inquiryinto the nature of love as a reconstruction of an ax murder"("Violence" 194) and later that Warren's "aim is notsimply to show how it really was (wie es eigentlich gewesen) at RockyHill the night of Sunday, December 15, 1811" ("Notes"214). Similarly, Margaret Mills Harper argues that the poem is concernedwith "the permanent values and significances of history, ratherthan the specific events" (242) and John Butt John Hurst Butt (born October 30, 1850 - died 1939) was a British sport shooter, who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics and 1912 Summer Olympics.In the 1908 Olympics he won a bronze medal in the team trap shooting event and was 24th in the individual trap shooting event. writes that"Brother to Dragons is a poem not about its events but about howthose events are to be evaluated" (201). This repeated insistence that the poem is not about the historicalevent but rather about permanent or mythic meanings suggests amisleading either/or dichotomy. Each of the critics cited above iscorrect: Warren's poem is an inquiry into universal truths abouthuman nature, the nature of love, the permanent values of history, andthe evaluation of historical events. However, it is also about thosespecific events. One of the poem's central themes concerns whatWarren sees as a recurrent problem in American history, or what he calls"the symbolic implication of the event for the Jeffersonian notionof the perfectibility of man and the good American notion of ourinevitable righteousness in action and purity in motive"("Foreword" 296). Clearly the event itself gives rise to theimplication, and any serious distortion of the event would also distortits implication. Unlike some of his readers, Warren refuses to draw a sharpdistinction between the truths of history and those of poetry. In hisForeword, he writes: I know that any discussion of the relation of this poem to its historical materials is, in one perspective, irrelevant to its value; and it could be totally accurate as history and still not worth a dime as a poem. I am trying to write a poem, not a history, and therefore have no compunction about tampering with non-essential facts. But poetry is more than fantasy and is committed to the obligation of trying to say something, however obliquely, about the human condition. Therefore, a poem dealing with history is no more at liberty to violate what the writer takes to be the spirit of his history than it is at liberty to violate what he takes to be the nature of the human heart. What he takes those things to be is, of course, his ultimate gamble. This is another way of saying that I have tried in my poem to make, in a thematic way, historical sense along with whatever kind of sense it may otherwise be happy enough to make. Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake. (xiii) That last sentence is often quoted by critics with finality, as ifit clarifies once and for all the question of the poem'shistoricity his��to��ric��i��ty?n.Historical authenticity; fact.historicityNounhistorical authenticity . It is an elegantly phrased sentence, certainly, but itstruth is open to question, for the little myths we make, such as poems,regularly contradict the big myths we live, such as history. Indeed, oneof the burdens of Brother to Dragons is to argue that Jefferson'slittle myth, the Declaration of Independence, is fundamentally andrepeatedly contradicted by the big myth of the nation's history asit has been lived out by its people. Nor is it entirely clear why, in order to say something "aboutthe human condition," a poem must "therefore" not violatethe "spirit" of whatever historical material the poem touchesupon. In the first place, it is difficult to imagine why any writerwould purposely violate what he takes to be the "spirit" ofhis history. In the second place, apart from the evidence of the text,it is difficult to imagine how a reader can know what an author takes tobe the spirit of his history, and whether or not he violates thatspirit. Finally, it is difficult to imagine why, if "the issuesthat the characters here discuss are, in my view at least, a humanconstant" (xv), as Warren writes in explaining the"unspecified place and unspecified time" in which thepoem's characters meet, the author or reader need be concerned withthe poem's making historical sense. A human constant--the"universal" truths that Aristotle describes, or the"mythic" truths that Holman claims are depicted by Warren andShakespeare--holds true across all periods of history, so in literaturefocusing on universal themes, errors of "historical sense"such as the anachronisms in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar andKeats's mistaking Cortes for Balboa in "On First Looking intoChapman's Homer On First Looking into Chapman's Homer is a sonnet by English Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) written in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment at reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer as freely translated by the Elizabethan playwright George " become insignificant. But Warren wants tomake "historical sense" as well as "poetic sense,"i.e., in Aristotle's terms, he wants to tell the truth about bothuniversal issues, such as the nature of the human heart, as well asparticular historical issues such as the impact of Jeffersonian idealismon American history. The question of the poem's treatment of history is focusedmost clearly in Warren's depiction of Thomas Jefferson. Early inthe poem Jefferson's spirit, haunted by his nephews' brutalcrime, is so disgusted with the "human" that he cannot forcehimself to drink from Lethe Lethe(lē`thē), in Greek mythology, river of forgetfulness in Hades. The dead drank from Lethe upon their arrival in the underworld. LetheAncient Greek personification of oblivion. She was the