In Memoriam A.H.H.
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In Memoriam A.H.H. is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833. Because it was written over a period of 17 years, its meditation on the search for hope after great loss touches upon many of the most important and deeply felt concerns of Victorian society. It contains some of Tennyson's most accomplished lyrical work, and is an unusually sustained exercise in lyric verse. It is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century.[1]
The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul", and this might give an idea of how the poem is an account of all Tennyson's thoughts and emotions as he grieves over the death of a close friend. He views the cruelty of nature and mortality in light of materialist science and faith. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.
Contents
Form
The poem is not arranged exactly in the order in which it was written. The prologue, for example, is thought to have been one of the last things written. The earliest material is thought to be that which begins "Fair ship, that from the Italian shore | Saileth the placid ocean-plains" and imagines the return of Hallam's body from Italy. Critics believe, however, that the poem as a whole is meant to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister.
"In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter, and such stanzas are now called In Memoriam Stanzas. Though not metrically unusual, given the length of the work, the meter creates a tonal effect which often divides readers – is it the natural sound of mourning and grief, or merely monotonous? The poem is divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue), and in contrast to its constant and regulated metrical form, encompasses many different subjects: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminiscence, philosophical speculation, Romantic fantasizing and even occasional verse. The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts to cope with this, remain the strand that ties all these together.
Quotation
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The most frequently quoted lines in the poem are perhaps
- I hold it true, whate'er befall;
- I feel it when I sorrow most;
- 'Tis better to have loved and lost
- Than never to have loved at all.
This stanza is to be found in Canto 27. The last two lines are usually taken as offering a meditation on the dissolution of a romantic relationship. However, the lines originally referred to the death of the poet's beloved friend. They are reminiscent of a line from William Congreve's popular 1700 play, The Way of the World: "'tis better to be left than never to have been loved."
Another much-quoted phrase from the poem is "nature, red in tooth and claw," found in Canto 56, referring to humanity:
- Who trusted God was love indeed
- And love Creation's final law
- Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
- With ravine, shriek'd against his creed
Also, the following are found in Canto 54
- So runs my dream, but what am I?
- An infant crying in the night
- An infant crying for the light
- And with no language but a cry.
Nature, red in tooth and claw
In writing the poem, Tennyson was influenced by the ideas of evolution presented in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation which had been published in 1844, and had caused a storm of controversy about the theological implications of impersonal nature functioning without direct divine intervention. The fundamentalist idea of unquestioning belief in revealed truth taken from a literal interpretation of the Bible was already in conflict with the findings of science, and Tennyson expressed the difficulties evolution raised for faith in "the truths that never can be proved".[2]
- Are God and Nature then at strife,
- That Nature lends such evil dreams?
- So careful of the type she seems,
- So careless of the single life;
- That I, considering everywhere
- Her secret meaning in her deeds,
- And finding that of fifty seeds
- She often brings but one to bear,
- I falter where I firmly trod,
- And falling with my weight of cares
- Upon the great world's altar-stairs
- That slope thro' darkness up to God,
- I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
- And gather dust and chaff, and call
- To what I feel is Lord of all,
- And faintly trust the larger hope.
Although this phrase is commonly ascribed to Tennyson, it already was in use, see The Hagerstown Mail in March 1837: "Hereupon, the beasts, enraged at the humbug, fell upon him tooth and claw."[3]
This poem was published before Charles Darwin made his theory public in 1859. However, the phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw" in canto 56 quickly was adopted by others as a phrase that evokes the process of natural selection. It was and is used by both those opposed to and in favour of the theory of evolution.[4][5][6][7]
However, at the end of the poem, Tennyson emerges with his Christian faith reaffirmed, progressing from doubt and despair to faith and hope, a dominant theme also seen in his poem "Ulysses".[8]
- If e'er when faith had fallen asleep,
- I hear a voice 'believe no more'
- And heard an ever-breaking shore
- That tumbled in the Godless deep;
- A warmth within the breast would melt
- The freezing reason's colder part,
- And like a man in wrath the heart
- Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'
- No, like a child in doubt and fear:
- But that blind clamour made me wise;
- Then was I as a child that cries,
- But, crying knows his father near;
Queen Victoria and In Memoriam
The poem was a great favourite of Queen Victoria, who after the death of Prince Albert wrote that she was "soothed & pleased" by it.[9] In 1862 Victoria requested a meeting with Tennyson because she was so impressed by the poem, and when she met him again in 1883 she told him what a comfort it had been.[10]
Other themes
The British literary scholar Christopher Ricks relates the following lines to Tennyson's childhood home at Somersby Rectory in Somersby, Lincolnshire, particularly the poet's departure after the death of his father.[11]
Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away.
Further reading
- A.C. Bradley, A Commentary on Tennyson's in Memoriam. London, Macmillan and Co. 1901.
References
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- ↑ [1]
- ↑ Charles Darwin-A Short Biography, Coe College Biology Department, 1999.
- ↑ Red in Tooth and Claw, Gary Martin, Phrases, Sayings and Idioms at The Phrase Finder, 1996.
- ↑ Start of preface to 1976 edition, Excerpt from The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. (2nd Edition 1989) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- ↑ 4. The Evolutionary Implications of Living with the Ice Age, William James Burroughts, Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos, Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-521-82409-5
- ↑ AQA A AS English Literature: Victorian Literature: Student's Book
- ↑ http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/home.do 5 January 1862
- ↑ http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/home.do 7 August 1883
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
THE POETIC WORK OF MOURNING: TENNYSON’S IN MEMORIAM AS THE FREUDIAN TRAUERARBEIT]
External links
Quotations related to In Memoriam A.H.H. at Wikiquote
Works related to In Memoriam A. H. H. at Wikisource