Uncharted Depths: Exploring Early Tennyson's Restless Years

The poet Tennyson existed as a divided soul. He even composed a verse called The Two Voices, wherein contrasting aspects of himself debated the merits of self-destruction. Within this revealing book, the biographer decides to concentrate on the overlooked identity of the poet.

A Critical Year: That Fateful Year

The year 1850 became pivotal for Tennyson. He published the great poem sequence In Memoriam, over which he had toiled for nearly twenty years. Consequently, he grew both celebrated and prosperous. He got married, after a extended relationship. Previously, he had been living in rented homes with his relatives, or lodging with bachelor friends in London, or living in solitude in a rundown dwelling on one of his home Lincolnshire's barren coasts. Then he took a residence where he could entertain prominent callers. He was appointed poet laureate. His existence as a celebrated individual commenced.

From his teens he was commanding, even magnetic. He was exceptionally tall, messy but attractive

Family Struggles

His family, noted Alfred, were a “prone to melancholy”, indicating susceptible to temperament and melancholy. His parent, a reluctant minister, was irate and very often inebriated. Occurred an occurrence, the particulars of which are unclear, that led to the family cook being fatally burned in the residence. One of Alfred’s brothers was placed in a psychiatric hospital as a child and lived there for life. Another experienced deep melancholy and emulated his father into drinking. A third developed an addiction to narcotics. Alfred himself endured periods of overwhelming sadness and what he called “bizarre fits”. His poem Maud is voiced by a lunatic: he must frequently have questioned whether he could become one personally.

The Intriguing Figure of Early Tennyson

Starting in adolescence he was imposing, verging on glamorous. He was of great height, messy but attractive. Before he started wearing a dark cloak and wide-brimmed hat, he could control a space. But, having grown up crowded with his brothers and sisters – multiple siblings to an cramped quarters – as an adult he craved privacy, withdrawing into stillness when in social settings, vanishing for solitary excursions.

Philosophical Fears and Turmoil of Conviction

In that period, earth scientists, astronomers and those “natural philosophers” who were starting to consider with the naturalist about the biological beginnings, were posing frightening questions. If the story of life on Earth had commenced eons before the arrival of the mankind, then how to maintain that the earth had been made for mankind's advantage? “It seems impossible,” stated Tennyson, “that the whole Universe was merely formed for humanity, who reside on a third-rate planet of a third-rate sun The recent telescopes and microscopes uncovered realms vast beyond measure and beings infinitesimally small: how to keep one’s faith, given such findings, in a God who had made man in his own image? If ancient reptiles had become extinct, then would the human race meet the same fate?

Repeating Motifs: Mythical Beast and Companionship

The biographer ties his narrative together with a pair of persistent elements. The initial he introduces initially – it is the symbol of the mythical creature. Tennyson was a 20-year-old undergraduate when he composed his verse about it. In Holmes’s opinion, with its blend of “Nordic tales, “earlier biology, “speculative fiction and the scriptural reference”, the short verse establishes themes to which Tennyson would keep returning. Its sense of something immense, unutterable and mournful, submerged beyond reach of human understanding, foreshadows the mood of In Memoriam. It signifies Tennyson’s debut as a virtuoso of metre and as the originator of metaphors in which awful unknown is condensed into a few brilliantly indicative lines.

The second element is the Kraken’s opposite. Where the imaginary beast symbolises all that is gloomy about Tennyson, his connection with a actual individual, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say ““there was no better ally”, conjures all that is affectionate and playful in the writer. With him, Holmes presents a side of Tennyson infrequently known. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his grandest lines with “grotesque grimness”, would suddenly roar with laughter at his own seriousness. A Tennyson who, after seeing ““the companion” at home, composed a appreciation message in poetry depicting him in his flower bed with his pet birds sitting all over him, placing their ““reddish toes … on arm, wrist and knee”, and even on his head. It’s an vision of pleasure excellently suited to FitzGerald’s great celebration of hedonism – his rendition of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also evokes the superb nonsense of the both writers' shared companion Edward Lear. It’s satisfying to be learn that Tennyson, the sad renowned figure, was also the muse for Lear’s verse about the aged individual with a beard in which “nocturnal birds and a fowl, several songbirds and a small bird” built their dwellings.

A Compelling {Biography|Life Story|