شرح و تحليل قصيدة In Memoriam By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

'Calm despair' Vs. 'wild unrest' in Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam.'

Characteristically, throughout In Memoriam, Alfred Lord Tennyson employs the imagery of natural elements in order to portray his feelings and emotions after the death of his close friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. Perhaps the most poignant of these images is that of the wind, represented in many ways throughout the poem, and linked closely to the concept of calm despair' and wild unrest'.




Often associated with notion of changeability, the wind in Tennyson's work appropriately symbolises his transformation through grief and despair and towards cheerful-mindedness' (Stanza 107, 19) and greater spirituality.
This motif plays a highly important and recurring role throughout the poem, and through it's continued use, although constantly altering its creative mood and meaning, Tennyson is able to unify the poem, bringing each individual section together as one.

We are first introduced to the image of the wind, or rather, the lack of it, in Stanza 11, as Tennyson highlights, through extensive repetition, the calm' of the landscape, without wind, to convey his own calm despair' in grief of Hallam's death: "Calm is the morn without a sound/ Calm as to suit a calmer grief/ And only thro' the faded leaf/ The chestnut pattering to the ground:"
Coupled with Autumnal imagery, such as the faded leaf,' The chestnut' and the leaves that redden to the fall,' symbolising the passing of time, the end of life, and moving into death, Tennyson uses this natural, calm imagery to highlight death as a natural occurrence, representing his own natural and calm grieving process.

By Stanza 15, however, the mood is already beginning to alter: "To-night the wind began to rise,"(1) as the scene changes, and more violent images of nature are introduced: "The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd/ The cattle huddled on the lea;/ And wildly dash'd on tower and tree/ The sunbeam strikes along the world:"(5- Tennyson's emotions seem to turn along with nature as he first begins to speak of "The wild unrest that lives in woe"(15)
In Stanza 16, Tennyson deliberately draws the two together in comparison: "Can calm despair/ and wild unrest/ Be tenants of a single breast?"(2-3) as he begins now to doubt the natural calm of his emotions, battling to cope with the "wild unrest" he feels in the anger and sorrow of his grief.

Despite his exceptional poetic control, in this section, Tennyson seems to express his complete lack of restraint over his emotions as he is overcome by wild unrest.' The wind, a force outside himself, and likewise outside of his control, seems to stand for the grief and emotion he is unable to restrain.
In the same way, the structure and form of the poem, an experimental elegy, and fragmented collection of one hundred and thirty three separate stanzas, seeming contradictory at times, also seems to portray Tennyson's wild unrest' and lack of control.
Whereas most elegies present a singular reaction to death, i.e. spirituality or despair, and then lead on to some form of consolation, Tennyson creates in In Memoriam, a kind of diary' of different reactions, where the fictional time span of the poem extends over nearly three years, and although the poem may seem to reach a consolation in one section, "A calm despair" (Stanza 11, 15) it seems it is only temporary, as it is contradicted by the revival of doubt in the next: "To-night these winds begin to rise." (Stanza 15, 1)
The use of iambic tetrameter quatrains with the rhyme scheme ABBA, a form that has since become known as the "In Memoriam Stanza," also seems to relate to the lack of control, and the conflict between "Calm despair" and "wild unrest" in the poem, and in the mind and emotions of Tennyson himself. With the use of the ABBA rhyme scheme, the poem seems to resolve itself in each quatrain, each stanza seeming complete, and so does not seem to naturally drive itself forward. In order for us as readers to move on from one stanza to the next we must will it for ourselves, as the motion does not come automatically to us by virtue of the rhyme scheme. These elements of brokenness and dividedness also seem to symbolise Tennyson's lack of ability to move on after the loss of his beloved friend.

Throughout the poem so far, Tennyson has used the imagery of the wind in order to convey his own changeable emotions, wild anxiety and doubt, and calm spirituality. In Stanza 17, however, he also uses this imagery to refer to the wind that moves the ship that carries Hallam's body: "Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze/ compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer/ Was as the whisper of an air/ To breathe thee over lonely seas." (1-4)
In this instance, Tennyson produces the wind, rather than becoming its victim. The calming mood brought about by the imagery of the whisper' and the breeze' emphasises the naturalistic journey of the ship, guiding Hallam gently, away from life and into death, into life with God and eternal rest.
The spiritual images of this stanza seem to bring about a turning point, highlighting the central issue of the poem, that is, Tennyson's fight for control. The wind, being an image of such neutrality, seems to lend itself equally in expressing both states of mind. In the struggle to overcome his own grief in moments of helplessness, Tennyson is able to employ the image of the wind in order to represent his vulnerability: "And but for fear it is not so/ the wild unrest that lives in woe" (Stanza 15, 14-15) but also in order to convey moments of calm control and spirituality: "The whisper of an air/ To breathe thee over lonely seas." (Stanza 17, 3-4)



As we have already established, the imagery of the wind in In Memoriam, seems to epitomize the rapid transformations between grief and hope, representing the whirl of emotions that overcame and overwhelmed Alfred Lord Tennyson after the death of his closest friend. In the same way, the conflict between Tennyson's calm despair' and wild unrest' again highlights the central theme of Tennyson's fight for control and also the conflict between his doubting atheistic despair and his confident Christian faith.

