"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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A brief review will be useful. The central figures of the man, a tigress, the
lake, and the tower on the island are introduced in the first stanza. At the end of the
second stanza we meet the other important figure, the woman who is also the goddess,
“the Source” (line 90) and the muse. The third stanza explores his vacillations: he briefly
contemplates turning back, but the idea of the glimpsed goddess ensnares him and lures
him on. The angry tigress follows him. In stanza four he climbs the stairs of the tower
and fights the tigress. At the start of the next stanza he cuts off her paw and the tigress
does not retaliate. The man then mounts the final set of stairs to the goddess who sits on a
black, stone throne, “empty-eyed, lips parted, legs apart” (line 85). He says she must be
“the Source” (line 90). In stanza six he utters a macabre invocation to the muse (line 91-
6) and prays that she “‘make poems within me’” (line 96). He rips off her shift but fails to
ravish her when her thighs burst into flame. He then retreats, finds the tigress’ paw, then
the tigress, binds her stump and helps her down to the lake. The tower starts to
disintegrate as they descend. The final stanza tells of the healing power of the water of
the lake. He replaces the paw on the stump and it regenerates. The pair swim and play
together. As they reach the shore the tower crumbles and falls. The poem ends with
reconciliation between the man and the tigress. They kiss. And then, the final twist:
It is not over for them:
they will meet here on this bank again
to spar in the mud
(lines 124-6).
Tony Morphet offers a more succinct summary of the poem:
A stage set, replete with tiger and naked man; lake and tower; magic sword, black
stone throne and muse-goddess, sets the scene for the encounter at its centre. The
poet prays to the muse figure … She spits back his pleas and he makes his way
back to the tiger and the lake, leaving the island, its tower collapsing behind him
as he returns ‘to spar in the mud’ with the animal. (206-7)
This, however, contains some inaccuracies. The animal is female, a tigress, not a tiger.
And they do not spar in the mud at the end of the poem: the poet contemplates this as a
future action. They frolic in the water and kiss. Both these points are important. The
femaleness of the animal is central to the poem, for she offers another side of the woman
or goddess figure and is imaginatively part of the poet himself. The reconciliation
between the two is also central and Morphet’s reading does not make this point. He does,
however, eloquently pinpoint the tension and dynamics of the poem: