The Vast Unknown: Delving into Early Tennyson's Turbulent Years
Tennyson himself was known as a torn spirit. He famously wrote a piece titled The Two Voices, where contrasting versions of the poet contemplated the merits of ending his life. Within this illuminating volume, the biographer chooses to focus on the overlooked character of the literary figure.
A Critical Year: 1850
The year 1850 was crucial for Tennyson. He released the great poem sequence In Memoriam, over which he had laboured for almost a long period. Consequently, he emerged as both celebrated and rich. He entered matrimony, following a long relationship. Earlier, he had been residing in temporary accommodations with his relatives, or residing with unmarried companions in London, or living in solitude in a rundown dwelling on one of his local Lincolnshire's barren beaches. Then he took a house where he could receive notable guests. He was appointed poet laureate. His life as a renowned figure began.
From his teens he was commanding, verging on magnetic. He was very tall, unkempt but attractive
Family Challenges
The Tennysons, observed Alfred, were a “prone to melancholy”, indicating susceptible to emotional swings and sadness. His paternal figure, a unwilling clergyman, was volatile and frequently inebriated. Occurred an occurrence, the details of which are vague, that caused the family cook being burned to death in the residence. One of Alfred’s male relatives was placed in a lunatic asylum as a child and stayed there for his entire existence. Another endured severe depression and followed his father into addiction. A third became addicted to opium. Alfred himself experienced periods of paralysing sadness and what he referred to as “strange episodes”. His work Maud is narrated by a lunatic: he must regularly have questioned whether he could become one personally.
The Fascinating Figure of the Young Poet
Starting in adolescence he was commanding, even magnetic. He was exceptionally tall, messy but good-looking. Prior to he began to wear a black Spanish cloak and headwear, he could control a space. But, having grown up in close quarters with his siblings – multiple siblings to an cramped quarters – as an grown man he desired isolation, withdrawing into silence when in groups, disappearing for lonely walking tours.
Philosophical Concerns and Turmoil of Faith
During his era, rock experts, astronomers and those early researchers who were beginning to think with Charles Darwin about the evolution, were introducing appalling queries. If the timeline of living beings had started millions of years before the appearance of the humanity, then how to believe that the planet had been made for people's enjoyment? “It seems impossible,” stated Tennyson, “that all of existence was merely created for us, who inhabit a insignificant sphere of a common sun.” The new optical instruments and magnifying tools uncovered realms vast beyond measure and organisms minutely tiny: how to maintain one’s belief, considering such proof, in a God who had created mankind in his likeness? If ancient reptiles had become extinct, then would the mankind follow suit?
Persistent Elements: Kraken and Companionship
The author binds his account together with a pair of recurrent motifs. The primary he introduces initially – it is the symbol of the legendary sea monster. Tennyson was a 20-year-old student when he composed his verse about it. In Holmes’s view, with its blend of “ancient legends, “historical science, 19th-century science fiction and the Book of Revelations”, the short verse introduces themes to which Tennyson would continually explore. Its impression of something enormous, indescribable and mournful, submerged out of reach of human understanding, anticipates the atmosphere of In Memoriam. It signifies Tennyson’s introduction as a virtuoso of rhythm and as the originator of symbols in which dreadful enigma is compressed into a few dazzlingly indicative words.
The other element is the contrast. Where the fictional creature symbolises all that is gloomy about Tennyson, his relationship with a genuine figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say ““there was no better ally”, evokes all that is loving and lighthearted in the poet. With him, Holmes reveals a aspect of Tennyson rarely known. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his most majestic phrases with ““odd solemnity”, would suddenly roar with laughter at his own solemnity. A Tennyson who, after calling on ““the companion” at home, wrote a grateful note in rhyme portraying him in his garden with his domesticated pigeons perching all over him, placing their “rosy feet … on back, wrist and lap”, and even on his crown. It’s an image of joy perfectly tailored to FitzGerald’s notable exaltation of pleasure-seeking – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also summons up the excellent nonsense of the both writers' common acquaintance Edward Lear. It’s gratifying to be told that Tennyson, the sad Great Man, was also the muse for Lear’s rhyme about the elderly gentleman with a beard in which “nocturnal birds and a fowl, multiple birds and a wren” made their homes.