In Stanza 75, although again originating from Tennyson, the mood brought about by the imagery of the wind is altered for a second time: "I care not in these fading days/ To raise a cry that lasts not long/ And round thee with the breeze of song/ To stir a little dust of praise." (9-12) Whereas before, the "breeze" of the wind and "the whisper of the air" were pleasant, representative of a greater spirituality, the "breeze of song" now in question, signifies Tennyson's writing, which he seems to feel is no longer useful in demonstration of his emotions. Tennyson now feels his breeze of song' to be inadequate in praise of Hallam and suggests that he should perhaps remain silent as his poetry is not worthy of tribute to his dear friend. A similar thought occurs earlier in the poem in Stanza 5: "I sometimes hold it half a sin/ To put into words the grief I feel;/ For words, like Nature, half reveal/ and half conceal the soul within." (1-4) Here, Tennyson also debates the worthiness of his writing, doubting his ability to put into words, the grief he feels over Hallam's death. In Line 8: "Like dumb narcotics, numbing pain," Tennyson writes about how he believes his poetry may misrepresent his feelings, as he feels it is impossible to capture the true state of his soul within words.

At the beginning of Stanza 78, although still in mourning, Tennyson introduces the absence of the wind once more, this time in order to again symbolise his "calm despair" and "the quiet sense of something lost." (
In the closing lines of this stanza, Tennyson seems to suggest that although his regret still lives on, the tears he once cried for Hallam have dried and the pain is no longer outwardly visible: "O last regret, regret can die! / No-mixt with all this mystic frame/ Her deep relations are the same/ But with long use her tears are dry." thus symbolising his progression through the grieving process and his readiness to progress to a new stage.



In Stanza 95, Tennyson again employs the image of the wind, however, as before, in entirely different way. Although beginning in "calm despair": "And calm that let the tapers burn/ unwavering," (5-6) the imagery in this stanza, unlike others, where the established role of the wind is sustained throughout the section, moves from no wind to high wind in just a few lines.
In line 33, Tennyson is overcome by some kind of trance, and for the first time, is able to spiritually join Hallam: "The dead man touch'd me from the past/ And all at once it seem'd at last/ The living soul was flash'd on mine/ And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd/ About empyreal heights of thought/and caught/ the deep pulsations of the world." (34-40)

After feeling these pulsations of the world', Tennyson seems to move on further through the grieving process, from grief to hope, and from doubt to a new kind of faith, again using the wind in order to convey his changed emotions and newfound energy. This sudden change seems even more profound as it is juxtaposed against the repetition of material introduced earlier in the stanza, reminding us of the quiet with which we began: "The white kine glimmered, and the trees/ laid their dark arms about the field" (51-52)
The intensity of the wind increases as the stanza progresses, and even as the season alters: the trees are "full foliaged" (58) and the rose is "heavy-folded,"(59) the wind is still portrayed as being powerful and strong. Although dramatic, this imagery of the wind seems suitably so, as it is said to originate from the "distant gloom," (53) maybe suggesting the powerful emotions "suck'd from out the distant gloom" of Tennyson's grief.

Although the natural imagery alone would seem to appropriately convey the strength of the wind in this stanza, its potency appears sharpened by Tennyson's choice of poetic technique.
Unlike Stanza 15, Stanza 95 employs extensive use of enjambment, which heightens our sense of the rushing of the wind and of the new force that seems to drive Tennyson after his remarkable vision: "And gathering freshlier overhead/ Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung/ The heavy-folded rose, and flung/ The lilies to and fro/ and said" (57-60)
The Rhyming of swung' and flung', both fimal verbs, seems to give the impression of the words hurling themselves out into their direct objects at the beginning of the following lines, which seems to urge the poem forward. The wind, now the element of freshness and change, seems to usher in the dawn, and as the sun rises, dies away "without a breath": "The dawn, the dawn, and died away;/ And East and West without a breath/ Mixt their dim lights, like life and death/ To broaden into boundless day."(61-64)



