The Boundless Deep: Exploring Young Tennyson's Troubled Years
The poet Tennyson existed as a divided individual. He produced a piece called The Two Voices, in which two versions of himself contemplated the arguments of ending his life. In this illuminating volume, the biographer chooses to focus on the lesser known character of the poet.
A Pivotal Year: 1850
In the year 1850 was pivotal for the poet. He published the significant collection of poems In Memoriam, for which he had worked for nearly twenty years. Therefore, he grew both renowned and prosperous. He wed, following a long engagement. Previously, he had been residing in temporary accommodations with his relatives, or staying with bachelor friends in London, or staying by himself in a dilapidated cottage on one of his local Lincolnshire's bleak beaches. Now he took a residence where he could receive notable visitors. He assumed the role of poet laureate. His existence as a renowned figure commenced.
Even as a youth he was commanding, verging on charismatic. He was of great height, messy but attractive
Ancestral Struggles
His family, noted Alfred, were a “black-blooded race”, suggesting prone to moods and sadness. His parent, a unwilling clergyman, was irate and very often intoxicated. Transpired an occurrence, the details of which are vague, that led to the household servant being killed by fire in the residence. One of Alfred’s siblings was confined to a psychiatric hospital as a boy and stayed there for life. Another suffered from deep depression and copied his father into addiction. A third developed an addiction to opium. Alfred himself suffered from bouts of paralysing despair and what he called “bizarre fits”. His work Maud is narrated by a lunatic: he must frequently have wondered whether he might turn into one in his own right.
The Compelling Figure of Early Tennyson
Starting in adolescence he was commanding, even glamorous. He was very tall, unkempt but attractive. Before he adopted a black Spanish cloak and sombrero, he could command a space. But, maturing hugger-mugger with his brothers and sisters – several relatives to an cramped quarters – as an adult he sought out solitude, escaping into quiet when in groups, vanishing for individual excursions.
Deep Concerns and Turmoil of Conviction
In that period, rock experts, celestial observers and those early researchers who were beginning to think with the naturalist about the evolution, were introducing appalling questions. If the history of living beings had commenced ages before the arrival of the human race, then how to hold that the planet had been created for mankind's advantage? “It is inconceivable,” stated Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was merely formed for us, who reside on a third-rate planet of a common sun.” The recent telescopes and magnifying tools revealed realms vast beyond measure and creatures tiny beyond perception: how to maintain one’s belief, given such findings, in a deity who had formed mankind in his likeness? If prehistoric creatures had become died out, then would the human race follow suit?
Persistent Motifs: Kraken and Companionship
Holmes weaves his story together with dual recurring themes. The initial he introduces initially – it is the symbol of the mythical creature. Tennyson was a youthful student when he wrote his work about it. In Holmes’s view, with its blend of “ancient legends, “historical science, “speculative fiction and the scriptural reference”, the brief poem introduces concepts to which Tennyson would repeatedly revisit. Its sense of something immense, unutterable and sad, submerged out of reach of investigation, anticipates the atmosphere of In Memoriam. It marks Tennyson’s debut as a virtuoso of rhythm and as the creator of images in which dreadful unknown is condensed into a few dazzlingly suggestive phrases.
The other element is the contrast. Where the fictional sea monster epitomises all that is melancholic about Tennyson, his connection with a real-life person, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say ““there was no better ally”, conjures all that is fond and humorous in the artist. With him, Holmes introduces us to a side of Tennyson rarely previously seen. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his most majestic phrases with “grotesque grimness”, would abruptly chuckle heartily at his own gravity. A Tennyson who, after calling on “dear old Fitz” at home, composed a appreciation message in rhyme depicting him in his flower bed 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 significant celebration of pleasure-seeking – his version of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also evokes the excellent absurdity of the two poets’ shared companion Edward Lear. It’s pleasing to be told that Tennyson, the mournful celebrated individual, was also the inspiration for Lear’s rhyme about the old man with a beard in which “two owls and a chicken, several songbirds and a small bird” made their nests.
