Uncharted Depths: Delving into Young Tennyson's Troubled Years
Tennyson himself existed as a divided soul. He famously wrote a piece called The Two Voices, where contrasting facets of his personality argued the pros and cons of suicide. Within this revealing volume, the author elects to spotlight on the overlooked persona of the literary figure.
A Critical Year: The Mid-Century
During 1850 proved to be pivotal for Alfred. He unveiled the significant collection of poems In Memoriam, for which he had worked for nearly a long period. As a result, he grew both celebrated and rich. He wed, following a long courtship. Earlier, he had been residing in rented homes with his family members, or residing with bachelor friends in London, or residing alone in a rundown house on one of his native Lincolnshire's bleak shores. At that point he moved into a residence where he could host notable visitors. He assumed the role of the official poet. His existence as a Great Man commenced.
Starting in adolescence he was striking, almost magnetic. He was very tall, disheveled but good-looking
Family Challenges
The Tennyson clan, wrote Alfred, were a “prone to melancholy”, indicating inclined to emotional swings and melancholy. His parent, a reluctant clergyman, was irate and very often intoxicated. There was an incident, the particulars of which are obscure, that caused the domestic worker being killed by fire in the rectory kitchen. One of Alfred’s male relatives was placed in a mental institution as a child and stayed there for his entire existence. Another suffered from deep depression and emulated his father into addiction. A third fell into narcotics. Alfred himself suffered from episodes of overwhelming despair and what he referred to as “bizarre fits”. His poem Maud is voiced by a lunatic: he must often have pondered whether he could become one in his own right.
The Fascinating Figure of the Young Poet
Starting in adolescence he was imposing, almost charismatic. He was exceptionally tall, unkempt but attractive. Prior to he started wearing a black Spanish cloak and headwear, he could dominate a room. But, having grown up hugger-mugger with his family members – three brothers to an small space – as an mature individual he craved privacy, retreating into stillness when in company, vanishing for lonely journeys.
Philosophical Concerns and Turmoil of Conviction
In that period, earth scientists, astronomers and those early researchers who were exploring ideas with Darwin about the evolution, were raising appalling queries. If the story of life on Earth had begun ages before the appearance of the humanity, then how to hold that the world had been formed for mankind's advantage? “It seems impossible,” stated Tennyson, “that the whole Universe was only formed for us, who live on a insignificant sphere of a third-rate sun The new optical instruments and lenses exposed spaces infinitely large and organisms minutely tiny: how to hold to one’s faith, in light of such evidence, in a deity who had created mankind in his likeness? If ancient reptiles had become extinct, then might the mankind follow suit?
Recurrent Themes: Mythical Beast and Companionship
Holmes binds his narrative together with two recurring motifs. The primary he establishes at the beginning – it is the image of the Kraken. Tennyson was a young scholar when he wrote his poem about it. In Holmes’s perspective, with its blend of “ancient legends, “historical science, “speculative fiction and the biblical text”, the short verse presents themes to which Tennyson would keep returning. Its sense of something enormous, unutterable and tragic, concealed beyond reach of human inquiry, foreshadows the mood of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s debut as a virtuoso of metre and as the originator of metaphors in which terrible unknown is compressed into a few brilliantly suggestive lines.
The other theme is the contrast. Where the imaginary beast epitomises all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his friendship with a genuine individual, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would write “I had no truer friend”, conjures all that is loving and humorous in the poet. With him, Holmes reveals a side of Tennyson infrequently before encountered. A Tennyson who, after reciting some of his grandest phrases with ““odd solemnity”, would unexpectedly chuckle heartily at his own gravity. A Tennyson who, after calling on ““the companion” at home, wrote a appreciation message in verse portraying him in his rose garden with his pet birds perching all over him, placing their “rosy feet … on arm, hand and leg”, and even on his skull. It’s an picture of pleasure perfectly suited to FitzGerald’s great exaltation of enjoyment – his version of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also summons up the brilliant nonsense of the two poets’ common acquaintance Edward Lear. It’s pleasing to be learn that Tennyson, the melancholy Great Man, was also the muse for Lear’s poem about the aged individual with a facial hair in which “a pair of owls and a hen, several songbirds and a small bird” made their dwellings.
