The Boundless Deep: Exploring Early Tennyson's Turbulent Years
Alfred Tennyson was known as a divided individual. He even composed a poem titled The Two Voices, in which two facets of himself debated the pros and cons of self-destruction. Within this insightful volume, Richard Holmes decides to concentrate on the lesser known persona of the poet.
A Defining Year: The Mid-Century
In the year 1850 was crucial for Tennyson. He unveiled the great poem sequence In Memoriam, on which he had worked for close to two decades. As a result, he became both renowned and prosperous. He entered matrimony, following a long engagement. Previously, he had been dwelling in temporary accommodations with his mother and siblings, or staying with male acquaintances in London, or living by himself in a ramshackle dwelling on one of his home Lincolnshire's barren shores. Now he acquired a house where he could entertain distinguished callers. He was appointed the national poet. His career as a Great Man started.
From his teens he was striking, almost glamorous. He was exceptionally tall, unkempt but good-looking
Lineage Challenges
The Tennysons, noted Alfred, were a “given to dark moods”, indicating inclined to temperament and depression. His paternal figure, a hesitant minister, was irate and regularly drunk. Occurred an occurrence, the particulars of which are obscure, that led to the family cook being killed by fire in the residence. One of Alfred’s siblings was admitted to a lunatic asylum as a boy and remained there for his entire existence. Another endured deep depression and followed his father into alcoholism. A third became addicted to the drug. Alfred himself suffered from episodes of paralysing gloom and what he referred to as “bizarre fits”. His Maud is narrated by a lunatic: he must frequently have questioned whether he was one personally.
The Intriguing Figure of Young Tennyson
Starting in adolescence he was striking, almost charismatic. He was exceptionally tall, disheveled but good-looking. Prior to he adopted a Spanish-style cape and sombrero, he could control a room. But, having grown up hugger-mugger with his family members – three brothers to an small space – as an mature individual he sought out solitude, escaping into stillness when in company, disappearing for solitary walking tours.
Deep Concerns and Crisis of Conviction
During his era, geologists, astronomers and those “natural philosophers” who were starting to consider with Charles Darwin about the origin of species, were raising disturbing inquiries. If the history of existence had begun ages before the appearance of the humanity, then how to believe that the earth had been formed for mankind's advantage? “One cannot imagine,” noted Tennyson, “that all of existence was simply made for mankind, who inhabit a minor world of a third-rate sun The new optical instruments and magnifying tools exposed areas vast beyond measure and organisms infinitesimally small: how to hold to one’s belief, given such evidence, in a deity who had created humanity in his likeness? If ancient reptiles had become died out, then would the mankind follow suit?
Persistent Themes: Kraken and Bond
The author binds his story together with dual persistent motifs. The initial he establishes at the beginning – it is the image of the Kraken. Tennyson was a young student when he penned his work about it. In Holmes’s perspective, with its combination of “Nordic tales, “historical science, 19th-century science fiction and the biblical text”, the brief verse establishes ideas to which Tennyson would repeatedly revisit. Its impression of something enormous, unutterable and sad, submerged out of reach of human understanding, foreshadows the tone of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s emergence as a virtuoso of rhythm and as the author of images in which dreadful mystery is compressed into a few brilliantly indicative phrases.
The second theme is the counterpart. Where the fictional beast represents all that is melancholic about Tennyson, his friendship with a genuine person, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would write ““he was my closest companion”, conjures all that is affectionate and playful in the poet. With him, Holmes reveals a aspect of Tennyson seldom known. A Tennyson who, after reciting some of his most impressive phrases with ““bizarre seriousness”, would suddenly chuckle heartily at his own seriousness. A Tennyson who, after visiting ““the companion” at home, penned a thank-you letter in verse describing him in his rose garden with his pet birds resting all over him, planting their ““reddish toes … on arm, hand and lap”, and even on his skull. It’s an vision of delight perfectly tailored to FitzGerald’s notable praise of enjoyment – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also evokes the excellent absurdity of the pair's common acquaintance Edward Lear. It’s satisfying to be learn that Tennyson, the mournful celebrated individual, was also the inspiration for Lear’s rhyme about the aged individual with a beard in which “two owls and a chicken, four larks and a wren” constructed their nests.
