The Vast Unknown: Exploring Young Tennyson's Turbulent Years
Alfred Tennyson emerged as a torn soul. He famously wrote a verse named The Two Voices, in which contrasting aspects of the poet contemplated the arguments of self-destruction. In this revealing work, the author decides to concentrate on the more obscure persona of the literary figure.
A Critical Year: That Fateful Year
The year 1850 proved to be pivotal for Tennyson. He published the monumental poem sequence In Memoriam, for which he had worked for almost a long period. As a result, he grew both renowned and prosperous. He wed, subsequent to a 14‑year courtship. Before that, he had been dwelling in temporary accommodations with his family members, or residing with unmarried companions in London, or living by himself in a ramshackle cottage on one of his local Lincolnshire's barren beaches. At that point he took a home where he could entertain distinguished visitors. He became the national poet. His existence as a renowned figure started.
From his teens he was commanding, almost magnetic. He was of great height, disheveled but attractive
Lineage Struggles
The Tennysons, noted Alfred, were a “black-blooded race”, suggesting prone to emotional swings and sadness. His paternal figure, a unwilling priest, was volatile and frequently inebriated. Transpired an incident, the facts of which are unclear, that led to the family cook being fatally burned in the residence. One of Alfred’s male relatives was admitted to a lunatic asylum as a boy and stayed there for his entire existence. Another endured severe melancholy and copied his father into alcoholism. A third became addicted to narcotics. Alfred himself endured periods of paralysing gloom and what he called “bizarre fits”. His poem Maud is narrated by a madman: he must frequently have pondered whether he was one himself.
The Compelling Figure of Young Tennyson
Even as a youth he was striking, verging on glamorous. He was exceptionally tall, messy but attractive. Before he began to wear a black Spanish cloak and headwear, he could command a space. But, maturing crowded with his family members – several relatives to an cramped quarters – as an mature individual he sought out privacy, withdrawing into stillness when in social settings, retreating for lonely journeys.
Philosophical Anxieties and Upheaval of Faith
In Tennyson’s lifetime, geologists, astronomers and those early researchers who were exploring ideas with Charles Darwin about the origin of species, were posing frightening inquiries. If the history of existence had commenced eons before the arrival of the humanity, then how to believe that the earth had been formed for people's enjoyment? “One cannot imagine,” wrote Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was only formed for mankind, who live on a third-rate planet of a ordinary star The recent viewing devices and magnifying tools exposed realms infinitely large and organisms infinitesimally small: how to hold to one’s belief, in light of such evidence, in a God who had made humanity in his likeness? If ancient reptiles had become vanished, then might the mankind meet the same fate?
Persistent Elements: Sea Monster and Companionship
Holmes binds his narrative together with a pair of recurrent motifs. The initial he presents at the beginning – it is the concept of the mythical creature. Tennyson was a youthful undergraduate when he wrote his verse about it. In Holmes’s opinion, with its blend of “Nordic tales, “earlier biology, “speculative fiction and the scriptural reference”, the short poem establishes themes to which Tennyson would continually explore. Its feeling of something vast, unspeakable and sad, submerged inaccessible of human understanding, anticipates the tone of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s introduction as a expert of verse and as the author of metaphors in which terrible unknown is condensed into a few dazzlingly evocative phrases.
The second theme is the Kraken’s opposite. Where the imaginary creature represents all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his connection with a real-life individual, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would state ““there was no better ally”, summons up all that is affectionate and humorous in the writer. With him, Holmes presents a aspect of Tennyson rarely previously seen. A Tennyson who, after intoning some of his most majestic phrases with “grotesque grimness”, would unexpectedly burst out laughing at his own solemnity. A Tennyson who, after calling on “dear old Fitz” at home, composed a appreciation message in rhyme portraying him in his garden with his pet birds perching all over him, placing their “rosy feet … on shoulder, wrist and knee”, and even on his crown. It’s an image of joy excellently suited to FitzGerald’s notable praise of hedonism – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also brings to mind the excellent absurdity of the both writers' mutual friend Edward Lear. It’s satisfying to be learn that Tennyson, the melancholy Great Man, was also the source for Lear’s rhyme about the old man with a whiskers in which “a pair of owls and a fowl, multiple birds and a small bird” constructed their nests.