daughter of Eris (Strife). because each time he bends to do so, heconfronts his own reflection. Everything he believed and stood for, heclaims, is wrong. He was wrong to believe that evil could be resolved intime, and wrong in his "towering / Definition" of man as"angelic, arrogant, abstract, / Greaved in glory, thewed withlight, the bright / Brow tall as dawn" (8). He was wrong to imaginethe American West as "great Canaan's grander counterfeit"(10). He was wrong to believe "That man must redeem nature"(27), wrong to believe that "If we might take man's hand,strike shackle shacklea bar 2.5 ft long with an iron loop at either end, used in restraint of large pigs. A chain is threaded through the loops and around the lower hindlimbs of the pig. When the chain is pulled the pig is stretched and is cast with the limbs held wide apart. , lead him forth / From his own nightmare--then hisnatural innocence / Would dance like sunlight over the delightedlandscape" (29), wrong to believe "the old charade where mandreams man can put down / The objectified bad and then feel good"(30). His "old definition of man" is only defensible now, saysJefferson, "in senility/And moments of indulgent fiction" (5),and his famous epitaph epitaph,strictly, an inscription on a tomb; by extension, a statement, usually in verse, commemorating the dead. The earliest such inscriptions are those found on Egyptian sarcophagi. is only "One more lie in the tissue of lieswe live by" (85). All kinds of human love, he claims, are "buta mask / To hide ... / the un-uprootable ferocity of self" (33). InBrother to Dragons, then, Jefferson's vision of man is as dark andunforgiving and sin-besmirched as the most intense Puritan's, buthis lacks the Puritan's promise of a divine redeemer."There's no forgiveness for our being human," he tellshis sister Lucy. "It is the inexpungable error" (19). This depiction of Jefferson, crucial to one of the poem'smajor themes, does not reflect Warren's thinking about Americanhistory so much as it reflects his thinking about the human condition.The poem's "traumatic subject," writes Jarrell, is"sin, Original Sin original sin,in Christian theology, the sin of Adam, by which all humankind fell from divine grace. Saint Augustine was the fundamental theologian in the formulation of this doctrine, which states that the essentially graceless nature of humanity requires redemption , without any Savior," and that sin isrooted in the "ignoble truth of man's depravity."Reviewing the poem shortly after its publication, in the wake of theSecond World War, Jarrell continues, "Most of us know, now, thatRousseau was wrong: that man, when you knock his chains off, sets up thedeath camps" (44). Later critics have followed Jarrell's lead. James Justus, forexample, finds Jefferson representing "the philosophical failure ofthe Enlightenment" (65), and many critics have remarked on thesimilarities between Warren's critique of Jefferson and hiscritiques of John Brown and Ralph Waldo Emerson (see Clark,"Canaan's" 147; Justus 64-65; Law, "Violence"195; Burr 202). All three engage in a self-righteous, absolutistidealism that, in its denial of the merely human, borders on fanaticism.Driven by what Justus calls "the pride to err massively" (64)or "ideological vanity" (65), Warren's Jefferson blindshimself to human nature's violent, irrational aspect and therebymakes himself vulnerable to its irruption ir��rup��tionn.The act or process of breaking through to a surface. . If Warren were simply using Jefferson as a mouthpiece to present aparticular brand of ideological rigidity the question of historicalaccuracy would be of minimal importance. But Warren usesJefferson's intellectual flaws to emblematize em��blem��a��tize? also em��blem��izetr.v. em��blem��a��tized also em��blem��ized, em��blem��a��tiz��ing also em��blem��iz��ing, em��blem��a��tiz��es also em��blem��iz��esTo represent with or as if with an emblem; symbolize. those of the nationthroughout its history. Hugh Ruppersburg develops this point most fully,arguing that "romantic humanism blinded Jefferson to certaininevitable aspects of human character and reality. So too ... hasAmerica been blinded by belief in its own exalted cause to thepossibility of its own error, corruption, and even maliciousintent" (45). Thus for Ruppersburg, Jefferson's enormousintellectual influence lies behind America's inability to confront,or even to recognize, the moral corruption evident in such issues asslavery or the removal of the Native Americans. Still, many of Warren's critics, even those who praise thepoem enthusiastically, are nevertheless uneasy with the poem'sdepiction of Jefferson. Harold Bloom, for instance, complains of the"massive drubbing" that Jefferson receives "for being anEnlightened rationalist" (145) and concludes that Warren is"dreadfully unjust to Jefferson" (147). The only critics tocome close to defending Warren's Jefferson as historically accurateare Lesa Carnes Corrigan, who claims that "The Thomas Jeffersonthat Warren introduces in the poem is in many ways the historicalpersonage revered in the annals of American greatness" (73) andthat "the Jefferson of history provides the contextual referent ofthe poem" (74), and William Bedford William Bedford (born December 14 1963, in Memphis, Tennessee) is a retired American professional basketball player who was selected by the Phoenix Suns in the 1st round (6th overall) of the 1986 NBA Draft after playing at the University of Memphis (then known as Memphis State). Clark, who writes, "FromJefferson's own writings, both public and private, we can see thatthese sentiments attributed to him by Warren have at least apsychological validity" ("Canaan's" 145). But Clarkquickly slips into arguing that the historical verisimilitude ofWarren's Jefferson is less important than the character'ssymbolic