The Boundless Deep: Delving into Young Tennyson's Restless Years
The poet Tennyson emerged as a torn soul. He even composed a verse titled The Two Voices, wherein two aspects of the poet argued the arguments of suicide. Through this illuminating book, the author chooses to focus on the overlooked character of the writer.
A Critical Year: The Mid-Century
The year 1850 was decisive for Alfred. He unveiled the monumental collection of poems In Memoriam, for which he had worked for close to a long period. Consequently, he became both celebrated and wealthy. He wed, following a long relationship. Previously, he had been living in rented homes with his relatives, or lodging with bachelor friends in London, or staying alone in a dilapidated dwelling on one of his native Lincolnshire's barren coasts. Then he moved into a house where he could receive prominent callers. He was appointed the official poet. His existence as a renowned figure started.
From his teens he was commanding, almost magnetic. He was very tall, messy but attractive
Family Turmoil
The Tennyson clan, observed Alfred, were a “given to dark moods”, meaning inclined to moods and sadness. His parent, a hesitant minister, was volatile and frequently inebriated. Occurred an event, the facts of which are obscure, that resulted in the household servant being burned to death in the home kitchen. One of Alfred’s brothers was placed in a psychiatric hospital as a youth and remained there for his entire existence. Another suffered from severe melancholy and emulated his father into drinking. A third became addicted to narcotics. Alfred himself experienced bouts of overwhelming despair and what he termed “bizarre fits”. His work Maud is told by a insane person: he must regularly have wondered whether he was one in his own right.
The Intriguing Figure of Early Tennyson
Even as a youth he was striking, verging on glamorous. He was of great height, messy but good-looking. Before he began to wear a black Spanish cloak and sombrero, he could control a space. But, having grown up crowded with his family members – three brothers to an attic room – as an mature individual he sought out privacy, retreating into quiet when in company, retreating for individual journeys.
Philosophical Concerns and Crisis of Faith
In Tennyson’s lifetime, geologists, celestial observers and those scientific thinkers who were exploring ideas with Darwin about the biological beginnings, were raising disturbing inquiries. If the history of life on Earth had commenced millions of years before the appearance of the human race, then how to believe that the planet had been made for people's enjoyment? “It seems impossible,” stated Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was only made for us, who inhabit a minor world of a common sun.” The new viewing devices and magnifying tools revealed areas vast beyond measure and beings infinitesimally small: how to maintain one’s faith, considering such evidence, in a deity who had formed mankind in his own image? If ancient reptiles had become vanished, then might the mankind do so too?
Recurrent Elements: Kraken and Bond
Holmes weaves his narrative together with dual recurrent motifs. The primary he establishes at the beginning – it is the image of the Kraken. Tennyson was a youthful undergraduate when he penned his poem about it. In Holmes’s opinion, with its blend of “Norse mythology, 18th-century zoology, “speculative fiction and the biblical text”, the 15-line poem introduces themes to which Tennyson would keep returning. Its sense of something immense, unspeakable and tragic, hidden inaccessible of human understanding, anticipates the tone of In Memoriam. It marks Tennyson’s emergence as a master of rhythm and as the originator of metaphors in which terrible enigma is compressed into a few strikingly indicative phrases.
The other theme is the contrast. Where the fictional sea monster epitomises all that is melancholic about Tennyson, his friendship with a genuine person, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say ““there was no better ally”, conjures all that is affectionate and playful in the artist. With him, Holmes introduces us to a side of Tennyson seldom previously seen. A Tennyson who, after reciting some of his most impressive phrases with ““odd solemnity”, would unexpectedly burst out laughing at his own solemnity. A Tennyson who, after calling on “dear old Fitz” at home, composed a appreciation message in verse depicting him in his rose garden with his tame doves resting all over him, setting their “rosy feet … on arm, palm and leg”, and even on his skull. It’s an image of pleasure nicely adapted to FitzGerald’s great exaltation of enjoyment – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also evokes the excellent absurdity of the pair's common acquaintance Edward Lear. It’s pleasing to be told that Tennyson, the mournful renowned figure, was also the source for Lear’s verse about the elderly gentleman with a beard in which “a pair of owls and a hen, several songbirds and a tiny creature” built their homes.
