Uncharted Depths: Exploring Early Tennyson's Restless Years
Tennyson himself existed as a divided spirit. He produced a piece named The Two Voices, where two aspects of himself debated the arguments of self-destruction. In this illuminating volume, the biographer elects to spotlight on the overlooked identity of the literary figure.
A Pivotal Year: 1850
During 1850 proved to be pivotal for the poet. He published the monumental collection of poems In Memoriam, over which he had laboured for nearly two decades. Consequently, he grew both celebrated and wealthy. He entered matrimony, after a extended relationship. Previously, he had been residing in rented homes with his mother and siblings, or staying with male acquaintances in London, or residing alone in a dilapidated house on one of his native Lincolnshire's barren beaches. At that point he moved into a house where he could receive prominent visitors. He became the official poet. His existence as a celebrated individual began.
From his teens he was commanding, verging on magnetic. He was very tall, unkempt but attractive
Family Struggles
His family, observed Alfred, were a “black-blooded race”, indicating inclined to emotional swings and sadness. His paternal figure, a unwilling clergyman, was angry and frequently inebriated. Occurred an incident, the facts of which are unclear, that led to the family cook being burned to death in the residence. One of Alfred’s siblings was admitted to a mental institution as a youth and lived there for the rest of his days. Another endured profound despair and copied his father into addiction. A third became addicted to narcotics. Alfred himself experienced episodes of overwhelming gloom and what he referred to as “bizarre fits”. His work Maud is voiced by a madman: he must regularly have questioned whether he was one personally.
The Compelling Figure of Early Tennyson
Even as a youth he was imposing, almost glamorous. He was exceptionally tall, disheveled but good-looking. Prior to he adopted a black Spanish cloak and headwear, he could command a gathering. But, maturing hugger-mugger with his brothers and sisters – three brothers to an small space – as an mature individual he sought out solitude, withdrawing into quiet when in company, retreating for solitary excursions.
Existential Fears and Crisis of Faith
In that period, geologists, celestial observers and those “natural philosophers” who were exploring ideas with the naturalist about the evolution, were raising frightening inquiries. If the timeline of life on Earth had commenced eons before the arrival of the humanity, then how to maintain that the earth had been created for mankind's advantage? “It is inconceivable,” noted Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was simply created for mankind, who reside on a minor world of a third-rate sun The recent viewing devices and microscopes exposed areas immensely huge and creatures infinitesimally small: how to keep one’s faith, considering such evidence, in a divine being who had formed man in his likeness? If prehistoric creatures had become died out, then might the humanity meet the same fate?
Recurrent Themes: Mythical Beast and Companionship
The biographer weaves his narrative together with a pair of recurring elements. The first he introduces early on – it is the concept of the Kraken. Tennyson was a young undergraduate when he penned his poem about it. In Holmes’s opinion, with its combination of “ancient legends, “earlier biology, 19th-century science fiction and the scriptural reference”, the short verse establishes themes to which Tennyson would repeatedly revisit. Its impression of something immense, unspeakable and mournful, concealed beyond reach of human understanding, foreshadows the mood of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s debut as a virtuoso of rhythm and as the creator of images in which terrible unknown is packed into a few brilliantly indicative words.
The other theme is the contrast. Where the imaginary beast epitomises all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his friendship with a genuine figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would write ““he was my closest companion”, evokes all that is affectionate and humorous in the artist. With him, Holmes reveals a aspect of Tennyson infrequently known. A Tennyson who, after intoning some of his grandest verses with ““bizarre seriousness”, would suddenly chuckle heartily at his own gravity. A Tennyson who, after visiting ““the companion” at home, penned a grateful note in rhyme describing him in his flower bed with his tame doves perching all over him, setting their ““reddish toes … on shoulder, palm and knee”, and even on his skull. It’s an vision of pleasure perfectly tailored to FitzGerald’s great praise of enjoyment – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also brings to mind the excellent nonsense of the both writers' shared companion 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 whiskers in which “nocturnal birds and a fowl, several songbirds and a small bird” made their homes.
