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Alfred Tennyson existed as a torn individual. He famously wrote a piece called The Two Voices, wherein two facets of his personality debated the merits of suicide. In this insightful volume, Richard Holmes elects to spotlight on the more obscure persona of the literary figure.

A Defining Year: The Mid-Century

During 1850 proved to be pivotal for Tennyson. He published the monumental verse series In Memoriam, over which he had toiled for close to a long period. Therefore, he grew both celebrated and rich. He wed, following a long engagement. Earlier, he had been dwelling in temporary accommodations with his family members, or lodging with male acquaintances in London, or staying alone in a dilapidated house on one of his local Lincolnshire's desolate beaches. At that point he acquired a home where he could receive distinguished visitors. He became the national poet. His career as a celebrated individual commenced.

Even as a youth he was commanding, even charismatic. He was exceptionally tall, messy but attractive

Family Turmoil

His family, noted Alfred, were a “prone to melancholy”, meaning inclined to emotional swings and melancholy. His father, a unwilling clergyman, was irate and frequently inebriated. Transpired an incident, the particulars of which are obscure, that caused the household servant being killed by fire in the rectory kitchen. One of Alfred’s siblings was placed in a psychiatric hospital as a child and remained there for his entire existence. Another experienced severe melancholy and followed his father into drinking. A third fell into opium. Alfred himself experienced bouts of overwhelming sadness and what he termed “bizarre fits”. His poem Maud is voiced by a insane person: he must frequently have pondered whether he might turn into one personally.

The Fascinating Figure of the Young Poet

From his teens he was striking, almost magnetic. He was very tall, unkempt but attractive. Even before he adopted a black Spanish cloak and sombrero, he could dominate a space. But, having grown up hugger-mugger with his brothers and sisters – three brothers to an cramped quarters – as an mature individual he sought out solitude, withdrawing into quiet when in groups, vanishing for lonely journeys.

Deep Concerns and Crisis of Conviction

In Tennyson’s lifetime, earth scientists, star gazers and those scientific thinkers who were exploring ideas with Darwin about the evolution, were raising disturbing queries. If the history of life on Earth had commenced millions of years before the emergence of the mankind, then how to believe that the earth had been formed for humanity’s benefit? “One cannot imagine,” wrote Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was only made for us, who reside on a insignificant sphere of a common sun.” The modern optical instruments and microscopes uncovered areas vast beyond measure and beings tiny beyond perception: how to maintain one’s faith, in light of such proof, in a deity who had made mankind in his form? If dinosaurs had become died out, then might the mankind follow suit?

Recurrent Themes: Sea Monster and Friendship

The author binds his account together with two recurrent themes. The first he presents at the beginning – it is the concept of the mythical creature. Tennyson was a young undergraduate when he penned his poem about it. In Holmes’s opinion, with its blend of “ancient legends, “historical science, “speculative fiction and the Book of Revelations”, the 15-line verse establishes ideas to which Tennyson would keep returning. Its feeling of something enormous, unspeakable and mournful, concealed out of reach of human inquiry, anticipates the tone of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s introduction as a master of verse and as the author of images in which dreadful mystery is compressed into a few brilliantly indicative phrases.

The additional motif is the Kraken’s opposite. Where the mythical beast symbolises all that is gloomy about Tennyson, his friendship with a genuine individual, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say ““he was my closest companion”, evokes all that is loving and playful in the poet. With him, Holmes reveals a aspect of Tennyson infrequently previously seen. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his most majestic verses with ““odd solemnity”, would abruptly burst out laughing at his own gravity. A Tennyson who, after seeing “dear old Fitz” at home, wrote a thank-you letter in poetry describing him in his flower bed with his pet birds sitting all over him, planting their “rosy feet … on arm, hand and lap”, and even on his skull. It’s an vision of delight perfectly tailored to FitzGerald’s significant praise of pleasure-seeking – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also summons up the brilliant absurdity of the both writers' shared companion Edward Lear. It’s satisfying to be informed that Tennyson, the sad celebrated individual, was also the muse for Lear’s poem about the old man with a facial hair in which “two owls and a hen, multiple birds and a tiny creature” constructed their nests.

A Fascinating {Biography|Life Story|