The Vast Unknown: Delving into Early Tennyson's Troubled Years

The poet Tennyson emerged as a divided spirit. He even composed a poem called The Two Voices, where dual facets of the poet debated the merits of self-destruction. Within this illuminating book, the author decides to concentrate on the lesser known character of the writer.

A Pivotal Year: The Mid-Century

The year 1850 became decisive for Alfred. He published the significant collection of poems In Memoriam, on which he had worked for close to a long period. Consequently, he became both renowned and prosperous. He wed, following a long engagement. Previously, he had been dwelling in rented homes with his relatives, or residing with bachelor friends in London, or staying alone in a dilapidated dwelling on one of his home Lincolnshire's desolate beaches. At that point he moved into a home where he could entertain distinguished visitors. He was appointed the national poet. His life as a renowned figure commenced.

From his teens he was imposing, almost magnetic. He was exceptionally tall, messy but good-looking

Ancestral Struggles

The Tennysons, observed Alfred, were a “given to dark moods”, meaning susceptible to emotional swings and depression. His parent, a unwilling priest, was volatile and frequently intoxicated. Transpired an incident, the facts of which are unclear, that resulted in the family cook being burned to death in the home kitchen. One of Alfred’s siblings was admitted to a lunatic asylum as a youth and remained there for his entire existence. Another suffered from profound despair and copied his father into alcoholism. A third developed an addiction to narcotics. Alfred himself endured bouts of debilitating gloom and what he referred to as “strange episodes”. His poem Maud is told by a madman: he must regularly have wondered whether he might turn into one personally.

The Intriguing Figure of Early Tennyson

From his teens he was commanding, verging on magnetic. He was exceptionally tall, disheveled but good-looking. Prior to he began to wear a Spanish-style cape and headwear, he could dominate a gathering. But, being raised crowded with his siblings – multiple siblings to an cramped quarters – as an adult he craved privacy, withdrawing into quiet when in company, vanishing for individual walking tours.

Philosophical Concerns and Crisis of Conviction

In Tennyson’s lifetime, rock experts, star gazers and those “natural philosophers” who were beginning to think with Darwin about the biological beginnings, were posing frightening inquiries. If the timeline of life on Earth had begun millions of years before the appearance of the mankind, then how to hold that the earth had been made for people's enjoyment? “It is inconceivable,” wrote Tennyson, “that the whole Universe was merely made for humanity, who reside on a minor world of a ordinary star The recent telescopes and lenses revealed areas vast beyond measure and creatures tiny beyond perception: how to keep one’s belief, considering such proof, in a deity who had created humanity in his form? If prehistoric creatures had become vanished, then would the mankind follow suit?

Persistent Themes: Sea Monster and Companionship

Holmes ties his account together with dual persistent motifs. The first he presents initially – it is the image of the mythical creature. Tennyson was a 20-year-old student when he wrote his work about it. In Holmes’s view, with its blend of “Norse mythology, 18th-century zoology, “futuristic ideas and the scriptural reference”, the 15-line poem presents ideas to which Tennyson would continually explore. Its feeling of something immense, indescribable and sad, hidden inaccessible of human understanding, anticipates the mood of In Memoriam. It marks Tennyson’s debut as a master of verse and as the originator of symbols in which dreadful unknown is compressed into a few brilliantly evocative lines.

The additional motif is the contrast. Where the mythical beast epitomises all that is gloomy about Tennyson, his relationship with a real-life individual, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say ““there was no better ally”, evokes all that is fond and lighthearted in the writer. With him, Holmes presents a aspect of Tennyson infrequently before encountered. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his grandest phrases with ““odd solemnity”, would abruptly chuckle heartily at his own gravity. A Tennyson who, after seeing ““the companion” at home, penned a appreciation message in rhyme portraying him in his rose garden with his domesticated pigeons perching all over him, planting their ““pink claws … on back, wrist and leg”, and even on his skull. It’s an vision of delight perfectly tailored to FitzGerald’s notable exaltation of enjoyment – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also brings to mind the brilliant foolishness of the two poets’ shared companion Edward Lear. It’s gratifying to be told that Tennyson, the mournful Great Man, was also the muse for Lear’s verse about the old man with a beard in which “nocturnal birds and a chicken, four larks and a wren” built their nests.

An Engaging {Biography|Life Story|