From this point on, as the wind has fulfilled its purpose- fading out the old and preparing the way for the new it no longer serves a central role in the poem, and now appears only temporarily in other benevolent roles, such as the "Whispering reed" (Stanza 100, 6) and the "windy wold" (Stanza 100, 8.)
Except, In Stanza 107, however, where Tennyson unexpectedly invokes the violence of the wind: "Fiercely flies the blast from North to East"(15) Although seeming nothing more than a representation of an external element, the wind featured in this stanza, could still be symbolic of doubt, grief and unrest, but now, symbolic of how Tennyson is apart and unaffected by such emotions. Later in the stanza, we are told, how instead he resolves to: "Bring in great logs and let them lie/ To make a solid core of heat/ Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat/ Of all things ev'n as he were by." (17-20)


In conclusion, we see then, how Tennyson employs these images of natural elements in order to portray his feelings and emotions in In Memoriam as he fights to overcome the conflict between his "calm despair" and "wild unrest" as he grieves over the death of his beloved friend, Arthur Henry Hallam.

Throughout his poetry, Alfred Lord Tennyson, manipulates the wind to his own devices turning it into a multiple symbol, capable of expressing a myriad of emotions and moods. Tennyson uses the natural element of the wind in order to convey his emotions of grief and despair, his uncertainty and doubt, and finally, in the Epilogue, his renewed hope, as he comes to terms with the death of his friend and moves on through the grieving process towards "Cheerful-mindedness" (58) and greater spirituality.
As we follow through the imagery of the wind and what it signifies, we simultaneously move through the different stages of Tennyson's grief and perhaps begin to sympathise with the sheer multitude of emotions he had to deal with and overcome in order to move on.
Tennyson may have chosen the wind as such a crucial symbol throughout his writing precisely as it is so variable, lending itself to a variety of different roles, and for the fact that as a naturalistic symbol, its effects on the surrounding environment, i.e. the context of the surrounding stanzas, and, in relation to Tennyson's emotions, the influence upon his mood and the way in which he interprets his own physical surroundings, is highly appropriate.

As we have already established, Tennyson carefully directs the way in which we interpret the wind and what exactly it signifies within his work, using various techniques, including changing its strength, for example, in the juxtaposition between "rock'd the full-foliaged elms" (Stanza 95, 58) and "the trees/ laid their dark arms about the field," (Stanza 95, 51-52) changing the atmosphere of the context in the surrounding poem(s), for instance, the rapid mood change that is apparent throughout Stanzas 11-17, in changing the relationship between the wind and himself, as he regularly switches back and forth between his control of the elements, and his submission to their power, and by changing poetic technique, for example, through extensive use of devices such as enjambment, in Stanza 95: "The heavy-folded rose, and flung/ The lilies to and fro, and said" (59-60)

The extended conflict between the "calm despair" and "wild unrest" in the imagery of In Memoriam is therefore crucial to the structure of the poem, and indeed the understanding of the emotions of the narrator. In his comparisons, Tennyson creates a feeling of both "calm despair" and "wild unrest" within the reader as they negotiate their way through each stanza, and, like Tennyson, begin to question the mourning process as they read on. The extended motif of the wind further extenuates this feeling as its changeability and neutrality lends itself to plethora of different interpretations within the poem, gently guiding, and, fiercely whirling the reader through the high and low points of Tennyson's grief.




Summary:

Prologue:

The poem begins as a tribute to and invocation of the “Strong Son of God.” Since man, never having seen God’s face, has no proof of His existence, he can only reach God through faith. The poet attributes the sun and moon (“these orbs or light and shade”) to God, and acknowledges Him as the creator of life and death in both man and animals. Man cannot understand why he was created, but he must believe that he was not made simply to die.

The Son of God seems both human and divine. Man has control of his own will, but this is only so that he might exert himself to do God’s will. All of man’s constructed systems of religion and philosophy seem solid but are merely temporal, in comparison to the eternal God; and yet while man can have knowledge of these systems, he cannot have knowledge of God. The speaker expresses the hope that “knowledge [will] grow from more to more,” but this should also be accompanied by a reverence for that which we cannot know.

The speaker asks that God help foolish people to see His light. He repeatedly asks for God to forgive his grief for “thy [God’s] creature, whom I found so fair.” The speaker has faith that this departed fair friend lives on in God, and asks God to make his friend wise.

