Uncharted Depths: Delving into Young Tennyson's Troubled Years
Alfred Tennyson existed as a conflicted soul. He famously wrote a piece named The Two Voices, in which dual versions of the poet contemplated the pros and cons of suicide. Through this insightful volume, the biographer elects to spotlight on the more obscure persona of the poet.
A Pivotal Year: 1850
During 1850 proved to be crucial for the poet. He published the significant collection of poems In Memoriam, over which he had toiled for close to a long period. Therefore, he grew both renowned and prosperous. He got married, after a extended courtship. Previously, he had been dwelling in leased properties with his mother and siblings, or staying with male acquaintances in London, or staying in solitude in a ramshackle house on one of his local Lincolnshire's bleak beaches. Then he acquired a residence where he could entertain notable guests. He became the official poet. His existence as a Great Man commenced.
From his teens he was imposing, almost charismatic. He was of great height, messy but attractive
Ancestral Challenges
The Tennyson clan, wrote Alfred, were a “given to dark moods”, indicating susceptible to moods and depression. His father, a hesitant minister, was angry and frequently drunk. There was an occurrence, the particulars of which are unclear, that led to the household servant being fatally burned in the home kitchen. One of Alfred’s male relatives was admitted to a mental institution as a youth and remained there for his entire existence. Another suffered from profound despair and followed his father into addiction. A third developed an addiction to the drug. Alfred himself experienced episodes of paralysing gloom and what he referred to as “bizarre fits”. His Maud is narrated by a madman: he must frequently have wondered whether he was one himself.
The Intriguing Figure of the Young Poet
Even as a youth he was striking, verging on glamorous. He was exceptionally tall, messy but handsome. Even before he began to wear a dark cloak and sombrero, he could command a gathering. But, having grown up in close quarters with his family members – several relatives to an cramped quarters – as an grown man he sought out isolation, retreating into quiet when in groups, retreating for lonely excursions.
Existential Concerns and Crisis of Belief
In Tennyson’s lifetime, earth scientists, celestial observers and those “natural philosophers” who were starting to consider with Darwin about the origin of species, were posing appalling inquiries. If the timeline of living beings had commenced ages before the appearance of the human race, then how to believe that the world had been formed for mankind's advantage? “It is inconceivable,” stated Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was only made for mankind, who reside on a minor world of a ordinary star The modern telescopes and lenses uncovered spaces vast beyond measure and creatures minutely tiny: how to maintain one’s religion, given such evidence, in a divine being who had made mankind in his form? If ancient reptiles had become died out, then would the humanity meet the same fate?
Repeating Motifs: Mythical Beast and Companionship
The author weaves his narrative together with a pair of recurring themes. The primary he introduces initially – it is the symbol of the mythical creature. Tennyson was a young scholar when he wrote his poem about it. In Holmes’s perspective, with its mix of “ancient legends, 18th-century zoology, “futuristic ideas and the Book of Revelations”, the short sonnet introduces themes to which Tennyson would repeatedly revisit. Its impression of something vast, unutterable and tragic, submerged inaccessible of investigation, prefigures the atmosphere of In Memoriam. It signifies Tennyson’s introduction as a virtuoso of verse and as the creator of symbols in which terrible unknown is packed into a few brilliantly evocative lines.
The additional element is the Kraken’s opposite. Where the mythical sea monster symbolises all that is gloomy about Tennyson, his connection with a actual person, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would state “I had no truer friend”, conjures all that is fond and lighthearted in the artist. With him, Holmes introduces us to a facet of Tennyson infrequently before encountered. A Tennyson who, after reciting some of his most impressive verses with ““odd solemnity”, would unexpectedly chuckle heartily at his own seriousness. A Tennyson who, after calling on ““his friend FitzGerald” at home, composed a grateful note in rhyme describing him in his rose garden with his domesticated pigeons sitting all over him, setting their ““reddish toes … on arm, palm and knee”, and even on his skull. It’s an picture of joy excellently adapted to FitzGerald’s significant celebration of enjoyment – his version of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also evokes the brilliant foolishness of the two poets’ shared companion Edward Lear. It’s pleasing to be learn that Tennyson, the mournful Great Man, was also the source for Lear’s verse about the old man with a whiskers in which “a pair of owls and a chicken, four larks and a wren” constructed their nests.