function: "the Jefferson of Brother to Dragons, howeverconvincing and well-drawn he may be, is less important as an individualreconstructed from the past than as a symbol embodying Warren'scritique of America's history and his hopes for America'sfuture" ("Canaan's" 146). Most critics, however, do not find Jefferson to be at all"convincing and well-drawn." Holman, for example, labelsWarren's Jefferson "totally unhistorical," but he agreeswith Clark that the historical accuracy of Warren's depiction isunimportant: "Warren's intention is clearly not to describe anhistorical Jefferson but to criticize the view of man and humanpossibility which Jefferson is generally considered to embody, and whichthe Lewis atrocity teaches him ... to call a 'lie'"(198). We find the same argument in William Van O'Connor'sreview: "He is dealing with the spiritual consequences ofJefferson's idealism, not with the man Jefferson.... he isJefferson's shade, a fictional character, a projection of a view ofhuman conduct. It may be closest to the truth to say that Jefferson isthe sort of idealist-gone-sour that one finds in Conrad.... He is hardlythe sage of Monticello" (O'Connor 179-80). The problem with such analysis is that, in conceding the historicalinaccuracy of Warren's depiction of Jefferson, these criticsseriously undermine their claims that Warren's Jefferson embodies acritique of American history. Warren wants to have it both ways and mostof his critics are willing to let him: he wants to write a poem thatmakes a serious argument that Jeffersonian idealism restricts thenation's ability to comprehend its capacity for corruption, malice,and error, but instead of adhering to the rigorous standards ofhistorical evidence, he asserts the poet's prerogative to"tamper with the evidence." In the light of Warren'sforeword, it is difficult to believe that his depiction of Jeffersonconstitutes "non-essential evidence." John Burr makes a pointcomplementary to mine: Warren creates his Jefferson by adopting apparently reasonable surmises about how he might have reacted to the Lewis tragedy had he allowed himself to comprehend it fully. Those surmises, however, cause him to produce a Jefferson who not only is different from his historical counterpart but is also absolutely and systematically counterfactual, opposite to the historical Jefferson in every respect. In the figure of Jefferson, that is, the concept of historical plausibility runs in circles, for in him Warren has plausibly imagined a historically implausible character, a character whom, did he not identify himself by name, we would not recognize. By means of the figure of Jefferson, the imagination that moves the poem calls attention to its liberty, even as it denies taking liberties and accounts for its deviations from historical expectation. (200) The most fully developed, interesting, and believable character inthe poem is Lilburne Lewis, perhaps because the paucity of historicalevidence regarding Lilburne gives Warren's imagination free reign.Lilburne is a monster, but every monstrous thing he does is a result ofa sadly twisted love for his mother, whose love for her son, perhapsdisplaced from the husband who fails her repeatedly, is not quite whathe needs. Lucy says, "the human curse is simply to love andsometimes to love well, / But never well enough" (18)--languagethat twists Othello's "one that loved not wisely, but toowell." Lilburne lacks Othello's heroic stature but he shareshis capacity to twist love into brutal violence. And he needs no Iago topoison his perception of the world and the people in it. He setssweet-gum leaves in Letitia's hair, telling her they are goldenstars and she is an angel. And then his face darkens and he tells her,"Go back to Heaven if you can, / And if you can't, then trythe Other Place, / For ... / I tell you, even Hell would be better thanthis sty" (47). He comes home drunk, forces Letitia to perform asex act that horrifies her, then the next day forces her to describe theact, to say that she enjoyed it, and to say that she enjoyed describingit, and then he concludes, "now I see when angels / Come down toearth, they step in dung, like us. / And like it" (52). When hismother sends the slave John to bring Lilburne home from a three-daydrunk, Lilburne beats the boy's face bloody. When Aunt Cat tries tocomfort Lilburne after his mother's death, reminding him that shenursed him, he replies, "All right, I sucked your milk, but now--... I'd puke PukeSlang for selling off a losing position even if the loss is substantial.Notes:The point at which an investor decides to sell regardless of price has been dubbed "the puke point. the last black drop, / I'd puke it out..."(58). In his desolate and hysterical love for his dead mother, he beratesor humiliates everyone alive who loves him: Letitia, Aunt Cat, hisbrother Isham. After the murder and the indictment, Isham tries toconvince Lilburne to run off, but Lilburne refuses: "Where'eryou go the world all stinks the same" (105). Lilburne'sdisgust with the world, with the people in it, and with himself isprojected and focused on the black boy John, who is clumsy and slow, whoruns away for days at a time, who breaks his dead mother's china.In dismembering John, in full view of Isham and of the other slaves,Lilburne strikes at all that he believes is wrong with the world, allthat is degraded and foul and dark, all that he has recognized withinhimself. His mother tells Jefferson that Lilburne, in attacking John,was trying to defend "himself against the darkness Against the Darkness is a role-playing game which assumes a vast Vatican conspiracy organized to protect humanity from supernatural forces, but is otherwise set in the modern world. It was created by Tabletop Adventures, LLC in 2006. that was his. /He felt the dark creep in from all the