Uncharted Depths: Delving into Early Tennyson's Troubled Years
Tennyson himself was known as a torn soul. He famously wrote a poem titled The Two Voices, wherein contrasting facets of his personality contemplated the merits of self-destruction. Through this insightful book, Richard Holmes chooses to focus on the overlooked character of the literary figure.
A Pivotal Year: That Fateful Year
The year 1850 proved to be crucial for Alfred. He published the significant collection of poems In Memoriam, over which he had toiled for close to a long period. As a result, he became both renowned and prosperous. He wed, subsequent to a 14‑year courtship. Before that, he had been dwelling in temporary accommodations with his mother and siblings, or lodging with male acquaintances in London, or residing alone in a dilapidated cottage on one of his local Lincolnshire's bleak coasts. Now he acquired a home where he could receive distinguished visitors. He was appointed the national poet. His existence as a Great Man commenced.
Starting in adolescence he was striking, verging on charismatic. He was very tall, unkempt but attractive
Family Challenges
His family, wrote Alfred, were a “black-blooded race”, suggesting susceptible to moods and sadness. His parent, a hesitant clergyman, was volatile and very often inebriated. Occurred an event, the particulars of which are unclear, that resulted in the family cook being burned to death in the rectory kitchen. One of Alfred’s siblings was admitted to a lunatic asylum as a child and lived there for his entire existence. Another endured severe depression and followed his father into addiction. A third fell into narcotics. Alfred himself endured episodes of debilitating gloom and what he referred to as “bizarre fits”. His poem Maud is narrated by a madman: he must frequently have pondered whether he was one personally.
The Fascinating Figure of Young Tennyson
Starting in adolescence he was imposing, even glamorous. He was very tall, unkempt but handsome. Prior to he began to wear a Spanish-style cape and wide-brimmed hat, he could dominate a space. But, having grown up hugger-mugger with his brothers and sisters – multiple siblings to an cramped quarters – as an mature individual he sought out isolation, withdrawing into stillness when in social settings, retreating for individual excursions.
Existential Concerns and Turmoil of Belief
During his era, geologists, celestial observers and those scientific thinkers who were exploring ideas with Charles Darwin about the evolution, were posing disturbing inquiries. If the story of existence had started eons before the arrival of the humanity, then how to maintain that the world had been formed for humanity’s benefit? “It seems impossible,” stated Tennyson, “that all of existence was merely formed for mankind, who reside on a insignificant sphere of a ordinary star The recent optical instruments and microscopes uncovered realms immensely huge and organisms minutely tiny: how to hold to one’s belief, given such evidence, in a divine being who had created mankind in his own image? If prehistoric creatures had become vanished, then might the humanity do so too?
Repeating Motifs: Kraken and Friendship
The author binds his story together with dual recurring elements. The initial he introduces at the beginning – it is the concept of the legendary sea monster. Tennyson was a young scholar when he composed his poem about it. In Holmes’s opinion, with its blend of “Nordic tales, “earlier biology, “futuristic ideas and the Book of Revelations”, the 15-line sonnet introduces themes to which Tennyson would keep returning. Its sense of something vast, indescribable and sad, submerged inaccessible of investigation, foreshadows the mood of In Memoriam. It marks Tennyson’s debut as a master of verse and as the originator of images in which dreadful unknown is packed into a few brilliantly indicative words.
The additional motif is the counterpart. Where the fictional creature epitomises all that is melancholic about Tennyson, his relationship with a real-life figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would write “I had no truer friend”, conjures all that is fond and playful in the poet. With him, Holmes reveals a aspect of Tennyson infrequently known. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his grandest phrases with “grotesque grimness”, would unexpectedly chuckle heartily at his own solemnity. A Tennyson who, after visiting ““his friend FitzGerald” at home, wrote a appreciation message in rhyme portraying him in his garden with his tame doves perching all over him, planting their ““reddish toes … on back, hand and knee”, and even on his crown. It’s an picture of joy excellently suited to FitzGerald’s notable praise of enjoyment – his rendition of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also brings to mind the superb absurdity of the both writers' mutual friend Edward Lear. It’s pleasing to be told that Tennyson, the mournful Great Man, was also the muse for Lear’s rhyme about the elderly gentleman with a whiskers in which “a pair of owls and a hen, four larks and a wren” built their nests.
