Tarantella by Robert E. Howard (Poem)
“Tarantella” is work of dark poetry written by Robert E. Howard. Inspired by the French Revolution, it was first published on 25 May 1926, in The Daniel Baker Collegian, the college newspaper at Danial Baker College, where Howard was a student. The poem appeared under the misspelled title “Tarentella”.
Tarantella is an Italian folk dance that involves quick steps and flirtatious behavior between the dancing couples. The dance gets its name from tarantism, a form of hysteria that occurred in Italy in the 15th to the 17th century. At the time, people believed that the afflicted had been bitten by tarantula spiders, and it was the venom causing the frenzied dancing that was characteristic of the condition.
In his “Tarantella” poem, Howard describes bloody scenes of execution and death, incorporating them into a type of mania, such as that suffered by those afflicted with the aforementioned condition, references to the dance being made obvious by lines such as “Kill! Kill! And my lips a-thrill With hot kisses snatched in the frenzied whirl” and “Prance, dance, you sans culotte.” Readers who look deeper may also notice an underlying social commentary.
Many years after it’s first appearance in print, “Tarantella” was reprinted in Echoes from an Iron Hart, an anthology of Robert E. Howard poems, published in 1972 by Donald M. Grant.
About Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American writer of pulp fiction. Often considered to be the man who began the sword and sorcery subgenre, Howard was the creator of Conan the Barbarian.
Howard began writing fiction when he was just nine years old. In December 1922, aged 16, his work began paying off when The Tattler (Brownwood High School newspaper) printed two of his stories: “‘Golden Hope Christmas” and “West is West”. Then, in 1924, after years of having his stories rejected by Weird Tales, he made his first sale to the magazine with a caveman story called “Spear and Fang”. This marked the start of Howard’s career as a pulp fiction writer and Weird Tales subsequently became one of his main outlets for weird fiction.
Tarantella
By Robert E. Howard
Heads! Heads! Heads!
Bounce on the cobble stones.
Glitter of scarlets and flame of reds
Crimson the road that Freedom treads,
We’re rearing a fane of bones.
And bare feet
Weave their beat
Down the red reeking street.
Hell holds sway.
Slay! Slay!
Hate goes bellowing through the land,
Crimson-hued is my gleaming brand.
Kill! Kill! And my lips a-thrill
With hot kisses snatched in the frenzied whirl—
Raped from the lips of a noble girl.
And her brother’s blood on my hand.
Rage, lust, passion-hot.
Prance, dance, you sans culotte.
This is your hour, the height of your power,
Culture, decency forgot.
Blood! Blood! The red gleams preen
On yon fair maid the guillotine!
Vive, vive la guillotine!
Hate and slaughter, that is all;
Blood to shed and heads to fall.
Love is lust and good is lies,
Satan rides the eery skies.
Dance and sway
Whirl away
Meet and kiss, it is bliss
But to slay!
All the world’s a gore-rimmed sea, lo, the devil laughs with glee.
Come and dance then, you with me, come and caper wild and free.
With red blood those fires are lit,
Hades’ smoke is tinged with it.
And the very skies that soar
Are encrimsoned as with gore—
Yon was once a baron’s head,
Now it decks a pike instead.
I salute ye, with my sword.
Here’s to you, m’sieu le lord.
Much you had of wondrous wine,
Ermine coats and horses fine,
Luscious lips of dainty girls,
Snowy bosoms, gold and pearls,
None so haughty as your sneer—
Now you ride a common’s spear.
Here’s to you! In hell you burn.
I am on the upward turn
Of the slow revolving Wheel
With my reign of blood and steel.
O’er my prostrate head ye strode;
On my shoulder bent ye rode.
You the whip-man, I the clown
Till I rose to tread you down.
They will rise to trample me—
For the moment I am free.
Through the ribs the winds may drone
Now the world is all mine own.
Mine to lust, to rage, to dance!
Vive la Freedom! Vive la France!
Robert E. Howard (1906 – 1936)