XXVII:


Here the speaker states that he feels no jealousy for the man who is captured and does not know what it means to feel true rage, or for the bird that is born with in a cage and has never spent time outside in the “summer woods.” Likewise, he feels no envy for beasts that have no sense of the passage of time and no conscience to check their behavior. He also does not envy those who have never felt pain (“the heart that never plighted troth”) or those who complacently enjoy a leisure that they do not rightfully deserve. Even when he is in the greatest pain, he still realizes that “ ‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.”

LVI:

After having asserted in Section LV that Nature cares only for the survival of species (“so careful of the type”) and not for the survival of individual lives, the speaker now questions whether Nature even cares for the species. He quotes a personified, feminine Nature asserting that she does not attend to the survival of the species, but arbitrarily bestows life or death on all creatures. For Nature, the notion of the “spirit” does not refer to any divine, unearthly element, but rather to the simple act of breathing.

The poet questions whether Man, who prays and trusts in God’s love in spite of the evidence of Nature’s brutality (“Nature, red in tooth and claw”), will eventually be reduced to dust or end up preserved like fossils in rock: “And he, shall he, Man...Be blown about the desert dust, Or sealed within the iron hills?” The thought of this evokes a notion of the human condition as monstrous, and more terrifying to contemplate than the fate of prehistoric “dragons of the prime.” The speaker declares that life is futile and longs for his departed friend’s voice to soothe him and mitigate the effect of Nature’s callousness.

Form
“In Memoriam” consists of 131 smaller poems of varying length. Each short poem is comprised of isometric stanzas. The stanzas are iambic tetrameter quatrains with the rhyme scheme ABBA, a form that has since become known as the “In Memoriam Stanza.” (Of course, Tennyson did not invent the form—it appears in earlier works such as Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and the Turtle”—but he did produce an enduring and memorable example of it.) With the ABBA rhyme scheme, the poem resolves itself in each quatrain; it cannot propel itself forward: each stanza seems complete, closed. Thus to move from one stanza to the next is a motion that does not come automatically to us by virtue of the rhyme scheme; rather, we must will it ourselves; this force of will symbolizes the poet’s difficulty in moving on after the loss of his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam.

Commentary
Tennyson wrote “In Memoriam” after he learned that his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a fever at the age of 22. Hallam was not only the poet’s closest friend and confidante, but also the fiance of his sister. After learning of Hallam’s death, Tennyson was overwhelmed with doubts about the meaning of life and the significance of man’s existence. He composed the short poems that comprise “In Memoriam” over the course of seventeen years (1833-1849) with no intention of weaving them together, though he ultimately published them as a single lengthy poem in 1850.

T.S. Eliot called this poem “the most unapproachable of all his [Tennyson’s] poems,” and indeed, the sheer length of this work encumbers one’s ability to read and study it. Moreover, the poem contains no single unifying theme, and its ideas do not unfold in any particular order. It is loosely organized around three Christmas sections (28, 78, and 104), each of which marks another year that the poet must endure after the loss of Hallam. The climax of the poem is generally considered to be Section 95, which is based on a mystical trance Tennyson had in which he communed with the dead spirit of Hallam late at night on the lawn at his home at Somersby.

“In Memoriam” was intended as an elegy, or a poem in memory and praise of one who has died. As such, it contains all of the elements of a traditional pastoral elegy such as Milton’s “Lycidas,” including ceremonial mourning for the dead, praise of his virtues, and consolation for his loss. Moreover, all statements by the speaker can be understood as personal statements by the poet himself. Like most elegies, the “In Memoriam” poem begins with expressions of sorrow and grief, followed by the poet’s recollection of a happy past spent with the individual he is now mourning. These fond recollections lead the poet to question the powers in the universe that could allow a good person to die, which gives way to more general reflections on the meaning of life. Eventually, the poet’s attitude shifts from grief to resignation. Finally, in the climax, he realizes that his friend is not lost forever but survives in another, higher form. The poem closes with a celebration of this transcendent survival.

“In Memoriam” ends with a an epithalamion, or wedding poem, celebrating the marriage of Tennyson’s sister Cecilia to Edmund Lushington in 1842. The poet suggests that their marriage will lead to the birth of a child who will serve as a closer link between Tennyson’s generation and the “crowning race.” This birth also represents new life after the death of Hallam, and hints at a greater, cosmic purpose, which Tennyson vaguely describes as “One far-off divine event / To which the whole creation moves.”