woods. / He felt the dark fearhiding in his heart.... He saw poor John as but his darkest self/ Andall the possibility of dark he feared" (116). In his foreword Warren calls Lilburne a "light-carrier"(xiii); like Conrad's Kurtz, he carries the light of civilizationinto the savage wilderness. And like Kurtz, he discovers the savagewilderness within himself. For Warren, Lilburne's kinsman kins��man?n.1. A male relative.2. A man sharing the same racial, cultural, or national background as another.kinsmanNounpl -men Meriwether Lewis was also a "light-carrier," and both wereamong the nation's "founding fathers" (Nakadate 213).Lilburne's story--moving west to the frontier, building Rocky Hill,carrying the refined values and beliefs of Virginia's bestfamilies, and then sinking into a cynical disgust with himself and theworld that ends in murder and, perhaps, suicide--parallelsMeriwether's. In Warren's poem, Meriwether Lewis is the sonJefferson never had, and he believes what he calls Jefferson's"lie." But after his journey to the Pacific and hisappointment as Governor of the Louisiana Territory, he is accused offraud. The poem assumes that he was unjustly accused, and that hisacceptance of Jefferson's idealized notion of human nature and thenew republic left him totally unprepared to face his attackers. He turnsas bitter and cynical as Lilburne and the Jefferson of the poem, andfinally commits suicide: For suddenly I knew there was no Justice. For the human heart will hate Justice for its humanness. Had I not dreamed that Man at last is Man's friend And they will long travel together And rejoice in steadfastness. Had I not loved, and lived, your lie, then I Had not been sent unbuckled and unbraced-- Oh, the wilderness was easy!--But to find, in the end, the tracklessness Of the human heart. (114) Warren uses the almost wholly fictional character of Lilburne ashis pattern for re-imagining the historical characters Meriwether Lewisand Thomas Jefferson. In a poem that makes an argument about Americanhistory, however, the wisdom of patterning historical characters after afictional character is questionable. Ehrenpreis quotes the historicalMeriwether Lewis to point out his extreme difference from Warren'scharacter: "I hold it an axiom incontrovertible in��con��tro��vert��i��ble?adj.Impossible to dispute; unquestionable: incontrovertible proof of the defendant's innocence.in��con that it is moreeasy to introduce vice in all states of society than it is to eradicateit, and this is more strictly true when applied to man in his savagethan in his civilized state" (103-04)--hardly the kind of thinkingWarren's romantic idealist would engage in. In his notes on the poem, Warren writes that Jefferson's"crime" parallels Lilburne's (Strandberg,"Craft" 202). By "crime" he means Jefferson'sdenial of humanity, expressed in his repudiation of his relationship toLilburne and his wish, in the poem, that "They should have thrown /It [the infant Lilburne] out where the hogs come to the holier, out withthe swill" (42). Lucy accusingly tells her brother that "whatpoor Lilburne did in madness and exaltation, / You do it in vanity"(116), and that "in virtue and sick vanity / You'd strike poorLilburne down" (117). Although Jefferson's "Crime"is never enacted physically, as Lilburne's is, the parallel holdson the ethical or spiritual plane: each denies the humanity of another;each denies the essential brotherhood of human being. Warren and some of his readers, however, want to push the parallelfrom the spiritual plane onto the plane of history, and on that planethe parallel breaks down. Early in the poem Jefferson suggests that allhuman beings carry deep within their labyrinthine lab��y��rin��thineadj.Of, relating to, resembling, or constituting a labyrinth.labyrinthinepertaining to or emanating from a labyrinth. psyches a monster, aminotaur; John Burr asserts that "Jefferson's Declaration ofIndependence, no less than Lilburne's murder, is a destructiveattempt to achieve transcendence, an attempt to strike down the minotaurwhich transforms the self into one" (216). Burt's equating ofa brutal axe-murder with the writing of the Declaration of Independencemay sound extreme but the poem invites the equation. Richard Law draws asimilar conclusion, claiming that the murder is "an image of thetragic core of American history" ("Violence" 194), andRuppersburg sees the murder as emblematic of the American capacity for inhumanity and violence. Such a capacity is innately human, but American democracy, predicated on Jeffersonian humanism and its belief in original virtue, was defenseless against its existence.... The murder represents not merely the invalidation of Jeffersonian humanism but the American republic's failure to honor the ideals its founders meant it to embody and their repeated violation throughout its history. (62, 63) Such interpretations make Lilburne's crime bear too great aburden. Perhaps because he recognizes that burden, Warren blurs thecrime's implications for American history with its implications forhuman nature. The poem's climax has virtually nothing to do withhistory. Lucy and Meriwether Lewis help Jefferson to acknowledgeLilburne's act, as Richard Law puts it, "as a fulfillment ofqualities latent in himself" ("Violence" 197). Over thecourse of the poem Jefferson comes to recognize that man is not merelythe monster, or minotaur, that he believes him to be early in the poem,just as he is not the angel that he believed him to be while writing theDeclaration of Independence. Once he recognizes his relationship toLilburne, his comphcity in what Lucy calls "the shade of the humancondition" (118), Jefferson is able to take his nephew's handin a gesture of reconciliation and acceptance, and to agree withMeriwether that "All is redeemed, / In knowledge" (120). At the moment