Nature in Tennyson’s poem "In
memoriam"
•Introduction
In Memoriam A.H.H. is a long poem written by the
English poet Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, and completed in 1849. It was composed as an elegy
to his friend, Hallam, who died at the age of 22
from a fever. The poem consists of many smaller poems, written in iambic
tetrameter with an ABBA rhyme scheme. Besides it is
divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue),
and in contrast to its constant and regulated
metrical form, it deals with different subjects such as: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminscence,
philosophical speculation, Romantic fantasizing and
even occasional verse.
(cf.<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A.H.H.> and
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/kuzmowycz12.html)
Through the analysis
of some sections of this poem, it can be taken into account the
relations to the romantic vision of nature and
religion in Wordsworth’s poem. First of all, it is necessary to
introduce the Victorian four elements in the total
situation of a work of art: the artistic product itself, the universe representing nature, the audience and the
artist. Many nineteenth-century critics affirm that
the romantic poetry tended towards egotism and excessive subjectivity,
instead the
Victorian project
found literary and artistic means of bridging a series of what they
considered to be binary oppositions such as: self
and society, personal and political, subject and objective; it is what
Tennyson did in his poem, that is to say finding
public uses for very private experiences without becoming egotistical, combining the romantic subjectivity with
publicly accessibility and social relevance.
(cf.
http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/abrams1.html)
•About the
poem
Tennyson created a poetry of fragments, leading the reader
of his poem "In Memoriam" from grief and despair
through doubt to hope and faith. We can find these tormented emotions in
the preface:
Preface
Strong Son of God,
immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy
face,
By faith, and faith alone,
embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;[lines
1-4]
We have but faith: we
cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we
see
And yet we trust it comes from
thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow. [lines
13-16]
But vaster. We are
fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not
fear:
But help thy foolish ones to
bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
[lines 21-24]
(cf.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A._H._H )
In the first four
lines of the preface, there are three characters: the Son of God, Love
and human being. The poet refers to God like full of
immortal love and "we", human being, have faith, although we have not proofs of the existence of God. But in the
following lines, the poet contradicts what he had
said before in the first stanza, "we have but faith" and he writes that
it is just for knowledge and trust that we believe
in things we see "it comes from thee", moreover in line 22 when man has no fear, "we mock thee". Surely, the theme of the
poem, Arthur Henry Hallam's death provided
him the excuse to question his faith in God and as well as in the rest
of the poem, to question his faith in nature and
poetry.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/intro.html> and
personal opinion)
Although it is defined
a poetry of fragments, there is throughout the poem a theme linearity,
due to the cycle technique used by Tennyson in order
to illustrate certain fundamental laws behind human
time and natural time, nevertheless it is a non-linearity structure that
prevails in the poem, reflecting the author’s
concept of non-linearity time. As I have read, Tennyson’s notions of
time are initially dependent upon the strict
division between human time and time existing in nature, the first
is linear, the second one is cyclical. This concept
is exposed in the first half of the poem.
(cf.<
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/eron35.html> and
personal opinion)
Some examples of this
time distinction and its consequences are throughout the poem:
Preface
Our little systems
have their day;
They have their day and cease to
be:
They are but broken lights of
thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. [
lines 9-16]
Section
1
Than that the victor
Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and
boast,
'Behold the man that loved and
lost,
But all he was is overworn.'[lines
13-16]
Section 13
Come, Time, and teach
me, many years,
I do not suffer in a
dream;
For now so strange do these things
seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
[lines 13-16]Section 50
And Time, a maniac
scattering dust, [line 7]Section 95
The steps of
Time--the shocks of Chance—
The blows of Death.
[lines 42 and 43]
(cf.<
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A._H._H.>)
In the stanza of the
preface it is shown the important effect that time have on human being,
that is to say, the death "They have their day and
cease to be"; every man has his system or his time,
which is divided by days, then being a linear time, there is an end. In
section 13 another notion is presented; to Tennyson,
time is something that oscillates along a past-present-past-present
continuum, we can experience the immanence of the
past, then the past resurfaces in the present, patterning natural or human cyclical phenomena, moreover the past
links to the present in which dreams and illusions
intertwine with reality.
As we can see in
section 13 the poet is confused by this intertwining of dream and
reality and I think that for the poet the
appropriate solution is death, in order to remove this
grief. What is more, in section 95 lines
42-43 time and death appear as cause and effect; however, this
relation is only true for human time.
(cf.<
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/eron35.html> and
personal opinion)
In section 2 it is
shown the difference between human time and natural time in lines 5 and
7 to 8 and in section 22 lines 5-12:
Section 2
Old
Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the
under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless
head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the
bones.
The seasons bring the
flower again,
And bring the firstling to the
flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the
clock
Beats out the little lives of
men.
O, not for thee the
glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any
gale,
Nor branding summer suns
avail
To touch thy thousand years of
gloom:
And gazing on thee,
sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn
hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my
blood
And grow incorporate into thee.Section
22
And we with singing
cheer'd the way,
And, crown'd with all the season
lent,
From April on to April
went,
And glad at heart from May to
May:
But where the path we
walk'd began
To slant the fifth autumnal
slope,
As we descended following
Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear'd of
man;
(cf.
