Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892 -- Friends and associates
sometimes running to excess; in his moods, too, of reverie or languor and
in the slumberous charm that broods over many of his landscapes. Yet he is
free from the disordered individualism of the extreme romantic school.
Disquietude and unrest are not wanting, but there is no unruly
self-assertion; the cry of social revolt is faintly heard, and, when
heard, its tones are among the least Tennysonian. Those who demand subtle
or curious psychology find him disappointing; his characters are in the
Greek manner _broadly human_, types rather than deviations from the type.
That he was capable of expressing intense and poignant feeling is shown by
such impassioned utterances as those of "Fatima" and "Maud"; but passion
with him is usually restrained. There are critics for whom passion is
genuine only if turbid, just as thought is profound only if obscure; and
for them Tennyson's reserve--again a Greek quality--seems an almost
inhuman calm. His own most deeply felt experiences find their truest
expression when passed through the medium of art; they come out
tranquillized and transfigured. The sorrow and love of "In
Memoriam"--which poem I take to be the supreme effort of his genius--are
merged in large impersonal emotions. The poem, as he himself says, "is
rather the cry of the whole human race than mine." Tennyson's intense
humanity gives rise to a peculiar vein of pathos, and even of melancholy.
Side by side there are his "mighty hopes" for the future and the power and
"passion of the past"--"the voice of days of old and days to be": on the
one hand the forward straining intellect, on the other the backward
glance, the lingering regret, and "some divine farewell." Those haunting
and recurrent words, "the days that are no more," "for ever and for ever,"
and the "vague world whisper" of the "far-far-away," are charged with a
sadness which recalls the pathetic but stoical refrain of "Nequiquam" in
Lucretius.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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