of climax, just before Jefferson takesLilburne's hand, Lucy and Meriwether claim not only thatJefferson's "dream" remains, but that a"nobler" dream is now possible, "nobler because moredifficult / And cold, in the face of the old cost / Of our complicities.And--/--knowledge of that cost is, / In itself, a kind ofredemption" (118). Jefferson replies by recalling a letter he wrotelate in his life to John Adams, in which he said "That the dream ofthe future is better than / The dream of the past. / How could I hope tofind courage to say / That without the fact of the past, no matter/Howterrible, we cannot dream the future?" (118). Hugh Ruppersburg,trying mightily to apply the poem's theme to American history,argues that the climax calls for a pragmatic idealism, a fusion ofJeffersonian ideals with an acceptance of the limitations of humannature. Such a pragmatic idealism would imply the continued pursuit ofthe ideals of the country's founding, tempered by the knowledgethat those ideals are unattainable (66). The poem "seeks from thepast a glory which will restore meaning to a diminished present"(75). Ruppersburg's is a hopeful vision, but the poem does notsupport it. Far from providing "glory" with which to restoremeaning to the present, the past can at best afford us what Jeffersoncalls the "bitter bread" (120) of a knowledge which is oftenterrible. Delmore Schwartz is more persuasive when he argues that thepoem's characters never finally answer the question of how it ispossible to believe in any human ideal or aspiration after facing theactuality of evil; the only answer is "the courage to live with theconsciousness that we are all guilty" (45). Echoing Schwartz, Burtconcludes that the poem "provides no solution to its motivatingdifficulty. At best, it provides a way of facing the fact that therewill never be one" (217). The climax of Brother to Dragons, in which Jefferson recognizes hiscomplicity in sin, forgives Lilburne, and begins his moral regeneration,is part of a story about ethics, not about American history. Yet Warrenunderstands history as an essentially ethical enterprise. At theFugitives' Reunion in 1956, he says, The past is always a rebuke to the present.... It's a betterrebuke than any dream of the future. It's a better rebuke becauseyou can see what some of the costs were, what frail virtues wereachieved in the past by frail men. And it's there, and you can seeit, and see what it cost them, and how they had to go at it.... And thatis a much better rebuke than any dream of a golden age to come, becausehistorians will correct, and imagination will correct, any notion of asimplistic sim��plism?n.The tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.[French simplisme, from simple, simple, from Old French; see simple and, well, childish notion of a golden age. The drama of thepast that corrects us is the drama of our struggles to be human, of ourstruggles to define the values of our forebears in the face of theirdifficulties. (Purdy 210) In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , the past is a "rebuke" to the kind ofarrogance Warren depicts in Jefferson's idealistic, naive vision ofhuman nature. Such language--"rebuke," "virtues,""values," "corrects us"--suggests that historyperforms an educative ed��u��ca��tive?adj.Educational.Adj. 1. educative - resulting in education; "an educative experience"instructive, informative - serving to instruct or enlighten or inform function. However, in his essay "The Use ofthe Past," Warren is quite clear that history cannot give us theanswers to current problems or "a formula for making rightdecisions" (40); nor can it help us avoid the kinds of errorscommitted in the past or reveal the laws that govern human events.Instead its value is similar to the ineffable value of literature:history can give its students "insight" or a feeling for"the medium in which action can be undertaken.... That feeling forthe medium--it is the indefinable, untranslatable thing" (40). Twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights. 2. after the Fugitives' Reunion, Warren told BillMoyers: I don't know how you can have a future without a sense of thepast. A real future. And we have a book like [John Harold] Plumb'sbook, The Death of the Past, which is a very impressive and disturbingbook.... He says only history keeps alive the human sense, history inthe broadest sense of the word. It might be literary history orpolitical history or any other kind of history. It's man'slong effort to be human. And if a student understands this or tries topenetrate this problem, he becomes human. (Ruppersburg 4) In other words history, like poetry, teaches us what it means to behuman. "The deepest value of history keeps alive the sense that menhave striven, suffered, achieved, and have been base or generous--have,in short, been men" ("Use" 37). In our reading of both literature and history, writes Warren, The truth we want to come to is the truth of ourselves, of ourcommon humanity, available in the projected self of art. We discover anuminous nu��mi��nous?adj.1. Of or relating to a numen; supernatural.2. Filled with or characterized by a sense of a supernatural presence: a numinous place.3. consciousness and for the first time may see both ourselves inthe world and the world in us. This drama of the discovery of the selfis timeless. Costume and decor do not matter. In it, the past becomesour present--no, it becomes our future. So far as we understandourselves, that is, we may move freely into a future and need not bemerely the victims of the next event in time that happens to come along.