The Vast Unknown: Delving into Young Tennyson's Restless Years
Alfred Tennyson existed as a conflicted soul. He even composed a piece named The Two Voices, in which dual aspects of the poet contemplated the pros and cons of ending his life. Within this insightful volume, the author chooses to focus on the overlooked persona of the poet.
A Pivotal Year: 1850
In the year 1850 was crucial for Tennyson. He unveiled the significant verse series In Memoriam, for which he had worked for almost twenty years. As a result, he emerged as both celebrated and rich. He wed, subsequent to a extended relationship. Earlier, he had been residing in temporary accommodations with his mother and siblings, or lodging with male acquaintances in London, or living by himself in a dilapidated house on one of his native Lincolnshire's barren beaches. Then he acquired a home where he could receive prominent guests. He was appointed the national poet. His career as a Great Man started.
Starting in adolescence he was commanding, even magnetic. He was exceptionally tall, messy but attractive
Ancestral Turmoil
The Tennysons, noted Alfred, were a “prone to melancholy”, meaning susceptible to emotional swings and sadness. His parent, a unwilling clergyman, was angry and frequently intoxicated. Occurred an incident, the facts of which are obscure, that led to the family cook being burned to death in the rectory kitchen. One of Alfred’s siblings was confined to a mental institution as a boy and remained there for his entire existence. Another experienced deep depression and followed his father into addiction. A third became addicted to the drug. Alfred himself endured periods of debilitating despair and what he referred to as “strange episodes”. His work Maud is voiced by a lunatic: he must regularly have questioned whether he might turn into one himself.
The Fascinating Figure of Early Tennyson
Starting in adolescence he was imposing, almost charismatic. He was of great height, messy but handsome. Prior to he adopted a Spanish-style cape and sombrero, he could control a space. But, having grown up in close quarters with his brothers and sisters – three brothers to an cramped quarters – as an grown man he sought out isolation, escaping into quiet when in social settings, disappearing for solitary walking tours.
Existential Fears and Upheaval of Belief
In Tennyson’s lifetime, earth scientists, celestial observers and those early researchers who were exploring ideas with Charles Darwin about the evolution, were posing disturbing questions. If the timeline of existence had commenced millions of years before the emergence of the mankind, then how to believe that the earth had been created for mankind's advantage? “It seems impossible,” wrote Tennyson, “that the whole Universe was only formed for us, who live on a third-rate planet of a common sun.” The modern optical instruments and microscopes revealed areas immensely huge and beings infinitesimally small: how to keep one’s faith, in light of such findings, in a God who had made humanity in his form? If ancient reptiles had become extinct, then would the human race do so too?
Persistent Elements: Kraken and Friendship
The biographer ties his account together with dual persistent elements. The first he presents at the beginning – it is the symbol of the Kraken. Tennyson was a young student when he composed his poem about it. In Holmes’s opinion, with its blend of “Nordic tales, 18th-century zoology, “speculative fiction and the scriptural reference”, the short sonnet introduces themes to which Tennyson would continually explore. Its impression of something enormous, indescribable and tragic, concealed inaccessible of human inquiry, anticipates the atmosphere of In Memoriam. It signifies Tennyson’s emergence as a master of rhythm and as the originator of metaphors in which terrible unknown is packed into a few dazzlingly suggestive lines.
The additional motif is the counterpart. Where the imaginary beast represents all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his friendship with a real-life figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say ““he was my closest companion”, summons up all that is fond and humorous in the artist. With him, Holmes introduces us to a facet of Tennyson seldom before encountered. A Tennyson who, after reciting some of his grandest lines with ““odd solemnity”, would abruptly burst out laughing at his own seriousness. A Tennyson who, after calling on “dear old Fitz” at home, composed a grateful note in rhyme depicting him in his rose garden with his domesticated pigeons perching all over him, placing their “rosy feet … on back, wrist and lap”, and even on his head. It’s an vision of delight nicely adapted to FitzGerald’s great exaltation of hedonism – his rendition of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also evokes the brilliant foolishness of the both writers' common acquaintance Edward Lear. It’s satisfying to be learn that Tennyson, the melancholy celebrated individual, was also the inspiration for Lear’s poem about the old man with a facial hair in which “nocturnal birds and a hen, multiple birds and a tiny creature” constructed their homes.
