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In Memoriam A.H.H.
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In Memoriam A.H.H. is a long poem by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833, but it is also much more.
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Encyclopedia
In Memoriam A.H.H. is a long poem by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833, but it is also much more. Written over a period of 17 years, it can be seen as reflective of Victorian society at the time, and the poem discusses many of the issues that were beginning to be questioned. It is the work in which Tennyson reaches his highest musical peaks and his poetic experience comes full circle. It is regarded as one of the greatest poems of the 19th century.
The poem was a great favorite of Queen Victoria, who found it a source of solace after the death of Prince Albert in 1861: "Next to the Bible, In Memoriam is my comfort." In 1862, Victoria requested a meeting with Tennyson because she was so impressed by the poem.
The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul", and this might give an idea of how the poem is an account of all Tennyson's thoughts and feelings as he copes with his grief over such a long period - including wrestling with the big scientific-philosophical questions of his day. It is perhaps because of this that the poem is still popular with and of interest to modern readers. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.
Form
The poem is not arranged exactly in the order in which it was written. The prologue, for example, is thought to have been one of the last things written. The earliest material is thought to be that which begins "Fair ship, that from the Italian shore | Saileth the placid ocean-plains" and imagines the return of Hallam's body from Italy. Critics believe, however, that the poem as a whole is meant to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister.
"In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter; though not metrically unusual, given the length of the work it creates a definite tonal effect which often divides readers - is it the natural sound of mourning and grief, or is it just monotonous? The poem divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue), and in contrast to its constant and regulated metrical form, encompasses many different subjects: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminiscence, philosophical speculation, Romantic fantasizing and even occasional verse. The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts to cope with this, remain the strand that ties all these together.
Quotation
The most oft-quoted lines in the poem are perhaps
- 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.
This stanza is to be found in Canto 27. The last two lines are usually taken, out of context, as offering advice on the dissolution of a romantic relationship. However the lines actually refer to the death of a beloved friend.
Another much-quoted phrase from the poem is "nature, red in tooth and claw," found in Canto 56, referring to man:
- 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
Also, the following are found in Canto 54
- 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.
Nature, red in tooth and claw
In writing the poem, Tennyson was influenced by the ideas of evolution presented in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation which had been published in 1844, and had caused a storm of controversy about the theological implications of impersonal nature functioning without direct divine intervention. The fundamentalist idea of unquestioning belief in revealed truth taken from a literal interpretation of the Bible was already in conflict with the findings of science, and Tennyson expressed the difficulties evolution raised for faith in "the truths that never can be proved".
- 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.
This poem was published before Charles Darwin made his theory public in 1859. However, the phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw" in canto 56 quickly was adopted by others as a phrase that evokes the process of natural selection. It was and is used by both those opposed to and in favour of the theory of evolution.
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