In Memoriam A.H.H.

The poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." (1850) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is an elegy for his Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died of cerebral haemorrhage at the age of twenty-two years, in Vienna in 1833. As a sustained exercise in tetrametric lyrical verse, Tennyson's poetical reflections extend beyond the meaning of the death of Hallam, thus, “In Memoriam” also explores the random cruelty of Nature seen from the conflicting perspectives of materialist science and declining Christian faith in the Victorian Era (1837–1901), the poem thus is an elegy, a requiem, and a dirge for a friend, a time, and a place.

History

“In Memoriam A.H.H.” (1850) is an elegiac, narrative poem in 2,916 lines of iambic tetrametre, composed in 133 cantos, each canto headed with a Roman numeral, and organised in three parts: (i) the prologue, (ii) the poem, and (iii) the epilogue. After seventeen years of composing, writing, and editing, from 1833 to 1850, Lord Tennyson anonymously published the poem under the Latin title “In Memoriam A.H.H. Obiit MDCCCXXXIII” (In Memoriam A.H.H. 1833). Moreover, upon the literary, artistic, and commercial success of the poetry, Tennyson further developed the poem and added Canto LIX: 'O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me' to the 1851 edition; and then added Canto XXXIX: 'Old warder of these buried bones' to the 1871 edition. The epilogue concludes “In Memoriam” with an epithalamium, a nuptial poem for the poet's sister, Cecilia Tennyson, on her wedding to the academic Edmund Law Lushington, in 1842.

The poem

Metrical form

Written in iambic tetrametre (four-line ABBA stanzas), the poetical metre of “In Memoriam A.H.H.” creates the tonal effects of the sounds of grief and mourning. In 133 cantos, including the prologue and the epilogue, Tennyson uses the stylistic beats of tetrametre to address the subjects of spiritual loss and themes of nostalgia, philosophic speculation, and Romantic fantasy in service to mourning the death of his friend, the poet A. A. Hallam; thus, in Canto IX, Tennyson describes the return of the corpse to England: "Fair ship, that from the Italian shore / Saileth the placid ocean-plains / With my lost Arthur's remains, / Spread thy full wings and waft o'er him".

Themes

As a man of the Victorian Age (1837–1901) and as a poet, Lord Tennyson addressed the intellectual matters of his day, such as the theory of the transmutation of species presented in the anonymously-published book ''Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'' (1844), a speculative natural history about the negative theological implications of Nature functioning without divine direction. Moreover, 19th-century Evangelicalism required belief in literal interpretations of ''The Holy Bible'' against the theory of human evolution; thus, in Canto CXXIX, Tennyson alludes to "the truths that never can be proved" — the Victorian belief that reason and intellect would reconcile science with religion.

In Canto LIV, the poet asks:

:''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;''

:''That I, considering everywhere''
:''Her secret meaning in her deeds,''
:''And finding that of fifty seeds''
:''She often brings but one to bear,''

:''I falter where I firmly trod,''
:''And falling with my weight of cares''
:''Upon the great world's altar-stairs''
:''That slope thro' darkness up to God,''

:''I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,''
:''And gather dust and chaff, and call''
:''To what I feel is Lord of all,''
:''And faintly trust the larger hope.''

In Canto LV, the poet queries Nature about the existential circumstance of Man on planet Earth: “Who trusted God was love indeed / And love Creation's final law — / Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek'd against his creed — / Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, / Who battled for the True, the Just, / Be blown about the desert dust, / Or seal'd within the iron hills?” Moreover, although Tennyson published “In Memoriam A.H.H.” (1850) nine years before Charles Darwin published the book ''On the Origin of Species'' (1859), contemporary advocates for the theory of natural selection had adopted the poetical phrase ''Nature, red in tooth and claw'' (Canto LV) to support their humanist arguments for the theory of human evolution.

In Canto CXXII, Tennyson addresses the conflict between conscience and theology:

:''If e'er when faith had fallen asleep,''
:''I hear a voice 'believe no more' ''
:''And heard an ever-breaking shore''
:''That tumbled in the Godless deep;''

:''A warmth within the breast would melt''
:''The freezing reason's colder part,''
:''And like a man in wrath the heart''
:''Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.' ''

:''No, like a child in doubt and fear:''
:''But that blind clamour made me wise;''
:''Then was I as a child that cries,''
:'' But, crying knows his father near;''

The conclusion of the poem reaffirmed Tennyson's religiosity, his progress from doubt-and-despair to faith-and-hope, which he realised by mourning the death of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam (1811–1833).

Personal themes

The literary scholar Christopher Ricks relates the following lines, from canto XCIX, to the end of Tennyson's boyhood at the Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire, especially the boy's leaving Somersby upon the death of his father.

In Canto XCIX, the poet speaks of:

:''Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,''
:''The tender blossom flutter down,''
:''Unloved, that beech will gather brown,''
:''This maple burn itself away.''

Quotations

As English literature, the elegiac poem “In Memoriam A.H.H.” (1850) has yielded many literary quotations:

In Canto XXVII:

:''I hold it true, whate'er befall;''
:''I feel it when I sorrow most;''
:'' 'Tis better to have loved and lost''
:''Than never to have loved at all.''

In Canto LIV:

:''So runs my dream, but what am I?''
:''An infant crying in the night''
:''An infant crying for the light''
:''And with no language but a cry.''

In Canto LV:

:''Who trusted God was love indeed''
:''And love Creation's final law''
:''Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw''
:''With ravine, shriek'd against his creed''

In Canto CXXIII:

:''The hills are shadows, and they flow''
:''From form to form, and nothing stands;''
:''They melt like mist, the solid lands,''
:''Like clouds they shape themselves and go.''

Concerning the natural science of the time, in Canto CXXIII, the poet Tennyson reports that "The hills are shadows, and they flow / From form to form, and nothing stands" in reference to the then-recent discovery, in the 19th century, that planet Earth was geologically active and was older than believed by the Victorians.

Popular culture

Novels

In the novel ''The Tragedy of the Korosko'' (1898), by Arthur Conan Doyle, characters quote poetic by citing Canto LIII of “In Memoriam”: "Oh yet we trust that somehow good / will be the final goal of ill"; and by citing Canto LIV: "I falter where I firmly trod"; whilst another character says that Lord Tennyson's “In Memoriam” is "the grandest and the deepest and the most inspired oemin our language".

Musical settings

* Canto CXXIII, "There rolls the deep were free the tree" (0000), by C. H. H. Parry
* The cycle of songs ''Four Songs from In Memoriam'' (0000), by Maude Valérie White
* The cycle of seven songs ''Under Alter’d Skies'' (2017), by Jonathan Dove

Celebrities

“In Memoriam” was a favourite poem of Queen Victoria, who after the death of her husband, the Prince Consort Albert, was "soothed & pleased" by the feelings explored in Tennyson's poem. In 1862 and in 1883, Queen Victoria met with the poet Lord Tennyson to tell him she much liked his poetry.http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/home.do 7 August 1883

References

Further reading

* A. C. Bradley, ''A Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam''. London, Macmillan and Co. 1901.

External links

Text of "In Memoriam A.H.H."
from The Literature Network.

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{{Alfred Tennyson

Poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
British poems
1849 poems