Uncharted Depths: Exploring Young Tennyson's Restless Years
Alfred Tennyson was known as a torn spirit. He even composed a piece called The Two Voices, in which dual facets of the poet argued the pros and cons of self-destruction. Through this insightful volume, the biographer chooses to focus on the more obscure identity of the literary figure.
A Defining Year: The Mid-Century
In the year 1850 was pivotal for the poet. He released the monumental poem sequence In Memoriam, on which he had laboured for close to a long period. Consequently, he became both celebrated and prosperous. He wed, subsequent to a long courtship. Earlier, he had been dwelling in temporary accommodations with his relatives, or residing with male acquaintances in London, or living alone in a ramshackle dwelling on one of his native Lincolnshire's barren beaches. Then he acquired a residence where he could entertain notable visitors. He became the national poet. His career as a celebrated individual started.
Even as a youth he was commanding, almost glamorous. He was very tall, unkempt but attractive
Family Challenges
The Tennyson clan, observed Alfred, were a “prone to melancholy”, suggesting susceptible to emotional swings and depression. His parent, a hesitant minister, was irate and frequently inebriated. Occurred an incident, the details of which are unclear, that resulted in the household servant being killed by fire in the home kitchen. One of Alfred’s siblings was placed in a lunatic asylum as a youth and lived there for the rest of his days. Another endured deep melancholy and emulated his father into drinking. A third became addicted to the drug. Alfred himself endured bouts of debilitating despair and what he called “bizarre fits”. His poem Maud is voiced by a madman: he must frequently have wondered whether he might turn into one personally.
The Intriguing Figure of Young Tennyson
From his teens he was imposing, almost glamorous. He was of great height, disheveled but attractive. Prior to he began to wear a black Spanish cloak and wide-brimmed hat, he could command a space. But, having grown up in close quarters with his siblings – several relatives to an small space – as an adult he craved solitude, escaping into stillness when in company, retreating for individual walking tours.
Existential Fears and Turmoil of Faith
In Tennyson’s lifetime, geologists, astronomers and those “natural philosophers” who were exploring ideas with Charles Darwin about the evolution, were posing frightening inquiries. If the history of existence had started eons before the arrival of the human race, then how to maintain that the earth had been made for mankind's advantage? “It seems impossible,” stated Tennyson, “that the whole Universe was only formed for humanity, who reside on a third-rate planet of a common sun.” The modern optical instruments and magnifying tools uncovered realms immensely huge and beings tiny beyond perception: how to keep one’s faith, given such proof, in a deity who had created humanity in his likeness? If prehistoric creatures had become died out, then could the human race meet the same fate?
Persistent Themes: Kraken and Friendship
The biographer weaves his account together with a pair of persistent motifs. The primary he establishes early on – it is the symbol of the legendary sea monster. Tennyson was a 20-year-old student when he penned his work about it. In Holmes’s view, with its mix of “Norse mythology, “historical science, “futuristic ideas and the Book of Revelations”, the 15-line sonnet establishes themes to which Tennyson would continually explore. Its sense of something enormous, indescribable and tragic, submerged out of reach of investigation, anticipates the tone of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s debut as a virtuoso of verse and as the author of images in which terrible mystery is packed into a few brilliantly indicative words.
The additional theme is the counterpart. Where the fictional beast symbolises all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his relationship with a real-life person, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would state ““there was no better ally”, conjures all that is affectionate and playful in the poet. With him, Holmes reveals a facet of Tennyson infrequently previously seen. A Tennyson who, after reciting some of his most majestic phrases with ““odd solemnity”, would suddenly roar with laughter at his own gravity. A Tennyson who, after seeing ““the companion” at home, penned a thank-you letter in rhyme describing him in his flower bed with his tame doves resting all over him, planting their “rosy feet … on arm, palm and knee”, and even on his head. It’s an picture of delight perfectly suited to FitzGerald’s significant celebration of enjoyment – his version of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also summons up the superb nonsense of the both writers' mutual friend Edward Lear. It’s pleasing to be learn that Tennyson, the melancholy Great Man, was also the muse for Lear’s rhyme about the old man with a beard in which “two owls and a chicken, multiple birds and a small bird” made their nests.
