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The poet Tennyson existed as a divided spirit. He even composed a piece named The Two Voices, wherein two versions of the poet debated the merits of self-destruction. Through this insightful work, the author decides to concentrate on the overlooked persona of the writer.

A Pivotal Year: That Fateful Year

During 1850 was crucial for Alfred. He unveiled the great collection of poems In Memoriam, over which he had laboured for almost twenty years. As a result, he emerged as both famous and prosperous. He entered matrimony, subsequent to a extended engagement. Earlier, he had been dwelling in leased properties with his mother and siblings, or residing with male acquaintances in London, or residing by himself in a dilapidated cottage on one of his native Lincolnshire's desolate shores. Then he took a residence where he could receive notable callers. He became the national poet. His career as a renowned figure started.

Starting in adolescence he was striking, verging on magnetic. He was of great height, messy but handsome

Ancestral Turmoil

His family, observed Alfred, were a “prone to melancholy”, indicating prone to moods and melancholy. His paternal figure, a unwilling priest, was volatile and frequently drunk. Occurred an occurrence, the details of which are obscure, that led to the family cook being killed by fire in the home kitchen. One of Alfred’s brothers was admitted to a lunatic asylum as a child and remained there for the rest of his days. Another suffered from severe despair and emulated his father into addiction. A third developed an addiction to narcotics. Alfred himself suffered from bouts of debilitating gloom and what he referred to as “bizarre fits”. His poem Maud is told by a insane person: he must often have wondered whether he was one personally.

The Intriguing Figure of the Young Poet

Starting in adolescence he was striking, almost charismatic. He was exceptionally tall, unkempt but good-looking. Even before he began to wear a black Spanish cloak and sombrero, he could dominate a room. But, maturing crowded with his brothers and sisters – several relatives to an cramped quarters – as an mature individual he sought out isolation, retreating into stillness when in company, retreating for solitary excursions.

Existential Fears and Upheaval of Belief

In Tennyson’s lifetime, rock experts, astronomers and those scientific thinkers who were exploring ideas with the naturalist about the origin of species, were posing appalling questions. If the timeline of existence had started millions of years before the appearance of the mankind, then how to maintain that the planet had been formed for people's enjoyment? “It is inconceivable,” noted Tennyson, “that all of existence was simply created for us, who live on a third-rate planet of a common sun.” The recent optical instruments and lenses uncovered realms infinitely large and beings tiny beyond perception: how to hold to one’s faith, considering such proof, in a deity who had made mankind in his likeness? If prehistoric creatures had become died out, then might the human race do so too?

Recurrent Themes: Mythical Beast and Friendship

The author weaves his account together with a pair of persistent elements. The primary he introduces initially – it is the symbol of the legendary sea monster. Tennyson was a youthful scholar when he wrote his work about it. In Holmes’s perspective, with its combination of “ancient legends, “historical science, “futuristic ideas and the biblical text”, the short verse introduces ideas to which Tennyson would repeatedly revisit. Its impression of something immense, unutterable and tragic, concealed inaccessible of human inquiry, prefigures the tone of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s introduction as a virtuoso of metre and as the creator of images in which dreadful unknown is compressed into a few dazzlingly suggestive lines.

The second element is the contrast. Where the fictional creature epitomises all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his connection with a genuine figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would state ““there was no better ally”, summons up all that is affectionate and lighthearted in the poet. With him, Holmes introduces us to a side of Tennyson infrequently previously seen. A Tennyson who, after uttering some of his most majestic verses with ““bizarre seriousness”, would suddenly burst out laughing at his own seriousness. A Tennyson who, after calling on “dear old Fitz” at home, wrote a appreciation message in rhyme depicting him in his flower bed with his domesticated pigeons sitting all over him, planting their ““reddish toes … on back, hand and knee”, and even on his head. It’s an picture of pleasure nicely adapted to FitzGerald’s great celebration of hedonism – his interpretation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also brings to mind the brilliant absurdity of the two poets’ shared companion Edward Lear. It’s satisfying to be informed that Tennyson, the mournful celebrated individual, was also the inspiration for Lear’s verse about the aged individual with a whiskers in which “two owls and a hen, several songbirds and a wren” made their nests.

An Engaging {Biography|Life Story|