("Use" 48) In Brother to Dragons both Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis sufferfrom the lack of self-knowledge Warren describes, and precisely becausethey do not understand themselves or other men, they become "merevictims" of events: "and I come back to the study of thepast," writes Warren, "as a way of discovering the self"("Use" 49). Yet for Warren the discovery of the self in history involves alsothe creation of the self, for he admits that an "absolute, positivepast" does not exist; the past is always "an inference, acreation" ("Use" 51). Self-discovery and self-creationare at once antithetical an��ti��thet��i��cal? also an��ti��thet��icadj.1. Of, relating to, or marked by antithesis.2. Being in diametrical opposition. See Synonyms at opposite. and complementary phenomena. We might also saythat historians must inevitably both discover and create the men andwomen they write about and that Warren does this in his poem with ThomasJefferson, Meriwether Lewis, and Lilburne Lewis. But a historian's"creation" can be tested in a way that a poet's ornovelist's cannot, as, for example, when Irvin Ehrenpreis quotesthe historical Meriwether Lewis in a way that strongly suggests thefictional quality of Warren's Meriwether. As a fictional character, Jefferson is a highly effectiveembodiment of the theme of complicity in evil, but as a historicalcharacter he is much less effective. Ruppersburg argues that thepoem's theme is "the corruption of the American Dream in thenineteenth century as the nation moved inexorably away from the idealsof the Declaration and the Revolution" and that the root causes ofthe Dream's corruption are "centered in the emblematic figureof Jefferson, who recognized the nation's potential for greatnessand was most fatally blind to its potential for blunder" (44).Jefferson "embodies the forces which left the nation vulnerable toits own corrupt nature" (45). Such an argument grants Jefferson farmore influence and responsibility than is fair. In fact, the ideals ofJefferson's Declaration were regularly criticized in the early daysof the Republic. To cite but one example, John C. Calhoun John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was a leading United States Southern politician and political philosopher from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century, at the center of the foreign policy and financial disputes of his age and best writes, it is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike;--a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving--and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it. (455) Ruppersburg's argument is also unpersuasive because the poemsuggests very clearly that Jefferson's vision, as embodied in theDeclaration, was deeply flawed from its inception; that is, the poemargues, the nation did not "move away" from those ideals, itnever embodied them in the first place. In other words, the"American Dream" was not gradually corrupted over the courseof the nineteenth century; human beings have always behaved likeLilburne Lewis and human history has always been made up of that"rich detritus" composing the "blind nutriment ofLilburne's heart" (77). When Ruppersburg argues that, forWarren, Jefferson's "idealism, disillusionment DisillusionmentAdams, Nickloses innocence through WWI experience. [Am. Lit.: “The Killers”]Angry Young Mendisillusioned postwar writers of Britain, such as Osborne and Amis. [Br. Lit. , andreadjustment ... is the archetypal ar��che��type?n.1. An original model or type after which other similar things are patterned; a prototype: "'Frankenstein' . . . 'Dracula' . . . 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' . . . pattern of American history"(46), he offers us on the one hand a pattern so abstract as to beapplicable to the history of almost any individual or nation and on theother hand so narrow as to be grossly reductive re��duc��tive?adj.1. Of or relating to reduction.2. Relating to, being an instance of, or exhibiting reductionism.3. Relating to or being an instance of reductivism. of the very complicatedthing American history is. It makes more sense to read the poem in thecontext of its composition shortly after World War II and in the earlyyears of the Cold War and America's emergence as a worldsuperpower. In The Burden of Southern History C. Vann Woodward suggeststhat the South's historical experience of failure, defeat, andhuman fallibility fal��li��ble?adj.1. Capable of making an error: Humans are only fallible.2. Tending or likely to be erroneous: fallible hypotheses. can offer a corrective to a nation convinced of itsexceptionalism ex��cep��tion��al��ism?n.1. The condition of being exceptional or unique.2. The theory or belief that something, especially a nation, does not conform to a pattern or norm. and its triumphalist role as leader of the free world The "Leader of the Free World" is a title used sometimes to describe the President of the United States, though the title is debated by those who consider themselves to be part of the "Free World", but not under the leadership of the United States. (anation soon to become caught up in what another Southerner, J. WilliamFulbright James William Fulbright (April 9, 1905 – February 9, 1995) was a member of the United States Senate representing Arkansas. Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist, supported racial segregation, supported the creation of the United Nations and opposed , would call "the arrogance of power"). Readalongside the pronouncements of John Foster Dulles Noun 1. John Foster Dulles - United States diplomat who (as Secretary of State) pursued a policy of opposition to the USSR by providing aid to American allies (1888-1959)Dulles and Richard Nixon,Brother to Dragons becomes an example of a poet's speaking truth topower. Lewis Simpson offers a reading of the poem's implicationsregarding American history somewhat subtler than Ruppersburg's,suggesting that Brother to Dragons shows that "the underlyingmotive of American history is ... the assertion of the connectionbetween intellect and self-will" (139-49) and that Jefferson andLilburne embody "the willful self as a central, and at timesdestructive, force in American history" (140-41). But Simpsonconcedes that the theme of intellectual willfulness applies not only to"the specific conditions of American history" but also to"the character of the self in modern history generally" (153);he cites Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Francis Bacon, and JosephConrad--none of whom dealt with "the specific conditions ofAmerican history"--as other writers whose work develops that themein important ways. Intellectual willfulness may be evident "inmodern history generally," but whether it is "the underlyingmotive of American history" (my italics) is open to question. Finally, the effectiveness of the poem's argument on Americanhistory pivots on whether the historical Jefferson was nearly as blindto the nation's "potential for blunder" as isWarren's Jefferson. In the poem Jefferson says, "And ashistory divulged itself, / I saw how the episode in the meat-house /Would bloom in Time" (85), and then cites a slave child'scrying as its mother is sold, a Christian Cherokee on the Trail ofTears Trail of TearsForced migration of the Cherokee Indians in 1838–39. In 1835, when gold was discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia, a small minority of Cherokee ceded all tribal land east of the Mississippi for $5 million. The U.S. , several horrific Civil War battles, the Haymarket Riot Haymarket Riot(May 4, 1886) Violent confrontation between police and labour protesters in Chicago that dramatized the labour movement's struggle for recognition. Radical unionists had called a mass meeting in Haymarket Square to protest police brutality in a strike action. (1886),and violence between labor organizers and "Henry's goons"at the Ford Motor Company, as "ample documentation" in supportof his cynical vision of human history. The problem here is that Warrenimplies that Jefferson, while he was alive, was ignorant of history. Theonly evidence that Warren's Jefferson cites, apart from the cryingchild, is drawn from history after Lilburne's murder. But it wouldhave been just as easy for Jefferson, or for anyone with a reasonableknowledge of history, to come up with an equally horrifying catalogue ofevents from before 1811. Warren is enough of a scholar to know that Jefferson was widelyread in history; in fact, in "Query XIV" of Notes on the Stateof Virginia (written well before Lilburne's act of murder)Jefferson mentions a Roman slavemaster, "a certain Vedius Pollio,who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food tohis fish, for having broken a glass" (268)--an incident not so verydifferent from Lilburne's murder of a slave for having broken apitcher. Indeed, if we take seriously Warren's "The Use of thePast," we might wonder why Jefferson's understanding of thehuman condition, despite his wide reading in history, is so deeplyflawed. The historical Jefferson may sometimes seem to ignore"man's capacity for evil" or the tragic dimension ofhistory, as Gordon Wood argues in "The Trials and Tribulations ofThomas Jefferson" (in his Revolutionary Characters), especially ifwe contrast Jefferson with a hard-headed realist like John Adams. ButJefferson is not simply a foil to Adams and his thinking is notreducible to mere "Jeffersonian idealism." He concludes"Query XVII" of his Notes with a prediction that is at onceprescient pre��scient?adj.1. Of or relating to prescience.2. Possessing prescience.[French, from Old French, from Latin praesci and remote from the facile optimism of Warren'sJefferson: But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance?... the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war [i.e., the American Revolution] we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire with convulsion. (287) Ruppersburg tries to explain Jefferson's traumatic shock Traumatic shockA condition of depressed body functions as a reaction to injury with loss of body fluids or lack of oxygen. Signs of traumatic shock include weak and rapid pulse, shallow and rapid breathing, and pale, cool, clammy skin.Mentioned in: Wounds overthe fact that a slave-owner might murder one of his slaves by arguingthat "the historical reality which John as slave represents ... wastoo grim and dark for Jefferson or his contemporaries toacknowledge" (59), and that "slavery and the mistreatment mis��treat?tr.v. mis��treat��ed, mis��treat��ing, mis��treatsTo treat roughly or wrongly. See Synonyms at abuse.mis��treat ofthe American Indian were two manifestations of brutality whose moralimplications the nation was unprepared to confront" (63), both ofwhich claims are simply false. Jefferson and his contemporaries may nothave confronted the moral implications of slavery and the treatment ofAmerican Indians in the same way that Ruppersburg and his contemporariesdo, but to suggest that these issues were simply unacknowledged or notconfronted is inaccurate. In "Query XVIII" of the NotesJefferson argues, despite his own slaveholding slave��hold��er?n.One who owns or holds slaves.slaveholding adj. , that "The wholecommerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the mostboisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism despotism,government by an absolute ruler unchecked by effective constitutional limits to his power. In Greek usage, a despot was ruler of a household and master of its slaves. on the one part, anddegrading submissions on the other" and concludes that "Theman must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepravedby such circumstances" (288). Despite his racism, Jeffersonconcedes that blacks as well as whites are endowed by their Creator withthe inalienable Not subject to sale or transfer; inseparable.That which is inalienable