Is In Memoriam a unified elegy, or a collection of lyric poems? ... Hallam's sudden
death from a brain haemorrhage, while overseas, saw Tennyson document.
Stephen Griffin University of Oxford Faculty of English Trinity Term 2003 Dr Julian Thompson, Regent’s Park College Is In Memoriam a unified elegy, or a collection of lyric poems? It is clear to the reader that In Memoriam is an elegy, a memorial lamenting the loss of a loved one. Tennyson’s poem expresses the grief and subsequent emotions that the poet felt over the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, whom he met during his university days at Trinity College, Cambridge. The relationship between the two would last for five years, in which time their bond grew, as they did, extending from study and mutual appreciation to that of travelling companions and prospective brothers-in-law. The seventeen years following Hallam’s sudden death from a brain haemorrhage, while overseas, saw Tennyson document the range of feelings and thoughts which arose from this sense of grief.
It is also clear that In Memoriam is a collection of one hundred and thirty one separate lyric poems. The real question, then, is whether it has any manner of narrative linearity – is it unified in any way, or are these lyric poems simply archived sequentially with little or no relevance to each other, save their form?
Tennyson has been recorded as stating, of the fragmented nature of the elegy and its construction in so many separate lyrics, ‘The sections were written at many different places, and as the phases of our intercourse came into my memory and suggested them. I did not write them with any view of weaving them into a whole, or for publication, until I found I had written so many.’ 1
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Recorded in Tennyson. H, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir (London, 1897)
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This quotation from the poet can lend credence to two theories regarding the linear structure of In Memoriam. The first is that it was written, as he states, with no intention of unification, and that the illusion of such a narrative comes as a result of simultaneous publication. This seems credible, especially when presented as the conscious intention of the poet. The second is that the successive writing of these lyrics as a direct expression of feeling experienced throughout the seventeen years give the piece, when considered as a whole, a cohesion that is denied when the poems are separated.
There is substantial evidence within the elegy, when taken as a whole, which is indicative of an intention of unification on certain levels, or at least of later lyrics, themes and symbols harkening back and resonating with previous ones, giving a familiarity and sense of purpose throughout.
One of his central themes of In Memoriam is the conflict between science and religion. Hallam’s death appears to have created in him an element of curiosity in the scientific world, as Tennyson launches into thoughts of an impartial natural destiny controlling mankind as a race, as opposed to a benevolent God ruling with compassionate omnipresence: 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; (LV 5-8) This stanza hints that Tennyson is succumbing, at this point, to doubt with regards to his religious faith. It seems that if, under Nature’s rule as opposed to God’s, the ‘single life’ is not a priority, only the continuation of the species – the ‘type’ in this biological sense – counts as valid or worthwhile. These concerns are seemingly arrived at by the state of grief Tennyson finds himself in at the time of writing – not seeing any reason within Christian theology with which he can attribute Hallam’s death, he can but despairingly conclude that biological evolution weeds out individuals in a ‘careless’, cruelly random manner. This
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surmising thought process is usually attributed to his reading Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell in 1836/1837 2 , which can be used to reiterate Tennyson’s exploration for meaning during the seventeen years of writing.
There is further evidence of this train of evolutionary thought in the next section, but here Tennyson extends his writing to encompass the possibility that not even the ‘type’ can be guaranteed survival under the evolutionary regime: ‘So careful of the type?’ but no. From scarpèd cliff and quarried stone She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go. (LVI 1-5) Here, Tennyson is conceding that mankind, as a ‘type’ is no less likely to escape extinction than previous species. In doing so, it seems that he is replacing his vision of Hallam as a mere individual to a representation of man as a species by following a logical process – if one person, and such a person as Hallam was to him, is as expendable as he seems, then surely the entire race may by chance suffer the same fate. He sees, at the heart of nature, nothing but purposeless ruin.
Tennyson’s association of Hallam as the ‘type’, in this biological sense, plays an important role in linking this central part of In Memoriam with the final section, thus promoting the notion of the elegy as unified once again. At various points from hereon in, he is more comfortable when considering the fate of the human race, ‘The seeming prey of cyclic storms, / Till at last arose the man;’ (CXVIII 11 & 12) seems to be a more optimistic reference to mankind’s fate. The ‘cyclic’ reference perhaps alludes to the evolutionary cycles seen in nature, and the ‘storms’ suggest both the power and seemingly catastrophic ways in which these laws are regulated.
