Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

Of the five suggested Tennyson poems to read, I finished The Dying Swan, In Memoriam, The Lady of Shalott, and The Lotos-Eaters. I skipped the Idylls of the King because I tried reading that some time ago, and quit. It's quite long, and I am doing the bear minimum of poetry reading.

I thoroughly enjoyed Tennyson's poems, especially The Lady of Shalott, The Lotus-Eaters, and In Memoriam. His poetic style is rhythmic and simple and pleasant, and his themes are emotional, as he deals with loss and grief and sadness. The Lady of Shalott is Medieval and The Lotus-Eaters is Greek mythology. Initially, I sensed he may be an orthodox Christian, but a little research explained how his faith was more emotional than rational, and I can definitely see that.

I am making a mental note that if I ever read more poetry, I will read Tennyson!… (more)

When Tennyson's best friend Arthur Henry Hallam dies in 1833, the poet start working through his grief the only way he knows - by writing a poem. Or 133. He does not write them quickly - it will take 17 years for him to complete all the parts and publish the book. Neither does he write them in order - ever since the poem was published, a numerous English majors and literary researchers had spent their whole careers trying to parse what was written when and what was edited when why (Tennyson apparently had the habit of reusing notebooks so two passages in the same notebook may have been written in the same day or the latter piece may have been written 4 years later).

It is accepted to call In Memoriam a poem although a collection of connected poems also describes it well. Most of the 133 parts can be read both as separate poems and as a part of the whole -- the ones that do not are usually connected to one or more of the rest thus forming a somewhat connected longer part. But reading each canto on its own loses the big framework of the poem - and part of the reason for the poem to have endured until the 21st century is exactly that framework (the other reason of course is the mastery of the poetic language of course).

The poem takes place in 3 years - the 3 years after the death of Hallam, neatly separated with parts about Christmas and the death anniversary in each year. The timeline does not completely match the real one though - either the lived one or the one of the writing - poetic license always allows for that and Tennyson knew when he can get away with it. There are a lot of cantos which deal with Hallam's death, its influence on the living and his past. But interspersed with it (and often dominating the personal story) are musings about theology, faith, geology, the creation of Earth and pretty much anything else a Victorian may have been concerned with. Tennyson was widely read and used that in his poem - often reshuffling new ideas and putting them against the old orthodoxy. He never claimed to be a scientist but in some of these cantos he serves the same role as the modern popular scientists - take a complicated idea from a long book and present it in a way that can be understood easily and with comparisons to things people would recognize. Inevitably in that era, that meant putting it against the religious dogma. Which had caused the book to be looked at both as an atheist manifesto and as a defense of Christianity. The fact that both sides of the debate could see the book as one of theirs shows just how good Tennyson was in what he was trying to express.

Of course, there is also the topic of love - Hallam was about to marry Tennyson's sister when he died, another of his sisters closes the book with her own wedding. These parallels run through the whole book - death and rebirth of a type. So does the undying love of a poet for his friend. That part had made a lot of people uncomfortable through the years - if one chooses to read it this way, the poem can sound extremely homo-erotic in places. Short of a time machine, the exact relationship between the two friends will remain a mystery but all evidence and understanding of the period point to a friendship - a close one but without the undertone some of the readers may see into the poem. At the end it really does not matter - the poem is an elegy for a lost friend (and one that breaks all rules on how to write elegies - from the selected meter (Tennyson went for iambic tetrameter (ABBA stanzas)) to the lack of the usual good ending that elegies are supposed to have.

The edition I read (I've read parts of the poem before but I think this was the first time I read the whole of it in order) was the Third Norton Critical Edition. As usual, it has very little line by line analysis of the text on its own (it has some notes) but it adds a lot of critical apparatus by citing or excerpting existing critical material - some of which does close reading and others point to things in the poem you may have missed.

Erik Gray's Introduction is a mix of background information (useful to read before the poem) and a commentary on certain elements of the poem (not very desirable if you want to read the poem blind). I enjoyed it a lot more when I reread it at the end of the book - after I had read the whole book (often the NCEs have introductions to the book itself and not to the text they are presenting - this is not one of them).

I am always torn when I am reading these editions if I want to read the background and context section before I read the text itself or after. These are very useful in understanding what you are reading from the start - but they can also be spoilery. On the other hand, a contemporary reader may have been expected to have read/have knowledge of all of these - so the question remains open. In this case, I decided to go into the poem blind (just with the notes - from the poet, from his son or from the editor) and then go chase the backgrounds.

As the poem deals with pretty much any topic you can think of, the backgrounds section is as varied as that: Tennyson's son Hallam's Memoir of his father, the writings of the original Hallam, the poems about and for Hallam Tennyson wrote before the young man died, the usual suspects from the literary world (Catullus, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Milton's Lycidas and Shelley's Adonais) plus the scientific books which the poem borrows from and re-frames (Lyell's "Principles of Geology", Whewell's "The Nebular Hypothesis" and Chambers' "Vestiges of the Natural Order of Creation"). While the literary sources are as timeless as ever, the scientific ones sound naive (and often incorrect) these days - but then that was where science was at the time the poem existed and including the passages from them here help understand where some of Tennyson's weird ideas come from (and some are weird indeed - for our 21st century understanding of science).

The critical section starts with a selection of contemporary reviews (the last one, by George Eliot, seems to have been included mostly because of who wrote it and not because it adds something useful - plus it is the only one from 1855 - all the rest are from 1850 and 1851). Then it is a walk through time and Tennyson scholarship - covering different topics and using different approaches - in some ways as varied as the poem itself: A. C. Bradley talks about the structure of the poem in 1901, T. S Eliot talks about the poetical mastery of Tennyson in 1936, Eleanor Bustin Mattes talks about science and faith in the poem in 1951, Edgar Finley Shannon, Jr. explores the reception of the poem when it was published as part of his book on the reception of all the Tennyson poetry in 1827-1851 in his 1952 book (the excerpt here references a lot of the reviews in the first section of the critical materials - I wish I realized this is here earlier so that I had read that before the reviews as it gives some context the naked reviews are missing), Peter Hinchcliffe writes a very technical essay on elegies and why In Memoriam is not exactly one in 1983, Jeff Nunokawa discusses the representation of the homosexual homoerotic angle in 1991, Sarah Gates goes for the technical side of the poem again in 1999 with an analysis of the form, Aidan Day's essay on the grotesque from 2009 adds more to the science/faith conversation, Matthew Rowlinson stays on the science/history side in 2013 while exploring what is a type, Michelle Geric explores the representation of geology in the poem in 2017 (both literally (Tennyson talks about geology after all) and as a metaphor) and Michael D. Hurley closes the volume with an essay from 2018 about faith in the poem and its connection to the form of it.

Some of these essays (and excerpts) were easier to read than others. Some were mind-numbingly boring (especially the ones analyzing the form of the poem). They all added something to my understanding though - some pointed me to things I missed when I read the poem, some clarified confusing parts.

It is also telling that from the 10 essays/excerpts (I am excluding the one from 1952 looking at the contemporary reviews), 4 are from before 1991 and the earlier ones deal with the form of the poem more than with the meaning of the poem (the one about the meaning in that set tackles he science vs faith line). Editors need to make choices and current scholarship is always preferred but some older material may have bridged some of the more technical essays - some of them talk about older works which I had never heard of and that makes them even less penetrable.

The poem is worth reading - in any edition you can find it. The NCE is useful and exactly what you expect from it - but unless you are in the mood for some very scholarly essays, it may be a bit too technical - more than most NCEs I had read.… (more)