The Original Iron Man

  Four hundred years before Tony Stark, there was an “yron man” named Talus created by Edmund Spenser in his epic poem, The Faerie Queene (and unlike everything else that purports to be “epic” out there, it actually is an epic, the longest narrative poem in the English language, full of heroes and monsters and battles and descents to the underworld . . . but I digress).

an early copy of The Faerie Queene, Huntington Library, CA

Talus is nicknamed the “yron [iron] man” in The Faerie Queene (5.1.12.2), and he is actually a sidekick (a squire) to a knight named Artegall, who is the knight of Justice. Talus helps Artegall carry out justice: punishing those who have transgressed and restoring those who have been victims of injustice. Here is how Spenser introduces Talus:

His name was Talus, made of yron mold,

Immoveable, resistless, without end.

Who in his hand an yron flail did hold,

With which he thresht out falsehood, and did truth unfold. (5.1.12)*

While Tony Stark as Iron Man tends to act out of personal revenge (this is emphasized in the latest movie) just as often as he responds from a sense of justice, Talus the Yron Man is concerned solely with justice, which, according to the passage above, is just as much about ferreting out the truth as it is about punishing evildoers.

Talus uses his flail to separate truth from falsehood just as one separates wheat from chaff. Jesus and Pontius Pilate have a discussion about truth in John 18:37-38. Jesus states that he has come into the world “to bear witness to the truth,” to which Pilate responds dismissively, not unlike skeptics of today, “What is truth?” Pilate, who is not interested in the answer here, had no way of knowing that Jesus had given answers to the question in the previous evening’s conversation with his disciples (“I am the way, the truth, and the life” Jn 14:6) and personal prayer (“Your [God’s] word is truth” Jn 17:17).   

The imagery of threshing is undoubtedly alluding to images used for Jesus as Judge in Scripture, meting out God’s justice. See, for instance, Matthew 3:12 or Luke 3:17.)

Maybe like Tony Stark, Talus lacks mercy. The “yron man” sometimes carries out justice too far and his flailing of foes has to be curbed. One such instance occurs after he and the “lady knight” Britomart defeat Radigund, the Queen of the Amazons, freeing the enslaved and emasculated men (which include Britomart’s fiancé), but encountering resistance from the Amazonian citizens. Talus “threshes” the citizens deserving of punishment in “his revenge of spirit” (5.7.36.9). Okay, so maybe Talus is like the other Iron Man—sometimes desire for revenge overpowers a concern for simple justice. Britomart, seeing that revenge has taken over, exercises mercy to make Talus stop. Justice must be tempered by mercy.

Unlike Tony Stark, Talus the “yron man” is not egotistical. He is content to be a sidekick, not the center of attention, a squire, not a knight. And, again unlike the other Iron Man, he’s not the most interesting character in Spenser’s collection of “avengers” within his epic poem. Much more interesting is the warrior maid Britomart, for instance, but I’ll have to save her for another post. . . .  

* I have modernized some of Spenser’s intentionally archaic spelling to make the text more easily readable. The parenthetical citation in Arabic numerals is divided into Book, Canto, Stanza, and Line # of The Faerie Queene.

The Hyde Within

My pastor recently finished a series on temptation, based on the passage from Luke’s Gospel about Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Coincidentally, I’ve been simultaneously reading Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, a book about how one man’s desire to give into his sinful flesh leads to his downfall. 

 

The Writers' Museum (devoted in part to Stevenson), Edinburgh, Scotland

It’s a simple story: Mr. Hyde is the “good doctor” Jekyll’s evil persona—the creature he turns into when he gives himself over completely to his fleshly desires, untempered by moral conscience. Jekyll explains this in a letter to his friends at the end of the novel. At one point, Jekyll becomes so alarmed by the unrestrained evil of Hyde that he determines to give “Hyde” up for good (that is, to stop taking the potion that strips away his good side, leaving only his fleshly appetites). It is also becoming more difficult for Jekyll to return to his good self after each Hyde binge. Jekyll explains in this letter to his friends,

“Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.”

Stevenson acknowledges here the universal battle with sin that each person fights within him- or herself. It is as old as Adam & Eve in the Garden. Jekyll decides that he wants to choose the “better part,” to do good, to be good, but in himself does not have the strength to be a good man. I’m reminded of the Apostle Paul in Romans, saying, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (7:18b).

Yet, Dr. Jekyll’s attempts to say no to temptation are half-hearted and therefore ineffective. He tries to go “cold turkey” from his Hyde persona, but without cutting off the possibility completely. He admits in his letter,

   “Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet.”

It’s like the smoker trying to give up smoking but insisting on hanging around his friends who light up their cigarettes in his presence. How can one avoid the temptation if one is not willing to cut oneself off from it? How can I avoid eating donuts if I persist in standing near the donut table at church? Jekyll keeps his “Hyde house” and “Hyde clothes,” inviting the temptation—in fact, as he admits, “ready” to give in. Not surprisingly, he tells us that he’s only able to stay the course for two months before desires become stronger than conscience:

“For two months, however, I was true to my determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.”

This is a spoiler alert: Jekyll, unable to resist temptation on his own, gives in completely to his Hyde persona, and the consequences are dishonor and death. Stevenson’s short novel is a powerful testimony to where the intentional and habitual practice of giving way to our sinful desires leads. The Apostle Paul, at the conclusion of his chapter in Romans on the seemingly futile struggle against our sinful flesh, provides the answer: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:24-25a).