This essay considers Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam A.H.H. and what it says about desire.
IIntroduction
Alfred Lord Tennyson is generally considered the “embodiment” of the Victorian age, both to his contemporaries and to modern readers. Although he lived in a world that was rapidly changing, his sympathies were with the countryside, and it is for his beautiful landscapes that he is most widely remembered.
He was an intelligent and passionate man, but he seems to have expressed that passion in poetry more easily than in life:
“Hallam’s death nearly crushed him, but it also provided the stimulus for a great outburst of some of the finest poems he ever wrote, many of them connected overtly or implicitly with the loss of his friend. “Ulysses,” “Morte d’Arthur,” “Tithonus,” “Tiresias,” “Break, break, break,” and “Oh! that ’twere possible” all owe their inception to the passion of grief he felt but carefully hid from his intimates.” (“Alfred Tennyson”, PG).
Alfred Henry Hallam was Tennyson’s dearest friend, and his death was the sad inspiration for one of Tennyson’s greatest works, “In Memoriam.” We’ll turn to a stanza of that poem to further examine Tennyson’s expression of desire.
IIDiscussion
“In Memoriam” is a tremendous work, nearly 3,000 lines long. It is sometimes joyous, sometimes despairing, as are the emotions of people who are coming to terms with the death of a loved one. One stanza in particular (CXXIX) speaks of Tennyson’s desire: “Dear friend, far off, my lost desire, / So far, so near in woe and weal; / O loved the most, when most I feel / There is a lower and a higher; // Known and unknown; human, divine; / Sweet human hand and lips and eye; / Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, / Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine; // Strange friend, past, present, and to be; / Loved deeplier, darklier understood; / Behold, I dream a dream of good, / And mingle all the world with thee.” (Tennyson, PG).
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(I’m transcribing it in this format to give us some space to talk about it.)
The first line talks about Tennyson’s “lost desire.” This of course refers to his friend, but modern readers sometimes interpret it to mean that the two men were lovers. However, scholars and historians say that there was no such relationship; and in fact it was the absence of homosexual feelings that allowed the men to express their devotion as openly as they did. (“Alfred Tennyson,” PG).
The rest of the stanza isn’t nearly as easy to understand, because Tennyson is struggling to comprehend what it means to be mortal, and to face death. The heart of the stanza, I think, are the lines “Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, / Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine.” This is a great cry of loss, but also of hope, and the very essence of desire. But not the desire of love, but the desire for life itself. Tennyson, who was trying to come to terms with his own mortality, is also looking for reassurance of survival; he seems to find it when he says there is a higher and lower, known and unknown, human and divine. Because his love for Hallam continues, so, he implies, does Hallam himself, and so will he.
This belief in a reunion is further explored in the last stanza, when he calls Hallam a “strange friend” whom he loved in the past, still loves, and will continue to love. But the words “to be” suggest that this love is still to come; that is, it will come to fruition after Tennyson’s own death, when they are reunited.
Finally, the last lines are very difficult, and open to many different interpretations. First, the words “deeplier” and “darklier” (those are not misspellings) are strange in themselves, and hint at a depth of love that is beyond any ordinary human desire. The idea of a stronger attachment is carried on in the next line, when Hallam is described as a “dream of good.” Tennyson is not saying that Hallam is a good man; it goes far beyond that. For the poet, his friend is a sort of Platonic Form of good; the idea of good that defines the entire concept. That is, Hallam is goodness itself.
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Finally, when he says he will “mingle all the world with thee,” it seems that he wants all mankind to share the qualities that made Hallam special.
IIIConclusion
This poem is the embodiment of desire, but not desire as we normally think of it. This isn’t a work about a man who’s had an unhappy love affair with the woman of his dreams; it is a poem that goes directly to the heart of what it means to have a real friend. It isn’t the death of a lover Tennyson’s mourning, but the loss of a man who believed in him and his talent. Tennyson isn’t considering Hallam as a lover, it is the anguish of losing his most cherished friend that drives him.
The desire that runs through the entire poem is so strong it’s like a live wire; it is particularly evident in this stanza. It is the desire of the living for the dead, for the reunion with the loved one, and for life everlasting.
IVReferences
“Alfred Tennyson.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 32: Victorian Poets Before 1850. Eds. William E. Fredeman and Ira B. Nadel. The Gale Group, 1984: 262-282. Retrieved 20 Mar 2003 from the Dictionary of Literary Biography [Database], The Literature Resource Center, San Diego Public Library, San Diego, CA:: http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/LitRC?c=294&ste=36&docNum=H1200003729&KA=Tennyson+desire&bConts=266151&tab=1&vrsn=3&tbst=ksrch&srchtp=kywrd&n=10&locID=san67255
Tennyson, Alfred. “In Memoriam A.H.H.” [On-line]. Undated. Accessed: 20 Mar 2003. http://tennysonpoetry.home.att.net/129.htm
