Uncharted Depths: Exploring Early Tennyson's Restless Years
Alfred Tennyson emerged as a divided spirit. He famously wrote a piece named The Two Voices, wherein dual aspects of himself argued the pros and cons of ending his life. Within this illuminating volume, Richard Holmes decides to concentrate on the lesser known persona of the literary figure.
A Pivotal Year: That Fateful Year
During 1850 proved to be decisive for Alfred. He released the monumental collection of poems In Memoriam, over which he had laboured for close to two decades. As a result, he became both celebrated and rich. He got married, subsequent to a long relationship. Before that, he had been residing in rented homes with his relatives, or residing with male acquaintances in London, or residing alone in a ramshackle house on one of his native Lincolnshire's desolate shores. Then he acquired a house where he could host notable callers. He was appointed the official poet. His existence as a renowned figure commenced.
Even as a youth he was commanding, verging on magnetic. He was very tall, disheveled but good-looking
Ancestral Turmoil
The Tennyson clan, observed Alfred, were a “given to dark moods”, indicating inclined to moods and melancholy. His paternal figure, a unwilling clergyman, was angry and very often drunk. Occurred an event, the particulars of which are unclear, that resulted in the domestic worker being burned to death in the rectory kitchen. One of Alfred’s male relatives was admitted to a mental institution as a boy and remained there for life. Another experienced deep melancholy and emulated his father into addiction. A third became addicted to the drug. Alfred himself suffered from periods of overwhelming sadness and what he termed “strange episodes”. His poem Maud is told by a insane person: he must often have questioned whether he might turn into one himself.
The Intriguing Figure of Early Tennyson
Even as a youth he was commanding, almost magnetic. He was exceptionally tall, disheveled but attractive. Even before he adopted a black Spanish cloak and headwear, he could dominate a space. But, having grown up hugger-mugger with his brothers and sisters – three brothers to an small space – as an grown man he desired solitude, withdrawing into quiet when in groups, retreating for individual journeys.
Deep Fears and Crisis of Conviction
In Tennyson’s lifetime, earth scientists, astronomers and those scientific thinkers who were starting to consider with Charles Darwin about the evolution, were introducing appalling questions. If the story of living beings had begun ages before the arrival of the mankind, then how to maintain that the planet had been made for humanity’s benefit? “It seems impossible,” stated Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was simply created for mankind, who live on a third-rate planet of a ordinary star The modern optical instruments and lenses exposed spaces vast beyond measure and beings tiny beyond perception: how to maintain one’s belief, given such proof, in a deity who had created mankind in his own image? If prehistoric creatures had become vanished, then would the human race meet the same fate?
Persistent Elements: Sea Monster and Bond
Holmes ties his narrative together with dual recurrent elements. The first he presents at the beginning – it is the concept of the legendary sea monster. Tennyson was a young student when he composed his poem about it. In Holmes’s opinion, with its mix of “ancient legends, “historical science, “speculative fiction and the scriptural reference”, the 15-line poem establishes concepts to which Tennyson would keep returning. Its feeling of something immense, unspeakable and mournful, hidden inaccessible of investigation, foreshadows the tone of In Memoriam. It marks Tennyson’s introduction as a expert of rhythm and as the author of symbols in which terrible mystery is condensed into a few strikingly indicative lines.
The second motif is the Kraken’s opposite. Where the fictional beast symbolises all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his connection with a genuine individual, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would state ““there was no better ally”, evokes all that is loving and lighthearted in the writer. With him, Holmes reveals a side of Tennyson rarely previously seen. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his most majestic lines with ““bizarre seriousness”, would suddenly burst out laughing at his own solemnity. A Tennyson who, after visiting “dear old Fitz” at home, composed a thank-you letter in poetry depicting him in his rose garden with his pet birds resting all over him, placing their ““reddish toes … on arm, wrist and lap”, and even on his crown. It’s an vision of delight nicely tailored to FitzGerald’s significant exaltation of enjoyment – his rendition of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also evokes the superb absurdity of the both writers' shared companion Edward Lear. It’s pleasing to be told that Tennyson, the mournful celebrated individual, was also the muse for Lear’s poem about the aged individual with a beard in which “two owls and a chicken, multiple birds and a small bird” constructed their nests.
