The Boundless Deep: Delving into Young Tennyson's Restless Years

The poet Tennyson existed as a torn spirit. He famously wrote a verse titled The Two Voices, in which contrasting versions of the poet argued the pros and cons of ending his life. Through this insightful volume, the biographer elects to spotlight on the lesser known identity of the writer.

A Pivotal Year: 1850

In the year 1850 proved to be decisive for the poet. He unveiled the monumental poem sequence In Memoriam, for which he had laboured for close to two decades. As a result, he grew both renowned and wealthy. He got married, after a extended courtship. Before that, he had been dwelling in rented homes with his relatives, or lodging with unmarried companions in London, or residing in solitude in a ramshackle dwelling on one of his local Lincolnshire's bleak beaches. At that point he moved into a residence where he could receive distinguished callers. He became the national poet. His life as a celebrated individual began.

From his teens he was commanding, even charismatic. He was very tall, unkempt but attractive

Lineage Struggles

The Tennysons, observed Alfred, were a “prone to melancholy”, suggesting inclined to moods and depression. His parent, a hesitant clergyman, was volatile and regularly intoxicated. There was an incident, the facts of which are unclear, that caused the domestic worker being burned to death in the home kitchen. One of Alfred’s male relatives was admitted to a mental institution as a boy and lived there for his entire existence. Another suffered from severe depression and emulated his father into drinking. A third developed an addiction to narcotics. Alfred himself suffered from periods of overwhelming gloom and what he referred to as “strange episodes”. His poem Maud is voiced by a insane person: he must often have pondered whether he might turn into one in his own right.

The Intriguing Figure of Young Tennyson

Starting in adolescence he was commanding, almost magnetic. He was very tall, messy but attractive. Even before he started wearing a dark cloak and wide-brimmed hat, he could dominate a gathering. But, having grown up hugger-mugger with his siblings – three brothers to an attic room – as an mature individual he craved privacy, escaping into silence when in social settings, disappearing for individual journeys.

Existential Concerns and Upheaval of Faith

In Tennyson’s lifetime, geologists, star gazers and those “natural philosophers” who were starting to consider with the naturalist about the biological beginnings, were raising frightening questions. If the timeline of existence had commenced millions of years before the appearance of the human race, then how to hold that the world had been formed for humanity’s benefit? “It is inconceivable,” stated Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was only made for mankind, who reside on a third-rate planet of a common sun.” The modern viewing devices and lenses revealed realms vast beyond measure and creatures minutely tiny: how to maintain one’s belief, considering such findings, in a deity who had made humanity in his own image? If prehistoric creatures had become vanished, then would the humanity follow suit?

Persistent Motifs: Sea Monster and Bond

Holmes ties his narrative together with dual recurrent motifs. The initial he establishes initially – it is the symbol of the mythical creature. Tennyson was a youthful undergraduate when he wrote his poem about it. In Holmes’s perspective, with its blend of “ancient legends, “earlier biology, 19th-century science fiction and the biblical text”, the 15-line verse establishes concepts to which Tennyson would keep returning. Its impression of something enormous, indescribable and sad, submerged inaccessible of human inquiry, prefigures the atmosphere of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s debut as a master of verse and as the creator of images in which terrible enigma is condensed into a few dazzlingly suggestive words.

The second element is the contrast. Where the imaginary creature symbolises all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his friendship with a actual figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say “I had no truer friend”, conjures all that is affectionate and playful in the writer. With him, Holmes reveals a facet of Tennyson seldom previously seen. A Tennyson who, after intoning some of his grandest lines with ““bizarre seriousness”, would suddenly roar with laughter at his own seriousness. A Tennyson who, after visiting ““the companion” at home, penned a appreciation message in poetry describing him in his rose garden with his pet birds resting all over him, placing their “rosy feet … on arm, hand and lap”, and even on his head. It’s an vision of delight nicely suited to FitzGerald’s great exaltation of enjoyment – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also summons up the brilliant nonsense of the pair's common acquaintance Edward Lear. It’s gratifying to be told that Tennyson, the mournful celebrated individual, was also the muse for Lear’s rhyme about the aged individual with a facial hair in which “nocturnal birds and a hen, four larks and a small bird” constructed their nests.

A Compelling {Biography|Life Story|