Not just an elegy and an epithalamion, the poem is also a deeply philosophical reflection on religion, science, and the promise of immortality. Tennyson was deeply troubled by the proliferation of scientific knowledge about the origins of life and human progress: while he was writing this poem, Sir Charles Lyell published his Principles of Geology, which undermined the biblical creation story, and Robert Chambers published his early evolutionary tract, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. In “In Memoriam,” Tennyson insisted that we hold fast to our faith in a higher power in spite of our inability to prove God’s existence: “Believing where we cannot prove.” He reflects early evolutionary theories in his faith that man, through a process lasting millions of years, is developing into something greater. In the end, Tennyson replaces the doctrine of the immortality of the soul with the immortality of mankind through evolution, thereby achieving a synthesis between his profound religious faith and the new scientific ideas of his day.


To which of the following poetic genres does “In Memoriam” belong?

(A) Elegy
(B) Sonnet
(C) Epic
(D) Eclogue


In Memoriam Alfred, Lord Tennyson


INTRODUCTION

One of the most influential Victorian poems, Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam (1850) is actually 133 poetic fragments or sections that differ in theme, tone, and presentation, but are all unified by the poetic persona's grief, doubt, and search for faith. The composition of In Memoriam was initiated by Tennyson's deep suffering at the loss of his brilliant young friend, the promising poet and scholar Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly in 1833 at the age of twenty-two. Although many of the sections were written in the three years following Hallam's death, when Tennyson's grief was most acute, he continued adding to and rearranging his long poem as science and religion shook traditional beliefs in God and Christianity. Finally, in 1850, Tennyson published his lyrical elegy. Immediately well-received, it brought Tennyson considerable fame and was undoubtedly influential in the decision to appoint Tennyson as William Wordsworth's successor as British poet laureate.

Plot and Major Characters

Although the 133 individual sections of In Memoriam present varying stages of doubt, faith, and consolation, they are all unified by the abba stanza form. Originally, Tennyson intended to call the poem “Fragments of an Elegy,” and later often referred to his work as “The Way of the Soul.” The actual title, however, was suggested by Emily Sellwood, Tennyson's future wife. In Memoriam has been argued by some critics to be deeply autobiographical, while others contend that it is foremost artistic and fictional; Tennyson himself claimed that the poem is actually the voice of all humanity, and not his own. The style and form of the emotional verse preclude conclusive identification of more than a few characters. There may also be no definitive answer to the question of genre, as its interior struggle is both highly personal and universal. The poem expresses deeply personal emotions and questions of faith, often directly resulting from the loss of Hallam. Contradictions abound, however, and with each assertion of doubt in God, Tennyson complicates the emotion by offering verses, or even single images or words, of hope and renewal. This culminates in section 95 when the poetic voice is reunited with the spirit of Hallam through a mystical experience. Finally, while closure is never truly found, the poem ends with a sense of consolation. Loss is accepted, faith is affirmed, and the presentation of a marriage leaves the reader with a measure of hope.

Major Themes

Most critics agree that In Memoriam can readily be divided into four sections marked by the three Christmas celebrations following Hallam's death. The mood progresses from despair, longing, doubt, and sorrow to hope, inner-peace, and faith. The poem considers death and the stages of bereavement as the narrator experiences intense grief, nostalgia, and disconsolation, as well as the contemplation of immortality with the desire for a future reunion with the dead. The eventual outcome of this renewed faith is tempered with knowledge of scientific advancement and is necessarily compatible with it. In Memoriam seeks to represent man's journey to understand suffering, love, and his own purpose.

Critical Reception

Criticism of In Memoriam has been rich and varied. During Tennyson's lifetime, his poem enjoyed universal acclaim. The Victorian reader shared his own spiritual doubt with the narrative voice of the poem and found solace. After Tennyson's death, his poem and his reputation alike suffered critical backlash. Many twentieth-century readers found the dramatic melancholy and the questioning of faith to be dated and naïve. The early twentieth-century vogue for dismissing Tennyson, and likewise In Memoriam, has largely passed, and critics since the 1960s have been greatly interested in the poem. Many scholars, including K.W. Gransden, consider In Memoriam to be an elegy. Gransden finds Tennyson's approach too tentative and exploratory as it seeks to adequately convey the poetic vision. Other critics have explored the influence of nineteenth-century scientific discovery on both Tennyson as a thinker and writer and on Victorian religious beliefs. One critic, Robert Dilligan, turned to computer analysis to help unravel the syntax and prosody of In Memoriam. The vehemence with which Tennyson's poem longs for the lost Hallam has led some critics, including Christopher Craft, to examine the homoerotic underpinnings of the poem and to question whether the obvious passages of male love are simply written with a sensibility unique to its time or are indicative of a different level of comfort with homosexuality. Likewise, analyses of the poem's linguistic structure, poetics, language, symbolism, and structure abound. In Memoriam remains an important work for critical examination as its themes of grief, doubt, loss, and longing are universal to humankind.