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

Tennyson himself existed as a divided individual. He even composed a poem titled The Two Voices, in which contrasting aspects of his personality argued the pros and cons of suicide. Through this illuminating book, Richard Holmes elects to spotlight on the more obscure character of the literary figure.

A Critical Year: 1850

In the year 1850 was decisive for Alfred. He published the significant collection of poems In Memoriam, on which he had worked for nearly two decades. Therefore, he emerged as both celebrated and wealthy. He got married, following a 14‑year engagement. Before that, he had been living in leased properties with his mother and siblings, or staying with male acquaintances in London, or staying in solitude in a rundown dwelling on one of his native Lincolnshire's desolate coasts. Then he took a home where he could entertain distinguished callers. He was appointed the national poet. His life as a celebrated individual began.

Starting in adolescence he was commanding, verging on glamorous. He was exceptionally tall, messy but good-looking

Ancestral Challenges

His family, noted Alfred, were a “given to dark moods”, meaning susceptible to temperament and depression. His father, a reluctant priest, was irate and very often intoxicated. Occurred an event, the particulars of which are vague, that resulted in the domestic worker being burned to death in the rectory kitchen. One of Alfred’s siblings was placed in a mental institution as a boy and stayed there for life. Another endured severe melancholy and followed his father into addiction. A third developed an addiction to the drug. Alfred himself suffered from bouts of debilitating sadness and what he termed “strange episodes”. His Maud is voiced by a lunatic: he must frequently have wondered whether he could become one personally.

The Fascinating Figure of Early Tennyson

Even as a youth he was commanding, verging on charismatic. He was very tall, disheveled but attractive. Prior to he adopted a black Spanish cloak and wide-brimmed hat, he could dominate a space. But, maturing hugger-mugger with his siblings – several relatives to an attic room – as an grown man he craved privacy, retreating into quiet when in social settings, retreating for solitary walking tours.

Deep Concerns and Turmoil of Faith

In that period, earth scientists, astronomers and those early researchers who were exploring ideas with the naturalist about the origin of species, were raising appalling questions. If the story of existence had started millions of years before the arrival of the mankind, then how to believe that the earth had been formed for humanity’s benefit? “It is inconceivable,” noted Tennyson, “that all of existence was merely formed for us, who live on a third-rate planet of a third-rate sun The modern telescopes and lenses exposed spaces vast beyond measure and beings tiny beyond perception: how to hold to one’s religion, given such findings, in a deity who had formed humanity in his form? If ancient reptiles had become died out, then could the humanity follow suit?

Repeating Motifs: Kraken and Companionship

The biographer weaves his narrative together with dual recurring themes. The primary he presents early on – it is the concept of the Kraken. Tennyson was a youthful student when he penned his work about it. In Holmes’s perspective, with its blend of “Norse mythology, 18th-century zoology, “speculative fiction and the Book of Revelations”, the short verse establishes themes to which Tennyson would repeatedly revisit. Its feeling of something immense, indescribable and sad, concealed beyond reach of human understanding, prefigures the tone of In Memoriam. It marks Tennyson’s debut as a master of rhythm and as the originator of images in which terrible enigma is packed into a few dazzlingly indicative lines.

The second motif is the contrast. Where the mythical creature symbolises all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his relationship with a genuine figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would say “I had no truer friend”, summons up all that is fond and lighthearted in the artist. With him, Holmes reveals a aspect of Tennyson infrequently previously seen. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his most majestic phrases with “grotesque grimness”, would unexpectedly burst out laughing at his own gravity. A Tennyson who, after visiting ““the companion” at home, composed a thank-you letter in poetry describing him in his garden with his pet birds resting all over him, planting their “rosy feet … on shoulder, wrist and lap”, and even on his skull. It’s an image of pleasure excellently tailored to FitzGerald’s significant praise of hedonism – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also brings to mind the excellent foolishness of the pair's shared companion Edward Lear. It’s gratifying to be learn that Tennyson, the sad celebrated individual, was also the muse for Lear’s poem about the elderly gentleman with a whiskers in which “a pair of owls and a fowl, several songbirds and a small bird” made their nests.

A Compelling {Biography|Life Story|