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Tennyson himself was known as a divided spirit. He famously wrote a verse called The Two Voices, wherein dual versions of himself contemplated the arguments of suicide. Through this insightful book, the biographer decides to concentrate on the lesser known persona of the literary figure.

A Defining Year: 1850

During 1850 proved to be decisive for Alfred. He published the monumental poem sequence In Memoriam, over which he had toiled for almost a long period. Consequently, he emerged as both famous and wealthy. He wed, after a 14‑year courtship. Earlier, he had been living in leased properties with his relatives, or residing with bachelor friends in London, or staying in solitude in a ramshackle house on one of his native Lincolnshire's desolate shores. At that point he moved into a residence where he could receive prominent guests. He assumed the role of poet laureate. His career as a Great Man began.

From his teens he was commanding, verging on glamorous. He was exceptionally tall, messy but good-looking

Ancestral Turmoil

The Tennyson clan, wrote Alfred, were a “black-blooded race”, indicating inclined to temperament and sadness. His father, a unwilling priest, was volatile and frequently inebriated. Occurred an incident, the details of which are obscure, that caused the family cook being fatally burned in the rectory kitchen. One of Alfred’s brothers was confined to a psychiatric hospital as a boy and remained there for the rest of his days. Another suffered from profound melancholy and copied his father into drinking. A third became addicted to opium. Alfred himself experienced periods of paralysing gloom and what he called “bizarre fits”. His poem Maud is told by a madman: he must regularly have pondered whether he could become one in his own right.

The Fascinating Figure of Early Tennyson

Even as a youth he was commanding, verging on magnetic. He was exceptionally tall, unkempt but attractive. Prior to he began to wear a black Spanish cloak and headwear, he could control a room. But, being raised in close quarters with his brothers and sisters – several relatives to an attic room – as an adult he desired isolation, retreating into stillness when in social settings, retreating for individual excursions.

Philosophical Anxieties and Turmoil of Belief

During his era, rock experts, astronomers and those scientific thinkers who were exploring ideas with Darwin about the biological beginnings, were posing frightening inquiries. If the timeline of life on Earth had begun millions of years before the emergence of the humanity, then how to maintain that the earth had been made for mankind's advantage? “It is inconceivable,” noted Tennyson, “that the entire cosmos was only created for us, who inhabit a insignificant sphere of a common sun.” The recent telescopes and lenses revealed spaces vast beyond measure and beings infinitesimally small: how to maintain one’s belief, considering such evidence, in a divine being who had created humanity in his likeness? If prehistoric creatures had become vanished, then might the humanity do so too?

Repeating Themes: Mythical Beast and Companionship

The author weaves his story together with two recurring elements. The primary he establishes initially – it is the image of the legendary sea monster. Tennyson was a young scholar when he wrote his work about it. In Holmes’s view, with its blend of “Nordic tales, “historical science, “futuristic ideas and the Book of Revelations”, the short poem establishes themes to which Tennyson would repeatedly revisit. Its feeling of something vast, unutterable and sad, hidden inaccessible of human inquiry, anticipates the atmosphere of In Memoriam. It represents Tennyson’s debut as a expert of verse and as the creator of metaphors in which terrible mystery is packed into a few strikingly evocative lines.

The second motif is the Kraken’s opposite. Where the fictional sea monster epitomises all that is lugubrious about Tennyson, his relationship with a real-life figure, Edward FitzGerald, of whom he would state ““there was no better ally”, conjures all that is loving and lighthearted in the writer. With him, Holmes presents a aspect of Tennyson rarely known. A Tennyson who, after reciting some of his most majestic lines with ““odd solemnity”, would unexpectedly burst out laughing at his own seriousness. A Tennyson who, after visiting ““his friend FitzGerald” at home, penned a appreciation message in poetry depicting him in his rose garden with his tame doves perching all over him, planting their “rosy feet … on back, wrist and knee”, and even on his head. It’s an vision of joy perfectly suited to FitzGerald’s significant celebration of hedonism – his version of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It also brings to mind the brilliant absurdity of the two poets’ common acquaintance Edward Lear. It’s gratifying to be informed that Tennyson, the sad renowned figure, was also the muse for Lear’s verse about the elderly gentleman with a beard in which “a pair of owls and a chicken, several songbirds and a small bird” constructed their homes.

A Fascinating {Biography|Life Story|