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A._H._H.>)
In section 2 another
concept is expressed, the poet immersion in nature. The poet compares
himself to the yews and so to the death, I think
because these animals live underground, and as human
being they born and die; moreover he envies "the sullen tree" and "for
thy stubborn hardihood" because the tree does not die and in my opinion
he imagines to free himself from hishuman nature, represented by the
blood, and therefore incorporating himself into nature.
(cf. personal
opinion)
Anyway, in section 22
it is described a sort of experience of the author and Hallam that
consists in a fall out of natural or seasonal time, they coexist with
the natural passing of the seasons and at the end this cyclical time
changes into a more linear time endowed by the immanence of death,
represented by "the Shadow"; it is more explicit in another verse this
concept of seasonal time "And every winter change to spring" in section
54 line 16. In my opinion winter represents the death of nature, but the
difference is that nature regenerates, whereas human being only dies. I
agree with the opinion that Tennyson, throughout the poem, tries to
reconcile the natural time with the human time, but I think that he
cannot.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/eron35.html> and
personal opinion)
Another issue in order
to describe the poet’s vision of nature is a comparison between some
Wordsworth’s verses in "Lines Composed a Few Miles
above Tintern Abbey" and it consists in the two
personifications of nature.
And this prayer I
make,
Knowing that Nature never did
betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her
privilege,
Through all the years of this our
life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so
inform
The mind that is within us, so
impress
With quietness and beauty, and so
feed
With lofty thoughts.
--William Wordsworth,
"Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," 122-128.
So careful of the
type?' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried
stone
She cries, `A thousand types are
gone:
I care for nothing, all shall
go.
"Thou makest thine
appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to
death;
The spirit does but mean the
breath:
I know no more."
--Alfred Tennyson, In
Memoriam 56, 1-8.
In Wordsworth’s
passage nature is presented like a woman who will not "betray/The heart
that loved her", who will "lead/From joy to joy". He represents nature,
not only as a woman but as a kind-hearted, benevolent woman who serves
the good of mankind and the world. She is his source for kindness,
beauty, and "lofty thoughts;" she is the muse and nurturer of the
Romantic poet and his mind. But the difference stays here; Tennyson
crafts a woman to represent nature, but "she cries from cliff-top", she
is not a nurturer who will not betray but one who cares for nothing,
Tennyson’s woman does not feed human mind, that is to say nature does
not teach anything to the poet, it is not the source for the poet’s
imagination.
(cf.<
http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/nature4.html>)
Finally, we have the
main different vision of nature: Wordsworth's nature holds such
benevolent powers because in her he finds sublime majesty and
transcendence into the realm of God and the religious world. She helps
him to reflect, he introspects himself and the world around him. On the
contrary, Tennyson, confused by the death of his close friend Arthur
Hallam, can find no gentleness in a world which caused such pain and
crushed and bewildered his faith; moreover, the assault of evolutionary
theory upon the religious doctrines of the time contributes to his
pessimistic vision on nature and world. I think that the two different
vision of nature reflect the two different periods, that is to say
romantic vision is much more optimistic and nature is used to escape
from the society, which is not accepted by the poets, it is a sort of
shelter for the poets, instead for Tennyson, nature has taken away his
friend, so it does not give him joy and quietness, but he sees nature as
the reason of death and to him it is not a source of imagination and
mind.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/nature4.html> and
personal opinion)
In conclusion, in my
view, Tennyson’s poem is an elegy which deals with social and
individual problems, in such a way that he reaches
the Victorian target of avoiding the excessive egotism of romantic poetry, even though he approaches the theme
of nature in a different way, using the comparison
between human and natural time, stressing the mainly role that death
have on human nature going as far as considering
nature like a negative element in our human life, in contrast to the romantic vision, which reckoned nature as the
muse of poetry and the source of imagination and of
the poetry creativity.
(cf. personal
opinion)
Bibliography:
-Tennyson’s In
memoriam under wikipedia and Victorian web homepage, section In Memoriam
A.H.H.Grief and the Continuation of Life, author Tatiana Kuzmowycz.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A.H.H.
>and <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/kuzmowycz12.html
>
Home: www.wikipedia.org
and www.victorianweb.org 08/02/2007
-Victorianism under
victorianweb homepage, section Victorianism as a Fusion of Neoclassical
and Romantic Ideas and Attitudes, author George P. Landow.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/abrams1.html
>
Home: www.victorianweb.org 08/02/2007
-In memoriam text
under wikipedia.org home page
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A._H._H>
Home: www.wikipedia.org 7/05/2007
-Tennyson’s In
memoriam under victorianweb homepage, section An Introduction to In
Memoriam, author George P.
Landow.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/intro.html>
Home: www.victorianweb.org 09/02/2007
-Tennyson In memoriam under Victorianweb homepage, section On
Borrowed Time: Cycles of Narrative, Nature, and Memory in the work of
Tennyson and Eliot, author Sarah Eron.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/im/eron35.html>
Home: www.victorianweb.org
07/05/2007
-Tennyson under
victorianweb homepage, section Nature in Wordsworth and Tennyson,
author David Stevenson.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/nature4.html>
home: www.victorianweb.org
11/02/2007