Uncharted Depths: Exploring Early Tennyson's Turbulent Years

Tennyson himself existed as a divided individual. He even composed a verse titled The Two Voices, where two versions of the poet contemplated the arguments of self-destruction. In this illuminating volume, the biographer elects to spotlight on the more obscure character of the poet.

A Pivotal Year: The Mid-Century

During 1850 was pivotal for Alfred. He unveiled the significant verse series In Memoriam, over which he had laboured for almost twenty years. Consequently, he became both renowned and wealthy. He entered matrimony, after a extended engagement. Earlier, he had been living in temporary accommodations with his family members, or staying with male acquaintances in London, or staying in solitude in a dilapidated cottage on one of his local Lincolnshire's desolate shores. Now he took a home where he could receive prominent callers. He was appointed poet laureate. His existence as a renowned figure started.

From his teens he was striking, almost charismatic. He was exceptionally tall, unkempt but good-looking

Ancestral Struggles

The Tennyson clan, wrote Alfred, were a “given to dark moods”, indicating inclined to emotional swings and depression. His father, a hesitant priest, was angry and frequently inebriated. Transpired an incident, the details of which are obscure, that led to the family cook being burned to death in the residence. One of Alfred’s brothers was placed in a lunatic asylum as a youth and remained there for life. Another endured severe despair and copied his father into alcoholism. A third fell into narcotics. Alfred himself experienced bouts of paralysing despair and what he referred to as “strange episodes”. His poem Maud is told by a lunatic: he must frequently have pondered whether he could become one personally.

The Fascinating Figure of the Young Poet

Even as a youth he was commanding, verging on charismatic. He was of great height, disheveled but attractive. Prior to he adopted a Spanish-style cape and wide-brimmed hat, he could command a gathering. But, being raised hugger-mugger with his siblings – several relatives to an small space – as an adult he desired isolation, withdrawing into silence when in social settings, disappearing for solitary walking tours.

Deep Anxieties and Turmoil of Conviction

In that period, earth scientists, star gazers and those early researchers who were beginning to think with Charles Darwin about the biological beginnings, were introducing disturbing inquiries. If the story of life on Earth had begun ages before the appearance of the humanity, then how to hold that the world had been made for humanity’s benefit? “One cannot imagine,” wrote Tennyson, “that all of existence was simply created for us, who reside on a insignificant sphere of a ordinary star The modern optical instruments and lenses revealed areas infinitely large and organisms infinitesimally small: how to maintain one’s faith, in light of such proof, in a God who had created mankind in his form? If dinosaurs had become died out, then could the human race do so too?

Recurrent Motifs: Sea Monster and Friendship

Holmes binds his narrative together with two recurring motifs. The first he introduces initially – it is the symbol of the legendary sea monster. Tennyson was a 20-year-old undergraduate when he composed his poem about it. In Holmes’s view, with its combination of “Norse mythology, “earlier biology, “speculative fiction and the scriptural reference”, the brief sonnet presents ideas to which Tennyson would keep returning. Its sense of something enormous, unutterable and sad, submerged inaccessible of investigation, foreshadows the tone of In Memoriam. It signifies Tennyson’s emergence as a expert of rhythm and as the author of images in which awful unknown is packed into a few dazzlingly evocative words.

The other theme is the counterpart. Where the mythical beast symbolises all that is melancholic about Tennyson, his relationship with a genuine figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would state ““he was my closest companion”, conjures all that is loving and playful in the poet. With him, Holmes presents a side of Tennyson infrequently before encountered. A Tennyson who, after reciting some of his most impressive lines with ““bizarre seriousness”, would unexpectedly roar with laughter at his own seriousness. A Tennyson who, after calling on “dear old Fitz” at home, wrote a appreciation message in poetry depicting him in his garden with his domesticated pigeons sitting all over him, placing their “rosy feet … on shoulder, palm and knee”, and even on his skull. It’s an picture of delight excellently tailored to FitzGerald’s great celebration of enjoyment – his rendition of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also summons up the brilliant absurdity of the both writers' common acquaintance Edward Lear. It’s satisfying to be learn that Tennyson, the sad renowned figure, was also the source for Lear’s verse about the aged individual with a facial hair in which “nocturnal birds and a fowl, four larks and a wren” made their dwellings.

A Compelling {Biography|Life Story|