cannot be bought, sold, or transferred from one individual to another. The personal rights to life and liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States are inalienable. right of liberty, and reflecting on the history ofslavery The history of slavery covers many different forms of human exploitation across many cultures and throughout human history. Slavery, generally defined, refers to the systematic exploitation of labor for work and services without consent and/or the possession of other persons as in America, he concludes, "Indeed I tremble for my countrywhen I reflect that God is just" (289). In short, Warren's Jefferson is far more ignorant of historyand of the moral shortcomings of his fellow citizens than is thehistorical Jefferson; whether such ignorance is a "non-essentialfact" that the poet may justifiably "tamper" with dependsupon whether we read the poem as an inquiry into questions of ethics andthe human psyche or as an argument on the role of Jeffersonian idealismin American history. Works Cited Bloom, Harold, ed. Robert Penn Warren Noun 1. Robert Penn Warren - United States writer and poet (1905-1989)Warren . New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Chelsea House,1986. Burr, John. Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism. New Haven:Yale UP, 1988. Calhoun, John C Calhoun, John C(aldwell)(born March 18, 1782, Abbeville district, S.C., U.S.—died March 31, 1850, Washington, D.C.) U.S. politician. A graduate of Yale University, he became an ardent Jeffersonian Republican and was elected to the U.S. . "Selection from A Disquisition dis��qui��si��tion?n.A formal discourse on a subject, often in writing.[Latin disqus on Government(c. late 1840s)." The American Intellectual Tradition. Vol. I. 4thed. Ed. David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper. New York: Oxford UP,2001. Clark, William Bedford. "'Canaan's GranderCounterfeit': Jefferson and America in Brother to Dragons."Grimshaw 144-52. --. ed. Critical Essays on Robert Penn Warren. Boston: G. K. Hall,1981. Corrigan, Lesa Carnes. Poems of Pure Imagination: Robert PennWarren and the Romantic Tradition. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP,1999. Ehrenpreis, Irvin. Poetries of America: Essays on the Relation ofCharacter to Style. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1989. Grimshaw, James Jr., ed. Robert Penn Warren's "Brother toDragons": A Discussion. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1983. Harper, Margaret Mills. "Versions of History in Brother toDragons." Grimshaw 226-43. Holman, C. Hugh. "Original Sin on the Dark and BloodyGround." Grimshaw 193-99. Jarrell, Randall. "On the Underside of the Stone." Clark,Critical Essays 43-44. Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas,1743–1826, 3d President of the United States (1801–9), author of the Declaration of Independence, and apostle of agrarian democracy.Early LifeJefferson was born on Apr. . "Notes on the State of Virginia."Writings. Ed. Merrill D. Peterson Merrill D. Peterson (born Manhattan, Kansas) is Professor of History (Emeritus) at the University of Virginia and the editor of the prestigious Library of America edition of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. . New York: Library of America The Library of America (LoA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Overview and historyFounded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published more than 150 volumes by a wide range , 1984.123-325. Justus, James. The Achievement of Robert Penn Warren. Baton Rouge:Louisiana State UP, 1981. Law, Richard G. "Brother to Dragons: The Fact of Violence vs.the Possibility of Love." Clark, Critical Essays 193-209. --."Notes on the Revised Version of Brother to Dragons."Clark, Critical Essays 210-15. Merrill, Boynton, Jr. Jefferson's Nephews: A Frontier Tragedy.Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976. --. "The Murder." Grimshaw 283-93. Nakadate, Neil, ed. Robert Penn Warren: Critical Perspectives.Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1981. O'Connor, William Van. Review of Brother to Dragons. Grimshaw174-80. Purdy, R. R., ed. Fugitive's Reunion: Conversations atVanderbilt, May 2-5, 1956. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 1959. Ruppersburg, Hugh. Robert Penn Warren and the American Imagination.Athens: U of Georgia P, 1990. Schwartz, Delmore. "The Dragon of Guilt." Clark, CriticalEssays 44-46. Simpson, Lewis. "The Poet and the Father: Robert Penn Warrenand Thomas Jefferson." The Legacy of Robert Penn Warren. Ed. DavidMadden. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2000. 130-54. Strandberg, Victor. "Brother to Dragons and the Craft ofRevision." Grimshaw 200-10. --. The Poetic Vision of Robert Penn Warren. Lexington: UP ofKentucky, 1977. Warren, Robert Penn Warren, Robert Penn,1905–89, American novelist, poet, and critic, b. Guthrie, Ky., grad. Vanderbilt Univ. 1925; M.A., Univ. of California 1927; B.Litt., Oxford 1930. . Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse andVoices. A New Version. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1979. --. "Foreword to Brother to Dragons: A Play in Two Acts.Grimshaw 295-300. --. "The Use of the Past." New and Selected Essays. NewYork: Random House, 1989. 29-53. --. "The Way Brother to Dragons Was Written." Nakadate212-13. Wood, Gordon. Revolutionary Characters: What Made the FoundersDifferent. New York: Penguin, 2006. Woodward, C. Vann. The Burden of Southern History. Baton Rouge:Louisiana UP, 1993. GARY GRIEVE-CARLSON Lebanon Valley College HistoryLebanon Valley was founded on February 23, 1866, with classes beginning May 7 of that year and its first class graduating in 1870. Expenses at this time for a full year were $206.50 and remained relatively unchanged for the next 50 years.