The Wandering Jew by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Name: The Wandering Jew
Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson

The narrator encounters an ancient, solitary man in New York and recognizes him through eyes that seem to remember everything. Though the setting and the man’s appearance do not readily agree, the narrator feels he has known the man’s image since childhood. He considers whether the stranger might be Noah, Nathan, Abimelech, Lamech, or Melchizedek, then rejects these names and finds that the man’s eyes provide an answer beyond questions. The stranger inspires both compassion and unease. His speech is an overwhelming stream of curses, directed against a world that he sees as corrupt, anguishing, and unfit for seers. He appears to prefer the dead figures of the past, forgetting that they too were destructive in their own time. His hostility toward the present recalls his conviction that no good came out of Nazareth. Yet the man has one reserve: at times he grows silent as though confronted by a Presence that cannot leave him. In that silence, his eyes resemble those of someone who has looked upon One who never dies. He reveals the losses contained in life, and the narrator cannot tell whether he is a man or a ghost. Perhaps he has died repeatedly, with only pride surviving because it is too rebellious to be freed. Perhaps, whenever humility nearly came to him, he declared that the Second Coming had arrived and passed in vain. The narrator cannot know whether he still defies the failure of the angry task that has cast him out of time into chaos, but imagines that his old, unyielding eyes may still flash among men, then flinch and turn away.

By Edwin Arlington Robinson · First published 1928 · Genre: Narrative Poetry, Dramatic Monologue, Religious Poetry · 760 words

First lines

I SAW by looking in his eyes

That they remembered everything; / And this was how I came to know

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The Wandering Jew is listed on Textopian as a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, dated 1928 CE.

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Work type: Poem
Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson
Date: 1928 CE
Language: English
Genres: Narrative Poetry, Dramatic Monologue, Religious Poetry, Legendary Poetry, Symbolist Poetry
Length: 760 words
Structure: 1 section, 72 paragraphs
Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)

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Genres

Narrative Poetry — The work is a lyric-narrative poem in which a speaker encounters and interprets the legendary Wandering Jew through a sustained sequence of scenes, reflections, and implied dialogue.
Dramatic Monologue — Although voiced by an observing narrator rather than the Jew himself, the poem builds its force through the implied presence, speech, curses, and psychological revelation of a single enigmatic figure.
Religious Poetry — Its central figure derives from Christian legend, and the poem explicitly invokes Nazareth, the Second Coming, spiritual rebellion, sin, judgment, immortality, and an enduring divine Presence.
Legendary Poetry — The poem reimagines the Wandering Jew, a folkloric and medieval Christian legendary figure condemned to endless life and wandering for defying Christ.