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Ricks. C, Ed., Tennyson, A Selected Edition, P.397 (Longman, Singapore, 1989)
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The ‘man’ who ‘arises’ in line 12 is Tennyson’s optimistic vision of the truly evolved human, who will come into being as a result of this natural action. In the following stanza, he refers to this being as ‘The herald of a higher race, / And of himself in higher place, / If so he type this work of time.’ (CXVIII 14 – 16). The use here of the word ‘type’ suggests Hallam, as it is a term previously attributed to him. If so, what could it mean? Tennyson may be presenting his friend as the model of human evolutionary perfection, a further shift of Hallam’s perceived identity.
Finally, in the Epilogue, Hallam is again alluded to as the ‘type’, but this time in a more theological sense: Whereof the man, that with me trod, This planet, was a noble type, Appearing ere the times were ripe, That friend of mine who lives in God, (E 137 – 140) Tennyson seems to have used Hallam as an exemplary foreshadowing of what he expects humans to become, and is satisfied that he has now found peace with God. By mentioning them both in this stanza, he perhaps transforms any worries he may have had concerning evolution into an assertion that as a result of nature, man will be united with God.
The In Memoriam stanza (or envelope stanza), as it became known, has a rhyme scheme a, b, b, a. When read, these stanzas appear to be heading in a progressive direction, but ultimately lead the reader back to where they began. This gives the impression that In Memoriam is actually comprised of small pockets of stasis, each one completely isolated and self contained – separate from the whole. The way in which Tennyson revisits grief over and over again, part of what separates In Memoriam from other elegies, is a mirroring of the smaller block which builds it, so that both the content and the form complement each other. Each stanza of the poem seems to pay homage to this constant cyclic movement.
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The problem of how to figure this kind of relationship is a familiar one to literary critics. Those who examine the sonnet sequences of Shakespeare, Spenser or Sidney encounter a similar issue of definition. On one level the individual poems of such pieces are discrete entities that have not necessarily been written in the finalised order that we discover in their modern printed versions. The narratives that we find in these sequences therefore cannot be conventionally linear like that of the epic poem, novel or well-made play. The individual poems can be happily appropriated for use in greetings cards, bookmarks or anthologies of poetry – which is exactly what Christopher Ricks does with In Memoriam in his Oxford anthology of Victorian verse – and there can indeed be much of historicist literary value in anthologising certain parts of In Memoriam alongside pieces by his contemporaries.
However, to read the parts of In Memoriam in exclusive separation is to ignore the kind of unity shared by the entire sequence. Only by treating the piece as a whole can the reader recognise how and why Tennyson develops his themes. It is possible to recognise developments, comments on earlier sections of the poem, ironic reversal, formal differences etc. as it unfolds, that cannot be explored with as much insight by reading parts individually.
In her Arden edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Katherine Duncan-Jones recognises that, when taken as an entire pre-determined sequence, there are features that would be entirely ignored by a separate reading of the poems, for example she says that sonnet 66 is full of doom because multiples of six are always associated with the number of the beast of revelation, 666. In this paper have contended that something similar can be discerned in Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and that treating the poems in hermetically sealed isolation ignores the structural and thematic unity of the piece as a whole. To ignore the fact that the poems are part of a sequence with a common theme would be to ignore Tennyson’s overall vision – it would be a bit like looking at one panel from the Sistine chapel ceiling whilst ignoring the rest of the room.
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Bibliography Bradley, A, C, A Commentary on Tennyson’s In Memoriam MacMillan & Co. (Glasgow, 1902) Drabble, Margaret and Stringer, Jenny (eds.), The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature (Revised Edition), Oxford University Press (Chatham, 1996) Duncan-Jones, K (ed), Shakespeare, W,Arden Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Sonnets: Third Edition, Arden (1997) Hobsbaum, P, Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form: The New Critical Idiom Routledge (St. Ive’s 1996) Ricks, Christopher (ed.), Tennyson, A Selected Edition, Longman (Singapore, 1989) Ricks, Christopher (ed.), The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse OUP (Oxford, 2002) Rogers, Pat (ed), The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, OUP (Italy, 2001) Source of quote: www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/teaching/pc/ptylvl3/tennyson.html for Tennyson. H, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir (London, 1897)
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